WWE bringing the smackdown to State College
By Dennis Fallon
For the CDT
Alright, you girlie-men. Grab your tights and oil up -- if you dare. There is plenty of smackdown to go around. Come and get it.
Grown men will fly through the air as voluptuous divas catfight, all to the adoring cheers and jeers of the crowd, as the pop-culture circus that is professional wrestling rolls into State College Monday on night. The event will be aired nationally on Spike TV.
World Wrestling Entertainment, has achieved epic popularity in recent years. With wrestlers who at times seem more like rock stars than athletes, scantily clad women, violence and melodramatic storylines, pro wrestling has become a business of not only big men but big money.
Founded by Vince and Linda McMahon more than 20 years ago, the WWE has grown from an underground cottage industry to a capitalist behemoth. Last year, the company earned more than $374 million.
Monday night's show will be a performance called RAW, which is one of the weekly TV programs that showcase the WWE wrestlers and advances their multiple plotlines. The action is no longer confined to the ring, backstage cameras give fans a voyeuristic front seat in the weekly tales of betrayal and vengeance, passion and deceit.
One of the wrestlers in the WWE stable to compete Monday is Edge, the handsome and long-haired gladiator of the new millennium. Speaking from a RAW match in Cincinnati, Edge described for the Weekender what he thought the appeal of the WWE is: "Anytime you see RAW -- especially a RAW telecast -- it's a melting pot of music and explosions. It's like a rock 'n' roll show with the story lines and theatrics of a soap opera and the athleticism of a football or a hockey game."
For Edge, who has been a wrestler for the past decade, he appreciates the fans' respect for the physical that is the hallmark of a good wrestler.
"Recently," he said, "people have given more respect toward the amount of work that goes into physically doing this job."
For those who can't remember the days of Andre the Giant or The Junkyard Dog, it's important to understand that professional wrestling has been around for decades, first achieving major popularity in the 1980s, when heroes such as Hulk Hogan and villains including Rowdy Roddy Piper sprung onto the national scene.
So what has kept this entertainment sport so popular and so commercially viable? For Edge, it all comes down to escape.
"When you take wrestling down to its brass tacks, I don't think we change the world. I think we entertain. It's to have fun for three hours, not worry about the workplace or the bully at school, but to forget about the everyday."
Credit: Centre Daily Times