By Coach B

Classic wrestling still has its hooks in me. Building this site is easier than pretending I’ve fully embraced the current product.

I grew up on rented VHS tapes, hazy Detroit TV signals, and the mythology of it all. Hogan. Flair. Piper. Delusional, grandiose, and dangerous. You bought a ticket to see the carnage that followed them into the building.

The crowd believed enough to matter. Throw a beer. Take a swing at the heel. Cool. You got to find out, in real time, what another grown man’s fist tasted like.

Today we have common decency, metal detectors, and security guards. Back then, given the choice between getting nightsticked by the local PD or getting in Bruiser Brody’s face? Just hand me the stick and I’ll kick my own ass, thanks.

Don’t tell me it’s better now. It’s cleaner. That’s not the same thing.

The Present Is Not the Enemy, Unfortunately

That doesn’t mean modern wrestling is bad. I’m not the guy who thinks everything made after 1998 should be loaded into a shit cannon and fired into a lake.

Modern wrestling is impressive. A guy built like a substitute gym teacher can hit three dives and a Spanish Fly before the first commercial break and somehow everyone walks away mostly fine. But that’s exactly the point.

Is it more impressive? Absolutely. Is it always more fun? No.

I miss wrestling that felt like it was happening in a real place. Not a universe. A place. A local civic center with folding chairs, angry fans held back by baling twine and aluminum tubing, and one woman in the fourth row who is somehow her own aunt.

What We Do Here

This whole thing started with a simple idea: watch classic wrestling, get distracted by the ring announcer, remember something from when I was nine, and write it down before the thought escapes into the ceiling fan.

Sometimes that means serious analysis. Sometimes it means realizing a jobber in a singlet looks exactly like my sixth-grade gym teacher, Mr. White. I stand by it.

That turned into four sections:

Altered Tape: Classic wrestling, watched too closely for the wrong reasons.

Bad Tracking: Modern wrestling, reluctantly viewed.

Loose Ends: The junk drawer.

Archive: Everything in one place.

Better isn’t really the question. It was more fun because we cared. Maybe if we go back and make it fun again, we’ll care more.

As for the name, plenty of wrestlers over the last forty years entered the ring in some kind of altered state, legally, spiritually, chemically, or medically inadvisable.

So here we are.

Huge thanks to Brian at www.ringthedamnbell.com for giving me a place and encouraging me to keep going. His support led directly to this site.