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 Five fucking weeks. That's how long it's been since I watched RAW. If you knew me well, you might begin to understand the enormity of that. I've been watching WWF Wrestling since Wrestlemania 2. I'm talking about Superstars of Wrestling, that weekly dose of those ass-awful jobber squashes. I'm talking about Wrestling Challenge, showing the same goddam matches one week later, hosted by that drunk redcoat Lord Alfred Hayes. And I'm talking about the only bright spot in those years and years of horrible WWF television: the brilliant Prime Time Wrestling. That show was truly a gem. Gorilla Monsoon and Bobby Heenan carried those broadcasts every week, never, ever missing a beat. If you haven't managed to catch an episode of Prime Time Wrestling, you truly don't know how good wrestling TV can be. But enough about that. I'm not in a good mood, and I'm certainly not here to share the proverbial love. Let's get back to those five weeks. Since Wrestlemania 2, there has never been a span of more than two weeks that I didn't catch some sort of WWF television program. I find that to be both inhumanly loyal and grotesquely pathetic at the same time. I followed the boom and bust cycles. I even got my Dad watching wrestling PPV's for a year or so. He was an Undertaker fan. Go figure. I hid my love for wrestling for years, then rejoiced when WCW and WWF enjoyed a taste of mainstream popularity in the late 90's. Suddenly, it was "cool" that I knew so much about wrestling. Even girls wanted to talk about wrestling, heaven forbid. It was just a good time to be a wrestling fan. I went so far as to sleep out overnight on a cold October night to get tickets for RAW an hour away from my home. I was rewarded with awesome seats, mugging on camera all night long and proudly displaying my immense "Dudleyville" sign with my five other friends, all of us decked out in full Dudley regalia. Yeah, I was a dork with a big hard-on for WWF Wrestling. I'm not ashamed to admit that. But history repeated itself, and the WWF found their business beginning to slip away once again. Desperate plan after desperate plan was hatched. Starting the XFL. Buying WCW. Digging up the corpse of ECW. Bringing back Hogan. Extending the brand. Yet I stood by, watching RAW, buying Pay Per Views and supporting the companies that bought ad time for WWF shows. Then earlier this year, RAW began to get bad. Inexcusably bad. But I kept watching. My friends who were part of the old school PPV crew lost interest and tuned in to Monday Night Football. But I kept watching. After all, I'd been watching since the beginning of time (OK, I exaggerate a bit) and I wanted to have something to post about, on the rare instance that I found myself wanting to post. (Yeah, I've become lazy about it. I'm busy as fuck in and out of work, but that's only part of the problem.) But then five weeks ago, I decided that enough was enough. I had been spoonfed enough heaping mouthfuls of shit TV and finally decided to give it a rest. After almost twenty years, I exercised the ultimate veto: I turned off the TV. What have I missed? Triple H dryhumping Resuscitation Annie in the cheapest publicity stunt the industry has ever seen. Triple H (no doubt speaking on Vince's behalf) telling the fans that he doesn't care what they think. The fans chanting for RVD and Booker T, only to be force fed MORE KANE. Fuck that. I'm sure there have been some good matches in the past five weeks, but I'm not going to sit through shit like that for the privilege of watching them. So congratulations to the WWF. You've finally done what nearly twenty years (that's two decades folks) of nagging from my parents, relatives, friends and girlfriends couldn't do: YOU MADE ME REALIZE THAT YOUR SHOW FUCKING SUCKS AND THAT I DON'T WANT TO WATCH IT ANYMORE. I thought it would be tough for me to quit a twenty-year habit cold turkey, but it hasn't. I simply don't care any more. I'm embarrassed that I've surrendered so much of my life to watching this shit. That being said, I'm not leaving Lethal. You should be so lucky. I still check the newsboards from time to time (20 years, cut me some slack), and I will no doubt encounter ridiculous news items that will motivate me to create ridiculous picture posts in an effort to entertain the ridiculous masses. I hear that X-Pac and Chyna are dating (no bullshit- it's in the Torch). There's a good starting point right there. I hope I don't drift away and become one of those bitter "I don't watch wrestling anymore" forum rats. To tell you the truth, I'll probably still catch some PPV's at the local Hooters, where the actual wrestling is the focus of the show, and the sports entertainment (or as JR calls it, "the sizzle," or as I call it "the faggotry,") will hopefully be kept to a bare minimum. So if you find yourself as disgusted with the WWF as I had become, I urge you to exercise that ultimate veto: turn that shit off. Until next time.
NormanB
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