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THOUGHTS ON THE UNIQUE RELATIONSHIP FANS HAVE WITH WRESTLING (AND THE WAYS THEY'RE AFFECTED BY DEATHS THAT FANS OF OTHER GENRES AREN'T)

By Stuart Carapola on 2018-08-14 12:00:00

As I'm sure most of you are aware by now, Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart has passed away, and it's caused a big outpouring from people who knew and worked with him, not to mention a great many fans.  Unfortunately, he's only one of several well-known names we've lost over the last few weeks, and these are the days when it hits me how many of the wrestlers I watched growing up are dead now, and what that's meant to me over the course of my life.  This led to a whole stream of consciousness that I thought I'd share for anybody who reacts to this kind of news the same way I do.

The first WWF PPV I ever saw was Summerslam 1991, and 19 of the people who were on that show in some capacity (wrestling, managing, announcing, etc) are now dead.  The British Bulldog, Kerry Von Erich, Hercules Hernandez, Mr. Perfect, "Coach" John Tolos, Earthquake, Andre the Giant, Sensational Sherri, the Big Boss Man, Road Warrior Hawk, the Ultimate Warrior, General Adnan, "Macho Man" Randy Savage and Elizabeth, referee Joey Marella, Lord Alfred Hayes, and the broadcast team of Gorilla Monsoon, Roddy Piper, and Bobby Heenan are all gone, and it makes the 27 years since that night seem a lot longer than it otherwise would.

It's sobering to ponder on, and now I've got another one to add to that area of my mind, because one of my favorite factions ever, the Hart Foundation, only has one living member left, Bret Hart.  Owen Hart, Brian Pillman, and the British Bulldog have all been gone for years, obviously, so it's not like this is anything I've recently had to wrap my head around, but Neidhart's passing has really hammered that home in a way I supposed it did for people who were fans of the Von Erichs in the 80s.

People always say it sucks to get old and start losing people you've known all your life, and that's definitely a truth I discover more and more with each passing year, but there's a weird extra dimension to that when you're a wrestling fan.  Yeah, it's entertainment, but it's different than it is with other TV shows.  You can meet Andrew Lincoln, but you can't meet Rick Grimes.  Wrestling fans can meet Ric Flair or Hulk Hogan, and in a lot of cases, the wrestling persona isn't that far off from the person behind them.  In fact, there's many wrestlers (and Flair is frequently said to be one of them) where what you see really is what you get.

These are people whose careers, trials and tribulations, and life events (both worked and shoot) you follow long enough, often across several wrestling companies, that they become as familiar a presence in your life as your actual family and friends.  People make fun of the "it's still real to me" guy, and while he might be an extreme example, he's typical of a lot of fans who, thoughout everything that happens over the course of their lives, wrestling has always been there.

Through tough times at work, divorces, deaths of family members, medical problems, and even for people who simply struggle to find social acceptance, they know that wrestling will be there to provide them with what the real world can't: a bit of happiness and enjoyment.  Even if there's nothing unhappy going on in their lives, a lot of people can and do use whatever was happening in wrestling at the time as reference points for what was happening in their own lives at the time (the "Oh yeah, college was ALL about the Monday Night Wars!" dynamic).  No matter what, they'll be able to come home, turn that TV on, and see John Cena tell us that we can't see him, or watch AJ Styles drill someone with the Phenomenal Forearm.

Then over time, you come home and find out you've seen the Eliminators hit Total Elimination together for the last time.  Then you tune into Monday Nitro only to see Shane McMahon explaining that the WWF has bought WCW, and this episode of Nitro will be the last.  Then you learn that Bret Hart and Steve Austin have suffered career-ending injuries and will never be able to wrestle again.  Then you find out you'll never see another scathing promo from CM Punk because he left the company and is never coming back.  In a lot of ways, it's as jarring as finding out a friend or relative has died.

Then you realize that one day, John Cena's going to tell us we can't see him for the last time, the Undertaker will lay his last victim to rest (and may already have for all we know), and some other company that you've enjoyed for years will go out of business for one reason or another. 

New wrestlers, personalities, and companies will come along, but much like your second cousin's grandkids, you just won't have the same attachment to them as you did to the people who defined your younger days.  You get to the point where you start appreciating the wrestlers who you may not have been huge fans of in the past, but are now the wrestling equivalent of the siblings and cousins your parents still have.

None of this, of course, will make any sense to anyone BUT wrestling fans.  I wasn't a HUGE fan of Jim Neidhart...I liked him well enough, and appreciate how important he was to other people I had more of an affinity for, but he was still part of the pseudo-extended family of longtime wrestling fans, and his passing probably has a lot of people as stunned as they would be if they found out a cousin they had infrequent contact with passed away at the still fairly young age of 63.  I guess it's all part of the special attachment we have to our favorite pastime, even if there are days it makes us feel our age.

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