Nick Perkins reflects on the situation between Chris Jericho and a couple unruly fans that happened this past weekend.
I hate that my first Editorial for this site is going to be about something so negative, but I’m left with no other option, and I had to get this off of my chest:
I’m embarrassed to be a wrestling fan.
I’m not talking about the type of embarrassed that most of America’s wrestling fans have been since 1998. That embarrassment was because chicks at bars weren’t so much attracted to guys in DX t-shirts. This embarrassment is a result of the sheer stupidity of many wrestling fans.
I have always defended professional wrestling when asked, including it’s fans. "We’re a rowdy, but passionate bunch," I would say to my accusers. I’ve heard fables of wrestling fans being "toothless morons." I’ve laughed that stereotype off on several occasions, simply because I was (still am) a fairly good looking guy, and I can’t be the only person in the world that has good looks and an affinity for the grappling arts. But, I can no longer deny the sad fact that many professional wrestling fans are not only idiotic, they are also an embarrassment to the sport.
Need proof? Look no further than any pro-wrestling website; they’re all talking about the incident this past weekend with Chris Jericho and a few unruly fans. The video explains itself, so check it out. It’s all around our news section. As with most situations, we don’t have all the facts. We don’t know why Jericho got out of his car. We don’t know if he said something "racist" to the young man who thought he could take on the first-ever Undisputed Champion. But, just judging from the video, it looks like a couple of morons couldn’t seperate fact from fiction. It looks like a loud mouth girl got a little too froggy, and decided to jump. It looks like the girl repeatedly tried to put her hands on a professional wrestler, which has been a no-no for ages. It looks like the girl went to push or hit Jericho while he was getting back into his car, and he reacted. I do not blame him.
You do not put your hands on a professional wrestler. You just don’t do it. Use some common sense and some intelligence for the love of God! I don’t know why this young woman thought that this rule did not apply to her, but she found out quite quickly that it does. And her boyfriend, or whoever the young man was that pushed Jericho, instead of getting involved, should have told the girl to shut up and leave. Judging from the video, these two wanted to look tough, and they found out in short order that they were not.
The response that this site and others has received is quite comical as well. At the risk of alienating our readers (and believe me, I understand that neither I nor this website would be here if it weren’t for you, dear reader) their responses further added to my embarrassment. It just seems like quite a few wrestling fans are either really dumb, or they are, in fact, 12-year-olds on their parent’s computer, just like Mr. Levesque said many years ago.
Now Heaven knows that this site doesn’t need another Mark Madden (albeit one that’s in a tad better shape) trying to be the "heel" of wrestlezone.com. That’s not my intent. My intent of this article is to hold pro-wrestling fans accountable. Don’t touch the wrestlers. Yell, scream, swear if your vocabulary doesn’t have much depth, make signs, whatever. That’s part of the fun. But when the show is over, don’t try to prove something to yourself by putting your hands on the wrestlers. Chances are, you’ll end up just like the young man and woman in the video.
Also, please use some intelligence when voicing your opinion. Believe me, nobody will take your opinion seriously if it consists of: "I think jericho did da wrong ting bcuz he shuldnt hit girlz. wwe rulez!!!" Take a few extra moments, use your spell check, add some punctuation, and prepare something that doesn’t live up to the stereotype mentality of the "typical wrestling fan" that everybody already has.
If I’ve offended you, please know that this is solely my opinion and is not shared by anyone else on wrestlezone.com. If you’re upset, please feel free to email me at Westernrebellion@live.com. If I can decipher what you wrote, I’ll post it here next week. Thanks for reading!
Nick "The Biz" Perkins
