Jabroni’s Corner: The Sequel

From June 2002 until May 2004 there was a little corner of the web called KWE Wrestling. I wrote a weekly column for the site and called it “Jabroni’s Corner.” It was a lot of fun; except for the six-week period that I did Raw recaps. Doing recaps made me dread watching wrestling more than going to work. I’ll never understand how Scott Keith can watch wrestling matches with a stopwatch. I tried it for six weeks and I’ll never try it again.

But I digress… While writing weekly columns for that site I watched wrestling die. The sport that I loved as a kid in the ‘80’s suffered the same premature death of so many of the stars we grew to love from that era. The days of “good guys” and “bad guys” fighting for titles were gone. They were replaced with stories. The stories were usually bad. I know that the McMahon family claims that they “make movies” and are not a ‘rasslin company, but ‘rasslin is what I wanted to see.

My first column in 2002 was about how Vince, after buying all of his competition, was still wasting television time burying that same competition. Stars from ECW and WCW were made to looks like losers and fools week in and week out.

My last column in 2004 was about what TNA Wrestling needed to do to compete with WWE; how they should stop wasting time trying to copy WWE and why they needed to get rid of Vince Russo.

So what does it say about then business when my columns from 2002 and 2004 could be written today? Just change a couple of names and the concept is the same.

In the last six months, I walked away from the business. Now, I’m not claiming that I was ever involved in it, but as a fan, I walked away. I always thought it would be difficult, or even impossible, to stop watching Monday Night Raw, but I haven’t seen a single episode of Raw in over six months. I haven’t watched Smackdown!, ECW, or TNA either.

Now that I have that out of my system, I have to confess that I still love professional wrestling. Once wrestling is in your blood, it stays there. I think it’s safe to say that most American men in their late twenties and early thirties were wrestling fans when they were kids. After that, they either “grew out of” the sport, or became more obsessed with wrestling than a liberal college girl is with Barack Obama.

I was in the “Obama” stage with pro-wrestling, but in the six months away, I learned that I could live without wrestling. Now that I know that, I can start following the sport again because I want to, not because I have to.

So let’s face it. When wrestling’s good, it’s great. When it’s bad, well, there’s already an entire site dedicated to that (wrestlecrap.com). I’m hoping that our new site can be a place for people to go to see the best of both worlds. When wrestling is bad, we’ll joke about it. When it’s good, I’m sure we’ll go all “fan boy” about it. But that’s what makes it fun. What you won’t find here on this site is one of those places where all we do is bitch about the current product. We watch wrestling because we like wrestling. When we don’t like it, we’ll find other things to do.

I picked the name Jabroni’s Corner because that’s what I am. I’m a Jabroni. And us Jabronis don’t like elitists. Especially wrestling elitists.

See you next week.

Oh, I almost forgot… the old Jabroni’s Corner would finish with the “Annoying item of the week.” Since I’m going to try to be more positive this time around, we’re doing something else. And since my wife is a teacher, I thought I’d try the “Homework assignment of the week” instead.

This week’s homework assignment: Go back and watch one of your favorite wrestling matches and leave a comment about it.

Tags: ECW, Jabroni, Obama, Raw, Smackdown, TNA, Vince McMahon, Vince Russo, Wrestling, wwe, WWF