“I think pro wrestling… doesn’t seem to get a lot of mainstream attention until somebody dies.”
-CM Punk
If you’ve ever witnessed a woman give birth
to a hand after performing a splash on Crash Holly
or seen Mankind thrown sixteen feet
off the top of Hell in a Cell and plummet
through an announcer’s table,
you know the line in wrestling between
what’s real and what’s show is more
of a moving target, and the more you aim,
the more wobbly it becomes.
You can count
the broken bones in Mick Foley’s body,
label most with a date and a city, an opponent,
a desire to never disappoint the thronging crowd,
but attempt to trace the origin of the hand
and you maybe (maybe) understand the company
was trying to push out Mark Henry
by putting him in the worst storylines
they could invent, and “Sexual Chocolate”
hadn’t gotten him to quit yet.
If you’ve never seen
a man die and the show go on,
you haven’t truly asked yourself
what are the limits to kayfabe,
the wrestlers’ code.
You haven’t heard the pipe bomb
destroy the distinctions
between CM Punk and Phil Brooks
only for him to piece them back together years later.
Owen Hart fatally falls and Chris Benoit
murders his family and Donald Trump
shaves Vince McMahon’s head and later
plays heel to a whole country.
How far
would you dig through the dirt sheets
to learn if Vince Steele really had a heart attack
Sunday afternoon in the middle of the ring?
Would you trust The Daily Star, which cites
Ringside News, which references but fakes
linking to Bodyslam.net, which,
when I visit, tries to give me a virus?
A man’s life is over. That’s a fact. But what truth
are you going to find down here
in the eyewitness reports that you didn’t go in knowing
already? You came here to cheer or to boo
or to find catharsis or to be sad.
Go on. Go on.
Your emotions are valid.
They’re larger than life.
They’re real.
–
JeFF Stumpo‘s poetry has recently appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as Rattle, DMQ Review, The Journal, RHINO, and Puerto del Sol. He watches professional wrestling, mostly AEW, when he can.
