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It's Time To Play The Game!
Interlude - Oni Checks the Mailbag to Answer "Why?"

Well ladles and jellyspoons, time for your tri-weekly update from me, OniBarubary, your master of the textual arts. Yessirree, that frequent updates thing flew right out the window, didn't it? And lo and behold this week I will be bringing you something I vowed never to do (and subsequently promised I would totally break) which is, a normal column on wrestling! Or relatively normal at any rate. For you see, this week we dig deep into the virtual mailbag to answer questions from my beloved and, what must be at this point, masochistic readers! Oh ballyhoo! A wondrous time we will have! I have been inundated by a veritable flood of questions and in this column today will strive to do my best to answer them. So, without further elongating of a column to the word limit, let's get this done!

Our first piece of mail comes to us (be using the royal we a lot in this column) as such:

Dear OniBarubary,

Long time listener, first time caller (HA!). I love your column whenever you get around to writing it, as it has me laughing a mile a minute. But what I like most about it is how it also discusses topics of pro wrestling at some depth. Sure you got Hustle and Missouri or Cold occasionally defending the WWE product, but a lot of the time I feel like you're very hostile towards the ole E. Why is that? Why do you attack them with such fervor in your columns? Just curious as I don't think you've ever really spelled it out before.

Keep on trucking even if the going gets tough!

From a Fervent Fan

First off, nice consonance. Second on, you realize I write everyone don't you? I still get some people thinking this is some kind of roundtable I just record which is...flattering, I suppose. But you do bring up a valid point. Though everyone is “my voice” I should say that myself in the columns has the strongest link to me, for obvious reasons. He is my stand-in so he's going to be spouting all that stuff which I most strongly believe. And if you've been reading for any great length of time, you know that our alliterative letter-bearer up there is correct; I'm pretty down on the WWE product overall.

Why is this? Even as a fan of all things wrestling, they're the biggest target. They're also the loudest, the oldest (so to speak) and the most popular. So of course they're the standard-bearer that everyone watches, pits themselves against and is compared to. Even if I don't care for that view, it's the truth. They're the big dogs.

And let's not pretend I never watched the E in the past or that it wasn't my main source of wrestling. Let's not pretend that up til recently I also didn't watch them or despised them at any real point. They have more wrestling on a weekly basis and are watched by more people. Of course they're going to have the most discussion.

Maybe I'm dodging the question a bit and meandering. As anyone who reads my column knows, it takes me 3000 words to get to the point, which is often shrouded in confusing wordplay and to be honest it's tiring. So let me just be direct and to the point.

I am so hostile towards them and attack them so readily because they fuck up a lot and put out a lot of shit. Maybe it's talked about more because they have so much more offending offal on the regular than indies or Japan or Mexico because of the sheer volume of their output. They have two weekly shows at a deuce a piece, NXT and Superstars on the web, a PPV every five days it seems. If CHIKARA has a bad show there's normally one the next night and then another a month down the line. If TNA has one, it's still only one 2 hour show a week. WWE has oh so many more opportunities to be fucking terrible than anyone else. And let's not pretend that simply because you enjoy something it's not terrible. Quality and enjoyment are two separate things and one does not necessitate the other. I listen to grindcore for fucks sake; I love it but I don't pretend people are idiots for not seeing it as modern day Mozart (because it's not a very good genre).

To continue this discussion in the direction it is obviously going, let's take another peek at some mail.

Hey Oni,

I get from your columns that you're not a big fan of WWE. Why is that? Do you really think the product isn't as good as it once was? Why does it piss you off so much? Why do you dress it down so much? Love the columns but you really seem to complain about it a lot.

Sincerely,
A reader

I sense a pattern emerging. This one is more to the point and less circuitous. Why do I give the impression I'm not a big fan of the E? Probably because I'm not.

Whoa ladies, hold onto those garters before you get all huffy. I'm really not anymore.

Why? Because it's pretty garbage. Now, whether this is a recent occurrence or has been true for a long while I have no idea and personally don't care. Taking a look back is not the most accurate of views as nostalgia and time will alter your perception and even the shittiest match can be called “fun” due to fond memories or outside factors. So my beloved Bossman/Buchanan tags may actually stink the body electric, but I'd never fucking know because I'm a mark for them and was in the past. So let's just say my ability to judge the quality of wrestling in the past as comparable today is 1. inaccurate and 2. biased. So fuck it, I won't.

Besides, since when does something shitty next to something not as shitty make the less shitty one great? That's not how it works. It reminds me of something always bugged me in the Bible (or Torah, which is where I read it) that Noah was a good man “for his times” What the fuck? He wasn't a good man, he was just the best man when compared to the mountain of ass-fuckers and toddler-philes that lived around him. That means by comparison he could stab 30 dudes for looking at his wife cross-eyed, but because everyone else in the world stabbed 100 guys for simply breathing “Eh, he's not so bad”. Fuck that shit, he's still a jealous shankmaster. You don't become a good person because everyone else is much worse than your wife-beating ass and you don't call a wrestling match good because it used to be much worse. It's still bad, get over it.

So no, I don't harken back to any old times to compare the modern E to. Because that's dumb. Hell, I didn't even watch the vast majority of the Attitude Era so you can't even claim I'm one of those nutters. Do I think the product isn't as good as it once was? I don't care. It's bad now and that's all that matters. You argue what it is not what it once was.

Now, on to address the second part of this. Why does it piss me off so much?

Because it doesn't have to be bad.

This is really important. You can tell because I bolded it.

There is almost nothing in this world that pisses me off so much as being frustrated. Leaving for work a half hour early and sitting as 3 buses don't show up on my route for an hour, with no means to get to work other than them, and arriving late? Frustration. Playing some video game wherein you need to make precision jumps but the camera is so pants-shittingly bad that you miss every time and it's not your fault? Frustration.

WWE having all the potential in the world to make truly great storylines, matches and wrestlers and dropping the ball almost every single time? Frustration.

WWE, when they're on, are the best. They simply are. When a feud comes together, when the matches are phenomenal, there is no beating them. But they are never on. WWE can do a great job getting the ball rolling the majority of the time but suck at completion. Like, vehemently so. Look at NEXUS. Look at SES. Look at anything Punk has ever done, specifically from this summer. They seem to come up with a great idea and then never follow through on it.

I really don't want to get into the whys of it, because I know the whys of it. I know the business aspect and I know the money and audience and blah blah blah. It doesn't matter, I don't care. WWE plays it safe 100 times out of 20. Any risk they take is then protected, not fully developed or allowed to play and becomes stunted and uninteresting by the time its through. How many of us care about the Punk storyline anymore? Hell, can you say it even exists in its current form?

They are stagnant. Stagnancy is death. Staying in place and not moving forward is death. You are the only game in town, how can you not take risks, try something new or allow ideas to blossom and develop instead of crushing them when they don't have immediate returns?

Oni,

Why don't you just enjoy it for what it is?

No, fuck you. This line of thinking is fucking retarded and I hate it. It harkens back to my Noah example. Just because you turn off your brain to watch it doesn't mean it's good and just because people like me are critical of it doesn't mean that we're sitting their with a ballpoint pen, outlining every move in a match, looking for any slip or any chance to jump down the E's throat.

Here's a little insight into the world of the whiners:

We want to be entertained and enjoy it just as much as you

Bolded again because it's important. I don't watch to complain I want WWE to be something I can enjoy and look forward to every week. I want to jump out of my chair and throw my hands in the air and wave them like I just don't care. I want to sit back, not screw my eyebrow up in a standard “The fuck” position and watch a quality product. That is not what I am getting.

I must realize though, that that does not mean the product doesn't have good wrestling or occasional good storylines. I'm sure it does. But if it does, I don't care about them. Sometimes I'm like people who can't get into good matches because of a lack of a decent storyline backing it, or at least one that they're interested in. Like everyone who shits on indy matches or Japanese puro or whatever. Or maybe the in-ring doesn't hold up, in which case you get torn down because that's not all there is to wrestling, y'know? There's storylines and characters and all this other bollocks that is supposed to support the wrestling, not supplant it. Let's just ignore the “wrestling” part of wrestling, who cares as long as it's entertaining? Well it's good entertainment then, and not good wrestling. You can't ignore the actual wrestling content when determining if it's good wrestling. If a million people tuned in to watch Hulk Hogan take a steamy dump in the middle of the ring and it drew 5,000,000 buys that doesn't make it good wrestling. You can't divorce wrestling from the product and then claim it's a good version of itself.

So maybe the wrestling and storylines are objectively good or whatever in the E but I don't want to watch them. I don't have any reason to care that I've been given (save Dolph Ziggler matches). They have made me not care about Daniel Bryan matches. Do you have any idea how depressingly amazing that is? That they made me not care about Danielson?

Oni, why not just watch other wrestling like the indies or Mexico?

Cause then no one would read my columns, lolololol

Seriously, it's even killing my interest in other forms of wrestling. I used to watch every CHIKARA show as it came out. Search for DDT matches on Youtube. Get the latest Black Terry or Dick Togo matches sent to me. I'm not so absurd as to think WWE has killed my interest in wrestling entirely, but I'm not so sure they're not a factor. I rarely watch wrestling anymore. I've stopped tuning in to Smackdown entirely and RAW barely holds my interest. PPVs become background noise while I do other things. Maybe it's me. I don't know.

I'm going to 2 Joshimania shows in December and I can't completely say it's not due to nostalgia and growing up trading AJPW tapes. I'm excited for them, sure, but this is more of an outlier when compared to my current interest in anything wrestling related. I'll probably chalk it up to nostalgia and a fetish for strong Japanese women. It's depressing that this is the first thing I've looked forward to in months as it pertains to wrestling.

Depressing. That's what it is. I don't just watch the small leagues because it's fucking depressing. Go on the LoP forums right now and see how much discussion the General Wrestling section gets that isn't “Which Diva would you fuck?” placed there only to include TNA in the discussion. See how often Japan is talked about, or Mexico or any independent promotion. I am sure that this is not an isolated case; visit some other sites and see how well-discussed these subjects are. They are subjects I love, am passionate about. But outside of my 2 or 3 friends, who will talk about it with me? Who'll freak out that Del Ray isn't gonna be CHIKARA's first champ? Who will keep up with every Dick Togo retirement match? Who will lose their shit with me that Super Dragon is making his return to wrestling? I can only be passionate with myself. There is no one for me to discuss this with (save said friends) and there is no audience for it. I can only talk about a product that is falling out of favor with me. I can talk about 10% of wrestling because that's what 95% of the people watch. Everything is kept inside and bottled up and what outlet do I have for it? None. All my love has nowhere to go. All my distaste and uncaring is what people hear because it's all they can relate to or understand. I feel so fucking trapped sometimes.

Why not stop watching?

Why not? I should. A smart man would stop devoting time to something he can barely stomach anymore. But it's not that easy to quit. I know I wrote a column about how I was addicted to wrestling, but I'd say it's worse. Wrestling is the abusive husband that I come back to. Wrestling is the shitty girlfriend that is sucking some dude's cock on the side, has told me so, and yet I'm still with her. Wrestling is a dead-end job that doesn't pay enough that with any small amount of effort you could fall into a better one, but you still stay year in and out.

It's not that easy, it's the sad truth. It is incredibly hard to walk away from something that has been inimical to your life for such a long period of time that you have held such strong feelings for. In all those examples above, who entered any of those situations because of the problems? No one. The abusive husband, the dick-suck girlfriend, the dead-end job all didn't start that way. When you see this shit happen and tell the person to just walk away, how often do they? How hard is it for them for something you don't understand? Because it's love. Fucked up, abused and misguided love. The qualities that made you love them may have disappeared but you still remember them. They are still in your mind or heart or whatever sappy direction you want to take this.

I've been watching wrestling for so long now it just is me, for better or worse. It is a large part of my life and doesn't just fucking disappear. It isn't a passing love of Mighty Max I gave up three weeks down the road. It isn't even Magic cards that got stuffed in a box when college rolled around. I've been watching wrestling since I was fucking 5, traded tapes at comic conventions since I was 10. It's not so easy to turn off the TV and say “Welp, time for that's done. Let's put my time into something else!”

It's why I keep coming back to the WWE. Over and over it lets me down but I can't stop fucking watching. I hate it so much and it makes me hate the part of me that can't simply give up the ghost and fucking turn away. I hate that its been poisoned and ruined every other federation, promotion or two dudes wrestling in a backyard that I see. I will see some faint glimmer of what I love: a Dolph Ziggler match, a Ryder push, news that Moxley and Regal are wrestling in FCW and Claudio signed with them and I am uplifted and filled with hope again that “No, this time, this time it'll be different. This time they'll do everything right and all m staying around will be justified.” I have so many cigarette burns on my arm it's hard to see the skin.

Why keep writing columns if you hate it so much?

I don't know dammit, I really don't. I keep letting the time pass until I'm about to get the boot and then push something out like this that I'll look back on mere moments later and go “I can't believe I shit out such tripe.” Every piece of hypocritical evidence I speak on then go against mere paragraphs later will stand out to me like signal flares. My passion is poisoned and my writing doesn't come to me anymore. How can I write so strongly about something that I can't even be bothered to set down a game system for?

I don't want to disappoint people. I've already done that a thousand times over when I stopped updating regularly and started posting other shit than ITTPTG. Obviously not many people liked it. And truth be told, I wish I could say I'm that person who just does not give a fuck, but I'm not. At the end of the day, I'm just happy if my friends got a lark out of my column or laughed about it. I never set out to be a main pager, it was never an aspiration and I never had any loyalty or pride for this site that would make me want to do the best job I could to engage readers or draw views. I wrote because I'm a writer, it is what I do and why not write about wrestling? If others saw me showing it to my friends and liked it too and shared it with their friends, then...well I don't want to let those people down who enjoyed my writing. I shouldn't care if it's for me, but if you people are the collateral for bombarding my friends with my bullshit then I feel responsible for you. I don't want to let you down. It's stupid. It's why I stayed in a job I hated, it's why I went three years long with that dick-sucking girlfriend, it's why I still watch wrestling and talk on the forums and why I still write columns.

I just don't want you to hate me.

Why do you care?

It's who I am. I don't care about anything half-assed. I use my whole ass. I've talked about how voraciously I read, book a day, or how I do every sidequest and collect every item in every video game or watch every match from a promotion in that year or any number of other obsessive compulsive behaviors that show how violently I throw myself into my hobbies. At the end of the day this is just another one of them. And I just want to throw my passion at others and see some of it come back. I want others to be passionate too. It's why that “sit back and enjoy it” attitude pisses me off so much. I don't want to sit back and enjoy it, I want to throw shit around my house and scream to the high heavens. I want to love it, to fucking not stand another minute without watching it. I don't want to lay back and accept, I want to actively enjoy and grab it by the braids and skullfuck it.

I just want someone, something to care as much for me as I do for it. For them. Whatever. I'm not the target audience. Fine, whatever. Just throw me a fucking bone. Give me something anything. Pretend you fucking care.

Why are you telling them this?

Why not? There are a thousand columns predicting PPV results, a million armchair booking, a trillion about what happened on RAW, take your pick. Throw a dart and someone will tell you their opinion on something. I thought I could bring something different to the table besides my quite apparent now insanity. I like writing, writing is my life. People deserve an explanation for me letting them down time and time again, even if it is “Oni is fucking crazy, get the net”

It's hard to say why. Why did I publish a mental fucking breakdown for everyone to read and post about how it's not wrestling? Beats me. Why not?

It's not really out of sorts for me. Look at all the random shit I write. Fucking Gail Kim? Is anyone really surprised by anything I write anymore? Is this going to get any more or less care than anything else I write?

I'm not entirely convinced wrestling won't become a good feeling for me again. Maybe that's why I stick around. Maybe that's why I'm holding out until December to write my Joshimania experiences. Maybe it'll kindle some small spark in me again and writing will flow from these fingers like fire across a dry forest. Maybe someone, one person in a see of those who read my columns will actually give a fuck what seeing all these Joshi stars was like. And maybe every esoteric column about anything behind the ken of normal wrestling I write is like that; designed for the one or two people who give a fuck. Even if I don't know them, even if they don't exist to me. Maybe it's all for them so they too can feel that someone cares as they do.

I really hope so. Because when people ask me “why” I'm not entirely sure I have an answer.

E-mail me at: OniBarubary@gmail.com

Source: lordsofpain.net