For Those Who Say Wrestling is Fake
I don’t think it’s a secret that 10 Count Blog has been wavering for the last few years. A lot has happened and the truth is, I just don’t have the time or the wherewithal to keep up with this blog regularly like it deserves. I think most of the fans of 10 Count have probably moved on at this point since we stopped doing our podcast and since this doesn’t get much attention anymore. And that’s fair.
But this started out as a guy who loved wrestling who needed a creative outlet because no one in his life was as passionate about pro wrestling as he was. Hi, I’m that guy. My name is Jason Tiller.
In the beginning I wrote about WWE almost exclusively. It was all I knew. I’d never heard of indie wrestling and I certainly didn’t know that the area in which I live had a rich wrestling history. I didn’t know that Evansville, Indiana – a town just an hour south of me – was a stop on Jerry Jarret’s Memphis loop. I didn’t know that guys like Hulk Hogan, The Undertaker, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Jerry the King Lawler, Jim Cornette, Bobby Eaton, Dennis Condrey, Stan Lane, Ricky Morton, Robert Gibson, Dr. Tom Pritchard, and countless others had probably been to my town on a fairly regular basis in the 70’s and 80’s.
The Evansville Coliseum is a Historic Place
I didn’t know that there were modern day promotions, not just one, but multiple promotions, building on that legacy in the wake of the demise of the NWA Territory System. And these promotions weren’t just in Evansville, but they were all over southern Indiana and Illinois and northwestern Kentucky; each one of them honoring the legacy of Memphis Wrestling. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the phrase “Memphis Style” over the years.
I truly live in a hotbed of wrestling history, and I never would have known. I would have been content to watch my WWE and move on. But no – that wasn’t what the wrestling gods had in store for me.
No, Not this Cock Thistle. #IStandWithKylie
Little did I know that just driving home from work one evening my life would be changed forever. The Wrestling Gods gave me a sign that I couldn’t ignore. It was outside of the Vincennes, Indiana Eagles Club and said “Pro Wrestling, Saturday (whatever that date was, 2016), 5 Bucks.”
Pro Wrestling? In Vincennes? What? This, I had to see. So the following Saturday, I made my way there and to my surprise, there was a real ring complete with ropes and everything. I won’t go into all of the details, but I enjoyed the show and little did I know I met the guy who would become one of my greatest friends in the world that night, Blaine Black (love you buddy!) In fact, I enjoyed the show so much that I wrote about it. You can find the link here.
I didn’t know it, never even thought about it, but that blog post changed the trajectory of 10 Count Blog and ultimately my life. The people at TSW found it and shared it into oblivion. They were grateful for the publicity and I was grateful for the clicks. The wrestlers started reaching out to me to say thank you and inviting me back to the shows. The Promoter, Barry, reached out to me and actually invited me to come in and check out the behind the scenes and pitched partnering with 10 Count Blog to help them promote. I was all in from the start. I took photos and you can find tons of my galleries online. I posted match reviews. The 10 Count Podcast started because I had access to basically everything and everyone. Honestly, it kinda snowballed.
Eventually though, as all passionate wrestling fans with the level of access I had do, I got the itch to get in the ring. From that first bump, I was hooked. I was no longer just a mark with an iPhone and a camera, as I used to call myself. I couldn’t be. I’d tasted the sweet nectar of the wrestling gods’ teat and I was addicted. I trained and became an independent pro wrestler.
And wrestling was there for me. It was there when I was living in a state where the only friends I really had were fairweather church friends, my wife and my in-laws. Wrestling was there when I went through my divorce and all the drama that followed. Wrestling was there to give me some of the best and most lasting friendships of my life. Wrestling was there when I met my current wife who is just the biggest fan of the Undertaker and swiped right on me because I had a picture of myself with a belt.
The photo that got my kids a step-mom.
Wrestling has been one of the most important parts of my life. Its been therapist, buddy, enemy, coach, trainer, and lifeline all rolled into one. I’ve sacrificed my time, my first marriage, time with my kids, my health, my sanity (at times), and so much more to be involved in it. It’s taught me endurance, perseverance, how to self-motivate, to have confidence in myself, psychology, and that getting punched in the face doesn’t hurt as bas as you think it will.
So when I hear someone calling it fake, like most people who have given of themselves for wrestling, my blood fucking boils. And now we get down to the reason and inspiration for this post.
Accurate.
By all accounts, I think most people would tell you in my real life, I’m fairly non-confrontational. I don’t like to stir the pot. I stay in my lane and live my own life. But I have been known to offer chops to people who call wrestling fake. They tend to decline that offer. What can I say? Being a big dude does occasionally have its perks.
A few weeks back, there was a…. lets call it a situation. A person who I had spent a lot of time, money, gas and sanity to help, and who had never shown any sort of gratitude, began acting like an entitled, narcissistic prick and proceeded to blame my wife for all of his shortcomings as a man and a father. You know, as all narcissists do – nothing was his fault. That eventually spiraled into an argument between he and my wife. It’s here that I’ll tell you that one of my fatal flaws is that I tend to have the “White Knight” mentality and I certainly wasn’t going to let this sorry waste of space speak to my wife the way he was. So, I spoke up.
And it did exactly what I intended. It took the focus off my wife and he put it solely on me. I have big shoulders. I can take it and dish it right back out. So after a few verbal jabs back and forth, he throws his verbal haymaker. I guess he didn’t realize that mine was bigger because when I came back at him, he was out of options and resorted to making idle threats of physical violence.
Now it’s here I should tell you that while I have many flaws, I’m also a master of self control in situations like this. I was shaking angry – like not even a euphemism, I was physically shaking and ready to get my hands on this motherfucker. But I fought the urge to reach out the window of my vehicle and throttle this guy because the situation called for self-control. The last thing I needed at that time was to spend the night in a jail cell with pending charges of simple assault and battery. Plus my wife was there and there was a young child in the vicinity. It just wasn’t the time.
Nope.
Though, I did tell him if he felt as though he was amphibious enough, while insinuating that he has regular sexual relations with the matriarch of his family, that he should bend his legs, push off and take flight in my general direction with the intention of rotating his shoulder backwards to charge his arm’s kinetic energy and suddenly throwing it forward in my general direction. Translated: if you feel froggy, motherfucker, leap and come take a swing.
It’s funny how people choose not to do that when you offer them the opportunity. Instead, he backed up, and continued to run his mouth. And while I found him amusing because he apparently was incapable of backing up his words with action, he uttered the phrase “your fake wrestling f****t bullshit won’t help you. I bet that’s why you wrestle anyway – so you can touch other men.”
It was at this point my wife had to hold me back. First, it’s 2024 – you need to delete the “f” word as it relates to our homosexual brothers and sisters from your vocabulary. Second, for you to call wrestling fake, knowing that I, as a wrestler, will defend it until my dying breath while also retreating to the safety of your living room is a total wuss move.
I agree.
So why is it so offensive to say that wrestling is fake? Why did him saying that make me want to rip his head off and take a shit down his neck hole? Because, it’s not fake. Predetermined? Sure. But fake? Not on your life.
Let me first tell you about how a wrestling ring is constructed. Steel posts and rails are at it’s base and either sheets of plywood or 2×6 boards make up the floor. A pad, about as thick as a common household rug with the density of what you’d find in your couch is layered over the wood and covered with a piece of vinyl or canvas and tied down. The ropes are then added. They can either be actual rope, typically covered with a layer of what is basically electrical tape or they can be steel cables, shoved through the cheapest water hoses you can find at your local Lowe’s and taped around with the same tape previously mentioned. These ropes are tightened with a heavy duty, double sided, threaded steel hook attached to an eyebolt on the rope and covered with a thin pad. We call these the turnbuckles as they create the 90 degree bends in the ropes that shape the square that is a wrestling ring.
After putting a shit ton of tension on all of these to make the ropes tight, multiple people spend the night throwing themselves, not falling, but actively throwing themselves at the floor of this contraption and against the ropes, praying that they don’t break under the forces of their weight and momentum. Most people are doing this with a minimal amount of clothes on or if they are covered, it’s typically by some sort of thin spandex and still isn’t designed to cover all of your body.
Steel and wood. And sometimes real rope. That’s it. This is the contraption we’re trusting to make what we’re doing “safe.” Add a steel cage or weapons into the mix and it can become a different beast entirely. This is what we train on for hours on end. IT’s the same exact construction for when we’re out there in front of screaming fans. Bruises, ripped skin, canvas burns, wear and tear on your body from hitting the mat. Wrestling a match has literally been compared by experts to being in a car crash. Ask Darren Drozdov how that worked out for him. Here’s a link.
Photo Credit: Fox Sports
But let’s take that argument out of the mix. That’s a tired old argument anyway and most people who think wrestling is fake won’t believe that its anything more than basically a big trampoline. Let’s get specific. Let’s talk about my personal wrestling journey.
I remember how sore and bruised I was after my first day of training. Every muscle I have, even some I didn’t even know I had, hurt like a motherfucker. My back and sides were torn to shreds courtesy of learning how to hit the ropes and I had tiny nagging canvas burns on my knees, elbows and knuckles from learning how to bump and then getting right back up to do it again.
I wish this was me…
I remember training classes where they taught you how to throw working punches. I remember the people who just couldn’t get it and kept throwing wild, uncontrolled fists at my face – some of which connected. But there was no time to ice it up. You just kept going.
I remember a time when I had graduated from training and was working shows, I was still helping with the training class. I was trying to teach the trainees how to put on a sleeper hold after shooting someone into the ropes. One particular trainee, a big guy, high school athlete who was strong, was out of place and broke my nose trying to put the hold on me.
I remember working my weekly show in Noble, Illinois one night. I was way over as a baby face and I milked it in my entrance. At the end, I’d go up on the turnbuckle and raise my arms like all the greats in WWE do. I also remember my foot slipping on the rope and trying to power myself up anyway. I remember the pop I felt in my calf and how much it hurt right before I had a 20 minute main event match. I remember how much is swelled up and the bruising – oh my god, the bruising.
This one is me.
I remember another show where I was booked against a couple guys I’d never worked with in a tag team match. They wanted to do their tag finisher on me and come to find out, they’d made it up that night: a combination where one would give me a Warrior Splash while the other came in with a Hulk Hogan leg drop. Well, this guy can call his leg drop a Hogan leg drop, but he couldn’t drop a leg like Hogan. I ended up taking an ass cheek to the face with the force of his full weight. Mad Man Pondo was on this show – and if you don’t know who he is, he’s famous for death matches with lots of blood and stuff. Look him up. I remember him saying to me “Damn. That looks like it hurt.”
I mean, he wasn’t wrong.
The last one I’ll mention is being dropped on my head. I don’t have any pictures of this one. But I was wrestling a guy who was bigger than me. He wanted to do a penta driver at the end and I let him. Look that move up if you don’t know what that is. And while I escaped injury on this one, my friends all told me they thought I was dead. Because I did land on my head. And oddly enough, I didn’t get injured on the driver, but a fucking clothesline earlier in the match resulted in my worst concussion I’d ever had. Just saying.
The point is that I could tell you all kinds of stories about being accidentally punched in the face, purposely being punched in the face, kicked, concussed and otherwise injured.
I can also tell you about how you learn to do “moves” by actually learning how to put legitimate holds on and taught the ways to make them look authentic without risking injury. I’m a trained fighter. Just because I do it in an entertaining way, doesn’t mean that I don’t know how to rip your shoulder out of socket or how to put you in the position to do so. How “fake” or “gay” will you find wrestling when you’re sitting in the E.R. with the doctor telling you you’re going to need surgery?
And by the way, shout out to my buddy Dexter Roswell and his husband Logan Ridge. I don’t think they’ll mind me saying this. You wanna call wrestlers the “f” word and make the insinuation that we’re all gay because we wrestle? These are two of the toughest motherfuckers on the planet and also happen to be homosexual. I’d love to be a fly on the wall for someone saying that to either of them. People like to call gay people fairies, but if they are, these two a fucking Jorgen Von Strangle from the Fairly Odd Parents.
Keep hate out of your mouth, bitch.
So to kind of tie this all up in a nice bow, my night with the moron who liked to run his mouth ended without violence and him running into his house. That’s probably for the best. But the point of this lengthy blog post is that wrestlers are protective of the business. You can call it choreographed or predetermined or whatever, but keep the word “fake” out of your mouth when referencing our business. I would urge you to do some research on the guys in this business who were badasses: Meng, Harley Race, The Wild Samoans, Dr. Death Steve Williams, Tracy Smothers, Bobby Lashley, Jake Hagar, Shelton Benjamin – and the list goes on and on and on.
Wrestling may involve and entertainment element, but it’s not fake. If you don’t believe me, slide in my DM’s on twitter @10CountJason and we’ll set up a time for you to come get some chops.
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