Nothing makes me feel the way pro wrestling makes me feel

I know this is a video game website, and I promised semi-regular posts about video games, but I'm sending you something a little different this week. Although video games are the thing I love most outside of friends and family, and the hobby that dominates my life more than anything else, there are quite a few other things I have unhealthy obsessions with, and one of those things is professional wrestling.

Like a lot of people right now, I feel pretty disconnected and uninspired by pro wrestling, particularly WWE. Truth be told, if it wasn't a part of my job, I'd probably go back to just tuning in for WrestleMania each year. Between the disinengious defense of why we should think shows in Saudi Arabia are a good thing and the eye watering ticket prices, it's harder to like WWE today than it ever has been, and that's really saying something considering some of the stuff they've put fans through over the years.

WWE fans will know that when it's at its worst, it's really, really bad. The thing is, when it's at its best, there's nothing else like it. All of my other obsessions - video games, Marvel movies, supporting Bristol City - make me feel things. They can make me hit the ceiling with excitement, or break my heart, mostly the latter when it comes to City. However, none of them come close to the highs and lows that come with being a wrestling fan.

Having watched WWE on and off for 25 years, there are moments I watched live that are so engrained in me, they might as well be a part of my DNA. Aramgeddon 2000, the first time I was allowed to stay up and watch a PPV live. Rikishi got thrown off the top of Hell in a Cell that night. It blew my 11-year-old mind, and that's a feeling I've carried with me ever since.

A few months later, my first-ever WrestleMania. WrestleMania X-Seven, widely regarded as one of, if not the best pro wrestling shows of all time. The Rock and Stone Cold wrestled in the main event that night. It remains my favorite match of all time, and if I were to watch it right now, even after seeing it countless times, it will conjure up all the same feelings I had when I watched it live for the first time in 2001.

Jump forward a decade, a period for most of which I had left WWE behind, largely because, when you're that age, you tend to jump from one hobby to the next. What pulled me back in was my introduction to CM Punk. Punk wrestled John Cena at Money in the Bank 2011, an incredible match at the end of which Punk left WWE with the title. It was all scripted and part of the plan, of course, but what pulled me back in then, and has helped hold my interest ever since, is blurring that line between what's staged and what isn't.

That's part of what makes pro wrestling so different from everything else in my life. Video games aren't real, Marvel movies aren't real, and Bristol City, as much as I wish otherwise, definitely is real. Wrestling falls into that grey area. Sure, you can call it fake if you like. I've heard that so many times in my life as a wrestling fan that I don't even really hear it anymore. But WWE is at its best when you're not entirely sure if the two people in the ring really hate each other, or if it's all a part of the show.

What I'm trying to say is, there is nothing else in my life that makes me feel the way wrestling does, and that's both a good and a bad thing. When you sit there for three hours and once the show's over, after watching a whole lot of nothing, you question what you're doing with your life. The feeling you get when something incredible happens, though, even if it's after two hours and 55 minutes of hot garbage, there's really nothing like it.

Pro wrestling is a part of me, even though a lot of the time - like now - I wish it wasn't, that has a huge place in my heart, and it's something I wish more people would give a chance. When you tell people you like pro wrestling you're often met with a scoff or even an eyeroll, and while I get it, if those people felt the way I did when CM Punk's music hit in AEW for the first time, they might not be so judgemental.

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