Fights Fought: 50. Clash

One of the greatest conspiracies of the 20^th century was the creation and the eventual popularity of the World Wrestling Federation, or WWF. Kids that grew up on fresh air and love had their appetites filled with a perennial flow of wrestling shows on cable TV. When WWF first started beaming into Indian homes in the early 90s, it must have been a shocker. Most parents then never really had a hold on the phrase Parental Guidance or PG, and as a 12 year old, you got away watching flicks on Star Movies that were meant for older folks – like 15 and above.

 

But besides Sachin Tendulkar and Bollywood movies set in Switzerland, not many things really caught on and stayed the course the way WWF did with kids. When I look back and wonder what created the roaring success with this sport (mind you, that’s part of the conspiracy) and its viwership, you can’t take the spotlight away from Trump cards. Remember that bunch of seemingly-useless-but-my-life-revolves-around-Papa Shango’s- biceps cards? Or around an overtly cacopygian Yokozuna? God knows why they called Trump cards (hell, I don't even know if this is a proper noun or not) by that name; but doesn’t look to me like the real-estate honcho was bent on lending his name to a bunch of cards that mostly featured muscular men in their undies, and an occasional muscular lady in her two-piece.

We played them all the time. We woke up thinking about Shawn Michaels, went through the day talking about Royal Rumble and Summer Slam, spent the evening looking at Tatanka’s poster, went to bed thinking about Razor Ramon’s numbers and cursing why you didn’t say ‘clash’ earlier. And while asleep we dreamt about Mr. Perfect’s biceps when we didn’t really know what biceps meant. Some part of the body, but who cares?(ad lib. A sentence has been excluded at this point since the pun sounds obnoxiously strong for most of the readers’ liking. But if you don’t mind a dirty joke, write to me. I’ll mail you the line.)  

WWF was mostly a show of odd balls. Hulk Hogan (rank 1) was like a professor of mine in college: you could never say how old he was and he never seemed to get older than that. And for some reason, he (not my professor) hardly fought fights and yet managed to retain rank 1 for as long as they printed Trump cards. Rank 2, the legendary Shawn Michaels, many kids claimed was the only wrestler who was trained professionally. The rest were junkies off the streets. The Undertaker was rank 3. As one can expect, anything said of The Undertaker will eventually measure up as undertone. To start with, my Aunt thought he was 100taker. This dude gave cats a run for their money. The guy had more lives than the demographic department could keep a track of. To top that, there was this short, stout ‘soul-keeper’ assistant of his who carried an urn to all the fights, which, as the story goes contained 100taker’s ashes from his previous life. Remember those douche-bag stories? No one could defeat The Undertaker. Not even Ranks 1 and 2. But the hero is never without his nemesis, is he?. For Rank 3 had his spokes loosened whenever he took on Repo Man. Repo Man was this i-got-no-life-so-I’m-here-in-WWF wrestler ranked No. 83. But he did prove to be a handful for The Undertaker. Surprising, you may say. But that was part of the conspiracy.

The ranks went on, and every time a card game came down to the wire, the losing kid started saying ‘clash’ for the most un-clashable things in the hope of salvaging some last bones. That kid eventually lost. It was good fun playing these cards, and following the matches on TV. Especially the part when the gruff voice came which announced “Ladies and Gentlemen, coming in at a magnificent 480 pounds to set the stage on fire, here’s Bam Bam Bigalo.” And the crowds would go into frenzy and hold up placards that said “Bam Bam, my girl loves you more than me.”

The newspapers said some kid nearly killed his younger brother trying to work the choke slam. But here are a couple of things I gleamed from WWF many years later: 

-         That Giant Gonzalez wasn’t really 7 foot and 11 inches tall.

-         That aspiring to make it to the WWF wasn’t nearly as wise a career choice as engineering.

-         That kids who took WWF too seriously could actually end up hurting each other.

      -         That my Grandpa still remembers British Bulldog was ranked 11. 

      -         That it’s probably not a good idea to refer to The Encyclopedia of names of WWF champs: Past, Present and Future to find a name for your new born. They’ve got pretty cool names like Beefcake Barber, Andre the Giant and Lex Luger “Hands of Steel” in it. I’m not sure if I’d want my kid to be any of those.  

For years, everyone stared in awe believing the fight was for real. Then one day, some person sparked off a debate about the sense of showing such violence to young kids. It all went great for a while. And then, we fucked up the end game by calling it Entertainment.