Brickbats or Bouquets?

I would think that there have been quite a few mentions of comments made to us along the way, about our following pro. wrestling. However can anybody recall those remarks from school mates, family and or fellow workers and colleagues? For instance my mum and dad and later brother embraced the 'sport' quite easily, although there was that one time, already posted here sometime ago, when my dad in an unusual bad mood, decided that he would demonstrate that jumping off the turnbuckle onto a fallen opponent, was really just theatre. He was to achieve this with the aid of a chair and the natural enemy of said chair, an egg. Placing the egg on the living room floor, he stepped up on the chair and was seriously going to knee drop the poor egg, only to be 'talked down' by my mother.

At my first place of employment several work mates were scornful of wrestling, a couple thought it was 'fun', one Greek guy and a Yugoslav liked it, but didn't watch it on t.v. religiously like myself. Another Greek was very dismissive, miming a guy taking a drop-kick and rolling his eyes scornfully. I even told one bloke that 'no', he couldn't look at my copy of Wrestling Revue I had just bought at lunchtime, as 'non believers don't get to see' which was a bit strong as I had seen the 'joins' some time before and was no longer a mark! The foreman was a lovely chap and we got on very well and yet he hated wrestling, (I think I remember him being a rugby league man) calling the participants 'poofters' the first time I mentioned it and again when I left saying, 'John's leaving us, because he'd prefer to go wrestle with the 'poofter wrestlers! When I worked in Fulham Broadway in the '70s, the manager another good bloke, would sit in his office around four o'clock on a Saturday afternoon and not come out until the wrestling had finished. He would then come downstairs and tell us salesmen how the wrestlers had done all these ridiculous things. I would usually admit, that as we had no customers at the time (they were all at home watching the wrestling) I had watched what he had, on one of the t.v.s dotted around the showrooms, however he'd just use that to remind me of 'when he jumped up onto the rope and then' on and on he would relate. I expect that there was usually at least one of those characters in every workplace. It got easier as I got older and eventually if at a party or barbecue and the chat had dried up, I'd say something like 'I took my son to the wrestling last week' immediately guys would want to know where it was held and whom had we seen. Others, with a smile on their faces, would comment, some wax lyrical, on the wrestling and wrestlers they 'used' to watch and some even said 'you have to give those guys their due, it's a hard game'.

So, that was nice!