George "the Animal" Steele
My love of wrestling started when I was
in my teens. I used to watch it with my grandparents. My
grandma was especially into it. She would yell at the
wrestlers on t.v. Her brother, my Uncle Sam, was also a big
wrestling fan and very vocal about it. Him and his son went to
many matches but I wasn't allowed to go because my grandma was
worried that I'd get killed there! Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka was
the wrestler that caught my attention. He kept me mesmerized
with his crazy antics and his signature move the "Superfly".
Then Shawn Michaels came along and made me swoon. Every week
we would watch wrestling. I had every single wrestling figure
there was (the old rubber ones) until my grandma lent them to
my little cousin Joey. Instead of returning them to me they
were sold at a flea market! AAAAHHHHHHH! I collected the
wrestling cards and read the magazines. One of many dreams I
had back then was to become a wrestling photographer.
Unfortunately I never pursued that dream.
In 1989 I got bit by the music bug and started meeting bands,
which took up a good many years of my life. Wrestling was
forgotten about. Music was eventually forgotten about too for
awhile. But they would both find me again. The day before my
grandfather's funeral my husband and I were sitting in the
hotel looking for something to watch on t.v. We came across
TNA (now Impact) wrestling. The storylines were not really my
thing and the wrestling I was seeing was pretty bad.
Ironically it made me think back to the superior WWE and long
to see it again. We never did watch TNA again but WWE has
become a weekly ritual in our house. A few years later I
finally went to my first wrestling match. It was incredible!
We saw Smackdown in Hershey Pa. and it was being recorded the
night we were there. We got to look for ourselves on t.v. 3
days later. If you haven't seen a WWE event live I highly
recommend it. Everything you see on t.v. is 10,000 times
better live.
Since then we have also met many the
wrestlers, both old and new. A few we have met at various
conventions. But the meeting that sticks out the most in my
mind has to be Wrestlemania Axxess 2011 in Atlanta Georgia.
The Undertaker was doing a signing and I want to meet him more
than anything. We didn't get to go to the actual Wrestlemania
match because we couldn't afford it. But instead we spent the
entire trip going to Axxess. It was a lot of fun but pretty
disorganized and sometimes frustrating. Due to the amount of
people that attended and the limited time that each wrestler
was signing autographs we didn't get to meet everyone we
wanted. One reason we did not get to meet everyone we wanted
involved the WWE changing stars signing schedules at the drop
of a hat. Another was that meeting the stars deemed to be big
at that years Axxess (said stars change yearly it seems)
involved extra money that we didn't have. We did pay extra to
meet the Undertaker. In the end it wasn't worth it to me.
After wasting the majority of that day sitting in line for 4
hours to be the first to meet him all I got was two words out
of him. I thought he would be a little more talkative to the
1st person in line but I was wrong. Kinda a let down. The
frustrating part of Axxess was the "security". Little girls,
fat guys and elderly men who were supposed to be protecting
the wrestlers. What a joke. They liked to try to manhandle the
fans as we were trying to meet the wrestlers. Other than that
the experience was a nice one. I don't know if I would
recommend it to anyone now though. From what I heard you're no
longer allowed to get your pictures with most of the
wrestlers. We plan on going back one day so I'll have to keep
you posted.
I learned pretty fast when I first
started watching wrestling that a lot of it was staged. I'm
still aware of this but I think now wrestling has a different
appeal to me. While some of it is staged a lot of it is real.
The wrestlers suffer injuries and live with constant. I was in
a car accident in 2007 and I suffer constant pain as well. So
I guess I can relate to them in that sense. That in turn makes
me respect them on a whole different level.
© Ariann Boisvert. All rights reserved.
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