Professional wrestling isn’t what it used to be

The seats of Mellon Arena are packed with screaming fans. Signs held high over their heads… The seats of Mellon Arena are packed with screaming fans. Signs held high over their heads support their favorite faces and bash the despised heels. Shirts are worn with the slogans of those the fans support.

No, hockey hasn’t let go of the lockout. Mario Lemieux isn’t blazing down the ice one last time. Something more barbaric, more scripted and more exciting live is taking place in the Igloo.

The cast and crew of the World Wrestling Entertainment are putting on a show.

The next WWE Pay-Per-View special brings the wrestlers of “Smackdown” to the Mellon Arena for “No Way Out” on Sunday, February 20.

The main event scheduled for the night is the first-ever Barbed Wire Steel Cage Match, which pits WWE Champion John Bradshaw Layfield against the oversized Big Show. And, of course, they will make a big deal of one-time hometown hero Kurt Angle coming back to Pittsburgh.

I remember the last time I went to a live WWE event — back then it was still called WWF. My two brothers and I went to a taping of “Monday Night Raw,” the federation’s weekly show at the time. We were the only fans supporting Angle in the entire sold-out crowd. When we were younger, my brother and I met Angle a number of times and took part in a wrestling clinic he held at an area tournament.

See, Angle used to be a real wrestler and won the gold medal in the Olympics before he joined the entertainment industry. I’m not putting down what the wrestlers of WWE do day in and day out, but it is entertainment. And even as entertainers, these guys still get hurt — someone will most definitely get hurt in the main event of “No Way Out,” and that’s what the brains of WWE are looking for, because, frankly, they need the ratings.

No matter how much I would love to see WWE live again, I can’t convince myself to pay the inflated ticket price. I haven’t watched either “Monday Night Raw” or “Smackdown” in more than a year. I lost interest in the story line the moment someone decided it would be a good idea to split the cast. Watching the same wrestlers go at it week after week tends to get old. It was a lot better when there was parity. I can only watch the belt go to and from Hunter Hurst Helmsley so many times.

I yearn for the good old days of the WWF, when Bruno San Martino would step into the ring and demand respect because he wrestled not so much as an entertainer, but as a professional. I miss the days of Hulk Hogan and Brutus the Barber Beefcake — the days when the story lines were the best. The in-ring performances weren’t as fluid as some of the acting in the ring is now, but the wrestlers in the late ’80s and early ’90s knew how to get a crowd going, and the story lines were actually worth watching week after week.

I feel old and out of it; I can’t even tell you who some of the wrestlers are anymore, or who’s on which show. It’s garbage to me now. It’s something that I skip by when commercials are on during “Monday Night Football.”

I remember thinking that it was all real so long ago, and not believing my friends who told me it was scripted. Then I grew older and wiser, and I could actually watch closely enough to see the wrestlers talking to each other in the ring, mapping out their next set of moves. Watching even closer, I could pinpoint the moment when the wrestler would reach into his boot or spandex and pull out the razor blade to cut his face. I knew it was scripted and fake but still watched it religiously.

Those days are long gone, and I blame the writing, the management and whoever thought that having Benoit and Jericho face each other every week would be great fun for the viewer.

Brian Palmer is the A’E editor and takes offense to the fact that WWE higher-ups think all of their viewers are mindless, and if anyone wants to step up, he’ll lay down a Hogan leg drop from the top rope. E-mail him at bkp8@pitt.edu.