PROFESSIONAL “WRESTLING” and CHILD REARING

Let me begin this article with a little funny for all of us ‘non-believers.’ My grandmother, God rest her weary soul, was a huge fan of Wrestling. She watched it every time she got the chance, bought books about the wrestlers and couldn’t understand, “Why that ref let that big boy beat on that little bitty ‘fella’ ”. My aunt told me one time Grandma told her she just didn’t understand why there wasn’t EVER anything during the Sports section of the nightly news about Wrestling. My reaction was, “DUH, it isn’t a real sport”.

I remember watching Bruno Samartino, Haystacks Calhoun and Bobo Brazil as a young child, but after visiting with Grandma, my husband got the Wrestling bug again. He watches two or three times a week and I goof around on the computer while enduring the sounds of “entertainment”.

I also remember the pride I felt as a mother of a high school wrestler who learned what REAL wrestling was about.

A few weeks ago something happened that just, pardon the phrase, griped my rear end. Rick Flair and Chris Jericho have been “feuding”, as the staged feuding goes in Wrestling. After mouthing off at each other for a bit, Jericho physically attacked Flair beating him brutally. Flair was bleeding from his forehead and blood was all over his face. As the cameras panned the audience, there were many parents with young children in the crowd.

What are these parents thinking? They bring the kids to see this stuff and then wonder why “little Johnny” gets in trouble for beating up kids at school. The parents are creating “heroes” out of these wrestlers that are demonstrating severe cruelty in the name of sports.

It was bad enough about a year or so ago when Mr. McMahon bared his behind and forced wrestlers to kiss his buttocks. I was appalled! In the front of thousands of children in person and on tv. (Granted this is my guesstimate).

I put a challenge out to ALL parents who expose their children to this violence, fake or not, you decide, to educate and guide those same children with daily doses of such abstract things such as manners, reality versus “TV reality”, and being responsible for their actions.

I also challenge the Producers and members of “TV Wrestling” to donate a minimum of 10% of the proceeds they receive to Child Development Programs around the country. They are helping to create some of the problems our children face, let us see if they can put their almighty dollars to work to correct some of them.