Oh How the World Has Changed
 December 6, 2007
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 Oh How the World Has Changed I started high school with little to no interest in wrestling. As a sports fan in the Lehigh Valley, I read the papers enough to know who the big names were, but that was about it. One of my good friends wrestled, but beyond “did you win?†our conversations about his sport didn’t go very far. I had played basketball my whole life, and had virtually no technical knowledge of wrestling. But what I quickly found out was the thing to do at Easton High School in the winter was go to wrestling matches. And since my aforementioned friend won the varsity 103 spot, all of my friends went quite often both to be cool and to watch him. So my options were either be the loser that always stayed at home, or go watch the wrestling match. Since no 9th grader is comfortable enough to accept being a loser, off I went. I was hooked pretty early. My favorite thing about matches was something was always happening (which oddly enough, is a common complaint I hear from wrestling fans , “c’mon ref, he’s not doing anything!â€). It helped that the team I rooted for always won. The more watched wrestling, the more I wanted to really know what was going on. I figured out scoring on my own, contrary to popular belief, its really not that hard if you can get a question or two answered early on. But I wanted to know more. It wasn’t good enough that things were happening; I wanted to know why things were happening. It bothered me that I didn’t know what moves were what, terminology was beyond me at this point. One thing I loved about watching basketball was I could see things before they happened. If you understand and offense, you can make the passes yourself in your head before they actually happen. I hoped that once I really “got†wrestling, I’d be able to see the set-ups and openings the wrestlers obviously were seeing. I did this through television. The lucky thing about living in the Lehigh Valley is that wrestling is on TV all the time. RCN and Service Electric are the two local cable companies, both show high school sports virtually every night of the week. Wrestling was no exception. But it wasn’t just that wrestling was on TV, I was already watching it a ton. But RCN had perhaps the best commentators possible for a budding wresting junkie. Scott Barr was, and still is, the play-by-play man. Wrestling is his passion. He has written books on the sport, and he gets what’s going on. A lot of my terminology was picked up from Barr narrating replays. “Oh, that’s a cement job†was one of my earliest finds, while watching Barr yell as Jeff Ecklof cranked over an unsuspecting victim. And while he was a great play-by-play announcer, the man who really taught me wrestling was Ray Nunnamaker. Nunnamaker is the coach that built the Nazareth program. He is one of the most well respected high school wrestling coaches in the country. Having recently retired, Nunnamaker was staying around the sport by doing matches on RCN a few times a week. He was fantastic. Although he did not exactly have the voice for television (more than once my mom would hear the TV and say “oh my, what is that?†when Nunnamaker was talking) but oh my did he have the know how. Nunnamaker’s commentary was exactly what I was looking for. By the time Easton-Northampton rolled around at the end of the year, I thought I was a certified pro when it came to wrestling knowledge. And after one full year as a wrestling fan, I was quickly turning into a junkie. As I started to expand my horizons, I came to a disheartening conclusion: wrestling was really hard to follow. I kept up with national rankings, at first to see how local guys stacked up, but then became generally curious at all the other names I was looking at. My favorite event in the world became the NHSCA Final Four because I got to see all of these names I was reading on Amateur Wrestling News’s top 12 each month. Once I year I got to watch Patrick Bond, Cameron Doggett, Charlie Falck, Daniel Frishkorn, and other studs from far off that I only read about. But other than Final Four matches, I had no way of really seeing any of these other wrestlers. Sure I could follow box scores. I read tournament brackets all the time. But as we all know, most wrestling events aren’t great about staying updated, and I found myself frustrated and angry more often than not. As many wrestling fans do, I fell into reading messages boards as some method of getting more information than “Nickerson dec. Scott 4-2â€. While hearing what hundreds of experts and idiots (there are plenty of both) had to say was certainly entertaining (especially when the two mixed), it really wasn’t what I was looking for, it certainly was entertaining. I also had started to follow college wrestling by tracking guys I had watched in high school. But there still was a major problem, I couldn’t actually watch it. Over the last three years, that has all changed. Wrestling is at a crossroads right now. A lot of people say the sport is dying, and Title IX is constantly being blamed for the sport’s demise. But that’s not what I see. I see a landscape that is incredibly pro-wrestling. Because I never had any intention of falling in love with the sport. I fell in love with wrestling by watching it constantly. That is an opportunity I had only because of where I lived. But across the country, wrestling is becoming easier and easier to watch. First of all, YouTube deserves some of the credit. I’m sure my college freshman year GPA suffered because I found out that I could watch whatever matches people posted online. Through Thematforums, people began making it known that they had these great matches could put them online. Suddenly, I could watch Cael Sanderson wrestle whenever I wanted. I watched Brent Metcalf’s front-flip against Matt Dragon. After reading about a match for weeks, I suddenly could watch and make my own observations. Now I was one search away from seeing almost whatever I wanted. FloWrestling has taken this to a whole different level with their coverage, which is why I wanted to get involved with the site. The interviews make wrestling all the more personal, and a lot of it exposes what is so good about the sport. The virtues of hard work, mental toughness, and tenacity are what makes wrestling sub-culture so great. And the expanded coverage of matches is only going to lead to good things down the road, I think we saw that with Vegas this weekend. The step beyond the internet is television. And this is a more optimistic battle than wrestling fans make it out to be. Because of the sub-culture, everybody who loves wrestling watches whenever it is on TV. ESPN has taken notice of this and shows more and more of the NCAA tournament every year. This year I’m sure will be no exception. This past weekend, the Big Ten Network showed Minnesota-Iowa State at the behest of a ton of angry e-mails about showing more wrestling live. The Big Ten Network granted our wish, and we came through by watching the match in very large numbers. The network has stated that they have not set their winter schedule, but that wresting fans will be very happy with the coverage. Slowly, we are winning the war. What wrestling needs now is two things. The first is a “Ray Nunnamaker†for the world. I liked watching wrestling because Nunnamaker made sure I knew what was going on. He has forgotten more about wrestling than I could ever aspire to know, but on TV it sounded like we were equals. He made it that easy. If there could be a team of broadcasters with that skill, wrestling will have its true voice to bring it to the layperson. The second thing is wrestling needs to showcase itself. Matches like Poeta-Gillespie from the weekend (which by the way, I told you so) are the thing the casual fan needs to see. The casual fan needs to see Darrion Caldwell. The casual fan needs to get the personalities like Ben Askren and Johny Hendricks that make wrestling fantastic. Wrestling is slowly getting exposure, now it needs to market itself. When that happens, it really will capitalize on the environment being created by the technology era. I’m a living, breathing example of what exposure to wrestling can do. I love it. And if it can happen to me, it can happen to anybody. |
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