I’ve recently come out of a depression.

I didn’t even know I was depressed until, around September of last year, I started feeling better about work, life, and art. I experienced the mental equivalent of clouds parting after a storm, and a warm beam of sunlight cutting through the dark. The juxtaposition of mindsets was so palpable that I realized, “Oh, I was depressed!”

That depression lasted for about two years and it manifested as a kind of dull, throbbing ache, a sense that something was about to go wrong at any moment. At my day job I struggled to decide what task to undertake next. I didn’t have a schedule (big mistake when you have bipolar!) and I would wander, aimlessly in my mind from one potential tragedy to the next. At home I was better, but I wasn’t really enjoying my life either.

To enjoy life seemed like a luxury I couldn’t afford.

How did I deal with this depression?

Moral Ambiguity In Professional Wrestling

Is amoral art immoral?

That’s the question I keep asking myself as I consider the implications of a professional wrestling that no longer asserts good is good and bad is bad, but rather that we live in a morally ambiguous world where people simply make choices and then live with the consequences. Amorality is being neither moral nor immoral, it is showing no concern in the rightness or wrongness of something. In art, that means the author doesn’t pass judgment on the characters, but merely presents them as they are, allowing the audience to judge. Such is the moral philosophy of many modern dramas and comedies in this Golden Age of Television. From Tony Soprano to Walter White to Don Draper to Daenerys Targaryen to Barry Berkman to Kendall Roy to many more, the amoral perspective these television shows have on their leads sidesteps the traditional moral binary of good versus evil for a more fluid interpretation of the universe.

Professional Wrestling Is Good For My Mental Health

For the past few months, I’ve been watching Monday Night Raw, AEW Dynamite, and Friday Night SmackDown every week. It’s been fun, and reminiscent of the early days of my pro-wrestling fandom where I watched totally devoted. Establishing this routine has made it easier to get through the work-week. Each day, I remind myself that wrestling awaits and it helps the next handful of hours pass a little quicker.

My favorite of the bunch is Dynamite. It’s the most inventive and naturalistic, featuring a fantastic cast of colorful characters. There’s the super serious sort like Jon Moxley and Hangman Adam Page and the hilarious sort like Orange Cassidy and The Best Friends. Unlike WWE-television, Dynamite has an actually funny sense of humor - that is to say comedy in AEW is genuinely amusing and not cringe-inducing. Dynamite also features wrestling matches with stories rather than wrestling matches as time-filler.

The Rock Got Me Through My Teens

The Rock is my favorite wrestler. I’ve come to this conclusion after much deliberation. He’s on a short list alongside CM Punk, Bret Hart, Sami Zayn, Stone Cold Steve Austin, and Mick Foley. It’s not hard to figure out why The Rock is my favorite. His ascent to WWF super stardom (and beyond) perfectly coincided with my adolescence. In those precious and impressionable years, he provided a respite from turmoil and angst. I would look forward to Raw and SmackDown every week in intense anticipation of what he might say and on whom he might layeth the smacketh down. Every new catchphrase was a significant event. Every gesture or subtle motion of his body was worthy of imitation.

Why We Love Professional Wrestling

“You know it’s fake, right?”

Most pro-wrestling fans have heard this question in some form at some point in their lives. They’ve worked up the courage to admit they’re a pro-wrestling fan and then they’re met with peculiar stares, snorts of laughter, or the dreaded f-word, “fake”.

On behalf of all wrestling fans allow me to answer…yes! We know it’s fake!

As I’ve matured as a wrestling fan the less interested I’ve become in “regular people’s” opinions of it (or me). If someone judges me negatively, even slightly, for loving professional wrestling then it is I who feel bad for them - not the other way around. The issue of pro-wrestling’s fakeness is not a problem for professional wrestling fans. We do not attend WrestleMania and feel deceived when we notice a softly delivered punch. We’re not confused when a wrestler climbs to the top rope to spring through the air and come crashing down on their opponent. And we’re not convinced the bad guy is evil and the good guy is good. We understand what we’re watching. We “get it”.

EDITORIALSTim KailNovember 21, 2022wwe, aew, Chris jericho, sami zayn, professional wrestling, professional wrestling blog

THE REALITY OF WRESTLING OR: WHY EVERYTHING IS FAKE

I believe in professional wrestling.

Like any other storytelling medium, the theater of pro-wrestling can inspire, enlighten, and unite. The transcendent power of a pro-wrestling match is best comprehended by those viewers caught in The Moment of Pop - that instant where the onlooker forgets what they're watching is staged and is inspired to rise to their feet or sink into their seat.

In that millisecond of purity, all contrivance fades.

Tim Kail's Raw Review

There are times when the WWE strikes that perfect balance between heavy-handed schmaltz and sincere, logical storytelling.

That elusive sweet spot may just be the purest representation of the WWE's perspective on professional wrestling; an over-the-top family saga wrapped in spandex, fireworks, and an assortment of colorful heroes & villains that occasionally results in genuine expressions of pain, joy, surprise, and psychosis.

One such moment occurred on the November 13th, 2017 episode of Monday Night Raw when Kurt Angle and his tearful "son", Jason Jordan, were interrupted by a grim & determined Triple H.

Your Negative Perception Of 205 Live Is Not Reality

On Tuesday night at 10:50 pm, I was quietly screaming at my television and pumping my fist with restrained desperation. I was "quiet" and "restrained" only because my wife was peacefully sleeping next to me, and I did not want to wake her. While words didn't actually escape my mouth, I could feel myself shouting, internally, "To-za-wa!!!". Akira Tozawa was making his "comeback" in a 205 Live main event match against Ariya Daivari. It was a number one contender's match to determine who would face Neville for the Cruiserweight Championship at SummerSlam. So it mattered.

It seemed to me that all of the conditions were right for enjoying some fun, psychologically sound professional wrestling. I had tuned in after a long day at work, and I was winding down towards sleep, reclined in my bed, Tweeting along with fellow viewers, insulated in a warm bubble of pro-wrestling goodness. All was right with the world from my vantage, and Tozawa and Daivari were telling me a reassuring bedtime story about the power of perseverance.

WOW - EP136 - G1 Climax 27 - NJPW

Pro-Wrestling Is An Art...But It's Better When Wrestlers Don't Know That

Professional wrestling is an art.

That's the simple truth.

Proving and reinforcing that truth with my style of pro-wrestling-arts-criticism has always been the purpose of my writing and my podcast. It is an accurate way of analyzing the medium that quickly dismantles the age-old claim "wrestling is fake", and simultaneously positions pro-wrestling to be watched (and created) with the respect it deserves.

The idea that pro-wrestling is an art is by no means new: philosopher Roland Barthes wrote about wrestling as theater in the 1950s, Bret Hart stated with his trademark tempered pride, "There is an art to wrestling" in the 1998 documentary Wrestling With Shadows, and CM Punk told GQ in 2011, "It's truly, I believe, one of the only art forms that America has actually given to the world, besides jazz and comic books".

Millions of Us Have Stopped Watching Wrestling - Can The Era of Wyatt Bring Us Back?

There are millions of us out there who have lost faith in the world of professional wrestling. It was a world we used to love. But since the end of the Attitude Era, so many of us walked away.

Is now the time for us to come back?

And is Bray Wyatt the man to bring us back?

My Message To the Pro-Wrestling Journalists & Podcasters Of The Future

At the end of 2016 my weekly podcast, The Work of Wrestling, will go on hiatus. During that hiatus I plan on restructuring the show so that, in the future, it will be distributed in a highly focused, seasonal format. I do not yet know how long that hiatus will be and I do not yet know how long those seasons will be, but I am excited about the prospect of reinvention and return.

While I still plan to continue writing about wrestling whenever the mood strikes, it feels like a good time to offer a "see you later" (rather than a goodbye) to The Pro-Wrestling Community, particularly to the younger writers & podcasters currently honing their crafts. You are the ones who will take up this mantle, push it into the 21st Century and beyond, and change the way people think about professional wrestling (for the better). Your passion, your ingenuity, and your progressive perspectives will be needed for our Community to ever grow up.

The Writings