Kids Belong In The Crowd, Not The Ring

“You know that’s fake, right?”

I don’t know about any other wrestling fans out there, but that statement/question is one that I’m certainly sick of hearing. At the age of 33, it’s something I’ve heard since I was in high school during the height of the Attitude Era and quite frankly, I’m tired of it.

So with a recent event putting 12-year old “superfan” Izzy into the squared circle, here’s my problem: children don’t belong in the ring. This issue has gotten a lot of steam this week with fans and performers alike coming in on both sides of the fence for various reasons. One such individual, WWE Superstar Lince Dorado, offered this take on it:

I will not support this at all and I will leave it at that! As a parent and PROFESSIONAL wrestler I feel utterly embarrassed due to my “peers” actions! Not ok! pic.twitter.com/KLzFI9f1hd

— Lince Dorado (@LuchadorLD) August 27, 2018

While I totally understand what he’s saying about the danger element, I do not one hundred percent agree with his reasoning for it. Does that mean I think children should be in the ring taking chokeslams? Absolutely not, but for a different reason that relates to the question I opened this piece up with. It’s not believable and that’s what drives me crazy about it. Now, I’m not saying it isn’t a cool moment for a kid to have a match and I’m not trying to kill anybody’s dreams here, but it’s just plain ridiculous and past the point of logic. Of course wrestling is a choreographed fight and at the end of the day it is entertainment, but does anybody think that a 12-year old girl would be able to defeat a 200 pound man in a battle? No. It’s absurd, just like WWE putting a child in the ring at the biggest event of the year, WrestleMania, to become a Tag Team Champion.

Just think about that for a second…a CHILD held a title in the WWE. Now you can say, “Braun Strowman is the one that won the match”, but what did that do for their opponents, The Bar? To that point, Sheamus and Cesaro had been built to be arguably the best tag team in the company after months and months of work, dominating the competition. So their reign comes to an end by getting pinned by…A FRIGGIN’ CHILD. Again, this is not believable and I don’t care if “wrestling is supposed to be fun” or “shouldn’t be taken so seriously all the time”. At the end of the day, it still needs to MAKE SENSE. There’s never a case where a kid defeating a grown man makes sense.

Now on the other side of the spectrum, Joey Ryan had the following to say about Izzy’s match:

This may be unpopular amongst my peers but it seems like everybody wants to treat wrestling like a real sport until it’s inconvenient. Most professional athletes were playing year round full contact sports when they were 12.

— Joey Ryan (@JoeyRyanOnline) August 29, 2018

Here’s the problem with that, Joey…the majority of those professional athletes weren’t playing those sports against other grown men and the rare ones that do, it’s because they were SUPREMELY talented and could actually keep up. Take soccer star Freddy Adu for example, who became a pro at the age of 14. Yes, he was a minor, but here’s where Joey’s opinion loses me: Freddy Adu could ACTUALLY BEAT GROWN MEN. It made sense because he could REALLY DO IT. Then again, I wouldn’t expect anything less coming from the guy who flips people with his dick in matches and makes a mockery of the business.

Perhaps I listen to too much of Jim Cornette, who does go off the deep end fairly often, but here’s the thing…I agree with his takes. Wrestling needs to be based in reality. As a fan, I take things like a 12-year old girl beating a grown man, a wrestler flipping people over with his johnson, someone having a match with a blow-up doll, as a total slap in the face. I don’t want my intelligence insulted and that’s the bottom line. So before anybody gives me grief for my takes here, I simply ask you this: Do you enjoy when non-wrestling fans tell you that it’s fake? Because this is the kind of stuff that feeds it. Personally, I don’t. There are outliers like Rey Mysterio who started professionally at a young age, but I repeat, he was believable.

Unless there’s a child out there with tremendous size or talent that actually looks like they could defeat a grown ass man, then they belong in the crowd. Not in the wrestling ring.