jennings rampage

See, it’s a metaphor.

When a professional wrestler is injured and is away from his sport and his work and his art, there’s a fairly established road to recovery. Once the athlete is fully rehabbed and is physically able to perform in the ring, he will generally spend some time by himself in an actual ring, just running the ropes and reminding himself how it feels. Next, he’ll work with a road agent or another wrestler, just working on basic moves and transitions until he starts to get his timing and rhythm back, and some of the “ring rust” gets knocked off. Once he’s able to work a full match in a gym, he’ll be brought back to work a dark match, the match before the television cameras start rolling to warm up the crowd. Here the stakes are still low, if the recovering wrestler fucks up somehow few people will know about it, but doing the work in a gym is completely different from doing the work in front of a live crowd — the energy from the fans is the only way to know whether or not you’re telling your story in the ring. Only after the wrestler works dark matches and house shows for at least a month or so will he brought back on television, where he’ll get a huge reaction for his official return and look as good as he possibly can after not being able to work for all that time.

What a professional wrestler will not do is show up at the arena the day after his doctors clear him to wrestle and work the main event having not set foot in a ring for, oh, five months or so. Because then he’d look ridiculous. Even if something like professional wrestling is in your blood, even if you think about it constantly while you’re laid up, even if you talk about it as much as possible, even if you do what you’re physically able to do without getting on your feet, it’s still going to take a little time to get back in the swing. It’s like riding a bicycle, sure, but when you don’t ride your bicycle for awhile, you generally perform a little maintenance first.

I’m not injured, so the excuses stop here. I’ll knock off as much rust as I can this week, then I’ll go back to Norfolk and build my own fucking ring if I have to.