Over the Line!

Is there a limit one must establish in the world of professional wrestling? Or is it meant to be no holds barred?
Priscilla Kelly pulls the offending object out of her body to inflict gross harm/ credit: prowrestlingsheet.com

Let’s not kid ourselves here, professional wrestling is not high brow art. True, it’s still a form of art. But it’s also a form of entertainment and of sport, with a huge emphasis on the entertain aspect. 

Entertainment itself is in fact subjective. What one finds appealing, the other might find revolting. Fans go ballistic for Superkick Parties, while others sneer, refer to The Young Bucks as spot monkeys, and want a 5 star technical feast for the eyes out of NJPW.

The crowd stood in awe and ovation for Will Ospreay and Ricochet’s display of grace and athleticism in 2016, while pros like Vader called it gymnastics.

Fans will laugh and cheer on Kenny Omega for facing off against a blow-up doll, and fulfilling a little girls’ wishes and wrestle her (safely) since it’s just for shits and giggles, while men with old school mentalities like Jim Cornettes’ have a conniption.

Purists will praise the indie scene, commending it’s perseverance and refuse to acknowledge WWE as wrestling because there’s a difference between wrestling and “sports entertainment”.

The fact is, despite what the voices of yore may claim, there seems to be very few lines one can draw in this crazy world of graps. By and large, most tend to just squabble a little and then go about their day. But then, you get the spots that cause a huge uproar in the world of wrestling. They become quite divisive.

A couple of years ago, Joey Ryan’s Penisplex went viral across all social media platforms. (If you’re still unfamiliar with that, go look it up, it’s brilliant.) Suddenly, there was no room for lewd gimmicks in wrestling. It was as though we forgot all the crap that WWE pulled on air during the Attitude Era. So clearly, there is room for that “crap”, it’s just a matter of who pulls it off. 

Why do I bring all this up? Enter “Hell’s Favorite Harlot”, Priscilla Kelly. Here we have a very young talent already making a name for herself. Debuting in 2015, she has already held the Shine Nova Championship, landed herself in last year’s Mae Young Classic and made her debut for Tokyo Joshi Pro, all culminating right after her 21st birthday. That is quite impressive. 

Last month, she faced Tuna in a match for Suburban Fight and there was a planned spot in which she seemingly withdrew a rather large used tampon from her body and shoved it into the gaping mouth of her opponent. Little attention was paid because, hey, just another weird, outlandish gimmick, right? Plus, it’s huge. Even on a woman’s heaviest day, no tampon is going to come out of the body that big. There’d be too much of a struggle to get it out for the spot. Just meant to get heat on Kelly.

Fast forward to this afternoon when TNA and WWE alumni Gail Kim noticed the match and subtweeted her absolute disgust (since she apparently didn’t have the guts to even tag Priscilla outright), even though this match is about a week or so old. In less than 24 hours, we saw this shit go viral and everyone is choosing a side. From fellow talent to backstage personnel at WWE, it seems everyone has something to say, with the consensus being of two opinions:

  1. You’re for it because it’s just a spot and wrestling isn’t meant to be Met-Gala-sipping-tea-with-the-Queen level entertainment
  2. There’s no place for it and ridiculous stunts like this is why pro wrestling is sneered at to begin with.

First, can I just remind everyone who is of the second opinion that the biggest entity in professional wrestling, y’know, the one who you wish would bring back the Attitude Era, did far, far worse. 

During that specific era and The Ruthless Aggression Era, we witnessed the following:

  • DX do blackface on national television
  • Women openly flash the cameras during Raw
  • Val Venis supposedly get his cock cut off and then do a segment the next week in the ring with John Bobbitt
  • Gangrel repeatedly drop blood on opponents of The Brood
  • The Undertaker try to sacrifice Stephanie McMahon
  • Triple H drugging Stephanie and forcibly marrying her at a drive thru chapel in Vegas
  • Big Boss Man dragging Big Show’s dead fathers’ coffin from his funeral with Big Show still on it
  • Triple H impersonating Kane and get in a coffin with the corpse of Katie Vick
  • Lita carrying out a miscarriage angle with Kane
  • Edge and Lita have a Live Sex Celebration on Raw (in which there was accidental total breast exposure)
  • Randy Orton tell Rey Mysterio that Eddie Guerrero was in hell just mere weeks after the real life death of Guerrero

Hell, let’s not forget CM Punk dumping Paul Bearer’s ashes during the Road to Wrestlemania 29 in order to get heat for his feud with The Undertaker. That was almost six years ago.

But Penisplexes, bloody tampons, wrestling blow-up dolls and possible overuse of spots is detrimental to the seriousness of professional wrestling?

We probably shouldn’t go into death matches, either. Tons of blood there. But it’s blood coming out of areas of the body that aren’t an orfice that’s scary, so it’s okay, right? 

Give me a fucking break. This is wrestling, not ballet.

We buy the tickets and cheer on the mayhem because we want an escape; we want to be entertained and enter a whole new world for just a couple hours. I don’t know about you guys, but if I want art that is serious, I’ll spend a day at the Art Institute in Chicago or I’ll pick up a god damn book. 

There once was a great man named Jon Moxley, king of the indie promos and death matches. He went on to become Dean Ambrose. Before he did so, he did a 2 hour long shoot interview, and within it, there’s a little tidbit I’ll leave you guys with that is brilliant in its’ simplicity.

“Have fun watching wrestling, because wrestling is fun.”

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Just another WWE smark in a IWC world gone mad. Find me poppin' off on Twitter some Mondays, most Tuesdays, for Smackdown PPV's (Let's not forget the Big 4!), and a whole hell of a lot of wrestling RT's. You've been warned. Got something to say to me? lauren.rae.83@gmail.com
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