Wrestling These Days: It’S Not For Kids Essay, Research Paper

For years and years professional wrestling has been loved and watched by children everywhere. They idolize their favorite superstars and despise their most hated. They stay up late on each and every Monday night to watch the muscular grapplers. Although it sounds like everything is all well and good, there is a problem. In the past 24 months professional wrestling has become too raunchy for young children. The fact of the matter is this, wrestling in the late nineties is not for kids.

There are many reasons for this but perhaps the most prominent is there is too much sex, violence and bad language on the program. They have done many extreme things that should only be seen by mature adult viewers. The most criticized and severe thing in which they have produced would have to the stunts pulled off by a devil worshipper named The Undertaker. This possessed individual has crucified superstars on more than one occasion and he has even hung an opponent after beating him senseless. This material is very offensive to many people and because of this the WWF received thousands of complaints from worried parents who did not want their childern watching but they did not succumb to the protesters and they kept giving their mature fans what they wanted. Next, they began to push the sex aspect of their product. They brought out scantily clad women and had them fight and claw and even rip each others clothes off. They have even play with the idea of having a woman lose her bra “accidentaly”. This would be terrible because thousands of kids would see a sight which they should not be seeing..They continued to give controversial angles and their ratings cvontinued to skyrocket to unprecidented levels. In information I found from the website http://www.iwrestling.com , The WWf is the top rated show on Monday night television for males between the age of 8 and 32. That means that there are many children watching and seeing the violence and sex.

In a study performed by Indiana Universuty, they took notes of a year’s worth of Monday Night Raw’s, the WWF’s flagship television show, and came up with some very interesting information. Researchers found 1,658 situations in which WWF performers pointed to their crotch in a sexual manner otherwise known as Degeneration X’s patented crotch chop. They also found 434 insatnces when those famous Degeneration Xer’s said their favorite two word, which happen to be “suck it”. These “role models” have caused an infinite amount of problems in elementary schools nationwide. For example, in Manitoba, the Teacher’s Aassociation put up a fight with TSN, the channel which airs RAW in Canada, to either move RAW to a later time slot or take it off the air altogether. This fight was started due to kids running around in the playground screaming “suck It” and doing crotch chops while wearing t-shirts covered with the WWF’s other obsene slogans such as “Austin 3:16 just whooped your ass”. The first step the teachers took was to ban the t-shirts and to give the children punishments if they got caught performing a Degeneration X trademark. Then since the kids relentlessly kept doing the gestures, the teacher’s went to the press. They stated that seeing as the WWF superstars were bad influences on the children, they wanted The Sports Network to move the program to a late hour. TSN did not like that so they kept on airing RAW IS WAR after school but they did edit out the parts that deemed unacceptable. This was not liked by the teachers association and since then they have been on an ongoing mission to get RAW off the television but due to the current popularity of the program, their crucade will not work. This is unfortunate because children should not be watching the violence.

Another major argument which has been voiced by many parents is the backyard wrestling which is traking place in homes all across the continent. In a story that aired on the television show “inside Edition” on May 21, it said how mnay children were getting injured while they performed the maneuvers which they saw every Monday night on television. Doctors have said that one day a child will kill one of his friends because a move was applied the worng way. Even the professionals are at great risk of attaining a major injury. An example of this occurred in August of 1997 at the WWF Pay Per View extravganza titled “Summerslam” when a wrestler named Owen Hart performed a piledriver on Stonecold Steve Austin and it broke his neck. Steve could not move his limbs for a matter of minutes but he still was able to secure a weak pin over Owen to win the match. Steve was then helped to the back by the referee and other WWF officials and promptly taken to the nearest hospital where it was revealed the he broke vertabrae in his spine. He was very lucky that his injury did not leave him permanently paralyzed. To this day Austin has never had another piledriver performed on him. Another tragic incident which could shocked children and adults alike was the death of Owen Hart at the “Over The Edge” Pay Per View on Sunday, May 23. Owen was performing a stunt in which he would come down from the ceiling on a cable when his harness broke and he was plummeting to his death. Owen fell 65 feet into the ring and his neck was snapped from the impact. He died instantly.

As one can see Pro Wrestling is not for kids and should be edited heavily.