[00:00:10] [00:00:28] [00:01:00] [00:01:31] [00:01:57] Let’s go ahead and get these matches underway, how ‘bout it? There’s very real things that are going on in professional wrestling. A lot of people wanna be like, ‘oh, well, that’s just a fake sport.’ It’s not a fake sport, it’s a form of storytelling, no better or worse than any other form of storytelling. In wrestling, there’s a general layout of story. There’s the Baby Face. And the Heel. The Baby Face has all these impossible odds against him. The Heel is ready to exploit any opportunity he can. The Heel doesn’t have any integrity. Whereas the Baby Face is only going to win if he can win fairly. There’s a story that gets told in wrestling about how things ought to be. Everyday people take an immense amount of shit from others. You get abused. You get exploited. You know you’re getting paid less than you’re worth. Things aren’t right. One of the frustrating things is you don’t know whose ass to kick. It’s a bureaucratic society, you know? I can call in to the power company or whatever, but the person I’m talking to probably doesn’t deserve their ass kicked. They probably, you know, deserve to be kicking someone’s ass themselves. But at the bottom of it, in our hearts, we know that there’s someone whose ass we need to be kicking. The Baby Face in professional wrestling is the one who is kicking that ass. Through the sheer tyranny of will, he’s gonna to rise to his feet and he’s gonna make a comeback. And we can at least live through that. It’s a story about getting the redemption that we feel we deserve. [00:02:30] That is a story that every form of art and every type of storytelling has tried to tell. [00:03:02] It’s a story about how things ought to be. I’m speaking to what wrestling can be. Not necessarily what it always is. But I think that’s true of pretty much an art form. It’s as good or as bad as we make it. [00:03:23] It’s not a fake sport. It’s a real story that we’re telling. It may not be the story that’s actually happening right then, but that’s no different than any story that you tell, ever.