A Love Letter of Sorts to the Most Demanding of Mistresses
Dear World,
In a world full of things I absolutely fucking hate, there is one thing that keeps its grasp on me, no matter how hard it tries to drive me away. Just like the mafia, when I think I’m out, one thing always pulls me back in. You’re supposed to start the steps to recovery by admitting you have a problem. So let’s get this one out of the way.
“Hi, my name’s Dan. I’m an addict”
It’s an addiction that I just cannot shake. I’ve managed to kick dependencies on sex, alcohol, nicotine, amphetamines and painkillers amongst many other things in my lifetime, but no matter how hard I try and leave it behind, there’s one itch that always comes back. There’s one thing that still manages to keep its grubby little tendrils in me, even when I don’t want it to anymore. That scratch that needs attention and I just cannot move past and get on with my life?
Professional wrestling.
Even now, procrastination and avoidance of working on pitches to agents for a novel I’ve completed - or working on the second novel I’ve started writing - I find myself, despite my pledge to ditch social media (something I did three years ago and have only just reactivated), motivated by the launch of the Sickos Club to sit down and talk about my love and never-ending, incurable dedication to this weird, homoerotic ballet of violence, acted out by oiled-up men in their pants. The women are bloody awesome and gorgeous too, but there were very few women involved in wrestling when I started watching this dance of the devil.
In my 45 years on this spinning rock, I’ve worked up and down the length of the United Kingdom. I’ve worked in countless industries, I’ve met thousands of people and there’s questions that are asked regularly when you decide to open up a little bit to people.
“You still watch wrestling? What? WWF? Is that still going?”
The amount of times I’ve been asked that question in my adult life when I start talking to new groups of people about interests, I was, for a while, slightly ashamed at my interest in wrestling. It was niche. It was weird. It was for kids.
Granted, we’d had peaks during the Attitude Era where it was “cool” and common to talk about wrestling. At the height of the nWo and Austin 3:16, on Friday nights in the pub, Monday night’s RAW is WAR would be broadcast on Sky Sports. Amongst the juggernaut that is the Premier League for association football, the WWF was probably the most-watched programme broadcast by Sky.
It wasn’t watched with derision or scorn - it appealed to a load of 18-30 year olds that were getting ready for a night on the town.
The 90s as a teenager were a weirdly fun time in Britain. Certainly for me. It was the time of lads and beer, Euro 96’ in England, the World Cup in 98’ just across the channel in France, FHM and Loaded magazine showing women in their pants with an abundance of disco biscuits to get us through the weekend and, to paraphrase the band Pulp, “We were OK because we were all sorted out for E’s and wizz” We had a “hip” new government after years of dull, oppressive Conservative rule and we were slap bang in the middle of a revolution known as Cool Britannia. It was this time that professional wrestling hit its peak.
The Attitude Era hit that cultural stratosphere at just the right time. I worked as a young man as a trainee tax collector (a fine role for someone who fluctuates between anarchist and socialist) and I’d been a viewer of wrestling since I was a young preteen.
I’d seen the cartoon world of the WWF come and go, now it was Stunners on your boss and beer baths. It was middle fingers and bloody carnage. It was a perfect accompaniment to the 90s as we looked to the future of a new millennium and all the wonders it would hold (In hindsight, the future was a steaming pile of dog shit, but let’s not get into that, this is a profession of love, not hatred).
I thought then that professional wrestling would go on to be something I’d love forever, specifically, but I also thought I’d have a choice between two titans - WWF or WCW. They’d be rock solid companies who would keep each other pushing the envelope at the time, forcing the other company to be better.
You have to remember, this was a time when the internet was in its relative infancy. We had to dial up the internet with AOL to get online. Chat rooms were a new thing. Hell, I found about this weird, mega violent emerging company called ECW that was also gathering traction. But I didn’t subscribe to dirt sheets, I didn’t know who Dave Meltzer was. I just knew there was wrestling to be watched. Suddenly, the industry was getting more mature as I was and it flooded into my life like a tsunami.
Between girls, beer and football, teenage me had this carnival of violence to enjoy on a weekly basis. I thought it would last forever. But like my youth, it was destined to end like a damp squib and again the professional wrestling landscape would change.
But how did I get to this weird world in the first place? What drew me into this wicked web? What foul P.T. Barnum character had duped me into this tent of wonders? Maybe if anyone is interested in how random people get sucked into the sideshow, I’ll tell the story of my first embrace from this crack rock industry, but for now, in my tendency to waffle, I’ll try and steer this back round to how in the hell this mistress has managed to keep my metaphorical tackle locked in a cage with a key only she possesses.
I’d dipped in and out of wrestling my post teen years and the Attitude era. In truth, the Fed’s monopoly drove me away, but thanks to Jeff Jarrett starting his own company, I found myself a family man, attempting to be sensible, and once again was now a regular purveyor of the graps. I’d even managed to get my sons into wrestling via TNA (and again, if anyone ever cared, I’ll let you gather round the chair next to the fire and I’ll tell that tale if you so much as ask)
In 2019, when AEW was announced, my sons and I were excited collectively. We consumed all of it, every minute of Dynamite and Dark. Kip Sabian, who we’d seen wrestle locally at Pro Wrestling Chaos, had the first televised match on Dynamite. Encouraged by this, to my sons, pro wrestling was no longer a pipe dream. They’d seen people they knew “make” it and appear on a mainstream television show. My eldest son saw someone who was smaller, that he had seen in person regularly appear on international television.
It wasn’t developmental and it wasn’t in a bingo or school hall. It was a proper show, a potential pathway to the stars.
AEW gave us the thing we needed to watch on a regular basis. The Fed (WWE) had purged the UK Indy scene and the quality of shows dropped, but AEW made up for that. We had PPVs on a Saturday that meant we could stay up till dawn together. We avoided spoilers and collectively watched Dynamite every Thursday night at a sensible UK time. Two hours of the show flew by. Like a night with a beautiful sexual partner, it felt like minutes had passed.
For me, the early shows reminded me of the good-to-great parts of WCW Nitro and the WWF during the Attitude Era. I didn’t know what would happen. My sons and I theorized, we fantasy booked, we guessed and were always wrong-footed with something better occurring than we’d collectively come up with. We ran sweepstakes for PPVS. We had a world title that the winner took possession of until the next show based on their prediction points.
From the start, AEW had momentum. It was beating Triple H’s vanity project NXT in the head-to-head ratings. NXT had been rescheduled from recorded shows on a network exclusive to go out live against Dynamite purely out of spite and to stop it getting off the ground. It was obvious that Vince McMahon’s WWE saw this company as a genuine threat and no amount of denial was going to obfuscate the clearly obvious alternative on display.
Then Covid-19 came.
My eldest son lived with me, but my youngest son and his sisters lived with their mother and they were isolated. I was working in a hospital and my eldest decided to work for the NHS during this time, given school was completely closed down. We worked 60-70 hour weeks during the pandemic, sorting out PPE and setting up vaccination centers and Nightingale hospitals, yet we came home every Thursday, looking forward to Dynamite.
We discussed it in the group chat with my youngest son - it kept us connected to each other.
In an unprecedented time of uncertainty and madness, AEW gave us a little light in the darkness. It’s why I will forever defend this company - it unified a fractured family. It entertained us in dark times. It gave us normality in the middle of absolute batshit insanity. When restrictions were lifted and we were all reunited, AEW became *our* thing exclusively.
AEW worked with NJPW, their wrestlers appearing on the shows and vice versa. They worked with TNA, Kenny Omega becoming their world champion, before dropping it to Christian Cage who went back to TNA to get more eyes on the product at a time when TNA couldn’t give tickets away.
AEW saw working with other companies, such as AAA (their title held by Kenny Omega) as a way to ensure that a rising tide lifts all boats. AEW got the best of both worlds, they had fresh talent to cycle in and showcase and the companies themselves got an opportunity to feature on mainstream US television.
When ROH folded and went up for sale, everyone assumed the WWE would acquire their library, given most of their roster had worked there at some point, but thankfully Tony Khan ensured the brand actually went to someone that would appreciate it, as opposed to using it as leverage for more content in media deals.
AEW was far from perfect. but to my sons and I, it gave us everything we wanted.
Brought up in a ridiculously fragile toxic masculinity propelled environment, I’d never cried in front of my sons before, but the three of us sat there blubbing when AEW presented the Brodie Lee tribute show. It was a memento mori for me and I saw a seemingly healthy father snatched too soon from his sons and shit, did that hit home. I’d never cried at a celebrity death, I had never even cried at a film, but that one show made my heart grow in size like The Grinch when he realizes where Christmas really comes from.
For someone who can’t process emotions well, AEW forced me to do so with two of the four people who mean the most to me in the whole world sat alongside me. We spoke as father and sons about death and how life is short and can be snatched at any time. That event changed my perspectives and it forced me to look inwards to my ADHD-muddled brain and address the way I carried myself as a father.
When the opportunity presented itself to go to Wembley in 2023 and attend All In, we packed ourselves into the virtual queue at launch to ensure we had tickets. That weekend, we took in a Progress and Defy show at the Electric Ballroom the day before the Wembley extravaganza.
Spurred on by the weekend and AEWs existence, my eldest son went back to university and enrolled at a wrestling school. He had his debut the following February at a showcase put on by Joel Redman, once known as Oliver Grey and tag team partners with PAC, then known as Adrian Neville who collectively held the first-ever NXT Tag Titles. He’s had regular matches since April 2024 and is increasing his bookings now around the South West of England as he continues to develop and hone his craft.
The three of us attended All In in August 2024 and we witnessed Bryan Danielson win the AEW World title in a moment like I’ve never felt watching any form of scripted entertainment.
I got to share this moment of unbridled, genuine joy and passion with my sons, singing along at the top of our voices to The Final Countdown. My eldest son even had a chance to see one of his favourite-ever wrestlers, Nigel McGuinness, who he’d become obsessed with when he debuted in TNA as Desmond Wolfe, return to the ring. Don’t even get me started on that clusterfuck because Racist Hogan and his limpet Bischoff ruined that show and Nigel’s momentum. It was one of the best surprises I’ve ever had live and again, something I can share with my sons and re-live.
That event, a father and two sons, all watching as equal men, reveling in the joy that pro wrestling can bring is something that I know will flash before my eyes as a cherished memory as I start to draw my last breath in this world.
That’s why professional wrestling will always drag me back in.
It can deliver highs that I’ll never get without chasing the dragon. It’s the only vice I am ever drawn back to. Even now, I’m having a little spell of hyperfixation as I sit here reminiscing.
I’m mostly a private person as I said before (OK, emotionally stunted might be more apt) and I keep my business and normally my true emotions to myself. I’m not renowned for my communication skills when it comes to talking about how I feel, yet here I am, sharing extremely personal details to whoever reads this, spurred on because of a love of pro wrestling.
It’s been in my life since I first found it. Now my son’s involved in it, it’ll never go away. If one day, he’s lucky and good enough to fulfill his dream and appear in Japan or on the big stage for AEW, hell, if he wins the X-Division Title in TNA like he always dreamed of (if it’s still there and not completely folded into WWE) , then I’ll be watching that. But even if he doesn’t, if he’s in a bingo hall in front of 20 people, I’m still going to be watching him.
My youngest son will soon be seventeen. At 6’5”, still growing and obsessed with the gym, I know where this is going. Sooner or later, I’ll likely end up with both sons standing alongside each other inside of a squared circle.
I will then nobly sacrifice myself, taking an unprotected chair shot to the head (I’m already mental, what harm is it gonna do?) then be put through a table with a powerbomb by my youngest son. As they cement their heel turns by destroying their own father in their quest for gold and power, my middle aged arse will lie amongst that debris, broken, shattered, feeling every inch my age, looking up to the lights, I will offer that phrase from my lips
“I fucking love professional wrestling”
You don’t know what wrestling means to people if you’re not in a relationship with her, because you’ll never get it. But maybe now you’ll understand why some of us adore the sport and why I adore pro wrestling and specifically AEW.
Thus I’ll end by paraphrasing a football journalist talking about my favourite team. An astonishing number of people despise AEW, or what AEW stands for. But this company was never made for them. See, I made it the whole way through this article without even swearing that much. I didn’t even call Donald Trump an orange, hate filled s*** *********t.
Lots of Love, Dan.
Sicko 4 Lyfe.
Art by Neon Ghost