I will now wait for the snickering and giggling to subside before I continue.

My interest started way back when I was a bouncing, nasty six-year-old with a very long-suffering grandfather.

"Pops" was Yardmaster at Union Station in St. Louis, and for thirty-odd years got to play with the world's biggest train set. Thirty years of sending freight and folks on to their respective destinations with nary a hiccup on anybody's timetable. (Matter-of-fact, if any of you are living west of the Mississippi in a house built before 1970, I guarantee that Pops shipped you the building materials. Amazing how one life touches so many others, isn't it?)

It was on a Saturday that Pops took me to the St. Louis Arena for an afternoon of pro-wrestling. The old Arena is gone now, replaced by the gleaming Kiel Sports Complex, but to an impressionable six-year-old, the Arena was the epitome of sporting venues. A huge, gloomy, cavernous building that would have been rejected by any Hollywood "film noir" director as a "ridiculous stereotype", the Arena played host to countless boxing matches, hockey games, the Ice Capades, and even a dog show or two. It smelled of stale beer, old sweat, well-used toilets, and cheap cigars. Put Tim Allen in there and he'd be drumming his chest and pulling down twigs due to the levels of testosterone the place generated.

Anyway, Main Event was the local champ (whose name escapes me), versus the redoubtable "Killer" Kowalski. For forty minutes, Kowalski, a master of the now-lost art of "hook-wrestling", bounced the champ from one end of the ring to the other. The champ was shown parts of his own anatomy that he'd never seen before. I can still remember Kowalski's closing move; a submission hold with Kowalski sitting on the prone champ's back while simultaneously applying a full nelson, and leaning wayyyy back. It looked painful as hell, and had the champ hollering "Uncle!" and waving his arms around helplessly while the referee counted him out.

Later on, Pops took me back to the wrestler's locker room to meet the "Killer" himself.

"Shake hands with Mr. Kowalski, boy", said Pops. I found my gingerly proffered digits enfolded in what looked to be an old, brown, callus-encrusted baseball glove that had a grip like a pit-bull. I looked up at Pops quizzically, then to the "Killer". To a six-year-old who thought his railroader grandpa was a big man, "Killer" Kowalski was huge! He towered over Pops, six and a half feet each way of solid muscularity, all topped with a face that looked like a salt-cured ham garnished with beard stubble. I half expected him to start booming out "fee-fie-fo-fum"!

"How's it goin' kid? Did you see me work tonight?" said the "Killer", his "dese- dem-dose" tenor voice dispelling any "Jack and the Beanstalk" images I might have had. "Did you get hurt much in the ring, Mr. Kowalski?", was my response.

"Nah, me an' Bobby over there were real careful," said the "Killer".

"Yeah, we sure gave ‘em their money's worth, huh?" This from the champ, who was seated on the next bench, smoking a cigarette. He didn't look much the worse for wear after his earlier ordeal with Kowalski.

I came away from my encounter with Mr. Kowalski having a profound respect for professional wrestlers and all they go through to entertain us.

Well, pro-wrestling has changed dramatically since my boyhood days. The two wrestling giants, Ted Turner's World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Federation (WWF) have become the dominant Monday night fare for over 11 million TV viewers, easily eclipsing ABC's Monday Night Football for the top spot on the tube. WCW used to be the big dog, but has lost it's #1 spot due to the WWF's more daring, edgy offerings of late. Even the wrestlers themselves have changed. Now bigger, taller, and heavier than their earlier counterparts, a good many have adopted the over-developed muscularity of the bodybuilder, while others use gimmicks or "looks" to get them "over" with the fans. Indeed, some pro wrestlers appear to be not so much created as unleashed. "Blue-collar Opera", Miz Judge Oaf calls it.

The actual wrestling action itself now seems to be a mere afterthought to the on- going feuds and foolishness that happen outside the ring. Often the matches themselves are only briefly held in the ring, frequently spilling out onto the ring apron, the floor, the audience, the concession area, the parking lot, etc. All in the name of entertaining the fans at ringside and at home. And sometimes there is a chance that "sports entertainment" (Mr. McMahon's description of what he is promoting) of this sort can get out of control.

Such an incident happened on WCW Monday Nitro back on July 5th.

For a long time, the WCW had been promoting the idea of their form of wrestling being "G"-rated family entertainment. Many times the cameras at ring-side would pan the crowd, and the announcers would remark on how many young kids were in the audience tonight. Well, the WCW's "G"-rating vanished at about 10:57 PM, on that fateful Monday night.

"Macho Man" Randy Savage, in his new role as a bad guy (or "heel" in wrestling parlance) found his girlfriend "Gorgeous George" (yes, she's female) in arch- enemy Kevin "Big Sexy" Nash's dressing room. Savage, to put it mildly, went ballistic. The fans at home, me included, were treated to five minutes of the enraged "Macho Man" shoving and slapping the lovely and pneumatic "George" all over the dressing room. This culminated in Randy Savage delivering a vicious kick to the supposedly battered "George" just out of camera range.

What shocked me was that, while Savage was supposedly knocking the stuffing out of the lovely George, the dog-gone cameras kept right on rolling, making sure that we the viewers got every last dribble of violence that was coming to us.

Not only is this an outrage, it's just plain wrong. For WCW to allow this sort of thing on the air merely as a means to reinforce the bad guy image of one of their wrestlers give the lie to their trumpeting the "wholesome family entertainment" idea as they do. It also sends a very disturbing message that seems to approve of domestic violence.

I was always taught that boys never, EVER hit girls, much less kick them. The one time that I transgressed this rule got me a quick trip to the woodshed with my Dad for the necessary "reeducation".

For World Championship Wrestling and Turner Network Television to allow this sort of thing onto the airwaves and then call it "wholesome family entertainment" made me disgusted. Then it made me angry at their arrogance and presumption. Then it made me turn off the TV.

It should make you turn off the TV, too.

Court's adjourned.