The Best and Worst of Modern Pro Wrestling

  

I was a huge wrestling fan in my teens and early twenties. Even though I really started watching it in the early 2000s, I’ve become fairly well-versed in wrestling of the 80s and 90s too, I’ve watched enough DVDs and reruns. But in the late 2000s, WWE started to cater to children, changed its rating to TV-PG, and became very boring. I stopped watching around 2007. And for a long time, besides the occasional old video tape or DVD from my collection, I didn’t watch wrestling. Then something interesting happened last year. WWE was going to lose their streaming deal with Peacock, so they started uploading a lot of their old stuff on YouTube. They even made a WCW channel, since they own their tape library, and I got to watch that for the first time. As I started watching it, the spark reignited. I decided to catch up on what I had missed in the previous decade and a half. WWE has gotten objectively worse in the intervening years (and it’s owned by actual fascists, but I’m here to talk about the wrestling itself). AEW and TNA still has some good wrestlers and matches, the latter perhaps more than the former, and I prefer both to WWE. I watched AAA’s TripleMania event and enjoyed it a lot. Some of my old favorites, now in their 40s and 50s, are still wrestling, and I’ve developed new favorite wrestlers too. I started looking at indy promotions as well, eventually discovering the Insane Clown Posse’s Juggalo Championship Wrestling (JCW), my favorite wrestling promotion now. 

Overall, I still like modern wrestling, as long as it isn’t WWE. But there are a few things I noticed across many wrestling promotions that had changed over the years. I’m glad women are being treated with more respect than the old days when they were just there to be eye-candy, they even have women as referees. But this is one of the only aspects of professional wrestling that has improved since I stopped watching. This is a list of the things I don’t like; guess it’s always easier to be negative, but in discussing my dislikes I’ll talk about what I do like too. There’s still more to like than dislike. 

First, here’s a YouTube playlist of wrestling from the 2020s that I consider worth watching. Have a look if you feel like getting back into wrestling too. 

My Top 4 Worst Things About Modern Wrestling 

1. The Overused “Suicide Dive” Spot

This is when a group of Heel wrestlers stand around outside the ring waiting for the Face to jump over the top rope and knock them all down like bowling pins. Not that this never happened occasionally in the 1990s, but most promotions do this spot like once or twice per show now. We never see anyone dart out of the way, leaving the attacker to fall flat on the cement outside the ring, like you’d expect in a real fight. They just stand there like a villain from Sailor Moon, waiting to get their ass kicked while the hero charges up their attack. Obviously someone needs to be there to catch the attacking wrestler, it’s a high risk move and no one wants to see them get injured in real life, but that’s exactly why they should keep this spot rare and not do it all the damned time. 

2. The fans in the crowd with their “This is awesome” chants; no more funny signs in the crowds either. 

This is especially prominent in TNA but I’ve seen it spread to other promotions. These fans are very easily impressed and chant “This is awesome” at almost anything. By itself it wouldn’t be so bad if it were used sparingly, but these days the fans will break out in this chant any time one wrester attacks another. Next they’ll be chanting it after the opening pyro at the start of the show. Another minor fan-related gripe I have is that no one’s really creative with their signs anymore, you only a handful of signs in the crowd now when in the 90s almost every fan had one, and they could be funny or artistic. None of this is the fault of the wrestling promotions per se, unless there was some crackdown on signs that I was unaware happened while I stopped watching. At least the fans don’t spam the whole show pointing their laser pointers at the wrestlers like they did in the late 90s. Now that was an annoying fad. 

3. Everyone’s a high flyer now.

I do love the lucha libre style. The high-flying Cruiserweight division was perhaps best part of WCW and “Ruthless Agression” era WWE, and Rey Mysterio, one of the main wrestlers who popularized lucha libre in the US, was always one of my favorite wrestlers; but now it seems like everyone is a high flyer, even big muscular guys who have no business climbing up the top rope. Flyin’ Brian Pillman would have a hard time standing out these days; a wrestler of the 1990s for whom being a high flyer was what set him apart. It was novel once, but now everyone does high flying moves and flips and hurracanranas, making it no longer special, or even that impressive. I miss good old technical mat wrestling with lots of submission holds; now it’s like they’re afraid to slow the match down at all, and it starts to look less like fighting and more like ballet dancing. It would be boring if everyone did mat wrestling too, I’m fine with there being some high flyers, but there needs to be more variety. 

4. Kayfabe and gimmicks barely exist anymore.

Just because everyone knows it’s scripted doesn’t mean you have to throw gimmicks and storylines out the window. No one goes to see a magician show and expects the magician to explain every magic trick they do. No one who goes to see a movie with computer animation these days wants to be reminded that most of it was filmed against a green screen with the actor talking to a hanging tennis ball. Now, 90% of the wrestlers go by their real names, and wear the same boring ring attire. WWE is the worst offender (as usual). They even have a show now called WWE Unreal, where they reveal what goes on backstage and in the writer’s room, and they advertise this show during wrestling matches, as if we want to be constantly reminded that what we are watching is scripted. I like outlandish gimmicks, and I’m not alone. Why else was the Undertaker so popular? Because people thought he was a real life undead wizard? It wasn’t because of his real-life persona, that’s for sure. If he had started out with his “Bikertaker” gimmick and went by Mark Calaway in 1990, he would have never gotten as popular. I know it’s fake, I don’t care, just give me my wrestling zombies! I want the escapism, that’s why I watch wrestling. I could go watch Olympic Greco-Roman style wrestling if I wanted the real thing. This is why I like Juggalo Championship Wrestling, it’s the perfect mix of hardcore wrestling, mature themes, and goofy gimmicks. A cross between ECW and early 90s WWF. I also still like AAA out of Mexico, where they still respect gimmicks and kayfabe, and many of the wrestlers wear elaborate masks or face paint (although now that they have been bought out by WWE I don’t know how much longer that will be the case). JCW and AAA seem to be the two last bastions of kayfabe and gimmicks.

Anyway, to help offset the negativity, here’s a list of my favorite active wrestlers of today, from across multiple promotions, no particular order.

Mr. Iguana (AAA)

“Timeless” Toni Storm (AEW)

Darby Allin (AEW)

Luigi Primo (JCW)

Frankie Kazarian (TNA) (a fellow Armenian)

Cocaine (JCW)

Steven Flowe (JCW)

Dragon Lee (AAA)

The Outbreak (JCW’s zombie tag team)

The Brothers of Funstruction (JCW’s clown tag team)

Mickey Knuckles (JCW)

Santana Jackson (JCW’s Michael Jackson impersonator/wrestler)

Orange Cassidy (AEW)

Matt and Jeff Hardy (TNA, formerly WWE)

La Parka (AAA)

“Hangman” Adam Page (AEW)

Luchasaurus (AEW)

The Ring Rat (JCW)

More Setian Philosophy ~ Shopenhauer, and the Temple of Set

 Analyzing Philosophical quotes

“The cheapest sort of pride is national pride; for if a man is proud of his own nation, it argues that he has no qualities of his own of which he can be proud; otherwise he would not have recourse to those which he shares with so many millions of his fellowmen. The man who is endowed with important personal qualities will be only too ready to see clearly in what respects his own nation falls short, since their failings will be constantly before his eyes. Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.” - Arthur Shopenhauer

The latest stop on my philosophical binge takes me to German philosopher Arthur Shopenhauer. He has a great deal to say about how stupid people advance easily through society while intelligent people are alienated from it. I call myself Siamanto the Foreigner (Otaruh) because not only have I always felt like an outsider in American culture, I don’t even fully fit in with my ethnic identity of Armenian. Religion is my biggest point of disagreement with the majority of Armenians; pagan Armenians exist, but are a very, very tiny minority. And even then, many of the ones I know of are overly nationalistic and socially conservative. I don’t fit in with American pagans either, who by and large are either Wiccan or follow only European deities (Greek, Norse or Celtic). I’m too “out there” with my Armeno-Kemetic path.  I’ve joined a coven twice in my life, and both times it ended badly. I’m at the point of my life where I feel like I’m better off on my own than joining a group of any kind, even if I agree with them by and large. 

I remember in school being baffled by calls for “school pride”, with mascots and football games. I hated school, because I was always bullied, and I hated being bossed around. Why would I have pride in the very thing that imprisons me? Might as well have pride in a prison. But people still fell for it, despite it obviously being only a way to insure obedience. And that’s what nationalism is. As long as your chains are in the color of your flag you’re supposed to be proud. But there was definitely a time in my early adult years where I was falling into the trap of nationalism. I’m not so above it all, truth be told. Armenian nationalism is different in character from American nationalism, but it’s still nationalism at the end of the day. When American nationalists call for closed borders and arming the military, they’re being bullies, because the US is under no real danger from outside countries. In Armenia’s case, it borders two countries which would love to see it erased from the map, Turkey and Azerbaijan, and have committed genocide against the Armenians on multiple occasions, while the international community ignores it. If Armenia stops militarizing their borders they’re done for. Armenia always seems to be hanging by a thread. But how much militarism is too much? Therein lies the rub. This constant state of conflict means social problems get dismissed, saved for some arbitrary “later” date that never comes. It’s never “now” when dealing with wealth inequality, sexism and homophobia, things of that nature. We have enemies to worry about first. The church sees to that. And they’re the ones who contributed to the defeatist attitudes that got Armenia into this situation in the first place. 

I think it’s okay to be proud of your heritage and culture to a degree, until it starts to cost you your individuality and you get absorbed into the herd. 

———

Apparently in 1987 the FBI investigated the Temple of Set, as part of a wider crackdown on “Satanism”, which was at the time the US conservative’s Boogieman of the Week. Some people, including those in the FBI, apparently still think Set and Satan are the same dude. At most they’re just drinking buddies. The Set-to-Satan pipeline definitely exists, in the same way I can find links between Set and the Armenian thunder God Vahagn via both of them having been seen as Ba’al to foreigners, but that doesn’t make them the same deity. Anyway, back on topic, I unexpectedly came across some notes from the FBI vault during an innocent internet search on the concept of Xeper as it relates to Set. It mainly has basic information about the history and beliefs of the Temple of Set. They were asked if they were “corrupting the youth” a key accusation of the Satanic Panic, and the Temple replied that you have to be an adult to even join because they don’t believe in indoctrinating children. You know, unlike some religions, namely the ones behind the Satanic Panic in the first place. Seems like every accusation is a confession. 

It’s a pretty interesting read though. I’m not sure if I would ever actually join, but I agree with basically all of their key tenets. It originally branched off Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan. The ones who jumped ship to the Temple of Set rightly felt limited in the Church of Satan’s philosophy, founded on being only “anti-Christian”, which is exactly why I never considered Satanism either, despite agreeing with a lot of it. It still tethers it to the Abrahamic religions, and if that’s what you’re trying to get away from, you’re better off looking at completely unrelated traditions. I went from Christianity to Wicca initially, but that was kind of a stepping stone religion for me. I started incorporating Kemetic elements pretty much right away because of a fascination I’ve had with Egypt since childhood. I found what I was looking for in Kemeticism and gradually drifted away from Wicca, expunging any modern elements from my practice, and later learning about and incorporated elements from my ancestral Armenian paganism. But Kemeticism still has as many paths within it as there are Netjeru. Sutekh’s path ended up appealing to me the most, after the illusions I grew up with finally fell away. 

The document gets more interesting when they discuss Setian philosophy, as you can see in the screenshots I provided. I find that a lot of it is conclusions I was already coming to on my own. It’s a religion dedicated to self-improvement, and experiencing a sort of rebirth of the soul, the Xeper, by following one’s passions. Which reminds me a lot of what Carl Jung and Nietzsche talk about, the process of individuation and coming into your own by integrating the darker parts of your psyche. Breaking the psychological chains of society on one’s self. But it has structure, there’s a “Council of Nine” and a High Priest and Priestess. It sounds fun, but I’m kind of over hierarchies and lables that people put on themselves so they can feel important. I could just call myself a priest and get pretty far before someone actually tried to do some kind of check to see if that was true. In ancient Egyptian a priest was called Hem-Netjer, roughly translated as “Friend of the God”. That should be all it takes to become a priest; consider your God a friend, emulate that God, and help others to do so as well. We should all be the High Priest or High Priestess of our own individual paths.

https://vault.fbi.gov/temple-of-set/temple-of-set-part-01

May Set rise and A𓌜p𓌜e𓌜p𓌜 fall.  𓇼𓀢𓏛𓃪

𓋹֍֎𓋹

~ Siamanto the Foreigner

 𓋷𓅁𓈖𓏏𓍯𓀭𓈖𓐎𓏺𓈉𓏏𓅂𓌙𓀀 

Սիամանթօ Օտարը

Sutekh Goes to the Movies: Groundhog Day

 Sutekh Goes to the Movies

Today’s movie: Groundhog Day

The 1993 movie Groundhog Day involves a weather reporter who gets stuck in a time loop, reliving the same day over and over. A seemingly hopeless situation; everything he does gets reset, so it doesn’t matter what he does. He decides to try to win the heart of his coworker by using the time loop to learn everything about her, but even on his most perfect day he fails to make her fall in love with him within 24 hours, so he falls into a deep depression, ending his life multiple times only to wake up back in bed at the start of the day again. After he tries to confide in his coworker his predicament, and proves it to her, she suggests maybe the time loop isn’t a curse, it just depends on how he looks at it. So he decides to use the time loop to better himself. He learns foreign languages, learns how to play piano, educates himself, wins his coworker’s heart by becoming his authentic self, reaching his fullest potential. And that is when he breaks the time loop. 

From a Setian perspective, I think this movie perfectly illustrates the ancient Egyptian concept of “kheper” (𓆣), to come into being. Sutekh aids Ra every night on a trip through the underworld, fighting the Chaos Serpent among a slew of other baddies, until he is reborn at sunrise as Khepri, the scarab-headed Solar diety. Sutekh would relate to this movie a lot, having to repeat a day over and over until you get it right. This movie is a metaphor for life. You’ll notice the story shifts when the main character realizes there are no lasting consequences to his actions, and again when he decides to view it as an opportunity to grow rather than a curse. It falls in line with Nietzsche’s concepts such as “amor fati”, learning to love and accept your fate, and that of the übermensch, a person who has reached their fullest potential and is no longer chained to the morals of society but creates and follows their own. The purpose of life is something you have to give it, but it could be that you’re supposed to overcome adversity and “kheper”. If you want to bring reincarnation into it, perhaps this is the final goal of your ka, the part of your soul that lives thousands of times until reaching its fullest potential. Life doesn’t have to be a “curse”. Once you stop looking at it that way, you can better yourself, and “kheper”. I’m personally due for another kheper sometime soon myself, maybe this year. Still got some more dark underworld stuff to tread through first. 

Here is a good essay on “kheper” by Don Webb of the Temple of Set; I’m not affiliated with the temple, preferring to forge my own path, but it is a good summary of the concept through a Setian lense. 

https://xeper.info/pub/pub_dw_xeper.html

May Set rise and A𓌜p𓌜e𓌜p𓌜 fall.  𓇼𓀢𓏛𓃪

𓋹֍֎𓋹

~ Siamanto the Foreigner

 𓋷𓅁𓈖𓏏𓍯𓀭𓈖𓐎𓏺𓈉𓏏𓅂𓌙𓀀 

Սիամանթօ Օտարը

On Competing Systems of Morality

 Day 2 of the Feast of the End of the 80-Year Battle Between Sutekh and Horus

I would like to share a poem by Armenian poet Avetik Isahakyan from 1905.

Avetik Isahakyan

Եղբայրության կամ թե սիրո

Եղբայրության կամ թե սիրո

Խոսքը ես ձեզ չեմ ավետում, –

Պատգամները չարի, բարվո

Ձեր ոտների տակն եմ նետում:

Կյանքն է պայքա՛ր՝ գոռ ու դաժա՛ն,

Ճզմի՛ր մարդուն և թռի՛ր վե՛ր.

Իրավունքը ուժն է միայն,

Վա՛յ հաղթվածին, հազա՛ր վայեր:

Տեր կամ ըստրուկ պիտի լինիս, – 

Ճշմարտություն չկա ուրիշ: 

Չես սպանի, քեզ կսպանեն,

Դու սպանի՛ր, քեզ չսպանեն:

Լուծ կամ լծկան պիտի լինիս,

Ճշմարտություն չկա ուրիշ:

Անիծվիս, մա՛րդ, որ հույսդ է մարդ.

Բախտըդ կռվով կռի՛ր ինքդ:

Սուրճ կամ զնդան պիտի լինիս. – 

Ճշմարտություն չկա ուրիշ:

Խոսք՝ Ավետիք ԻՍԱՀԱԿՅԱՆ

English:

I do not proclaim the word 

of brotherhood or love to you.

Instead I throw messages 

of good and evil at your feet.

Life is a struggle, loud and cruel,

Crush a man and jump on him.

Only strength is morally right.

Woe to the defeated, a thousand woes.

You’re either a master or a slave.

There is no other truth.

If you don’t kill, you will be killed.

If you kill, you will not be killed.

You are either free or in bondage.

There is no other truth.

You are cursed, humans, by your hope.

You continue to delude yourself.

You will either be a slave or a prisoner,

There is no other truth.

The sentiment in this poem is an understandable reaction to centuries of on and off genocide and colonization undergone by Armenians. It was written ten years before the worst phase of that genocide, at the hands of the Ottoman Turks. In Friedrich Nietzsche’s “Beyond Good and Evil”, he introduces the concept of two basic moral systems that have been at odds since the beginning of human history, calling them “Master Morality” and “Slave Morality”. Keep in mind he was writing in the 1800s; I probably wouldn’t have called them that myself because it makes it sound like one is good and the other is bad, and it’s not that simple. These competing moralities both have strengths and weaknesses, and having too much of one or the other is a bad thing, in my opinion. Nietzsche writes that Master Morality was the dominant moral system of the ancient world, or at least of ancient Greece; how much he knew about the moral systems in ancient Egypt, the Western Hemisphere before European colonization or remote regions of Africa and Australia, I don’t know. Nietzsche provides the example of the Trojan war, and how it differed from modern conflicts; neither side in the war demonized the other, in fact they had begrudging respect for one another, even for heroes on both sides of the battle. No one was calling for a genocide against the other, neither side called the other “evil”. Master Morality’s starting point is defining what is good, and anything that isn’t good is labeled “bad”. Bad is different from “evil”; it is undesirable, but a person who does bad things is not irredeemable. Things that were “bad” mainly were things that undermined society in some way. Strength, bravery, nobility, chivalry, these are seen as positive qualities. Abuse of power, killing (without good cause; wars and death penalties still existed), stealing, cowardice, these things were considered bad. Slave Morality, Nietzsche says, was a reaction to Master Morality, and came from those who were victimized by those in power that followed Master Morality. Its starting point was from a place of resentment, and that is the whole problem with it; rather than try to transcend Master Morality it embodied everything that Master Morality was not. The first thing they did was define “evil”, and anything that wasn’t evil was labeled “good”. Once something was labeled “evil” it could be dismissed, or punished. Once something is “evil” you don’t have to come up with an argument against it, it’s evil because “God says so”, and this “God” is always in agreement with whoever invokes them. Positive qualities in their moral systems include obedience, peacefulness, pacifism, equality, empathy, conformity. Its adherents fear negative emotions and chaos. The Slave Morality overtook the Master Morality when Rome made Christianity its official religion. They did this because, while to this very day world leaders follow Master Morality, people who exclusively follow Slave Morality are easier to control and dominate. They “turn the other cheek” instead of fight back, they fear power and strength, if they protest they do so peacefully and nonviolently, and they often wear their victimhood like a badge of honor. You see the latter when people try to position themselevs as victims, or play the “trauma Olympics”, and use it as an excuse to whatever they like. But I wouldn’t say the Slave Morality originated with Abrahamic religion, it merely popularized it. We start to see shades of it in ancient Egypt, with the popularization of Osiris and the demonization of Sutekh. That’s how it ties in to Sutekh. In Osiris’ afterlife, you face judgment, and you can either gain passage into Osiris’ paradise to serve Him forever, or your heart becomes a meal for Ammit the Devourer and you cease to exist. In Sutekh’s afterlife, you climb a ladder to the stars and become a God youself. Sutekh wants you to strive for excellence and reach your true potential, not bow your head in servitude. 

Despite this, I’m not here to say one is right and the other is wrong. Almost no one follows one moral system exclusively, and that actually is for the best in some ways. Nietzsche died before he could criticize the Master Morality in a book (and this is the cause of a lot of misinterpretations of his work), but he did not advocate for a return to the Master Motality. Someone who only followed Master Morality would become a tyrannical self-centered psychopath, while someone who only followed Slave Morality would become a stagnant, cowardly doormat. I personally value empathy towards the downtrodden and equality as much as it is possible. On the political spectrum you’d find me on the bottom left corner, I am anti-authoritarian and socially a leftist. I do not like hierarchy in general. So I think I already mix both. Most people have shades of both moralities, and it is the source of a lot of hypocrisy in our society. This is why there are so-called Christians that blindly worship the US president no matter how many times he violates the morality of the Bible. In fact Nietzsche mentions that the ones who have the most conflict between the two clashing moral systems often become priests. 

I do not desire to be anyone’s master or slave. I desire personal freedom. So I am building my own moral system, combining ancient Egyptian philosophy and the best of both Master and Slave morality. If the choice is mine, I no longer plan to have my heart weighed on the scales in the afterlife, I will instead ascend Sutekh’s ladder to the stars in order to “kheper”, to ascend to my highest potential. 

May Set rise and A𓌜p𓌜e𓌜p𓌜 fall.  𓇼𓀢𓏛𓃪

𓋹֍֎𓋹

~ Siamanto the Foreigner

 𓋷𓅁𓈖𓏏𓍯𓀭𓈖𓐎𓏺𓈉𓏏𓅂𓌙𓀀 

Սիամանթօ Օտարը