WWE: Oh, No! What Happened to Vince McMahon?

Once upon a time, in the early 70's, I watched the WWF show faithfully.  If there was a big event I taped it and shared it with my friends.  Then two things occurred to wake me up to "Professional Wrestling."

A WWF event came to Peoria and an acquaintance of ours was arrested, somewhat ironically, by a Peoria police officer who was yet another acquaintance of ours for having the poor judgement to attempt to hit a wrestler with a folding chair.

The police officer, who I will simply call Larry (because it is his first name), was quoted as saying "Some people just don't have the intelligence to realize that wrestling is not real."

Well, I knew it wasn't real, and incidentally thought it ironic that a wrestler was attacked with a metal folding chair, since so many of the wrestlers consider that their weapon of choice to use against their adversaries, but kept watching until the second event(s) occurred.

My girlfriend (now deceased) decided to "help" my oldest son who she considered to be her godson, by obtaining a professional's advice, because my son had begun to wrestle in his freshman year of high school. (And that is real, not phony wrestling, an actual sport).

You would have to know JJ to understand that she parlayed a very short career as a model and small time actress into a means of meeting famous people and quickly forming very close relationships with them.

JJ wrote to Terry Bollea (Hulk Hogan) who at that time was famous for being an upright "pillar" of the wrestling community and a spokesman for youth or "the little Hulksters" as he called them, advocating clean living, family values, and vitamins--to be on the safe side, I guess.

When my friend brought a brown card-board box with a return address with a Venice Beach address on it, I'll admit I was a little impressed that "the Hulk" had bothered to try to "help" her godson.

Sure enough there was an imitation gold WWF championship belt (made of thick plastic on a pliable black adjustable belt), a cut off red tee with a bright yellow-gold logo saying "HULK" on the front and pre-slitted sides (to aid in ripping it off ala the Hulk routine which was so popular during his introductions upon entering the ring in his early days when he played a hero), and what appeared to be a lifetime supply of vitamin supplements--which was impressive for its shear size, although I refused to ever allow him to take any of them.

As Sean Sherk has learned the hard way, you can never tell what the vitamin companies are putting into these pills to prove their effectiveness to those that do use them.

JJ proudly told me of her many phone conversations with the Hulk, his questioning her to see if she was a "small woman," and his invitation to go to see him as his guest at one of the big events.

Of course, being the ultimate self promoter that she was, she accepted and was flown out to one of the shows, and afterwards a very good time.

Not long after this, as she had been introduced around and became "the" ultimate wrestling groupie, she got us free tickets to events in Peoria, Champaign, Springfield, and Decatur Illinois to see the big events.

Of course my young sons loved this and as gas was not expensive then it made for good family outings. (Hey, you can't beat free passes, right fight fans?).

For a while it was impressive and very entertaining.  We have a lot of photographs from that period of our lives, and many of the wrestlers came to Peoria, stayed overnight and came out with her to see her horse, one even brought his trademark, a snake!

Eventually, my impression of the wrestlers was that they drank too much after events, partook too freely of drugs, as did my friend, and were less than stellar examples to expose my sons to at all.

So our interest in the "sport" ended, but hers continued and she did not die of her drug overdose until after her close friend Miss Elizabeth did.

They were such close friends that they often traded expensive designer dresses to the events that they attended with each other, and after Ms. E divorced the Macho Man, JJ even dated him for a while.

I mention ALL of this to get to my point. 

As long as Vince McMahon has been involved in professional wrestling which requires a current Screen Actor's Guild card, (a note for the uninformed and gullible), there have been scripted story lines. 

The one that was most devastating to my friend was the one involving the untimely death of Owen Hart, one of JJ's favorite performers from Canada. She loved all the members of the Hart family and in 1993 tried to get them to buy one of our Akita puppies to keep on their acreage.

If Mr McMahon WAS actually injured in a wrestling stunt gone bad at RAW on Monday, (June 23, 2008) night, I cannot say I am sorry.

On my part and that of my friend who can no longer speak on the many travesties that go on in the now WWE organization due to Vince McMahon being responsible for the scripts which put others, including the audience, at risk; I would like to say, "What goes around eventually comes around for all of us."  

And that includes successful billionaires, too, Mr. McMahon!