"Do ya need a good clout to the head?"

Can you truly remember the circumstances surrounding the discovery of a passion in your life? I was six. My father was one of three brothers who did not live close to his other family members, a theme that seemed to follow throughout my life, so visits to Atlanta were frequent. My cousin was a couple of years older than I was and aside from the joy we derived from pounding on his little brother who was also younger than I was, we had very little in common. Little did I know that from these scraps that another common interest would spring forth, a mutual love for professional wrestling or, as a true southerner would say it, "wrasslin'". We would spend the hour between one and two o'clock on Saturday watching such wrestlers as Tony Atlas, Tommy Rich, Stan Hansen, and "Bullet" Bob Armstrong who were seemingly invinsable or else protected by a legion of catholic saints. Afterward the match we would attempt to imitate some of the moves we would see, much to the "disappointment" of my little cousin. At this time wrestling boundary lines we generally pretty clear in a match, you were either a "face" (a good guy) or a "heel" (a bad guy). Two on one handicap matches were the norm with my little cousin always being the heel which meant that every now and then during lunch he might end up taking a clothesline to the head or a sleeper hold causing him to collapse in his spaghettios. From these continued visits over the years my infatuation with wrestling grew along with my little cousin who, as he became older, would think nothing of trying to get a quick piledriver in before dinner. Now I look at wrestling with mixed emotions. Although my passion for it is still strong I cant help but think how groups like WWE and TNA have "muddied the waters" so to speak and turned the innocence of good ole' southern "wrasslin'" into something centered around more of the packaging rather than the wrestling. But that doesn't mean that I will quit watching it, not by a long shot.