Views from the Hawke’s Nest 12.04.11: A Special Comment – FireKevinCamps.com

This column is being reposted from what I wrote at my Road to Mania Blog

This column is my homage to Fire Joe Morgan , which was a blog (run by sitcom writers) that picked apart lazy sports (mostly baseball) journalism from about 2005-2008. I still find myself rereading some of their posts because they are so damn funny and insightful. Like all homages, this will naturally be inferior to what they did, but I shall try my best.

So, I stumbled upon this article written by Kevin Camps, that discusses his live event experience at the very first Resistance Pro show. To say that the author of this article is ill-informed about pro-wrestling would be a gross understatement. In an apparent attempt at humor, the author used this article as a soapbox to demean all those who call themselves wrestlers and all those who call themselves wrestling fans. I normally don’t wish to promote negativity, but this guy really got under my skin.

If writers on the internet do not hold each other to high standards, no one else will. Here we go (everything in the article is in bold; my comments are not in bold)…

For most consumers here in the United $tate$, there is no better time to stock up on $2 waffle makers and discount cleaning supplies than the Friday after Thanksgiving. Black Friday is the one day out of the whole year when you can not only buy your mace at Wal-Mart, but you can use it on your fellow shoppers, too. After all the chaos of the day, it was a refreshing relief to finally get out that evening, grab a beer, and watch some morons pretend to knock the shit out of other morons as yet more morons watched and cheered.

3 wrestling stereotypes in one article!

An oldie but a goodie:
Wrestling is pretend and fake! How original! Right away Camps, you established that you never have watched professional wrestling past the age where you learned that Santa doesn’t exist. A bold choice to establish your credibility as someone with any knowledge of what you are talking about. I salute you!

All wrestlers are morons: sure, some wrestlers display a lack of common sense when they perform their craft, and sure there have always been rotten eggs in the business, but to just assume all wrestlers are morons is no different than assuming that all people who write on the internet have no journalistic standards…ok, bad example.

People who watch wrestling are morons: Ok, this Tumblr seems to support this claim on the surface, but let’s not judge a book by a cover.

Seriously, I don’t even know what to say to this, but it’s just so lazy and predictable that it is not even worth commenting on much further.

Resistance Pro Wrestling is the latest adventure embarked upon by our favorite bald man from the 1990s, Billy Corgan. Acting as the creative director behind the scenes of Resistance Pro, Corgan is hoping to return wrestling to its halcyon days of the early 90s when it was still fake but more people seemed to give a shit.

Reference to the “fact” that wrestling is fake #2!

Determining when wrestling was most popular is a hard to thing to answer (because there is no one specific figure of data that definitively answers the question), but I cannot think of a single credible source (besides Kevin Camps of course) who would even suggest that the early nineties was an extremely popular time for wrestling (although wrestling is in a “down” cycle now, so I cannot truly say which period of time was more popular). If you have definitive quantitative information that proves the answer either way, please send that information to [email protected].

They held their first event the day after Thanksgiving, cunningly deciding to bill it as “Black Friday.” Below is a firsthand account of everything I tried to avoid when I was 12 years old.

We would all be better off if you had just listened to the convictions of that 12 year old.

[Picture of Teddy Hart moonsaulting off the balcony] As you can tell, it got off to a pretty fast start. As you can also probably tell, the designated arena was as big as your backyard pool. This actually worked to the event’s advantage, because the wrestlers were able to simultaneously drink your beer while climbing up the balcony to perform a diving elbow drop thing. Often this led to the audience finding themselves in the thick of the action, and thus in the thick of their own wet dreams.

Hey, I’m starting to think that this Kevin Camps guy is not a fan of wrestling like you and me!

He describes the action so that it implies that the fans got really excited as they got to see the wrestlers up close and personal. Something they cannot see if they stay in the comfort of their own home. Something that they paid to see. It seems like the wrestlers are being paid to provide a service that a group of consumers desire to purchase. I’m pretty sure this is a time for the phrase: “everybody wins,” or “basic principles of economics of the entertainment business at work.” Don’t worry Kevin, your demeaning way of describing the show works too.

[Cheerleader] Melissa takes a breather. Not only did she beat down Serenity, she could also kick the asses of 90 percent of the guys in the room.

This is probably true, but at this point, I’m just going to assume that Kevin did not bother to ask Melissa about whether or not she had combat fighting training or experience.

The event took place in Chicago’s Excalibur Nightclub, a place that was named Chicago’s best entertainment venue by a local magazine in 1999. Maybe that’s why Ryan Gosling showed up? Oh wait, sorry, that’s “Colt Cabana.” Is that Billy making a reference to “Kurt Cobain”? Whatever, nice jacket “Colt,” sure doesn’t remind me of any other jacket I’ve seen in a film recently or anything.

Kevin is accusing Colt Cabana of ripping off Ryan Gosling’s character from the movie Drive (which was released this past summer) because Colt’s ring jacket resembles the jacket worn by Gosling throughout Drive. Hey Kevin, go fuck yourself.

This man [Matt Classic] showed up in a mask, pretending to be a Mexican.

Really Kevin you couldn’t even Google check your work? I don’t care about fact checking anymore, I would have settled for a quick glance at Wikipedia

I have no idea [who Icarus is], but he sure was angry about something.

Ah, now I feel bad for picking on the handicapped. I take it all back. Why didn’t Kevin say he was deaf and incapable of hearing what any ring announcer said before the match, or else use standard human behavior and just ask a neighboring customer to find out who this man was. It all makes sense now.

[Picture of Teddy Hart and Mark Briscoe selling on the floor] Nap time came early for these two. The last time they were this close to another man is the reason they go to the gym so much.

I think this was a joke, but it went over my head. If it is a joke, it sounds pretty homophobic. If so, stay classy Kevin. If not, then he just sucks at writing jokes.

This guy was called “Hallowikid.” He was actually “hella-lame.” Let’s see how great you feel about your life in March, Hallowikid.

Nope, despite the use of quotations, you did not manage to spell Hallowicked’s name right. Also, “Hella” does not have the same pronunciation as “Hallow,” which is just lazy joke-telling on your part Kevin. I really expected better from you. Also, in March, Hallowicked will probably be gearing up for Chikara King of Trios. A really fun wrestling event that a lot of people work hard to produce and even more people pay to enjoy.

So there you have it. Billy Corgan has created a new wrestling league in Chicago, and if you wanna check it out for yourself go to their next event in January.

Kevin Camps, you are everything that is wrong with people who write on the internet. You are lazy, demeaning, and show no passion for what you write about or how you write it. You display no work ethic in properly researching what you write about. Vice.com should be ashamed to employ your services.

Have a Nice Day!

To end things on a positive note, I encourage you all to go to PWPonderings for a much better column discussing this very same issue by the site’s co-editor Jerome Cusson.

If you wish to comment to me directly about what I wrote here, contact me on Twitter or at my email address: [email protected]