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Before Ring of Honor: The Homecoming II last month, none of us had ever attended a pro wrestling event. While en route to the venue in the south suburb of Chicago Ridge, we each expressed our predictions and hopes for the night. The first hope—that we would feel a genuine sense of danger to our personal safety and ideally suffer a light injury—was fulfilled at the end of the evening when I tripped over some haphazardly-placed theatrical lighting.

Unsure of the protocol of such events, a member of our party called ahead to see if alcohol would be sold there. "No," they responded, "but we will have hot dogs and nachos and pop for sale." We debated whether we'd be able to sneak beer in, but since their response to our query made it sound an awful lot like a junior high dance, I predicted that the venue would in fact be just a well-lit gymnasium...which, we realized as we walked in, also turned out to be true.

The show took place inside a field house run by the local park district. We were greeted by a marquee outside that seemed more appropriately used to announce the date for the next Market Day.

Our initial excitement at having fifth-row seats was quickly diminished as we realized there were only six rows of chairs (not counting the general admission bleachers on one side of the gym), but we became instantly pumped up again to see a large man with curly blonde hair pile-drive a much smaller guy in one of the pre-show matches. The smaller guy writhed in pain as the ref called another ref to come and assist him out. Was this a legitimate injury or just showmanship? Like in a scene out of Jacques Tati's Parade, the line between spectacle and reality was hopelessly blurred.

With the exception of some pay-per-view events, Ring of Honor wrestling matches are not generally televised. They make money, however, by selling DVDs to a loyal following. The fans keep track of all the plotlines by buying the videos and following the posted results on the Internet forums. The final match in Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler is an ROH event, and indeed, I spotted a few people in the film that I had seen live. I have to say that I grossly underestimated the fans when going into the show. I predicted nothing but aggressive, vulgar yokums in ICP shirts who would quickly sniff me out as a faggoty-ass outsider. While I did certainly see a lot of long hair and metal band t-shirts, the crowd was in fact surprisingly genial and diverse (well, except for a palpable lack of women). Black, white, and Latino, the audience ranged in age from their 60s to a several-month-old infant sitting behind us. There were indeed a lot of dads with their kids there, and surprisingly, it turned out to be a pretty family friendly event, despite the obvious violence of the proceedings.

The typical audience member was something akin to a lovable, snarky 30-something comic book fan. As someone in our group remarked, the level of video game skills in the room was probably staggering. There were a few scattered people who took the event very seriously, mostly old men, but for the most part, the crowd was laughing and having a good time throughout.

There were eight fights in all, separated by one intermission. Egotistico Fantastico, wearing a horned Mexican mask, defeated “Skullkrusher” Rasche Brown in the first bout—a pretty exciting introduction to the evening. The next match really got the absurdity going, however. This was a tag-team battle, with Silas Young and Alex "Sugarfoot" Payne squaring off against the flamboyant team of Austin Aries and Rhett Titus. Aries entered the ring wearing a feathery pink jacket and a Freddie Mercury mustache, while his goofy partner Titus went shirtless with a baby blue bow-tie. Just hearing small kids and grown men yell out, "C'mooooon, Sugarfoot!" really made me smile. The silly team would engage in goofy homoerotic antics (locking an opponent's arm between their legs and stroking it), but somehow, this only seemed playful and never felt offensive. I think this was the moment I expected the crowd to really turn vulgar and homophobic, but they were all well-behaved and amused by it (with the exception of a pair of fans holding signs mocking Aries's tattoo by calling the symbol "Chinese for faggot.")

But it was during the next match that the audience really proved their worth. It was a three-way fight between the "very European" Claudio Castagnoli, whose gimmick was having Swiss flags up and down his red spandex; the relatively nondescript Roderick Strong; and Jimmy Jacobs, who had his red-dyed hair up in a mohawk and wore an eye-patch. The crowd quickly and appropriately labeled Jacobs with a chant of "EMO PIRATE." Later, he was also taunted with a great chant of "RUFIO! RUFIO!"

Everyone in the audience was remarkably quick to catch onto the games that they were creating for each other—they'd have made a fantastic improv team. Spontaneously, the fans all started yelling "Heyyy!" after each move by Castagnoli, "Wooo!" for every punch by Strong, and Jacobs's attacks were naturally greeted with an, "Arrrr!" I can't imagine how they will make it sound on the edited DVD of the event, but live in the crowd, the audio of the whole match was nothing but 600 guys screaming in unison: "Heyyy!" "Arrrr!" "Wooo!" "Arrrr!" "Wooo!" "Heyyy!" "Heyyy!" "Arrr!"

There were plenty of other fun crowd moments. At a couple moments when the action in the ring seemed a little slow going, someone from the audience would yell out, with a rolled 'R', "Wrrrrrresstling!" to which the rest of the crowd would respond in unison with an unenthusiastic "yayyyyy." When the fighting moved out of the ring to the corridor where the wrestlers made their entrances and the view of most of the crowd was obscured, we all responded in kind with a chant of "We can't see shit! *clap clap clap-clap-clap*." When one heckler yelled out something everyone else apparently didn't approve of, they chanted back, "That guy sucks! That guy sucks!"

The highlight of the night was an incredibly exciting tag-team match with Davey Richards and Eddie Edwards facing off against Kevin Steen & Jay Briscoe. Watching the acrobatics was something like watching an Indepence Day fireworks display—you just can't take your eyes off of it, and when the big ones come, you're compelled to "ooo" and "ahh." Finally, the night closed off with the headlining match, where veteran wrestler Jerry Lynn defended his championship belt from Chicago's own Colt Cobana, making his first appearance with ROH after a gap of a few years. Apparently, it's customary to bring toilet paper and streamers to throw at the heels and faces respectively as they enter the ring. The streamers greeting Colt Cobana were actually quite beautiful:

Colt had great entrance music, filled with references to Maxwell Street, and had a whole wrestling-comedy schtick that was pretty entertaining. It was a nice clean fight, perhaps lacking the pyrotechnics of the tag team match, but still one I got genuinely caught up in. After Lynn defeated Cobana, they both took a turn at the microphone and gave classy speeches congratulating each other and thanking the fans, ending with an embrace before we filed out into the parking lot.

Between going to this event and seeing The Wrestler, I guess I've developed a kind of fondness for wrestling culture. I don't expect to be ordering anything on pay-per-view anytime soon, but I guess there's more to wrestling than the asshole kids in eighth grade with their Austin 3:16 shirts. Like the father being rudely informed by a pack of kids that they don't give a shit that Apple Jacks don't taste like apples, I'm realizing that maintaining the illusion of wrestling's reality is not at all necessary for the fans to enjoy it. I can't speak for the bigger promotions like WWE, but at least at ROH, it was a charming, clubby atmosphere. It's a lovely bonding experience among strangers in the crowd, brought together by the conventions of the event and a few good chants.

Tags: ring of honor, wrestling

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