Gay Today: Entertainment

Ready to Rumble

By Warren D. Adkins

The WCW's Goldberg stars in Ready to Rumble

The beautiful man who's shared my life for the past two years has, I'm afraid, a quirk. I'm not sure what caused it, although it may have been his father's doing. He grew up in a crowded Arab household, he explains, where his dad demanded absolute silence while, on the boob tube, the family patriarch watched wacko antics provided to the entire Arab world courtesy of the World Wrestling Federation and World Championship Wrestling.

My friend, obviously, takes after his good ol' dad. Monday nights he rushes home from work and no one—not me-- nor anything—not the telephone—may interfere with the expressionless attention he lavishes on the TV screen between 9 p.m. and 11 p.m. I dare not complain nor question.

To me, it seems, the WWF and the WCW get folks unconsciously high on sado-masochistic homoeroticism. What else can I make of a mean but well-built hunk with the words "Mr. Ass" printed on his shapely rear? And what am I to think of those signs that are often held up in wrestling audiences saying "Suck it?"

On a major TV awards show I recently heard the MC discuss what he thought about audience reactions to a variety of today's dramas and sit-coms. But then he said, "And then there's World Wrestling Federation. Nobody knows what those people are thinking." It was then that I decided to stop trying to make sense of the "sport."

One thing's certain: moral mayhem reigns. In the phony wrestling skits I've watched at home, the owner's cunning daughter smacks her dear old Mom upside the head, knocking her to the floor. So much for family values. I've listened in awe as the muscled wrestlers strut their stuff, making thinly veiled references as to how their opponents butts will likely become handy receptacles for unmentionable intrusions.

Diamond Dallas Page

Ready to Rumble, I'd hoped, would be able to throw some light on these mysteries of pop wrestling. But no. It was just more of the same. I left the theatre as confused about the meaning of wrestling to its fans as before the movie rolled. The protagonists were WCW (World Championship Wrestling) dudes. WCW isn't as good as WWF, and neither is this film.

Gordie and Sean, played by David Arquette and Scott Caan, are portable toilet maintenance men. One of the funnier parts of the film concerns the highway accident their sewage-tanker has when it collides with another gargantuan truck, one filled with toilet paper.

The plot involves attempts by these toilet keepers to save the career of the WCW's Jimmy King (Oliver Platt). If you're a WCW fan, you'll thrill to final scenes in a triple cage death match held at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas. But if you're like me, hoping for a greater understanding of this "sport", you'll be sorely disappointed.

The script, by Steven Brill, is rife with TV-type WCW lunacy. Jokes involving excrement are delivered non-stop. The parts that women play in Rumble have little charm. They're appreciated mostly because of their ability to strut about in bras and panties.

"Do you think that a loser would buy tickets to this championship?" Gordie asks a french fry flipper. Her reply is succinct: "Yes."

Pro wrestling, as this film demonstrates, is surely fake. But most of us already know this. The soap opera skits are stupid. But this doesn't seem to matter to the fans, or to my handsome companion. They and he dote on the stupidity and the fakery. There probably isn't any way to approach such tastes using the intellect as a tool. Intellectual insights in Ready to Rumble are non-existent.

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Related Sites:
Ready to Rumble: Official Site
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If you want to see nearly naked men battling each other without mercy, however, Ready to Rumble provides one such unmemorable occasion to do so. Enjoy it because its dumb, OK?