Wrestling

FEATURE: The Wrestling Streaming World Tour Part One

 
This is the beginning of a series entitled “How WOBAM Spends Their Summer Vacation” where we introduce you to some fandoms outside of our usual scope.  Keep Checking in for More!

The Wrestling Streaming World Tour:

Why Now
is the perfect time to get into Professional Wrestling outside of WWE.
It’s the
summer.
All your
favorite TV shows are on summer hiatus.
The next
Comic Book Movie is Ant-Man 2 in July.
But you’re
looking for something to whet your geeky appetite for longer than two
hours.  Well, your old Uncle Jason has
something he thinks you should try.  Come
over here, let’s have a talk.
I’ve made my
love for Professional Wrestling no secret in my Flash reviews.  I’ve mocked Roman Reigns, used Broken Hardy
Gifs, mocked John Cena, expressed my love for Naito-san and of course… Mocked
Roman Reigns.
I love
Professional Wrestling and have loved it since nine year old Jason first saw
Macho Man Randy Savage talk about being The Cream of the Crop. I was in college
during the era of Austin, and WCW vs the NWO and watched it all go down week to
week.  I’ve been hooked pretty much
constantly on this great place where sports and storytelling and art meet.
For a long
time, that meant a lot of WWF/WWE.  Sure,
I would go to the occasional indie show, and I had more than a couple
bootlegged episodes of World Class and a couple of Great Muta compilations I
spent more money on than I should have. In recent years two things have changed
to make enjoying wrestling so much more enjoyable.  The first is the wrestling renaissance in the
UK and Japan and the second is streaming!
Streaming
has made it easier than ever to be a wrestling fan, and I’m not just talking
about the WWE Network.  In fact, you can
be completely immersed in this, watch the best wrestlers in the world seven
days a week and never watch one second of Raw, Smackdown or NXT and I’m going
to show you with a world tour.
Mexico
So what do
you like?  Are you into quick paced
athletics and acrobatics with a little bit of bombastic melodrama?  You’re here at WOBAM so chances are you like
heroic figures in masks.  Let’s start
with Lucha.  Lucha isn’t exactly my thing
but I make a point of trying to never judge another person’s wrestling tastes
(Unless you’re a Big Cass fan. Gross!) so it could be for you.
The best
place to dip your toes into Lucha is Lucha
Underground
.  (El Rey Wednesday 8/7pCentral)
Think of
this as something of an all-star promotion with a side of soap opera.  There’s ongoing storylines, the wrestling is
good and most of the people on the show work in other promotions so you can
find who you like and follow them other places.
But the real
big dogs of Mexican wrestling is CMLL
and AAA.  CMLL is classic, straight forward Lucha and
is known by the nickname “The Serious and the Stable.”  Not only do they have some of the greatest
talent in Mexico but they’ve cultivated many working agreements with companies
like Ring of Honor in the US and New Japan Pro Wrestling (We’ll get to both of
them later.)  They don’t have a streaming
service but they do put their weekly television show on YouTube.
AAA started
in 1992 as a breakaway promotion from CMLL and quickly gained prominence
because they took most of CMLL’s younger talent at the time, most notably Rey
Mysterio jr.  AAA is more likely to get
gimmicky than CMLL and like CMLL, they don’t have a streaming service rather a
Twitch Channel that they show new and classic content on.
With that
starting point, let’s head back north of the border for part two.

Just another guy on the internet.