May 22, 2004

FOR those of you interested in big muscular American guys throwing each other around a wrestling ring, here’s the ideal website for you: psychiatrist.com. For those of you who think maybe the whole wrestling deal may be, well, a little crap, you’re reading the right column. And I thank both of you for it.

The world of professional wrestling has come in for some pretty hard knocks in its time, especially the USA’s WCW and WWF (who, lest we forget, lost a domain name battle to the cuddly animals from the World Wildlife Fund). It attracts these criticisms mainly for the overblown staged fights, the way the wrestlers are hyped up as the Second Coming and because 90% of any given audience has a mullet and is married to his/her cousin.

But now there’s a website dedicated to the rubbish side of wrestling: wrestlecrap.com. According to its FAQ page, WrestleCrap's purpose is to showcase the worst, the most ridiculous, the most unbelievable in pro wrestling. And to give it credit, it delivers.

Take the "Jobber of the Week" section, which looks at wrestlers who came, saw, and failed to conquer. One example of what can happen when hype meets reality is that of Chris Jericho, who turned up for a much-vaunted showdown with Bill Goldberg only to find himself facing a 4ft 1in impostor. Things started out badly for Jericho when he got lost on the way from the changing room to the ring and had to be rescued by the some venue staff. He then dispatched the challenger in about 0.5 seconds to cries of "Bullsh#t!" from the fans, who were no doubt all shaking their mullets in rage.

The "Weird World of Wrestling" page also deserves a look, if only for the bit about Ta-Gar, Lord of the Volcano. Ta-Gar was a guy who wore a silver skull mask with glowing green eyes, as does the "Someone Bought This!" page, showcasing the worst in wrestling memorabilia. If you thought those porcelain statues advertised in The Mail on Sunday’s magazine were bad, wait ‘til you get a look at the "Little Stone Cold Porcelain Doll".

The shame of this site is that the webmaster had 150 pages at one point but couldn’t afford the bandwidth charges. Now THAT'S crap.