There are few sports or sport-adjacent activities that have nearly as much geek overlap as pro wrestling. Costumed characters with long-running stories and decades of lore—sound like any other medium you know? Pro wrestling is the closest thing to actual superheroes fighting it out on live TV.
Once upon a time, the traditionally feminized performance of the wedding ceremony was a ratings season staple of World Wrestling Entertainment, infiltrating the hyper-masculine wrestling ring where relationships were punctuated by violence, not by holy matrimony. And though Randy Savage and Miss Elizabeth’s 1991 pay-per-view wedding wasn’t the first instance of in-ring marriage rites, it was the one that kicked off the glitzy shebangs that would follow into the late ’90s Attitude Era—best known amongst non-wrestling fans as the wrestling heyday of sex, drugs and rock and roll that birthed such household names as Stone Cold Steve Austin and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
I am a 23-year-old woman from Bangladesh—and my greatest passion is professional wrestling.
When I was a kid, there were few responsibilities I took as seriously as my daily obligation to join Toonami Tom and watch the newest decade-late rerun of Dragon Ball Z. It didn’t matter if I’d seen the episode a million times—the battles fought by Goku, Piccolo, Vegeta, and all their friends against countless colorful foes lit up the dopamine centers of my adolescent brain like a Christmas tree.
I love Dragon Ball Z. I always have, and I always will. But I have a confession to make:
I don’t give a crap about the super powerful, never-give-up, unwaveringly-cheerful main character of the series. I don’t care about Goku.