Thanks Puroresu Power!

I’ve been writing about books, about music, and about my personal thoughts. I’ve touched on abortion, on intelligent design, and on public broadcasting. I’ve posted about sports, and I’ve received numerous hits on the pictures I have linked on this site.

But I write two things about wrestling, and the entire world knows about me.

Thanks to this article, a clarification on my stance on professional wrestling, I’ve received an alarming number of hits over the last couple of days. Thanks to Puroresu Power, a rather well known (in wrestling circles) site dedicated to the art of Japanese wrestling/mixed martial arts, I’ve been selected as the “Link of the Day” for 3/25/06. The column is being billed: “A former pro-wrestling fan explains why he’s given up on the business.”

This is funny because, well, I’ve received some comments saying “I don’t blame you,” though I also received a comment by some anonymous visitor saying “you should get yourself checked.” I apparently insulted this guy’s entire existence, and forced him to adopt my opinion.

A look at the referring sites that have sent me traffic:

puroresupower.com 9:04 pm
puroresupower.com 8:51 pm
puroresupower.com 8:50 pm
puroresupower.com 8:46 pm
puroresupower.com 8:42 pm
puroresupower.com 8:41 pm
puroresupower.com 8:40 pm
puroresupower.com 8:37 pm
puroresupower.com 8:26 pm
puroresupower.com 8:26 pm
puroresupower.com 8:22 pm
puroresupower.com 8:21 pm
puroresupower.com 8:16 pm
puroresupower.com 8:16 pm
puroresupower.com 8:00 pm
puroresupower.com 7:57 pm
puroresupower.com 7:55 pm
puroresupower.com 7:50 pm
puroresupower.com 7:43 pm
puroresupower.com 7:41 pm
puroresupower.com 7:40 pm
pro-wrestling.com 7:34 pm
puroresupower.com 7:33 pm
puroresupower.com 7:27 pm
puroresupower.com 7:25 pm
puroresupower.com 7:21 pm
puroresupower.com 7:17 pm
puroresupower.com 7:10 pm
puroresupower.com 6:59 pm
puroresupower.com 6:53 pm
puroresupower.com 6:41 pm
puroresupower.com 6:35 pm
dakotawarcollege.blogspot.com 6:27 pm
puroresupower.com 6:25 pm
puroresupower.com 6:23 pm
puroresupower.com 6:22 pm

That’s a visitor from Puroresu Power nearly every five minutes, with one from pro-wrestling.com (which I think is an admin site for Puroresu Power – I was not allowed access to the link but searched around to find it had the same “link of the day” and the same articles) and one from Dakota War College (Thanks PP!)

Now I can’t even find out how I was found as the “Link of the Day” – there have been so many hits from puroresupower.com that it’s pushed any original tracking off of the list. According to my lifetime referrers, puroresupower.com has already sent me more hits than Todd Epp’s SD Watch did during the past year!

A lot of this traffic is because there’s an idea that I’m denouncing mainstream professional wrestling. That’s not really the case. I’m just saying that the entire genre has, as I put it, “done me wrong,” by which I mean it suckered me into taking it way too seriously – more seriously than anyone I knew. Now I’ve seen the light and understand it for what it is: a television show and marketing product.

Again, I’ll say that I don’t hate wrestling. I never meant this to be some “change and I’ll come back” manifesto. I don’t care what wrestling does anymore. I don’t like it, and my views have more to do with me growing apart from the genre than it does with the product becoming horrible, though the product becoming horrible certainly didn’t help. I made some rebuttal arguments in the comments to the original article, and hopefully I’ve made myself clear.

Anyway, thanks to Puroresu Power for giving me some extra traffic, regardless of how long the new viewers ever stick around.

I’ve found a new hot-button topic. Forget abortion rights, the Iraq war, and political corruption – just give me an old Boston Crab and an elbow off of the turnbuckle and we’ll get those comments flowing in.

This was lovingly handwritten on March 25th, 2006