An account of a hardcore WWE fan

I have a little brother who has been obsessed with WWE for the past 5 years. He first started to watch it simply because he liked watching two men beat each other up until one was declared the victor. Yet, as time progressed, he began to take sides in different arguments portrayed on "Monday Night Raw" or "Friday Night Smackdown" (he follows wrestling religiously, to the point where he watches it 3 times per week). The emotional aspect of the different feuds between wrestlers and the scandals that come up every so often have kept him coming back for more. Now, he basically knows every single detail about almost every single wrestler, and when I ask him about his favorite wrestler he could go on for hours about various matches against different enemies.

Those who say WWE is simply about violence, that the fans only watch it because they have a need to see violent acts, are just wrong. Yes, my brother might have started to watch it because the violence caught his eye, but as he and all of the other crazy fans get more involved, it transcends the level of simple violence. It becomes a staged battle of wills. Fans get emotionally involved rooting for on wrestler to the point where if that wrestler loses a match, the fan feels bad (my brother would be incredibly upset if The Undertaker lost at Wrestlemania). This mass emotional involvement makes the WWE seem more like an epic tale of triumph and defeat rather than a series of mindless violence. In some ways, the WWE is a modern day Greek myth