After having been a part of local roller derby leagues for years, I find myself wanting to support other small, local, sporting events. I want to appreciate the time, practice, and hard work that the participants put into their ‘passion’ like my former league mates and myself put into our derby bouts. So when I saw a Facebook event for a local amateur wrestling match in Pyeongtaek (P-town), South Korea, my first thought was “Oh, this should be interesting!’

The definition of ‘interesting’ is “something that holds the attention” so by definition it was….but unfortunately, by definition, so is a train wreck.

I absolutely want to give props to the people involved….I applaud their effort and enthusiasm for their sport. However, now that I’ve experienced it once, I don’t need to ever go back—it’s just not for me. That might sound bad, but I’m sure there have been many a spectator attend a roller derby bout and leave saying the exact same thing. That’s OK! It takes all types of people to make the world go around.

The first annoyance came with the fact that the location was almost impossible to find. The address didn’t come up in the navigation and being lost driving in a foreign country is never fun! Once we found the venue, I was surprised to see that the venue was barely wider than the actual wrestling ring and could only fit about 40-50 people. Second annoyance was that it cost $20 per person for what ended up being about 90 minutes of actual event.  But money aside (I’ve wasted more on less, for sure), I just don’t think entertainment wrestling is for me. Even if the venue had been easy to find and it didn’t cost a penny, I don’t think I would have liked it any more than I did.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I think that part of this type of wrestling is “storylines.” (You know, the back-story of the characters, the rivalries, etc.) Well, when half of the event is in English and the other half is in Korean, only bilingual spectators got the whole picture. And from the looks on the audiences’ faces, I was under the impression that most people watching were missing big parts of the “story.”

Regardless, I’m happy for the people that participated. They seemed to enjoy it and some of them were pretty good at it. If you like wrestling, I imagine you’d love it so I’d totally recommend it. And if you don’t know if you like it, I recommend it as well—just so you find out, like I did. Now I can add wrestling to the list of activities I don’t want to spectate along with golf, bowling, swimming, D & D games, and 99% of the Olympics.