WRESTLING: Shane Hegarty joins a Point Depot-full of foul-mouthed eight-year-olds for a night of "glorious entertainment" at the World Wrestling Entertainment Tour of Defiance.
STRUGGLE IS OPTIONAL, reads his T-shirt logo, PAIN IS INEVITABLE. Yikes. It's a terrifying message - made a little less intimidating by the fact that the T-shirt is on an eight-year-old. It's a Wednesday in the Point Depot, and World Wrestling Entertainment is in town. WWE used to be the WWF, but after a protracted legal bout, the World Wildlife Federation persuaded it to change the acronym.
It is the Big Daddy of wrestling companies, creating such superstars as The Rock and Hulk Hogan through its outrageous, pyrotechnically-enhanced shows. That it had lost to a bunch of panda-lovers might have been enough to dent its reputation, but not in Ireland. Tickets for the two nights of its Tour of Defiance show sold out in 15 minutes.
The crowd is more mixed than I expected. There are a lot of men in black T-shirts and there is a lot of hair, but there are a few women here, too. And there are the kids, with their hand-painted banners in one hand and dutiful parents in the other. Everybody is gorging on merchandise, especially the T-shirts with such blunt slogans as FACE YOUR FEAR and YOUR CANDY ASS IS NEXT. If you spot a boy arriving for his Confirmation in a T-shirt that reads I HAVE ISSUES, you'll know where he's been.
The action arrives with explosions so loud it must have dislodged the loose teeth of every child in the building. Then a wrestler appears amid smoke and heavy metal. His name is Batista. He is the biggest man I have ever seen in my life. He is six-foot-six and weighs 318 pounds, or more than 22 stone. Batista has muscles upon muscles upon muscles. Then some veins. Then some more muscles. Then a tattoo across his back that must be visible from space.
He fights a popular guy called Matt Hardy, and beats him after a rousing few minutes of choreographed violence. It is followed by a tag team match during which mock-superheroes, The Hurricane and Rosey, defeat Canadian duo, La Resistance. The crowd picks its favourite and abuses its villains with a boo, or through a spirited chant of "Asshole, asshole".
These bouts set a pattern for the rest of the evening. Pantomime slaps are interspersed with flying leaps and crunching falls. The wrestlers fight until neither can go on. Then they go on.
They spill out of the ring. Somebody wins. The loser gets carried from the ring looking like he'll be lucky to eat solids again. Fans rush the barriers to greet them both. It is gloriously entertaining.
After a few bouts, we are introduced to a young woman called Stacey Keibler. If virtue was dictated by leg length, Keibler would be the Mother Teresa of the wrestling world.
There is a collective thud as thousands of pre-adolescent, adolescent, adult and post-menopausal jaws hit the floor. Keibler informs us that she is most delighted to be here in Dublin, Ire-Land. To prove it, she'd like to put on a little show for us. So she begins to dance and pull at her skirt in a tantalising manner; and any six-year-old who picked this moment to want the toilet can forget about it, 'cos Dad is suddenly enjoying himself.
Her dance is cut short by a gentleman by the name of Mr Bishoff; one of the villainous administrators central to the WWE pantomime. He tells her to "get her skanky ass out of my ring". Dublin has never before heard a boo so loud.
It becomes a running theme: the women appear and are treated awfully by the men, but they do what they're told. Later, we meet Trish Stratus, who has accompanied the wrestler Tyson Tomko (boo!). Stratus has a problem. Perhaps it is that she did not get the required planning permission for the large extension to her chest. No, it is that she has come all this way to Dublin, Ire-Land only to have people call her "a slut". Rival wrestler Chris Jericho (woo!) expands on this: "A ho, a streetwalker, a slapper, a tart." If Jericho needs a nickname, may I suggest "The Fighting Thesaurus".
As Jericho and Tomko slug it out, she alternates a bit of fighting with some baiting of the audience. The crowd loves it. The gang of pre-pubescent kids in front of me know the deal. "Show us your boobs!" they squeak, and far worse. Across the arena, voices come together in agreement. Can there be any sound less sweet than thousands of nine-year-olds chanting "slut"?
Those kids in front of me are getting increasingly hyper as the night progresses, fuelled on junk food and violence. A guy called Triple H comes out. He's a single knot of gnarled muscle, topped with a delightful coating of sweaty hair. He is fighting Shawn Michaels, aka the Heartbreak Kid, who prances about the stage in mock vanity to the delight of the crowd.
Triple H is getting a lot of stick from the little kids, who yank at their T-shirts and tell him to bring it on. Triple H shouts obscenities back at them. The kids give him the finger. It really is a delightful tableau.
As the night goes on, it doesn't take long to notice how white the WWE is. There is one black wrestler, Shelton Benjamin, whose popularity can't prevent his defeat. The rest are white guys, mostly long-haired, arriving into the ring to the crunch of guitar rock. Unlike boxing, there is no shortage of great white hopes in this sport.
The matches keep coming. There is a chap called Nature Boy, who seems old enough that he might change that to Endangered Species. His call is a demented "yee-oo" that the crowd has been echoing all night. Nature Boy has muscles, but his skin has lost its elasticity and gathers in pools about his waist. He loses to a chap called Edge, who is one of seven WWE wrestlers to have broken their necks in recent years. You can call this fake if you like, but you wouldn't want to say it to their faces. Every so often, when the wrestlers tumble out the ring, one of them will get lifted up and bounced off a crash barrier, and it looks to be about the most painful thing a person can do.
After three-and-a-half hours, the atmosphere has begun to wane. This tour can be defiant if it wants, but not on a school night. But the crowd heads home pumped up. Across the country's playgrounds the next day, kids will re-enact top-rope clotheslines and claw holds. And in the offices, their dads will talk about Stacey Keibler in awed tones.
WWE Smackdown is at the Odyssey Arena, Belfast in October