ADA Easter Special

What is Easter and how does it relate to Wrestling?

It seems that every single month that goes by there is a major Holiday to celebrate. Some, like Christmas and the 4^th of July, have a history that is pretty much a given to the average wresting fan, but others, like Easter, has an origin mostly unknown to followers of the squared circle. This is a shame because Easter, in its most basic form, deals with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, known in the business as the first recorded “work.” Wrestling insiders point to Christ’s resurrection several days after his crucifixion to be the basis of all the fake retirements that we see today. “It’s a time honored tradition,” says pro-wrestler Terry Funk, “And to show my respect to Jesus Christ I make sure that anytime I ‘retire’ from this business, I make sure to wait at least four days before I return.”

Thanks to my recent in-depth interviews with the Heartbreak Kid Shawn Michaels and TNA’s AJ Styles, I’ve been able to make Easter more accessible to average fan. Below are some of the terms used in the celebration of Easter along with their connection to the world of wrestling.

Connected with the observance of Easter are the 40-day penitential season of Lent, beginning on Ash Wednesday and concluding at midnight on Velocity Saturday, the day before Easter. In many churches Easter is preceded by a season of prayer, abstinence and fasting. Now it’s obvious to anyone who has spent anytime with “the boys” that prayer, abstinence and fasting are three words not even in the average wrestler’s vocabulary. But to make up for that, several have chosen to forego other things that are important to them. Here are a couple of examples:

	A-Train- gives up eating any food that contains less than 50% fat
	WWE Diva’s Terri Runnels and Jacqueline do not add any saline into their implants
	WWE Announcer Michael Cole- shuns his usual thong underwear and goes back to men’s briefs
	Triple H- In a choice most remarkable, Triple H gave up jobbing to Stone Cold Steve Austin for Lent back in 1997 and has continued to uphold that vow to this very day

And it’s not just the WWE who takes this seriously, so too does the IWC.

	PWTorch Assistant Editor Jason Powell forces himself to stop talking about Steel Domain Wrestling
	PWTorch Columnist Pat McNeill goes on a 40 day binge of unreadable song parodies
	PWTorch Sex Symbol Derek Burgan disables his computer’s Spell Check
	1Wrestling.com’s Dave Scherer only uses the Wrestling Observer for ½ of his “exclusive scoops” instead of the usual 100%.
	411’s Scott Keith stops automatically subtracting 2 ½ stars from each Triple H match on Raw or PPV.
	Dave Meltzer and Bryan Alvarez stop comparing Bob Sapp to things like The Beatles and the “discovery of electricity”
	411’s Chris Hyatte does his best to go almost the entire six week span without claiming some writer somewhere has ripped off his material and will do his damndest to not use c---sucker as a noun, unless talking about Scott Keith
	It is important to note that PWTorch’s Nick Moore’s giving up bathing for Lent doesn’t count because he regularly goes without a shower for six weeks out of any two month period

Ash Wednesday: The first day of Lent, gets its name from the practice of putting ashes on the foreheads of the faithful to remind them that man is but dust. Since the only ashes backstage in the WWE are found in the form of discarded cigarette butts and crack pipes, alternatives such as blue light paint (Jeff Hardy), cheap plastic masks (The Hurricane and Kane) and ground up Percasets mixed with vodka may be used.

Palm Sunday: One week before Easter, celebrates the entry of Jesus in Jerusalem. Holy week begins on this day. This is not to be confused with Palm Monday-Saturday, which is the wrestling term for masturbating to Torrie Wilson’s Playboy or pictures of Stacy Keibler downloaded from the Internet.

Good Friday: Commemorates the crucifixion of Christ. Great Friday Commemorates the 12 year anniversary of the last time Paul Heyman paid a debt in full.

Many Easter customs come from the Old World. The white lily, the symbol of the resurrection, is the special Easter Flower. The marijuana plant, the symbol of the Clique, is the special Easter Funny Cigarette. The Easter Rabbit, a symbol of fertility is usually represented in the wrestling world in the form of Steven Richards who is well known to have had “relations” with many ringrats over the years regardless of age, weight, height, creed or looks. The Easter Eggs, originally painted with bright colors to represent the sunlight of spring have pretty much been banished from the WWE locker room (along with PlayStation 2’s and dirtsheets) because the Big Show was eating them all. The eggs were also the symbol of rebirth, but the WWE already has the term “Smackdown” for that.

Although this should only be considered a “beginner’s course” for understanding why Easter is such an important holiday for wrestling fans, we here at GumGod hope it clears up some hard to understand concepts. In future updates we will try to “dumb down” other complicated subjects including Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, Stephen Hawking’s “Big Bang Theory” and Mojo Mitchell’s Raw Recaps.

Have a question for Derek? Send it to derek@gumgod.com.