Monday nights aren't just for football.

I'm 30 years old and I watch professional wrestling. Oh it's true - it's damn true!

Like many guys my age, I grew up a Hulkamaniac - worshipping the 24-inch pythons. As I entered adolescence, I realized that professional wrestling was a bit childish and grew out of that phase of my youth. But in high school, wrestling came back again. I suffered through Mondays of classes and sometimes work to at last plant myself in front of my TV and enjoy the Monday night wars*. Watching wrestling then became a bonding activity and memorable experience with friends in college.

*In case you're not familiar, in the late 90's the WWE (formerly WWF) began to face stiff competition from its main competitor, WCW. WCW was the first to air live shows on Monday nights, began signing big stars away from the WWE and developed richer, more interesting story arcs for their wrestlers. The WCW creative team spent 18 months developing a feud between Sting and Hulk Hogan, which culminated at Starcade in December, 1997. To this day, this was the best and most exciting story line in professional wrestling history. The WWE sadly has never demonstrated the type of patience with their arcs to pull off something of that magnitude. But, in order to stay competitive with the WCW, the WWE took its brand in the Jerry Springer direction, began winning the Monday night ratings wars again, and by the early 2001, bought WCW, thus eliminating their competition - I do attribute this to professional wrestling entering an era of being less interesting.

After college, I grew out of wrestling again. I'd check in every now and then, but the product didn't capture my attention the same way it did in my late teens/early 20s. I liked that wrestling became more adult in the late 1990s - it made it more accessible to me as a 16 year-old. But by the mid 2000s, it became too adult, and ceased to be a product that kids like me in the 1980s could enjoy.

Last fall, I saw an article online about the newest WWE video game, WWE Smackdown vs. Raw 2011. After checking out the graphic quality of the game, its extensive features allowing for significant user customization, and reading reviews of its realistic gameplay - reviews I now endorse - I put it on my wishlist for Christmas. The game is great and I've enjoyed playing it since.

As I got into playing SVR, I started to get the itch to watch Monday Night Raw again. Sometime around early February of this year I tuned in, and instantly remembered why I enjoyed watching a decade ago. There's action, drama and comedy, it gets the adrenaline pumping and it builds anticipation as well as any other form of programming on TV**. Plus, the WWE has changed the tone of its programming. Gone are the over-the-top sexual innuendos and the gruesome violence. It has embraced a more family-friendly approach, and effectively straddles the lines of being entertaining to 10 year-olds and 30 year-olds***.

**DVR is great for professional wrestling. The complaints I could make about watching it are that it's way too commercialized and that some matches just aren't very good or interesting. But with DVR, I can breeze through the commercials and watch matches in double-time, with the capability to pause if I notice that something interesting is happening. I make a two hour show watchable in an hour.

***Professional wrestling is one of the most hotly debated subjects on the internet. There's a large and strong contingent of fans who chastise the family-friendly product the WWE has produced in recent years, dubbed the "PG Era." They long for the raunchier version of the product, dubbed the "Attitude Era." Personally, I prefer the hybrid approach the company is currently taking - it's both entertaining and socially responsible.

So I am happy to report the wrestling is back! I've added it to my regular TV schedule and plan to use it as a subject for occasional posts like I do with other shows I watch. I'm not sure if anyone who reads this blog is a wrestling fan, but if so I welcome your input and feedback to this or any future posts I write.