And now, for a post I really wanted to make while I was in Florida...

I learned during my stay down there that fake wrestling is more widespread than just the pro wrestling we see on TV. In Tampa there was a semi-pro wrestling league, full of guys who were working hard to make it to the bigtime. And then there was this... Noah was right; there really is a christian analogue to everything in mainstream pop culture.

I found out about semi-pro and christian wrestling in a newspaper article in the St. Pete Times. I've been digging around some christian wrestling websites to figure out what on earth it is and who on earth thought to combine evangelical christianity with fake wrestling, and I came across this group's message explaining what they were trying to accomplish by wrestling. This page also has an interesting explanation of why the violence in wrestling and football is ok.

One more funny thing about christian wrestling: at one site, the wrestler profiles (it's amusing to see the names that the wrestlers take, by the way) include when they became Christians. Here's the weirdest: "Became a Christian in September of 1999 at the age of 18, in a dorm room at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor." I guess that's what they're calling it nowadays. (To be fair, UMHB is a Baptist-affiliated school, but still.)