I attended a family gathering the other week. I’d just come straight from a hell day at work and desired only to wedge into a corner of the sofa with a vino in one hand and a cracker in the other, with no conversational demands forced upon me until the Merlot had done its work in rendering me somewhat human.

Alas, t’was not to be.

“So Kirst,” a cousin inquired, before I’d even seen the bottom of the first glass. “What are you up to these days?”

“Oh you know,” I replied vaguely, “just work.” This was said in that tone of voice which often indicates “I don’t want to be rude, but if you keep talking at me before I’ve gotten sufficiently sozzled you’ll be wearing that stuffed olive up your nose.”

“But,” the cousin bludgeoned on, “didn’t I hear you just got back from Detroit? What were you doing over there?”

Long ago I learnt to say “professional wrestling fan/journalist” with pride, head held high, an I-dare-you-to-make-something-of-it expression on my face. In normal circumstances I’d have said “WrestleMania! Yeah, how cool is that?” But on this particular evening I did not feel equal to explaining and then justifying my extra-curricular obsession. I mumbled something around the Brie and hoped she would go away, until my darling Mum, who never misses an opportunity to make mischief, piped up with “Oh go on Kirst – tell them what you’ve been doing, they’ll think it’s great.”

By this stage the eyes of the entire room were on me. I drained my glass. “You’re gonna love this,” I said. “I’m the new Editor of Playboy. Yeah, I always said only the right deal would get me away from Penthouse, and The Hef stepped up.”

My cousin smiled politely. Some people have no clue when it comes to sarcasm.

“WrestleMania,” I said. “I went over for a professional wrestling show.” Now my cousin laughed. Actually, she guffawed. So did the rest of the room. Clearly, they had found my Playboy joke more plausible. “Wrestling?” she spluttered. “You mean that idiotic thing where men in tights pretend to throw each other around?”

Oh, the irony.

My sister leapt to my defense. (I forced her to sit through Samoa Joe vs. Christopher Daniels vs. AJ Styles once, whereupon she reversed her opinion that it was all fake and crap.) “It’s really athletic,” she said. “It’s much harder than people think.” But our cousin – and the rest of the room – had simply found this revelation too much of a novelty to let go, and for the rest of the evening I was peppered with the kind of questions that make wrestling fans want to smother non-wrestling fans with honey and throw them into a pit of bears.

I’m sure everyone has a story similar to this. Sometimes it makes me think: where are all the wrestling fans? Why is it only ever just me in a room?

Initially I just thought that they were in all in the States. They had to be, because every time I tune into RAW, SmackDown or a pay-per-view, the arena is packed. For most of the week! It’s amazing when you think about it; a rock band will tour for three months and perform maybe three times a week, and still have to cancel shows because of poor ticket sales, but WWE is on tour constantly and everywhere they go attendance doesn’t seem to be a concern. However, the success of the 2002 Australian Global Warning Tour put paid to that theory in terms of Down Under, and was completely disproved when WWE packed out Westpac Stadium in Wellington and Christchurch and drew thousands of fans to what’s usually a race-track in Auckland. It’s this last that gives me a pause.

When WWE performed in New Zealand for the first time in March 2006, people travelled from far and wide. The disrupted ferry crossing caused many a heart-broken fan. The atrocious Wellington weather wasn’t sufficient to keep them away, and judging from the amount of T-shirts, signs and “Eddie” chants, this wasn’t their first taste of wrestling either. So where are they the rest of the time? How is it that, with a worldwide successful phenomenon that tours all year, every year, to packed out arenas, I never run into them in general terms?

What I do get a lot are people saying “Wrestling? My brother/sister/cousin/friend is into that, yeah they’re going to see them when they come out here.” And I’m thinking – where are they now? We’d probably have a lot to talk about!

The cynic in me has also questioned whether or not people are always completely truthful… often I get the feeling that the brother/sister/cousin/friend is to that person what Hyde was to Jekyll.

More than once, Dave Batista has said that being a WWE star is as close as you’ll get to being a rock star, if you’re not a musician. I actually don’t think he’s giving himself and his brethren enough credit; they play to more people. They sell more merchandise and more tickets. AND they have pay-per-views and three weekly shows. Their audience range is, I would venture to speculate, larger than any other form of live entertainment available.

So how is it I only ever hear about wrestling fans by proxy? I get emails from fans all the time but not once have I run into any of them in person.

Does this sound familiar to you? Do you have a similar tale? Or perhaps you have some thoughts on this conundrum of mine? If so I’d love to hear about it, and to publish those thoughts in the next Editorial – email .

Speaking of Letters to the Editor, it appears that many of you have had something to say on the subject of my last Editoral: spoilers.

Jason Lummis shared with me (and now, you) his own tale of woe concerning “well-meaning” friends who just can’t contain themselves:

Your recollection of being spoiled by an online friend put me in mind of one of my own. The really stupid thing is that he’s not even a wrestling fan, but he knows that, like you, I’m trying to stay spoiler-free during the day so I can enjoy the ppv at night when I get home. His favourite (until I got wise to it after two attempts) was to email me with a generic subject line. I’d open the email and see “JOHN CENA WON!!!” in bold, capital letters. Bastard.

Bastard indeed. This is where you go into your spam filter and add his address to your Block list. Or at the very least, email him back a photo of Mae Young and her naked, unfettered puppies.

I think the issue – whether movies, wrestling or Harry Potter – was best summed up by Bronagh Walker, who incidentally is one of our special guests in this week’s edition of Gimme Five:

I wanted to drop a note (and not just think about it) to say I read and enjoyed your latest editorial.  Being a Harry Potter reader the title intrigued me, and I agreed with a lot of what you said about spoilers.  It's easier than it was being spoiler-free in NZ now, but there's a lot of people around who are real brats with spoilers.  Potter and wrestling both are things which seem to bring out the worst in people.  And I understand what you mean where you don't even want to hear that such and such was a good match, or a bad match.  I don't like to think too much about what could happen, but to let the actual product present itself as good or poor.  If you think about things, you can see a lot of results coming, and what fun is in that?

There's nothing like the excitement of unspoiled, new events, especially things like a title change or superstar's long-missed theme music announcing a return.  It's a shame that some of these are spoiled for us.

I couldn’t agree more, Bee. It blows my mind the way some people like to get their kicks. I particularly see where you’re coming from about letting the product present itself; by virtue of the very nature of wrestling, the most is gained from it by NOT knowing the outcome. This is not always the case when it comes to other forms of entertainment; for instance, I know what happens at the end of King Kong, so I passed on the film. All of the films. But if you’re spoiled on the outcome of wrestling matches, especially ones that have been well-built over previous weeks, the actual watching becomes increasingly redundant since you’ll not appreciate to the same extent the story being told in the ring. And the story is, after all, one of the main reasons we’re watching.

Speaking of watching great story-telling, I hope that New Zealand fans all managed to catch the airing of the 2006 NZPWI Invitational on SKY1 last week. The show was the result of many hours of blood, sweat and tears by promoter Dion McCracken and his band of merry men – and women! – and boy, did it show in the production. I was involved in the organisation, I toiled alongside other NZPWI staff during the day, I cheered during the show, and I got a sneak preview of the DVD, but actually seeing it aired on mainstream telly was a real kick. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who thought so. SKY1 have indicated that they’re very pleased with the rating… so much so that they’re considering airing the 2007 show in prime-time. And if you did happen to miss out, the DVD – including special features – is available for sale here.

While we’re on the subject of the 2007 Invitational, tickets went on sale on August 3. 2006 Champion Alfred Valentine, along with the likes of IPW Champion Jon E. King, KPW Champion H-Flame, and former Auckland Warrior and IPWA star Dallas Mead have all been announced as participants in this year’s show, so if you don’t have your ticket yet, what are you waiting for? Don’t miss your chance to be part of the highlight of New Zealand’s wrestling calendar!

And speaking of highlights, this week NZPWI debuted its newest columnist, Matt “Sweet Ass” Sparnon. Matt is a wrestler and trainer for IPW Australia, and was runner-up at last year’s Invitational. Matt’s inaugural column “Mad Dog Oliver… The Ref of Death” is online now, and is a fantastic read – an insider’s perspective with more than a touch of humour.

Another must-read on NZPWI this week is our very special edition of Gimme Five. The team is joined by former NZPWI staffers James Cardno, Bronagh Walker, David Gerbault and Frank Gibson. Each of these people contributed their own unique perspective to NZPWI over the years, and with no small amount of talent. It was indeed an honour that each of them agreed to cameo in a retro edition of Gimme Five, which I guarantee you is well worth a read. And I’ll just take this opportunity to give them a shout-out – you guys are legends!

I’d like to move away from NZPWI for just a moment, in order to pay tribute to someone who is not only a fantastic wrestling columnist, but a wonderful colleague and a great friend. James “JT” Thomlison, who is my OWW Co-Editor, and who hosted the Kiwi contingent when we invaded Detroit for WrestleMania 23, has said farewell to the very popular 411mania column, Hidden Highlights. JT, along with his partner in crime JP (who also welcomed the Kiwi crew to the States), authored 100 editions of Hidden Highlights. The column will continue under the aegis of JP, but it need hardly be said it won’t be the same without JT. As anyone who has read Hidden Highlights will attest, the witty repartee between these two very talented writers was what made HH one of the most popular wrestling columns on 411mania. And as Dion and IPW referee Iain Kenderdine will also verify, their banter was very much in evidence when JT and JP were thrown together for real. I count myself as extremely fortunate that JT remains my loyal partner in editing columns for Online World of Wrestling.

Remember, if you have any thoughts you’d like to share with me and with NZPWI’s readers, send them to . Until next time, grasshoppers.