Watch a pro wrestling event spark a real-life riot

I walked into my pro wrestling fandom without any illusions of legitimacy about the "sport." I didn't become a wrestling fan until I reached the world-weary age of 13. So much of wrestling's cartoony presentation in the late 80s and early 90s kept me at arm's length, and it wasn't until the product garbed itself in the ultra-violence and grit of its late 90s variant that I became a die-hard fan.

In the years since, I've become enamored with every era of pro wrestling, irrespective of country. And while I'm able to relive plenty of the greatest matches and moments, there's one aspect of wrestling that I will always find inaccessible: I never believed it was real. I never got a chance to get lost in the performance and fall under the spell of pro wrestling.

That's why I find videos like the one linked above so compelling. Before Vince McMahon outed the sport and turned it into a cartoon, wrestling was presented as a legitimate sport. Whether that sentence is ridiculous to modern sensibilities or not, wrestling fans of yesteryear took their fandom seriously.

In the video, pro wrestling legend and historian Jim Cornette walks viewers through the infamous Ox Baker riot in the early 70s while providing hilarious commentary throughout. Even if you think pro wrestling is stupid, the video is more than worth the watch.