South Park Goes WWE

Last night, after the boys of South Park, Colorado went to a WWE Event in Denver, they have found their true calling - to one day be in the WWE.

It's usually how all the wrestlers get into the business, it's the pure majesty of sports entertainment: the lights, sounds, gimmicks, costumes, storylines... It almost resembles the Theatre. Which is the angle that South Park went for, WWE: theatre for red necks.

The match, which the boys saw, was a storyline between John Cena and Edge, possibly during Edge's WWE Title reign. Slight goof: they called Lita, Vanessa instead; and the simple fact that John Cena never slept with Lita in any storyline. That was either borrowed from the real life, then made into storyline, situation between Matt Hardy and Edge; or just thrown in their for the hell of it. Either way, this sparks for some hilarious storylines that the boys come up with.

Stan and the gang decide to roll up into wrestling class at their school, but instead they find themselves in actual matt-wrestling attire. "But where are the cool costumes?" "Maybe they wear this under the costume." This is actually true for some wrestlers: just look at Undertaker, Big Show, Jack Swagger, and Mark Henry. But when the wrestling coach tries to teach the boys some of the wrestling starting positions - its seen as a little less than straight.

Professional wrestling has been usually associated with being a "red-neck" soap opera, which is why it worked so well on South Park. My initial reaction of South Park making a WWE episode was that they were going to attack the art of pro-wrestling, but instead, they celebrated and elevated pro-wrestling to broadway status (with playbills and orchestra seating); while matt-wrestling is just "gay p*rn."

The gimmicks that the boys came up with were obvious in who they were portraying: Cartman was every Russian to ever join WWE; Token was R-Truth; and Kenny was Rey Mysterio, or El Pollo Loco!

WWE wrestling to the boys, and everyone else in the South Park Universe, is not the actual phsyical part, its just storylines and the occassional chair shots. But what really made it all come together was having Mr. McMahon come to the boys' wrestling event to scout the talent.

The backyard wrestling that the boys set up was nicknamed W.T.F., or Wrestling TackDown Federation. A lot of backyard wrestling promotions usually have the words Wrestling or Federation in the title, to mimick the WWF name. Even when the Hardy Boys started out, their promotion was called T.W.F., or Trampoline Wrestling Federation.

The episode was a true classic and one of the cleanest episodes of recent history. It also brought back my favorite gimmick, "They took his job!" The episode was most likely inspired by Mickey Rourke's The Wrestler, since the scene of the boys running through spots was straight from the film. It's definitley a must-see for pro-wrestling fans and South Park fans alike.