Hello, folks, and welcome to this installment of Conan's Corner. I'm Conan the Reporter, and today I ask you a question. Are we even wrestling anymore?

As I gaze over the broad band of wrestling promotions, and I flip through the many late-night wrestling access shows, I find less and less of what I'm looking for. At every turn I find hardcore wrestling, or extreme wrestling. I understand that this type of entertainment may be popular to some people, but to this reporter, it's a downright nonsense.

In my eyes the fans have lost the idea that is wrestling. Two men, duking it out, each having to go by the rules. Usually one man, the heel, will do whatever he can to cheat, whenever he can. In the old days, the fans always wanted to see the man who didn't cheat win. They wanted him to strive above the cheater, to prove that breaking the rules is wrong, and above all else, never works. However, these days, wrestlers are cheered on to hit someone with a weapon, or to hit them in the groin. And in the eyes of todays wrestling fans, the wreslters who don't break the rules, the wrestlers who keep it "between the ropes" is booed and jeered out of the stadium.

So what do we get? What happens when all that people want to see is chairshot after chairshot, barbed wire, and fire. We get wrestling organizations who's whole purpose is to keep these fans entertained. They hire men who can't wrestle, and who can barely use a mic, and overnight these nobody's are turned into stars, and some even become champions. Left and right wrestling promotions claim to be the most "hardcore" or the most "extreme." Well, if all we have is a bunch of men and women hitting each other with weapons and breaking the original rules of professional wrestling, what are we left with? Where is the wrestling?

I am relieved to see that every once in a great while, flipping through the channels at late night, you can come across a federation that keeps tradition. Most of which only have "Old School" belts for traditional wrestling, but a few actually go by the original rules. I see even less, that claim to have matches where the rules are enforced, and yet again less where those rules are enforced strictly.

It is the hope of this reporter that soon the fans will tune into these organizations more often. They will witness wrestling at it's purest, when the whole point of the good-guy is to never break a rule, and the whole point of the bad-guy is to always try. It is my hope that the fans will see what wrestling is supposed to be, and not what wrestling has turned into. And, it is my hope, that they will once again embrace tradition.