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THE culture shock at Colonial Stadium last night was complete when giant Jamie Noble, aided by scheming girlfriend
Nidia, smashed a green-suited comic character known as The Hurricane.
Here, in the stadium where sly elbows to the head usually bring a suspension and wrestling is punished with a fine, anarchy replaced the organised mayhem of Aussie Rules.
There were no rules as referees were floored by wayward forearms and the brutality spilled into the audience.
It was World Wrestling Entertainment, leaping madly from the TV to the turf.
It came to Melbourne with fanfare and fireworks - and Melbourne responded with a record.
Not even a blockbuster footy match has eclipsed this bizarre phenomenon, a cross between a circus and an asylum.
It took Essendon and Hawthorn last year to produce a crowd even close to last night's sell-out show that was more about fantasy than dinkum sport.
The travelling road show that is WWE turned on a performance somewhere between a rocket-fuelled rock concert and a revivalist prayer meeting, with a touch of Grand Final football thrown in for good measure.
These wrestlers-cum-actors know how to work a crowd.
While there is no denying they are athletes, powerful as stallions and quick as foxes, they are also showmen with a flair for farce and a well-rehearsed capacity for over-inflated triumph and mock tragedy.
In what was theatrically billed as the Global Warning Tour, America's most glamourous and richest wrestlers pranced, stomped and danced before a wildly enthusiastic crowd of about 55,000.
Oh, and occasionally they wrestled.
It was like a big, interactive video game - an American extravaganza with pyrotechnics and slick choreography.
Giant screens were there for those too far from the ring to make sense of what was happening if, indeed, there was any sense.
There was Brock Lesner, ostentatiously introduced as The Next Big Thing, nemesis of everyone's favourite, Hollywood Hulk Hogan, who did not travel to Australia because of injury.
There were Rikishi and Rico, the latter having to kiss the former's ample rear end in the opening Kiss My Ass Match.
Also in town were blonds Billy and Chucky, who helped turn the tag contests into high-energy orgies of make-believe violence.
But it was Lesner who most looked like a living parody of TV's wrestling industry, a giant who resembled Flash Gordon or even our Chesty Bond.
It was difficult to tell where reality ended and video-game animation began, even when Mark Henry, the "world's strongest man", stampeded his way into a ring that was more stage than sporting canvas.
The audience was full of kids - they loved it.
But -timers capable of seeing through the glitter would recognise elements of Jimmy Sharman's boxing tents, which were the front line of physical entertainment for 50 years to 1975.
This was a super-slick and sophisticated version of the wrestling Jack Little brought to Australian TV in 1958. We had Killer Kowalski.
These visitors had The Rock, a former footballer whose new-found fame led him to a starring role in The Scorpion King. They form a remarkable marketing steamroller that turns over $80 million a year.
It was sensational and Colonial will never be the same again".
(heraldsun.news.com.au)
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"Wrestler on canvas after learning
ropes" 
