On WrestleMania XL and Making Legendary Memories with Your Kids

After an iconic father/son wrestling weekend in Philadelphia, I wanted to put some dad thoughts down for posterity and I’m calling this piece: On WrestleMania XL and Making Legendary Memories with Your Kids

When you have kids you hope they find their own passions and things they enjoy…

But you ALSO hope they share a few of the things you’re into. Every parent knows you can’t force things – that usually backfires…

You can introduce your kid to things and then it’s a crapshoot – they like it or they don’t. They’re into it or they’re not…

Occasionally, if you’re lucky, your kid falls in love with something that you’ve loved since you were a kid…

And when that happens, it’s magic.

Me? I’ve loved pro wrestling as long as I can remember and if you follow me here and if you’ve joined me on my journey to write this Macho Man book, then you know…

Wrestling is one of my things.

And for a while I’d have it on and my son didn’t care much about it… Not at 5 or 6 or 7….

Then at 8, something clicked. He “got it”. Suddenly he wanted to watch everything and he knew everyone’s entrance music and he had his guys… and I couldn’t have been happier…

Then I started my Macho Man book and he watched all the old WrestleManias with me… And all the Macho promos and other matches on YouTube…

Suddenly he became a fan of his guys and the guys I grew up with. And when I started the Macho Man biography 2 years ago and we picked the WrestleMania XL week release date, I thought:

“Wouldn’t it be just about the coolest thing ever to take my son to WrestleMania XL to celebrate and promote the book?”

We didn’t know The Rock would be coming back. We didn’t know Cena would appear. We didn’t know if Cody, our favorite guy, would finish his story…

In fact, when I started the book there was no story yet.

But as we inched closer to XL over the last two years, I knew we HAD to be there.

For Macho: Promoting that book at WrestleMania was an author’s dream come true.

And for us: Because my son is 11 now, PEAK wrestling fandom age. He’s all-in… He’s been riding with Cody Rhodes for two years… He’s invested.

Soon he’ll be a teenager and maybe age out of wrestling for a bit and then boomerang back like I did in college or so…

But now, in this moment, this stuff matters so much to him. To us. Wrestling is our thing together. Every SmackDown. Every RAW. House shows… All of it…

And to be there for both nights. To be there for Sunday night’s finale – what I would say was the greatest, most electrifying Main Event ever – and to watch my son’s joy and excitement as one icon after another appeared: Cena. Rock. Taker….

Then for Cody to get the pin and to belt out Kingdom with 70,000 people live…