Macho Man Memories: Why Every Dad Needs a WrestleMania Moment With His Son

Allow me to tap into some dad and WrestleMania nostalgia for a moment.

When you have kids you hope they find their own passions and hobbies and things they enjoy. Big things. Little things. Doesn’t matter. You just want them to find fun stuff that they’re passionate about as they grow up.

BUT, selfishly, you ALSO hope that a few of the things they discover are things that YOU’RE passionate about as well. 

Of course, Rule #1 of this dynamic is that as a dad, you can’t force things. Every dude reading this knows how fast that backfires. It’s like the unwritten rule of the parent universe. The harder you push something for your kids to like, the faster they have no interest in that thing.

The best you can do is introduce your kids to lots of stuff and then it’s a crapshoot – they like stuff 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 for as long as I can remember and as an author, this culminated in getting to write a bucket list biography of the “Macho Man” Randy Savage, which came out this time last year for WrestleMania 40 in Philadelphia. If you read me regularly here at Midlife Male or on social, then you know:

Wrestling is one of my goofy things. I was huge into it growing up like lots of 80s and 90s guys, with Hulk Hogan and Macho and Junkyard Dog and Andre the Giant. I left for a bit in high school and came back strong in college with the Attitude Era and The Rock and Stone Cold hell yeah.

After that I went  stretches where I didn’t pay much attention to it – long stretches sometimes – but when my son was born I’d check in on what’s happening on SmackDown or Raw regularly and I’d watch matches from some of my favorite old school guys like Randy Orton. Mostly because I love RKOs out of nowhere and also because I wanted to see if my son would dig it.

And for the longest time, he didn’t. 

Not at 5 or 6 or 7….

Nothing. No interest. I even took him to a few live events, including a legendary SmackDown with Roman Reigns in Dallas and he was lukewarm. Kinda liked it. Kinda didn’t care that much. Oh well.

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…

I vividly remember being that age and legit caring about my favorite wrestlers and which belts they had and who they tag-teamed with. All of it.

Then I started researching my Macho Man book and he watched all the old WrestleManias with me… And all the Macho promos and other matches on YouTube…  The kid was saying “snap into it!” like he was in 5th grade in 1993. It was awesome.

Suddenly he became a fan of his guys and the guys I grew up with. And when my publisher and I looked ahead for potential launch dates for the Macho book and we picked the WrestleMania XL week release date in 2024, 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 Rhodes, 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 three 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 was 11 then, PEAK wrestling fandom age. He was ALL-IN… He’d been riding with Cody Rhodes for two years… He was invested. 

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

But right now, at this age, this stuff matters to him. To us. Wrestling is our thing together. Every SmackDown. The highlights of RAW. House shows… In. In and in.

And to be there last year for both nights. To be there for last year’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: John Cena. The Undertaker. The Rock…

Then for Cody to get the pin and to belt out one of the all-time great WWE wrestling crowd anthems, Kingdom, with 70,000 people live…

Man. That’s a life memory right there. For both us.

It blows my mind that it’s already been a year since that night, but as we got ready to watch WrestleMania 41 this weekend (from home, not in person – no book to promote this year haha) we went through our entire photo album from last year, reliving one of the best weekends we’ve had together. Getting the Macho Man book on the jumbotron. Cutting a promo on the floor of WrestleMania. A hilarious pic of my son with the Mouth of the South Jimmy Hart.

These memories. This is the good stuff. The best stuff of being a dad. Knowing, in the moment, that you’re making lifetime memories and appreciating them as they happen. Then getting to relive them the rest of your lives.

Doesn’t have to be wrestling, of course. Could be baseball. Or fishing. Or chess. Or a rock band. Whatever. But if you’re lucky enough to get to relive one of your childhood passions with your kids, during their childhood, soak up every minute. Go to the big event with them. Book the trip. They’ll only be kids once. Do it for them. And do it for you.

Ooooooohhhhh yeahhhhhh!

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Jon Finkel
Editor-in-Chief, Midlife Male
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