When I was younger I always watched wrestling thinking how cool it would be to go to a wrestling show live instead of watching it from my television. Then that thought became a reality and I went to my first wrestling show back in 2009.

I went to a live taping of their show “Friday Night Smackdown” and it also included other shows like “WWE: Superstars” and “WWE: ECW.” I was 11 years old at the time and I can still remember like it was yesterday that I got to see my favorite wrestler CM Punk go against The Great Khali.

Knowing that, I’m going to mention the pros and cons of going to a wrestling and how to prevent the cons from happening.

A pro of going to a wrestling event is going there to have fun. Professional wrestling is like live theatre and it gets us yelling and booing at people who are playing a character. The energy in the arena is electric from beginning to end. It’s something a person can go to, and not think what’s going on in the world or personal lives.

A con to this though is that it always depends on where the shows are at. Usually Bakersfield has a very stale crowd, which I witnessed on Feb. 13 when WWE came for Smackdown Live. I got to see how the crowd reacted from the top seats for once, and I noticed that people at the top don’t go as crazy as the people that have ringside seats.

Last summer, I went to a different wrestling company’s show in Long Beach called “New Japan Pro Wrestling: G1 Special USA,” and both days the crowd was never dead no matter how long the show was. Cities like Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, or Las Vegas are where people want go and actually feel the excitement.

The second topic is seating. I have been from the very front to the very back to now the very top of an arena. I love watching and feeling the energy up close, so I always try to score front row ringside seats because no one is in the way of my view, and I’m close enough to be lucky in getting a picture with some of the wrestlers.

If that’s not possible, I would rather get the top seating because the seats are inclined and it’s actually not a bad view. For example, when my brother and I are ready to get wrestling tickets and start getting seats like “Row D, Seat 5-6,” we refresh the page or look for another section that is not as popular. Secret revealed!

It works very differently in other companies that rarely come here to the U.S because it feels like a first come first serve bases. If someone didn’t get tickets, well they’re out of luck.

For insistence, the company that is based in Japan, New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW), they are having a show at Long Beach in March that sold out in less than eight minutes with a capacity of 8,500 seating. It felt like the Hunger Games when trying to get tickets. Luckily enough, my brother and I got tickets to the show.

Another thing is the people that go to the show. A pro about it is that most wrestling fans are some of the nicest people I have ever met. I’ve never been a very social person, but socializing with wrestling fans has made me meet people from Japan, England, New York, and Los Angeles.

A con to wrestling fans is that some fans are very stuck up, the wrestling community calls them “smarks.” Those fans are the ones that think they know it all. They are the people that will not admit when they’re wrong about a piece of wrestling history. I always try to avoid them when going to an event because they can be jerks to people. As wrestler Zack Sabre Jr. would say “Wrestling is for everyone.”