"Imitation Is the Sincerest Form of Flattery"

As a culture we tend to imitate what we admire, whether it be a style we find in a magazine, music video, favorite TVcharacter, as well as thousands of other examples. For some WWE wrestling is something to be admired, inspiring a sub culture of mostly teenage to young adult  boys to imitate the moves and stories seen on WWE. This sub culture is known as backyard wrestling. The question that needs to be asked is, is the WWE something that should be imitated and is this spin off of professional wrestling a good thing or is it too dangerous. While scanning You Tube for videos of young men participating in backyard wrestling I came to the conclusion imitation seems to be nothing but harmless fun. While there are definitely some people who take the whole backyard wrestling too far proving it to be dangerous for the individuals involved. More often then not everyone in these videos seem to be playing along in a manor that imitates not only the wrestling but the obvious fake and choreographed routines the professional wrestlers do. It could be argued that backyard wrestling is safer then professional wrestling. Perhaps not in the sense that the wrestlers in the WWE are professionally trained to preform stunts so no one is injured and backyard wrestlers are amateurs making the likelihood of injury greater; however, backyard wrestling seems to imitate the characters, some of the story lines and mostly just the general fun of the sport. Backyard wrestling strips away the constant mocking and scantily dressed woman. In most of the imitations I found on the internet the boys engage in the wrestling as well as some of the theatrics such as picking names and perhaps costume but backyard wrestling is more about the fun of wrestling and playing macho manly characters then it is about constant belittling, mocking of gay characters and violence toward woman. While watching videos of young men imitating wrestling it just looks like they are having fun. One aspect of the WWE that backyard wrestlers do imitate is the idea of dominant and subordinate masculinity. While watching these  clips, such as the one attached, one character is predominantly seen as the dominant male being the character who is constantly over powering the subordinate characters. The idea that even young men strive to become the dominant male can be clearly seen throughout the story lines of both the WWE and backyard wrestling. It is my opinion that backyard wrestling more often then not is a safer imitation of the WEE, providing a fun outlet for boys to express their masculinity and use their imaginations.