At least with Sheamus, we know where we stand

It was the kind of week my nine-year-old self dreamed about. Make way on the podium Katie Taylor. Step aside Paul Brady, of handballing not island-visiting renown. Stand down Mark McInerney, from the mean lawns of golf croquet. For Ireland has a new world champion to salute.

A Cabra man, whose personal style owes much to Hardy Buck Eddie Durkan — if Eddie was stripped to his best underpants and allowed a Supermarket Sweep at Carroll’s Gift Shop — lifted the WWE World Heavyweight belt in Miami last Sunday. A timely triumph with the Wrestlemania Revenge Tour set to rock up to the O2 next week. Wrestling’s coming home, it’s coming home.

It had been written in the stars, or at least in the script sitting on Vince McMahon’s desk.

Known by a single name like all the greats — Pele, Zico, Twink — our colossus of the ring goes only by Sheamus now, since Stephen Farrelly is not a name you can etch convincingly in spandex.

He first got a taste for leaving the hand in playing Gaelic for Erin’s Isle in Finglas and served his time bouncing at Lillie’s Bordello, where, they tell us, he took special care of Bono; presumably a period that enhanced the tolerance levels for bullshit he would soon rely on.

In the grand old manner of the sport, Sheamus drew on all his experience standing outside nightclubs during his 18-second triumph last Sunday, capitalising resourcefully as lovelorn opponent Daniel Bryan lingered distractedly in the tender affections of the lovely AJ.

A single boot in the head later, it was all over. Sheamus had the belt and an entire nation’s talent for spoofery was finally rewarded.

Nearly 80,000 Americans watched it live, 1.9 million others forked out up to 60 bucks a pop on pay-per-view, while countless more sneaked in via online streams.

For comparison, MLS drew an average 290,000 viewers on ESPN last season. It’s fair to say Sheamus’ trademark ‘brogue kick’ is a bigger deal stateside than Robbie’s somersaults.

But would Sheamus still be operating closer to home if it wasn’t for Greg Dyke, the man who, as ITV controller of sport, made plenty of nine-year-olds very sad when he culled wrestling from British TV a quarter of a century ago? It was an open weight match; Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks versus a Steve Davis and Eric Bristow tag-team. But Dyke had one sport to kill and snooker and darts survived for a time. The golden age of British wrestling was over.

This nine-year-old was first drawn into it by Johnny Cougar in the pages of the Tiger comic. Johnny was a native American grappler who could still be called a redskin then. Firm but fair, he dealt good-naturedly but clinically with a catalogue of cynical opponents with names like Gus Grunt.

But Cougar was just a gateway drug into world of sport, where ITV paraded all the stars every Saturday; Daddy, Haystacks, Dynamite Kid, the masked Kendo Nagasaki. In the trade, they were divided into blue eyes and heels, but we knew them only as good guys and bad. And we learned many important life lessons, notably how foolhardy it was to turn your back on a prone, fat man.

But gradually word filtered around the schoolyard that it was all a sham, in case it hadn’t registered with the slower among us — it hadn’t — that these were not athletes in peak physical condition. It’s a betrayal that can’t ever be forgotten. How many small boys never truly learned to trust again?

Which brings us to the week’s other standout slice of ham-acting during a contest with a preordained result. Or at least the admission by Bari’s Andrea Masiello during the week that he deliberately scored an own-goal in Serie A last season for a price thought to be in the region of €50k. A rogue kick.

Watching Masiello slump in agony to the turf following his treachery, you assume the McMahon clan have already made discrete enquiries. A crooked man who can keep a straight face is a prized asset in their line of work.

But spare a thought for the nine-year-old boys and girls of Bari, who woke up last Sunday to discover nine of their blue eyes, turned heels were under investigation for throwing matches. What kind of dreams can these innocents possibly muster from here on in? In his second book, Mick Foley — who held Sheamus’ title three times before the wildlife people reclaimed the WWF tag — insisted “the real world was faker than wrestling”.

With Sheamus, these days, at least we know where we stand.