World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) may currently hold a monopoly on professional wrestling, but it wasn’t always that way, according to a man whose date wishes her life had turned out differently. 

“The regional promoters were mostly cooperative members of the NWA, but Vince was a renegade,” said 31-year-old Mike Hastings to 33-year-old Tanya Taylor, who feigned interest with periodic utterances of “mmhmm” while silently cursing her friends for setting her up with this manchild. 

“Vince bought up television syndication rights to go national and was an early adopter of pay-per-view,” Hastings told Taylor, who tried throughout the Applebee’s two-course dinner to change the subject to music, movies, books, any other sport, or even cordial silence, to no avail. 

Undeterred, Hastings pointed out that pro wrestling traces its roots not only to Greco-Roman grappling, but also to vaudeville and the travelling circus, to which Taylor responded that she needed to “use the ladies’ room.”

Hastings was telling the waiter about Jerry Lawler’s legendary feud with Andy Kaufman when Taylor shimmied out a bathroom window and walked home.