Why Wrestling Isn't a Guilty Pleasure

Originally written 8/22/2017.

A few years ago, I had YouTube open on half of my computer screen while I was doing school work on the other half. YouTube’s autoplay function allowed me to go from one video to another without interrupting my focus. It was just a light distraction that counter-intuitively helped me concentrate on my task, I wasn’t paying attention to it in the slightest. That is until my eyes darted over for half a second and I found myself watching a WWE wrestling match.

Up until this point, I had had zero exposure to professional wrestling. All I knew about it was it had something to do with fighting, but was also fake and lowbrow, something to be avoided. And yet, from the first glance, I was enraptured. The video was already halfway through, so I restarted it to watch from the beginning. A cheering crowd surrounded a square ring in the middle of an arena. Excitable and loud announcers told me that the man walking down a ramp while rock music played was named “Mr. Kennedy” and he was from Green Bay, Wisconsin. Before they could finish their introduction, Mr. Kennedy grabbed a mic so he could do it himself. Unlike the commentators, who I initially believed to be unbiased, he had no qualms about over-exaggerating his abilities for the crowd. When they refused to believe his pomp and tried to beat him to the chase in chanting his signature catchphrase, he screamed at them.

It was amazing to me! I’d never seen a performer actively trash talk his own audience before and the fact that he was doing it so organically made me hate him as much as I’d hated any fictional villain. And the crowd agreed with me, booing him like it was their job. With his introduction done, a flashback clip showed me that Mr. Kennedy and his partner, someone called Montel Vontavious Porter, had angered another wrestler named Kane. The first time I saw Kane I backed away from my screen. The man was massive, just skirting under seven feet tall, and built like an ox. Once I’d recovered from my initial fear of the man, I realized that the clip had also given me a beginner’s course on the basic rules of wrestling. With M.V.P.’s help, Mr. Kennedy lay on top of a stunned Kane while a referee hit the ring canvas three times. The crowd cried out in surprise and Mr. Kennedy was declared the winner.

The replay ended in time for me to witness M.V.P. come out to join Mr. Kennedy in the ring. He walked with an arrogant swagger that can only come from wealth. To confirm my suspicions, the announcers let me know that he was the highest paid wrestler signed to the company and, on top of that, he’d bought one of the announcers dinner the other night, immediately prompting that commentator to defend M.V.P.’s unwarranted brashness and cocky attitude. Though I didn’t know it at the time, the battle lines and character dynamics were being drawn in my head as each new piece of information demystified a new corner of this bizarre world I found myself in.

M.V.P. was barely in the ring when a heavy guitar riff rang out and the screen became awash with flaming red lights. Before they even showed him, I knew it signified that the monster of a man I’d seen before was coming. Kane came to the entrance stage and marched down to the ring with visible bloodlust in his eyes. The man was so intimidating, Mr. Kennedy and M.V.P. cleared the ring when he approached, like bullfighters backing away from a raging toro. It was then that the announcers informed me that Kane would be joined in this match by his brother, the Undertaker. I think I laughed out loud when I heard that name. M.V.P., Mr. Kennedy, and Kane were all silly enough names, but Undertaker? There was a limit to what I could take.

And then it happened. A gong chimed. The crowd roared louder than I’d yet heard them. They knew what was coming. The lights went out and the titantrons in the arena flickered with lightning. Organ music began to play. It was a song that would be equally at home in the depths of hell as it would be in a morgue. Fog clouded the entry way. I stopped laughing, knowing that whatever I saw next would be ethereal, other worldly perhaps. “All hell’s not going to break loose,” an announcer assured me, “they are all hell.”

“And from Death Valley, weighing in at 305 pounds, the Undertaker!” At first he was just a shadow, silhouetted by the lights of the titantron, shrouded in a mist that almost seemed to emanate from him. As he drew into focus, I stopped breathing. If I thought Kane was intimidating, his brother was a hundred times more impressive. He was dressed in a black leather coat and wide-brimmed hat, giving him the appearance of a specter who died in the dusty streets of a lawless western town. What I remember most was his eyes. They were wide, unblinking, staring across the arena not at his opponents, but at his victims. You could have told me in that moment that he was just a very fit man with scary music and eyeliner, but I wouldn’t have believed you. In that moment, I was watching an dead man rise from the grave to enact vengeance with his demonic brother. In that moment, I was watching the coolest, most badass thing I’d ever seen in my life. In that moment, I knew why they called him the Undertaker.

He moved slower than Kane, taking his time getting to the ring. It was downright ritualistic. Fans in the front row bowed in his presence. He stepped into the ring and shed his coat. With a practiced flourish, he took his hat off, momentarily covering his face. When it came back into view, his eyes had rolled back in his head and his mouth curled in a hideous sneer. I had to stand up and move way from my computer for a moment when I first saw this. It was so terrifying that it silenced the announcers, who had been hyping up Kane and the Undertaker as “The Brothers of Destruction.” An apt name. With all participants in the ring, or at least onstage, the match could begin. To further cement their character traits, Kane and the Undertaker both wanted to be the first to fight while M.V.P. and Mr. Kennedy debated who would be the first sacrifice.

The match itself was just as amazing as the entrances. Over the course of it, I learned more about each of the wrestlers. How they moved around, how they fought, how they bent or adhered to the easily understandable rules, their facial expressions and body language, it all came back to who they were and what their goals were. It didn’t even occur to me that the moves were all fake or that none of the punches were connecting, that didn’t matter. The crowd was just as much a character as the wrestlers, their cheers and boos dictating the speed and direction of the match. I would later learn that what I was watching would be considered a ‘Squash,’ a type of match where one side was made to look dominant and one side was made to look weak. You can guess which was which in this case.

At some point, M.V.P. and Mr. Kennedy decided they’d had enough of getting humiliated and left the ring, marching up the ramp to lick their wounds backstage. The crowd booed their cowardice with renewed vigor. Before they could leave, new music hit and an out-of-place-looking man in a suit came out with a microphone. He was clearly some kind of executive figure in a position of power. Using his authority, he ordered the match to be restarted, to the crowd’s approval. Cut for commercial break. The match returned with much of the same. Undertaker used quick strikes and smart strategy. Kane used physical prowess and intimidation tactics. M.V.P. and Mr. Kennedy used underhanded moves and wily maneuvers to try and outwit their opponents and, most tellingly, each other.

Eventually, Mr. Kennedy tried to end the match early by unveiling to me a new rule of wrestling: No hitting below the belt. Proud of their witty excuse to end their torment, Mr. Kennedy and M.V.P. backed up the ramp. Fortunately, the suited man returned and was so pissed off by their mischief that he not only restarted the match, but he was threw out the rule book. No disqualifications, no-holds-barred, no way to escape the Brothers of Destruction. The match devolved into one-sided carnage with Kane and Undertaker battering their opponents in and around the ring. They threw Mr. Kennedy into the crowd! They tossed M.V.P. around like a rag doll! At a certain point, the brothers starting doing the same moves on Mr. Kennedy and M.V.P., competing to see who could hit the moves harder, faster, and better, all at the expense of their opponents.

Suddenly, there was a back and forth, M.V.P. and Mr. Kennedy were putting in some offense! Both brothers were down! Could the villains, the sneaky and subversive crooks really walk away with a win over these two utter beasts? For a moment, all seemed lost. And then Undertaker sat up from a dead rest! And so did Kane! The attacks that M.V.P. and Mr. Kennedy had visited upon them were nothing compared to the punishment they would now receive! In a flurry, the brothers performed a series of incredible moves, showing off their athletic prowess as well as their natural showmanship. Finally, Undertaker decided it was time to put them out of their misery. He grabbed Mr. Kennedy and hugged him upside-down, flush against his body. The crowd was on its feet! He fell to his knees, slamming Mr. Kennedy’s head into the ring mat! “Tombstone piledriver!” one of the announcers tried to tell me. I couldn’t hear him over my unintentional squeal of excitement. Undertaker folded Mr. Kennedy’s hands over his prone body like a corpse and grinned devilishly as the referee counted to three.

And that was it, my first wrestling match. I was hooked from my first taste. Like a vacuum I sucked in any and all information I could find on YouTube and the larger world wide web. I researched the crazy, wacky, sometimes offensive world of wrestling with more vigor and passion than I had for some of my term papers. There was a deep lore and history for me to uncover, it was like a secret world that I had always sort of known existed but for some reason I considered too beneath me to take seriously. What I fool I had been to so easily dismiss this. I learned insider terminology and backstage factoids. There were interviews where the wrestlers dropped their stage personas and revealed secrets and opinions of other workers. There were entire wars between rival companies that had happened throughout my childhood that I’d never even acknowledged. Slowly, I learned just what an awesome thing I had discovered.

But I also learned there were negatives to what I’d found. Sexism was rampant throughout the industry, with women competitors often treated as novelties or sideshows. There was a noticeable lack diversity among the champions, a major problem considering the results are all predetermined. Veterans of the industry often suffered from extreme physical debilitation and, in some genuinely haunting instances, mental illness. Sometimes matches were less the narrative works of art I’d initially witnessed and were more testosterone-fueled bouts where all semblance of story was abandoned in favor of gruesome and disgusting stunts.

Fortunately, I learned that the wrestling industry is constantly evolving and some of these major problems are being worked on. Fantastic performers like Charlotte Flair, Sasha Banks, and Asuka are giving women’s wrestling an unprecedented level of legitimacy by putting on amazing match after amazing match. New company guidelines in many mainstream promotions are prioritizing the long-term safety of the talent. As of this writing, one of the top stars in the WWE is Shinsuke Nakamura, a world-class Japanese wrestler, and one of the best matches in this year’s Wrestlemania event was a bout for the Cruiserweight Championship between Cedric Alexander and Mustafa Ali, an African American and Pakistani-American respectively.

Both are clear indications that the biggest wrestling company in the world is looking for more diverse wrestlers to become their next generation of top stars in an increasingly global market. None of these issues are at all close to being fixed, but the improvement is palpable. A major motivation for these changes comes from the internet, where a community of wrestling fans and independent promotions discuss, debate, and judge the current state of the industry and the stories therein.

I wrote this essay for two reasons. The first was to potentially advertise wrestling for anyone who wants to learn more. It’s hard to fully recommend wrestling because, like everything else in the world, there are going to be some people who just can’t get into it. It’s also difficult for newcomers to find an entry point into the fan community. Though not an insular group of people, there’s over fifty years worth of wrestling lore and cannon to observe. You don’t need to know everything, far from it, but it does behoove you to know who industry revolutionaries like ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin are, even though he’s retired and your won’t see him on TV these days.

I know my depiction of my first match made it seem like you can just hop right into this, but the truth is that I’m an outlier. It took one match and the mere sight of the Undertaker for me to realize that this was something I could be passionate about. For most people, there isn’t going to be one perfect fight that can convince you that this is worth your time. In fact, the Mr. Kennedy/M.V.P. vs. The Brothers of Destruction feud was so short lived that it has been all but forgotten in the annals of WWE history. It was so brief that they had to condense everything about it, the character development, story progression, and in-ring action. Ironically, this made it easier for a complete outsider like myself to consume and appreciate.

The second reason I wrote this was to explain that I don’t consider my love of wrestling to be a guilty pleasure. The term guilty pleasure implies enjoyment of something despite a deep-seeded, innate knowledge that what’s being enjoyed is bad, offensive, or overall irredeemable. And yeah, occasionally wrestling fringes into these uncomfortable territories. But that doesn’t mean it’s indefensible. Wrestling, at its core, is spectacle with a story, and the spectacle can be phenomenal, the stories can be deep, and the action can be thrilling. Not always, but often enough that I feel comfortable defending wrestling as an athletic, physical art form, on par with the likes of ballet or theater. It might be considered lowbrow, but so is something like South Park and that show’s provided some of the most critical and important social commentary of the last twenty years, including an episode where they critique exactly what people like and dislike about professional wrestling. Something being base or looked down on should not devalue the artistic contributions it is capable of.

Now, I can’t force you to see things from my point of view and if you’re like I was a few years ago, you probably think I’m a crazy person. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask that you at least give it a sincere chance. Maybe you don’t have to watch a full match, but find a video and set aside all your preconceptions. Don’t worry about it being fake, that’s very much the point, that’s what allows us to enjoy it. Nobody would realistically act or talk like the people we see on our screens, but that’s what makes their performances all the more special and impressive. If you can find it in yourself to forgo your biases for five minutes and raise your suspension of disbelief to an appropriate level, I think you’ll find a creative, inspiring, wonderful world that’s been waiting patiently for you to find it.

If you want to learn more about wrestling, I highly recommend the WhatCulture Wrestling and Cultaholic YouTube Channels. The guys who run it are clearly devoted fans who have a lot of fun talking about the wrestling process to the point where they even run their own independent promotion that they publish for free online. Even if you don’t want to get into wrestling, they’re really funny and are worth a watch if for no other reason than to see them squirm in delight in their reaction videos.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq8jp0E99ELBvmBxjJ-JLgA

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjcPJbFDwVZZELGG38q2cLQ

If you want to take a look for yourself, here’s the first match I ever saw that I outlined above.

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