Did you know that Dwayne Johnson only acquired legal ownership of the name: ‘The Rock’ in January of 2024? Johnson achieved this by joining the board of owners of the WWE, the world’s largest and highest grossing professional wrestling company. It got many non-wrestling fans looking into why it is that one of his famed titles only just became his. This coupled with the recent surfacing in allegations on Vince McMahon, long-time former chairman of the WWE, and the company’s 5-billion-dollar deal with Netflix has brought wider attention onto the world of professional wrestling. As someone who has had great fun training in wrestling myself by trying to embody characters, do big moves and work with some excellent performers: I’ve got to ask, where’s all this wrestling hype come from? Has it always attracted this much attention?
Wrestling has tried to captivate audiences through entertainment since its initial : following the American Civil War. Wrestling was originally a carnival-based attraction where the strongest combatants would compete with paying customers in physical contests; a patron could expect a sum of money if they successfully pinned the promoter’s champion. As a grappling contest, this protected wrestlers from CTE or becoming ‘punch-drunk’ as it was known back then due to the lack of strikes, as well as maintaining a cleaner aesthetic than many striking based sports. Yet you only need to look at the view counts on Mixed Martial Arts videos and compare ‘Knockout Highlights’ with ‘Takedown Highlights’ to find out that people have an appetite for flashy KO’s and violence. This led to what initially seemed like shady business practices that instead changed wrestling into an entirely different world.
Promoters like William Muldoon began by instituting time limits on matches to keep things snappy for audiences, but more famously outcomes became fixed. Wrestling matches became simulated combat as opposed to genuine contest. This meant that the best wrestlers were no longer ranked solely by physical ability, but instead by raw charisma. Wrestlers used the codeword ‘Kayfabe’, a term that likely originated from Carnie slang, to let one another know that fans were near so they needed to adopt their persona. Fixed matches meant that wrestlers needed to face other wrestlers and not carnival-goers. “Bret ‘The Hitman’ Hart vs ‘The Heartbreak Kid’ Shawn Michaels” has a much better ring to it than: “Stone Cold Steve Austin vs … Roger”. Now characters could be pitted against one another, and storylines were developed.
Theatricality was emphasized further until the first breakout star of professional wrestling: Gorgeous George. In most theatre you need goodies and baddies, in wrestling these are called ‘faces’ and ‘heels’ respectively to make audiences know who to cheer and who to boo. When observing the art of wrestling, the thing to remember is that not everyone is looking for the audience’s praise. For many heels their goal is to create a chorus of boos, this means that wrestling generates long term fans as much from an audience that loves as an audience that hates.
Figure 1: An Image of Gorgeous George taken from TV Tropes at https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Wrestling/GeorgeWagner
What no one expected was that Gorgeous George wasn’t the good guy, but the man who everybody loved to hate. George would begin his matches by having his valet spray perfume on the ring and lay out a mink rug for his entrance. On George’s walk he would chastise the audience members who didn’t shower him with praise and throw out ‘Georgie’ pins as souvenirs for the fans who shelled him with boos. Shouldn’t the people have been looking for a hero to root for? However George’s advice to one young man proved his great understanding of performance. Famously George told this young man that “A lot of people will pay to see someone shut your mouth. So, keep on bragging, keep on sassing and always be outrageous.” Considering this young man was Muhammad Ali, he ended up achieving a fair amount of success as arguably the most famous boxer of all time. Gorgeous George’s advice to Ali has been proven invaluable time and time again, with many of wrestling’s stars being its most provocative.
George’s guidance to “always be outrageous” was clear, the goal of the heel in wrestling is to provoke and outrage the audience. This tradition continued through the golden era of 80’s wrestling with great villains such as ‘Ravishing’ Rick Rude. Rude’s heel work was as direct as it was effective. Rude opened his match with Billy Brownby cutting off his own music to tell the audience that “What I’d like to have right now, is for all you fat, filthy Iowa sharecroppers to keep the noise down while I take my robe off and show the ladies what a real man looks like”. Rude’s theme ‘Striptease’ then continued as he disrobed, flaunting his physique to the many camera wielding women in attendance and feeding off of the audience’s boos. This in wrestling is called ‘heat’, a sort of generated outrage, showing how wrestling seeks to evoke more direct and noise-based responses from the audience than traditional theatre.
Figure 2: Ravishing Rick Rude pictured during one of his matches taken from the WWE’s gallery at https://www.wwe.com/superstars/rick-rude/gallery/rick-rude-photos#fid-40090194
Ultimately the goal of wrestling is the same as the goal of theatre, to make the audience think and feel. Eero Laine argues that “professional wrestling bears many similarities to other theatrical forms, such as vaudeville… and musical theatre (characters break into fights, not songs).” The question of what makes art is of course one of the easiest and cleanest to solve in all of history. Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini once explained that “all art is autobiographical”, and wrestling is no exception. Wrestling’s use of provocation and authenticity generates its most popular moments. The greatest example of this is the WWE’s Attitude Era. This began in a time of intense competition for Monday night viewers in the 90’s between the WWF (now WWE) and rival wrestling company WCW. During the Monday Night Wars, as they were called, the WWE’s Attitude Era was made up of intensely provocative interviews, matches and moments. From Stone Cold Steve Austin’s trademark middle finger to teams like DX using the ‘Suck It’ chant, wrestling was all about exploring outrageous topics.
The Attitude Era also introduced the company’s most notorious villain: Mr McMahon. The most popular rivalry at this time was Mr. McMahon vs ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin. While chairman Vince McMahon had originally only been involved in programming as a commentator, the attitude era saw the real life owner of the company participate in wrestling matches and storylines as the evil ‘Mr McMahon’. McMahon’s character was a perverted, greedy, dirty, and cruel billionaire who loved to cause misery and mistreat his wrestlers, only caring for his money, his own personal pleasure and himself. As McMahon himself once put it “I enjoy destroying lives, it turns me on.” The other end of this feud was McMahon’s polar opposite, first and foremost as a seemingly decent real-life person, one beloved by fans and one who never worked under McMahon. This was the beer-swilling, foul-mouthed, hell-raising ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin. Austin’s character was pure anti-authority and his feud with McMahon satisfied an audience who wanted to give their asshole boss the middle finger, kick their boss’ ass and then have a beer. Stone Cold was the one who got to do it on live TV before millions. This feud became one of wrestling’s most famous and led to the consensus victory of WWE over WCW in the Monday Night Wars.
With all this in mind, is wrestling an art? And if so, why do people watch it? Wrestling is as much theatre as traditional theatre is, with most of the storyline’s centring around victory in combat, holding the championship belt and achieving greatness. When a wrestler sells a punch to the audience, are they not as convincing as the Macbeth that claims to see a dagger before himself? The precision and finesse required for some of the most intricate technical wrestling manoeuvres (like those performed by Eddie Guerrero, William Regal, Bryan Danielson, Zack Sabre Jr.,) requires rigid training like the movements of an expert mime or ballerina. Wrestling also involves dynamic interactions, both with the other performers and with the audience directly. Wrestling foregrounds the audience as an authoritative and democratising force within the theatre due to its reliance on their noise for affirmation. As a result, the noise filled halls of a professional wrestling show is a player in itself, demonstrating the wrestler’s influence with chants, cheers, boos, and songs. The audience, by participating in, viewing, and affirming the performance, become an integral part of the performance. In one of the WWE’s most famous storylines, fans of the wrestler Bryan Danielson (who wrestled under the name Daniel Bryan while with the WWE) thought he was underrepresented relative to his skills. As a result, fans began hijacking shows and drowning out company voices with Bryan’s name or a trademark “yes” chant. This brought Bryan to a victory in both the opening and main event of WrestleMania 30, where an audience all applauded thunderously in an affirmation of his victory, his determination, and their own influence all by repeating one word: “Yes!”.
The world of professional wrestling is a campy and provocative arena where the audience plays as much of a role in shaping the story as the performers. Whether a wrestler’s style is comedic, high-flying, hardcore, horrifying, striking, technical or something else, their goal is to inspire reaction in the audience with their persona. This persona reflects the wrestler, it is something distorted, accentuated, emphasised, and transformed. Whether the script is written beforehand, or the ring is the page, the wrestler interacts in unique and interesting ways with every performer they cross. For interesting stories that may play out in wrestling, I’d recommend viewing Irish YouTuber ‘Super Eyepatch Wolf’, who outlines several in his wrestling video series. While most wrestlers seek victory, these stories break the fourth wall, consistently incorporating genuine reality to create a new theatre that lies between real and narrative. The origins of wrestling have evolved organically into a totally unique and ever-changing world. For the chance to experience it yourself, there are plenty of independent Irish wrestling shows with talented performers. Remember that at the show, the audience are both the provoked and the provokers, not necessarily causing change through disapproval, but rather with a wall of silence.
WORDS: Harry Pender
