Why Pro Wrestling Is Great Art
You probably know what professional wrestling is. It’s that thing where the muscular people fake fight in their underwear. I’ve heard it described as “anime for NASCAR fans” and, while that’s kind of true, it also doesn’t paint the whole picture. Sure, pro wrestling is weird and silly and wacky and probably closer to a carnival sideshow than it is an actual sport, but it’s also a beautifully artistic form of storytelling. In fact, it’s perhaps the last true form of travelling, Shakespearean theatre that exists. Name me another international brand that travels city to city, country to country, putting on story-driven shows for audiences. Even Broadway shows stay put in the same place, as do Cirque Du Soleil performances.
Yes, it’s fake fighting, in the sense that it’s not a “real fight”. The pain is just as real, though. And, in my opinion, that’s only one of the many lenses you can watch it through. If you watch it to see a fight, I can understand how you’d be disappointed. But if you watch it and bear witness to two (or sometimes many more) astounding athletes tell a story together and put on a show, with highs and lows and twists and turns, then it becomes a lot more impressive. These are theatrical performers at work, not brutes knocking each other’s teeth out.
It’s not like every move is choreographed the way, say, a stunt fight in a motion picture would be. This is a lot looser, giving the artists (AKA wrestlers) more canvas to paint on. There’s a significant level of psychology that goes into a wrestling match; knowing how and when to toy with an audience, get some heat for the villain, or a triumph for the hero. It’s an athletic soap opera, in the sense that live theatre is also a soap opera. That’s what makes wrestlers so impressive; not only are they premier athletes, but they’re entertainers first and foremost. The skill they hone is one that somehow marries Olympic-level athleticism with free-form entertainment like nothing else on the planet. It’s an intricate art form, with real cultural significance and merit, that too often gets labelled as corny or for kids who still believe in Santa Claus.
To me, the most beautiful thing about being a wrestling fan, is that you’re always getting worked. You can choose to watch it at face value, as a “mark” who believes the fighting is real and the outcome is decided on who the greater warrior is. Choosing the ignorant path is a fun one, because that’s how the product was initially intended. However, it’s become such a phenomenon over its 100+ years of existence, that many viewers, like myself, start feeling like they’re “in the know”. I watch it to see how it’s booked. I watch it to see who the “powers that be” choose as the winner in any given situation and how they develop a story. I even watch it to gripe and complain about who’s unfairly getting held back and which A-list superstars are undeserving. Despite all of that, I’m still getting worked. I’m still a sucker who’s reacting to an outcome. Whether you believe it or not, you’re always in the dark, and that’s part of what makes it so exciting.
After all, wrestling is a show for an audience. Naysayers love to use the argument “but it’s fake”. To that I say: that’s the point. Unlike actual sports that compete for supremacy, pro wrestling is meant to entertain its viewers first and foremost, with wins and losses holding significantly less value. In fact, within the confines of the wrestling world, the term “fake” is replaced with a much deeper and richer term: Kayfabe.
Kayfabe is the portrayal of staged events, competitions, matches, relationships, and rivalries as reality. To a degree, it’s comparable to what actors refer to as “the fourth wall”, or to the oath of a magician who must protect their tricks of the trade. It’s a code by which every professional wrestler lives by, and something that every professional wrestler is sworn to protect. It’s the umbrella term that houses all of the gimmicks, characters, outfits, catchphrases, and finishing moves. It’s everything that exists and transpires on the other side of the curtains.
The show itself exists on a sliding timeline. Whether it’s weekly episodes, monthly live events, or any other form you choose to ingest it in, nothing happens in the world of wrestling outside of the world of wrestling. A muscle-bound competitor can shockingly admit to sleeping with his co-worker’s wife on a Monday, and you better believe the irate co-worker won’t do anything about it or even issue a response until the following show. Which is fascinating, because wrestling also exists in real time and in the real world. Wrestling storylines often involve culturally relevant pieces or timely trending topics, yet they get put down when the lights are off and only get picked back up when the show starts up again. There’s no FOMO to worry about.
In fact, each program is a play unto itself. In wrestling, the term “program” is used to describe a storyline between characters. Each program has it’s own unique reasoning, build up, and, hopefully, a pay-off. Some programs can last a single encounter, some a couple of weeks, and some of the best ones can last years. For example, Ric Flair and Dusty Rhodes battled each other throughout most of the 1970’s and 1980's. The former was a wealthy playboy who loved to gloat and look down on people, while the latter was an overweight, relatable son-of-a-plumber who represented the everyman. These two would travel around, town to town, filling stadium after stadium with their one-on-one matches. Each match told it’s own unique micro-story, with it’s own set of ups and down. Some, Ric would win. Some, Dusty would win. They’d even trade the heavyweight championship back and forth on a number of occasions.
When Ric Flair was champion, the fans would boo with vigor, wanting anything but to see this asshole validate himself. When Dusty beat him for the title, it was like a win for the people. Each match was a story unto itself, while the entirety of their program together was an over-arching story that told their saga. And eventually, when any given story found a fitting conclusion or when the audience stopped being as invested, the program would end, and both competitors would move onto another program with someone else. Dusty Rhodes might go work with another type of villainous archetype, like The Great Muta from the Orient, or The Shiek from the Middle East, while Ric Flair would go on to feud with another type of babyface, be it the noble and just Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat, or the epic and heroic Hulk Hogan.
See, that’s kind of wrestling in a nutshell; good vs. bad. The tale of hero versus villain is as old as time, and can be dated back to man accepting a snake’s apple in the Garden of Eden. It’s pretty much storytelling 101. There’s a good guy, or “babyface”, and a bad guy, or “heel”, as the pro wrestling terms go, and the dynamic is often as simple as “good guy overcoming bad guy”. Only, what’s so impressive, is the way that same story’s been told in 100,000+ uniquely different ways.
And you can’t have one without the other. There can be no babyface hero without a mean heel to defeat (or sometimes, continue losing to). Each match depicts the struggle between good and bad. In some instances, the bad guy actually makes a valid point and the good is kind of an oblivious buffoon. In fact, one of the most important jobs that a wrestling company has is to build up strong, believable heels. Without insurmountable odds to overcome, there isn’t really much for a babyface to do. There’s no Hulk Hogan without him having to slam Andre The Giant. There’s no Stone Cold Steve Austin without him fighting the oppression of his evil billionaire boss, Mr. McMahon (an instance where a real life person was built into a kayfabe character role, and the lines between the two got poetically blurred).
Some heels are big, dominant monsters, while others are spineless, cheating jerks. There’s actually dozens of bad guy archetypes. In my opinion, the heels get to have more fun. They get to speak truths that would otherwise be alienating or insulting. They get to bend the rules in their favour. They get to jeer at audiences and intentionally piss people off in the name of performance art.
For example, one of my favorite rising stars of today is MJF, Maxwell Jacob Friedman. His entire gimmick is pretty much “snobby bar mitzvah Jew”. He’s a 24-year old who wears a Burberry scarf and a diamond pinky ring and constantly has a shit-eating grin on his face. But he’s also a phenomenal wrestler, puts on a fantastic display of athletic abilities mixed perfectly with intricate storytelling, and validates his pompous behaviour by winning all his matches. Sure, he cheats. Sure, he’s an asshole. But he’s a winner, and he isn’t shy about telling anyone and everyone how great he is.
A few months ago, at a public meet-and-greet and autograph signing, a small kid, maybe 7 or 8 years old, asked MJF for a picture. The heel reluctantly complied, but not without flipping the bird right at this child’s face just as the photo was being taken. The incident caused a bit of an uproar, as most things do these days, with people blaming MJF for his rude and despicable behaviour. But guess what? It’s wrestling!!! He’s a character and we’re being worked. I’d be more upset if he DIDN’T do something appalling to that kid. That’s the whole point of this performance-based art form. If you’re a big enough fan of MJF that you’re willing to attend an autograph signing of his and ask for a picture, then you better be prepared to deal with whatever meeting MJF entails.
Another example that I love happened around the same time, but this encounter involved another premier heel from another wrestling promotion, Shayna Baszler. She’s known as being a tough, no-nonsense MMA fighter who beats the crap out of people in the wrestling ring. In this particular instance, Baszler had just finished brutally punishing the happy, smiling, and lovable Candace LeRae. As LeRae lay in a heap in the ring, Baszler made her exit, content with the pain she had inflicted on her opponent. On her way out, Baszler was confronted by a young Candace LaRae fan in the front row, no older than 7 or 8, who screamed at the villain for beating up her hero. Rather than ignore it, or simply scoff at the fan in typical heel fashion and walk away, Shayna Baszler took it a step further. She looked at this child directly in the eyes and said “YOU DID THIS”, then proceeded to re-enter the ring a choke the life out of an already hurt Candace LaRae until she was unconscious. That’s some high quality heel work right there. That’s some top notch storytelling, because eventually someone IS going to give Shayna the ass whooping she deserves, and it’s going to feel that much sweeter.
Wrestling wasn’t always this much of an act. In its infancy, professional wrestling involved actual shoot fighting. Guys would grapple and apply holds on one another, with the outcomes being genuine. That slowly morphed into more of a carnival side-show that people would come watch. Eventually, the fights would be just as rough and painful, but the outcomes became pre-determined. Carnival show-runners would use this as a way to make some extra easy cash. They’d schmooze with the audience prior to the event and try to get a feel for who was still in the dark and didn’t know about the pre-decided winners. When they found a poor shmoe who believed it all to be true, they’d “mark” them by patting them on the back with chalk. That way, they knew who to sit next to and gamble on matches with during the card. That’s where the term “mark” apparently comes from.
This eventually evolved into storylines and characters with gimmicks, and the creation of an entire “kayfabe” world. Somewhere along the lines, pro wrestling turned into something of a glamorized mirror of society, with real cultural significance. Prior to the globalization of professional wrestling, it was very much a territorial phenomenon. Each region had their own heroes and their own villains, and they represented truths about that population. Dusty Rhodes, the fat everyman, was one of the biggest stars of the 1970’s and 1980’s in territories like Atlanta, Florida, and the Carolinas. He was a huge deal, but he would never be the people’s champion in a state like New York, though. It just wouldn’t resonate the same way. That’s why, during that same time period, New York’s biggest star was the muscular, bruising tough guy, Bruno Sammartino. He had chest hair and a close personal friendship with Frank Sinatra and he never boasted about his father having to fix toilets. It just made sense to the audience that was ingesting the product.
That same sort of cultural significance hasn’t gone anywhere, either. It’s just being done on a bigger scale now. Just ten years ago, the WWE’s women’s division was full of ex-bikini models participating in lingerie matches and catfights. The women’s matches were something to trot out between intense men’s matches, like something of a pallet cleanser for the audience to gawk at. However, as the equality movement continues to grow and cement itself, as do otherworldly performers like Charlotte Flair and Becky Lynch, two of the biggest stars and greatest wrestlers alive today. Heck, the current heavyweight champion of Impact Wrestling (another wrestling promotion) at the time of writing this is Tessa Blanchard. She isn’t the women’s champion, she’s the heavyweight champion. In October of 2018, WWE held an all-female pay-per-view event called Evolution. That’s a far cry from the schoolgirl matches they ran a couple of years ago.
The same sort of evolution can be said about other elements of society. Mustafa Ali is one of the brightest up-and-coming stars in the WWE. He’s an ex-police officer who’s gimmick relies heavily on his passion for justice, his morality, and the strength of his character. He’s a good guy, through and through. What makes this fascinating is that his name is Mustafa Ali, an Arab-American who, at any other point in the 100+ year history of the wrestling business, would have been cast as a “scary foreign bad guy”. Never before would wrestling allow for a babyface named Mustafa Ali. But the silly perception of “scary foreigner” is thankfully changing culturally in the real world, and therefore pro wrestling mirrors it.
As mentioned earlier, wrestling used to be a territorial thing. However, all of that changed in the mid-1980’s, when Vince McMahon Jr. bought out his father, Vince Mcmahon Sr., and took over the World Wrestling Federation (later changed to World Wrestling Entertainment in 2002). At the time, WWF mostly operated out of New York and worked harmoniously with the other, separate territorial promotions. Vince Jr. had another idea, and opted to poach the best talent from around the map in order to make one, mega promotion.
To his credit, Vince McMahon took a silly travelling circus and turned it into a family-owned billion dollar, publicly traded enterprise. He took it from live shows in arenas and gymnasiums, and turned it into a syndicated television program (which also changed the in-ring action to better fit a television program, with juicer storylines, formatted segments, and commercial breaks) that airs several times per week. He took local heroes and made them into superheroes, complete with theme songs and cartoons and sellable t-shirts and action figures. For all intents and purposes, Vinny Mac took an entertaining form of performance art and turned it into a tangible, consumerized product worth a shit ton of money.
During the mid-to-late 1990’s, the WWF encountered some worthy adversaries, though. In the south, WCW (World Championship Wrestling), was beginning to blur the lines between reality and fiction by taking one of the biggest good guys of all time, Hulk Hogan, and turning him into a despicable heel. Elsewhere, in Philadelphia and New York, a fringe promotion called ECW (Extreme Championship Wrestling) was starting to push the limits of in-ring performance and tip-toeing the line between “fake fighting” and real life danger.
At the time, WWF was mainly a kids show. The Hulk Hogan era of “say your prayers and eat your vitamins” had just come to a close, and the majority of characters were unrealistic and cartoonish. You had The Undertaker, who was a frightful, staggering zombie-like creature. You had Doink The Clown, an evil clown who terrorized people with an assortment of clown paraphernalia. You had Papa Shango, a mystical shaman who would put a hex on his opponents and sometimes cause people to vomit. You even had Duke The Dumpster Droese, who was kind of just a man who happened to be employed as a garbage collector and I guess wrestled in his spare time? However, with the threat of these other growing promotions looming, the WWF took a turn towards realism. Suddenly, Vince McMahon had shoehorned himself into the storyline as the evil boss, and his role was to make life a nightmare for real, believable human people like Steve Austin, Chris Jericho, and John Cena. The “realer” wrestling got, and the more it started shifting towards an older, more refined audience.
This would prove to be the right move, as time went on and the Internet became more of a thing. Not only were wrestlers suddenly put on a main stage with worldwide recognizability, but their “real” lives naturally became a point of interest. If you were The Punisher and you wrestled in Minneapolis in 1966, it was relatively easy to get out of character and go for dinner with your wife whenever you’d like. Today, that’s close to impossible. Now, these performers all have Instagram and Twitter accounts, and they’re constantly expected to live the gimmick (even at a meet-and-greet when a child asks for an autograph). It would be an impossibility to ask Jim Hellwig in 1988 to be The Ultimate Warrior 24/7. These days, Kevin Owens is kinda just… Kevin Owens.
Around the late 1990’s, during the WWF’s infamous Attitude Era and their weekly battle with WCW in the Monday Night Wars, the line between real and fake became a blur. If a wrestler was going through some personal issues, they’d use it in the storyline. If there was a real life dispute backstage, they’d “settle it” in the ring. People’s spousal problems and substance abuse issues and troubled pasts became the fuel that propelled the pro wrestling narrative. Sure, it staggered along the Jerry Springer lines at times, but that was just the art form evolving.
The tried, tested and true algorithm of “good guy vs. bad guy” started losing some of it’s steam, and the antihero started to sprout. I’d argue that Razor Ramon was the first to really succeed at this in the early 1990's. For all intents and purposes, he was a heel. Heck, his nickname was literally “the bad guy”. He was a knock-off Scarface character, but what made the character such a success was that it managed to maintain the endearing elements of Tony Montana as well. Rather than simply paint a picture of a bad guy who does bad things, Razor Ramon was, in a way, the first bad guy people rooted for. Much like the Tony Montana character he was based on, there were both lovable and straight up cool elements to the gimmick that people gravitated towards. Razor would wear gold chains and call people “Chico” and flick his toothpick in their faces. He was a bad guy, but in an awesome way rather than the typical “I hate this guy and want to see him lose” kind of way. Years later, “Stone Cold’ Steve Austin would pick up where Razor Ramon left off and turn the antihero role into perhaps the biggest star the wrestling business has ever seen.
So, if everything is somewhat based on reality now, does that mean that kayfabe is dead? After all, how can you maintain a secret “backstage” world, when there are literally shows called “WWE Backstage” and another called “Ride Along” where you can watch your favorite superstars drive from city to city in their rental cars? Well, that’s certainly a point of contention within wrestling fans. The cartoonish world of make believe is mostly deceased, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. After all, the greatest works of fiction are typically based in some element of reality. Authors constantly derive material from their own personal lives, screenwriters are constantly attempting to produce commentary on the real world, and playwrites are forever trying to tap into authentic, human emotion. Pro wrestling is no different.
In a way, as long as there are more stories to tell, kayfabe can never die. Pro wrestling will go on, the same way novels will continue to be written and movies will continue to be made and plays will continue to be performed. Will it change? Absolutely. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? That’s on each and every individual to decide for themselves. Part of what makes wrestling so great is that there’s something for everyone to enjoy. The names might be more real, and the performer’s personal lives might play into it more than ever, but that’s all part of the show. And don’t get it twisted, it’s still a show. No matter how educated you are on the subject, and no matter how you choose to watch this wonderful, wacky, sometimes hilarious and sometimes raunchy show, we’re all just kids trying to figure out what’s real and what’s not.
