At four years old, I started watching a show that would shape my childhood, alter my brain and begin my life-long infatuation with the bizarre. Growing up, my brothers and I would play fight with my dad every night (much to my mother's dismay). During these playful battles, he would reference names like Killer Kowalski and Jake the Snake. One fateful night in 1997, I was watching TV with my head resting on my old man's chest, winding down after another epic scrap, when he flicked to a new channel and what I saw changed my life forever. Two oiled-up men grappled in the middle of a ring, surrounded by thousands of screaming fans. The announcer called the action in a clear, high-energy tone. Before I had time to process this stimulus overload, the screen went black. I thought my dad had turned off the TV, but the program was still on because I heard the commentator shout, “Who turned out the lights, McMahon?!” Then, a deep, ominous bell gonged and the crowd let out an ecstatic roar. This was my introduction to professional wrestling.
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Professional wrestling or, more specifically, World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) is my guilty pleasure. Although, these days, there is a stigma around the WWE, it's hard to explain how much of a cultural phenomenon its was, when I was growing up. It was massive in North America, especially with adolescent boys, along with other pop-culture behemoths like South Park and Limp Bizkit. Since then, the whole “wrestling is fake” argument has surfaced, which exposed that pro wrestling is scripted and wrestlers aren't hitting each other as hard as it seems. There's also a very real dark side to wrestling that has become more well-known through documentaries like Dark Side of the Ring and Netflix's Mr. McMahon. This dark side includes drug and alcohol abuse, suicide, murder, and sexual assault. One wrestler even died in the ring mid-episode and WWE continued with the program. If that wasn't enough to create a stigma, there is also the argument that this type of programming is for the immature. It's not a real television drama like Breaking Bad or Lost. It's not a real sports league like the NFL or the NBA. So, what is it?
Professional wrestling has its roots in the carnival and, today, it's not so far removed from those roots. It still lumbers to your town with an enclave of trucks, sets up shop for the night and disappears before daybreak. Pro wrestlers create characters, some are heroes (the faces) and some are villains (the heels). To a pro wrestler, the most important thing is entertaining the audience. Thus, storylines are developed, characters are magnified and new ways are invented for seemingly torturing your opponent. Keeping your opponent safe is key, as an injured performer is one that can't work. Whereas boxers takes months, sometimes years, to recover, pro wrestlers protect themselves so they can continue fighting week after week.
Out of the carnival origins came managers and promoters who started to claim territories. This meant that, if you wanted to wrestle in, say, Florida, you would go to a specific promoter who would arrange to include you in that state's circuit. Across America, these territories operated independently, until a businessman named Vince McMahon Sr. started buying out promoters and homogenizing the market. Through this process, McMahon Sr. created the World Wrestling Federation, a national “territory” for professional wrestling. With the advent of cable television, McMahon Sr. was able to broadcast the WWF across the country to millions of viewers. Thus, an empire was formed.
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By the time my four-year-old pea brain started to watch, McMahon Sr.'s son, the infamous Vince McMahon Jr., was running the show. I didn't know this at the time, but, in 1997, he was in a ratings war with a competitor, World Championship Wrestling, and, to boost his ratings, McMahon was willing to try some really crazy things. And I couldn't get enough of it.
WWE's weekly program, Monday Night Raw, was so loud. The announcers were always yelling. The fans were always screaming and holding up signs with profane sayings. Wrestlers would walk to the ring, accompanied by excessive pyrotechnics and blaring music, before being put through tables, having chairs smashed over their head and “blading” their forehead to create the crimson mask. At that time, most wrestlers had outrageous gimmicks. Mankind was a denizen who seemingly felt no pain and hailed from “the boiler room." Val Venis was a sex-fuelled ladies man who came to the ring wearing little more than a bath towel. Stone Cold Steve Austin was a foul-mouthed, middle-finger-waving Texan that drank beer and hated his boss. Then there was D-Generation X, the group that famously told the world to “suck it," creating a generational catchphrase and gesture that I was shouting and gesturing long before I had any clue what it meant.
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Those late-90s/early-2000s episodes of Raw and Smackdown (which premiered in 1999) were must-see TV, at least to me, and they provided many classic, if not problematic, moments. There was the time Edge and Lita had sex in the ring. There was the feud between Rey Mysterio and Eddie Guerrero over who was Dominik Mysterio's real father, cumulating in a “custody of Dominik” ladder match. There was the yearly search for the next Diva, which is what WWE called women wrestlers at the time, and it always included a shameless lingerie contest. And who could forget the time The Undertaker crucified Stephanie McMahon, Vince's daughter? Mixed in with all this chaos was a plethora of inferno matches, boiler room brawls, casket matches, blood baths, and The Rock laying the smackdown on everybody's candy ass. Those were the days.
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It was around 2007 that my interest in the WWE started to wain. Most of my favourites like The Undertaker and Shawn Michaels were getting old and not featured as much. Stone Cold Steve Austin retired due to injury. The Rock had gone to Hollywood. Eddie Guerrero was found dead in his hotel room. And there was the horrifying and tragic deaths of Chris Benoit and his family. On top of this, I was getting older and, in my teenage years, wrestling wasn't as cool anymore. I started watching less and less until, finally, I stopped watching entirely.
Then, in June 2022, something happened that I could not ignore. Vince McMahon, amid a slew of egregious sex-trafficking accusations, stepped down as CEO of WWE. Along with stepping down as its business leader, Vince also relinquished his grip on WWE's creative vision. This was massive because, since WWE became a household name in the 1980s, Vince had always had final say on the creative direction of the show. Him stepping down meant that, for the first time ever, we were going to get a new leader of WWE's creative direction. This new leader was Paul Levesque, the husband of Stephanie McMahon and a former wrestler who wrestled under the names Hunter Hearst Helmsley and Triple H. Yes, the man who fought Henry Godwin in a hog pen match at In Your House 5 and was instrumental in telling the world to “suck it” in the late 90s was now in charge of WWE's creative vision. This, I had to see.
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Tuning back in, I was pleasantly surprised. WWE, these days, is taking itself much more seriously. It doesn't rely as much on outrageous gimmicks and crude sexual angles to keep the audience's attention. Instead, it focuses on long-term storytelling and exceptional wrestling. The women's division now gets equal time with the men's division, and there are no more lingerie contests or sexist remarks from the commentators. It also has a great training program, which gives former college athletes a chance to have an athletic career without losing their hopes of fame and fortune. All they need is a little microphone training.
Most importantly, there's a strong roster of interesting characters. Rhea Ripley is a Chyna-esque Aussie that loves to dish out maximum punishment. Chad Gable, a technical maestro, is this generation's answer to Kurt Angle. Iyo Sky is a Japanese high-flyer whose acrobatics and expressive ring cadence makes her one of the most entertaining people in wrestling. The American Nightmare, Cody Rhodes, is a prodigy whose father, Dusty Rhodes, was a wrestling legend and his half-brother, Goldust, was a staple of the bizarre 90s. Most famous of all is the Tribal Chief Roman Reigns, the longest-reigning WWE champion in the modern era.
The product is good, the characters are interesting, the stories have long-term angles and the crowd is totally into it. All of this makes for exciting episodes of Raw and Smackdown. In short, the Triple H era has me feeling like a kid again.
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As an adult viewer, I found a new appreciation for this form of sports entertainment, especially in its similarities to performative theatre. Raw and Smackdown are done live in front of an arena full of fans that proudly let the performers know what they think (kind of like how audiences used to act during Shakespeare performances at The Globe hundreds of years ago). They boo who they want to boo and cheer who they want to cheer. Every time a performer goes through the curtain, they can either sink or swim. The flow and timing of the wrestlers are essential for making a match believable and engaging the audience. It's fascinating to watch these performers play the audience, build up tension and time everything to get the maximum “pop” from the crowd. At its best, it runs like a violent ballet, with a beautiful harmony in the chaos.
As of this week, WWE is now exclusively on Netflix. This has put me at another crossroads. I don't have a Netflix account. I was being a deadbeat and using my parents' account, until Netflix clamped down on account sharing. So, I'm faced with a decision. Do I pay the monthly fee and continue watching my guilty pleasure or do I, once again, step away from the world of professional wrestling so that, one day, I can surely return again? If there's one thing WWE has taught me: Nothing pops a crowd more than a surprise return.
Alejandro Franco "Arlequin" ![Cinephile Panel](https://img.peliplat.com/api/resize/v1?imagePath=peliplat/default/20241118/c97256847a4fc10ffe711e4d410048e3.png&source=s3-peliplat)
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Federico De Gennaro ![Participant "Write your own sequel"](https://img.peliplat.com/api/resize/v1?imagePath=peliplat/default/20250114/3ef0fafe9bc3369da1b1ce98d305c2f8.png&source=s3-peliplat)
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