AHC: Make professional wrestling stereotypically associated with the left wing and/or progressivism.

[Alstein]

Roller derby was never the television success that Wresting was. My guess is that has more to do with it. The executives were still mostly male, and I would argue it is more the executives that set the tone.

I have to agree with those that are questioning the politicalization of the sport. My prof used to say “Correlation is not Causation”. WWE being a somewhat dirty organization, but that does not mean wrestling is inherently right, or left, wing.

Roller derby when it was on TV was half-men/half-women.

Generally wrestling tends to mirror the politics of its audience. You'd need its audience to be left-wing. When the biggest woman heel of the 90s was a Hillary expy, that says something. (and MLW kinda had an AOC-influenced character as a heel manager)

 

[Lord High Executioner]

I wonder if it has something to do with it being a female dominated endeavour.

I imagine it has more to do with it not being literally rooted in carny shit like professional wrestling,
and also with it having been been virtually gone, so the grassroots revival was more or less
untainted by anything the sports entertainment wing did.
And possibly also because the reporting of the current version hasn't gone much deeper than
"Women Doing Things, Which Is Awesome" yet.

Of on a tangent, I seem to recall there were, possibly still are, Christian feds that as described
sounded like basically mystery plays (e.g. defeating icarnations of various sins).

 

[The Lethargic Lett]

The first thing that comes to mind for me is the wrestler Sputnik Monroe. Monroe began his career in Alabama and Tennessee in the late 1950s, although he continued to wrestle into the late 1980s. When his career began, his "villainous" heel gimmick was that he was in favour of racial integration.

 

[Brady Kj]

I don't think you can possibly make professional wrestling "clean", but you can make it "liberal", or at least perceived as "liberal" like most of the entertainment industry.
If managers and the people who write the stories aren't outright racist, that would make it less of a sport for conservative viewers. Unionizing would help too. So would famous wrestlers who use their fame as a platform for antiwar protest, or speaking out for the rights of minotirities. But I think the biggest and easiest way to get it associated with liberals, without having to actually be liberal, would be if professional wrestling specifically tried to get gay viewers. But I think in order for this the happen, professional wrestling would have to be obscure and desperate for viewers in the 1980s or later.

 

[marathag]

I don't think you can possibly make professional wrestling "clean", but you can make it "liberal", or at least perceived as "liberal" like most of the entertainment industry.
If managers and the people who write the stories aren't outright racist, that would make it less of a sport for conservative viewers. Unionizing would help too. So would famous wrestlers who use their fame as a platform for antiwar protest, or speaking out for the rights of minotirities. But I think the biggest and easiest way to get it associated with liberals, without having to actually be liberal, would be if professional wrestling specifically tried to get gay viewers. But I think in order for this the happen, professional wrestling would have to be obscure and desperate for viewers in the 1980s or later.

Pro Wrestling has been 'Hillbilly Opera' since its Golden Age start after WWII, with Joe Sixpack taking his kids for a basic morality play, with Forearm Smashes and Pin of eventual Good triumphing over Bad, Gorilla Monsoon winning over Killer Kowalski, The Crusher over Mad Dog Vachon.

In the '60s, the Anti-War Hippy would be a Heel, not a Face.
The idea is to put Butts in Seats, and for the time that Wrestling was really popular, before the '90s, that meant the Silents or the Greatest Generation paying for tickets.
They stop paying, the show dies.

Being pro-Gay in that period would not really work, except in the Gorgeous George way, who just played up being an effeminate wrestler (but not gay, his Wife was Ringside)
his shtick was getting people outraged over this ease in beating the Face in most matches, flamboyantly.
Outrage sold seats, to be there the time he would get beat, and get his long hair shaved off.

 

[Alstein]

I imagine it has more to do with it not being literally rooted in carny shit like professional wrestling,
and also with it having been been virtually gone, so the grassroots revival was more or less
untainted by anything the sports entertainment wing did.
And possibly also because the reporting of the current version hasn't gone much deeper than
"Women Doing Things, Which Is Awesome" yet.

Of on a tangent, I seem to recall there were, possibly still are, Christian feds that as described
sounded like basically mystery plays (e.g. defeating icarnations of various sins).

That's basically what American-style wrestling is, it's morality plays. It's just not all of it is Christian. European style was based more along the lines of a sporting contest, whereas Japan, particularly NJPW, often has a shonen anime feel.

QT Marshall of AEW fame was running a Trump gimmick in local indies here for a bit, depending on the area, the stories told would make him a heel, or usually a (face). It was kinda a ripoff of the Progressive Liberal gimmick in Virginia (and there was some heat between the two of them)

In the 70s and 80s, there was a wrestler with a gay gimmick named Adrian Street who would occasionally be a face.

 

[Sam R.]

Generally wrestling tends to mirror the politics of its audience. You'd need its audience to be left-wing. When the biggest woman heel of the 90s was a Hillary expy, that says something.

The first thing that comes to mind for me is the wrestler Sputnik Monroe. Monroe began his career in Alabama and Tennessee in the late 1950s, although he continued to wrestle into the late 1980s. When his career began, his "villainous" heel gimmick was that he was in favour of racial integration.

I don't think you can possibly make professional wrestling "clean", but you can make it "liberal", or at least perceived as "liberal" like most of the entertainment industry.

I'm taking this seriously, because Professional Wrestling and Class War are serious business. With the exception of the post discussing assassinating a president people have not nearly gone far enough. Most posts here have restricted themselves to liberalism. Can we get a liberal Wrestling culture? Easily. Wrestling is bourgeois entertainment and if the 1930s go differently then controlling the south through Liberalism may develop. And if the South is controlled by liberalism, then liberalism will be force fed by minor bourgeois entertainment promotors because they are liberals, and because liberalism sells. The same metric holds for why alternate wrestling set-ups sell different story lines: the generations of workers they cater to (as the alternative) demand different stories because they are controlled by different political-cultural-economic relations, and because only owners who will cater to these clusters of needs and meanings will succeed in recruiting working class viewers.

Wrestling is the ballet of a certain segment of the proletariat.

You are not going to see ballet story lines which the haute-bourgeois disagree with too deeply. They may set up critiques of certain moralities, or even of certain aesthetics, but you are not going to see a ballet [re-enacted] where the ballerina walks into the audience and shoots the president. (The Dancer Upstairs 2002). Such avante-garde works of art are forbidden, if only by the lack of a second willing president after the twist is revealed.

You are not going to see wrestling story lines which the segment of the proletariat attracted to a promotion disagree with too deeply. They will set up heels. They will set up heat. But you are not going to see Daniel Bryan unionise the locker room and hang Vince McMahon with the guts of Rupert Murdoch in a ladder match. If that story line is needed then it'll be kayfabe.

So we've got three viable options:

1) Change the politics of the segment of workers mainstream wrestling caters to
2) Change the segment of workers mainstream wrestling caters to
3) Change how wrestling caters to politics

Option 3 is really unlikely. Politics gets heat. Because working class life is political. For want of a better term the "Southern US right-wing worker political imaginary" exists because it lets people survive capitalism. That's going to exist unless we go down option 1. Wrestling is a commercial sport. Wrestling has to generate heat. Politics is heat. But the politics of the class at rest is one which draws the blanket up over the head while the nasty business of production is happening. HHH is a rich play boy. VMM is an evil boss. Sure, these story lines make life down the plant surviveable. They make life without a plant in a trailer survivable. And that discourages story lines which make life unsurvivable. Like putting everything on the line over a health and safety complaint. Instead you get the health and safety complaints outstanding. Until a man shoots his partner because his friend was murdered by the boss. And even those storylines have been incorporated by working class viewers into their reception of wrestling. Everyone remembers the Curtain Call Everyone knows that certain storylines won't be told. Kayfabe might be more complex today. Working four jobs none of which actually exist is more complex today. Everyone knows what happens to you when you step out of line, even if the line is different to 1996.

Option 2 already exists. But it is a (comparative) commercial failure. Smarks, Austin Texas, labour aristocrats with loggers beards. Even with brilliant storytelling like Hardy or Wyatt, the performers are constrained, cap in hand, to the network. You can do your best work outside, but, at the end of the day, you have to pay the rent. Trying to change wrestling in its past will come over a similar problem. When your problems are light and you've got plenty to eat you watch football or other similar staged entertainment where the outcome is fixed before the match. When your problems are heavy and your living is marginal you seek out the depths of the morality play, where the sport is the real business of survival in the face of unemployment or the bossman. Now we could produce an economic disaster on the level that the North supports wrestling from a more unionised perspective. Given that I am an evil bastard I'd put a Daniel DeLeonist United States which plunges the US into a nomenklatura-capitalist stagnancy and recession as its core. Set up the camps in Utah. If you want to do it 30 years later use James P. Cannon. That'd give you a northern industrial "left" opposition wrestling story telling. That'd give you Wrestlers cleverly using face/heel switches and irony in their story telling to critique the ruling class. That'd give you revolutionary working class politics in wrestling.

Option 1 is perhaps the most difficult. Union density in wrestling heartlands is mediocre. Transforming working class politics from within is really difficult. The real politics of workers, not who they support in elections, but how they organise and what kind of attitude they have towards elections, is about surviving a continuous horror. Workers aren't stupid, they support dickheads like Ronald Reagan, pure media beat-up, because the story line makes sense. They know that the matches are fixed, and the outcomes are fixed, but voting for Reagan is *interesting* because of the story line it sets in motion. Transforming wrestling fans politics from being smarks into actually believing that they can win a match and it isn't fixed is difficult. It is even more difficult to do this without a general revolution in the United States. The South works like it does for a reason, and it is damn hard to change. Breaking the undercapitalisation, elemental racism, small crony capitalism, agricultural capitalism and sedate petit-bourgeois towns is a fairly big thing. Doing so while politicised racism is the main way to divide the labour movement is harder. Given the heightened relative poverty already existing in the South, just chucking large scale economic deprivation at the region and hoping to get a union won't work. You actually need growth and hope.

It isn't Vince McMahon. You can get WCW and WCW is still as horrifically anti-worker as WWE. Changing the paint on the electoral platform from red to blue won't get you a labour-movement Wrestling. It'll get you a different flavour of shit. Wrestling fans know this: it is written into the storylines at basic levels. The fundamental "transformative" of the face/heel turn is precisely this storyline: that if you change the face the system remains the same. Getting a blue major wrestling federation is pathetically simple. Getting a labourite or social democratic one is marginally more difficult. Getting a proletarian one, outside of a social revolution, is impossible; because wrestling's fundamental story is about how to survive capitalism, and while class-consciousness might be a lottery ticket gamble, the costs of maintaining it outside of revolutionary situations are very, very, very high.

yours,
Sam R.

 

[herkles]

Perhaps a good way would be if professional wrestling meant sports wrestling, so Greco-Roman and freestyle. Would this help at all?

 

[marathag]

Perhaps a good way would be if professional wrestling meant sports wrestling, so Greco-Roman and freestyle. Would this help at all?

Old school Pro-wresting used to have a lot more actual wrestling, holds, pins, all that, Hour long matches, best of three Falls.

That could lead to a chant from the crowd rarely heard since the Attitude Era

'Boooring. Boooring' or 'This is Boring'

All the conferences by the late '70s were switching to higher intensity moves and single Fall matches to keeps things going at a faster pace

Ric Flair and Ricky 'The Dragon' Steamboat could keep an hour long match interesting, a lot of the other guys couldn't

There's a reason that Collegiate wrestling time limit is 3 minutes.

 

[Sriyam Swastik]

I've never seen wrestling being casted as "Conservative" or "Liberal" (unless its about the redneck vibes some of them give, but still). Or are you implying that Sexual Assault is inherently Conservative? Isn't that the opposite of Conservative morals?

 

[Lord High Executioner]

That's basically what American-style wrestling is, it's morality plays.

You missed the point. I was thinking of groups like (*googles lazily*)
Christian Wrestling Federation (although in their own words it comes
across as less blatant than the previously seen second-to-third hand
summaries), not the basic Good Guy overcomes obstacles and beats Bad Guy.

I'm pretty sure Exotic Adrian Street was meant to be at least pansexual
(and I guess his occasional face turns might be partially based in the bit
where whenever actual tough guys in wrestling is discussed by people
in the know, he's one of the first names mentioned).

 

[Meordal]

I will be slightly disgressing after my long #14 post in order to explain how pro-wrestling could and often was progressive before WWE. I won’t speak about Sputnik Monroe who unfortunately hasn’t been introduced into the Hall of Fame yet and really should be, This man was a hero. I prefer to show you an extract of another famous wrestler who had the talent and a perfect gimmick to connect with his fans and with a specific type of fans.

One of his promo

"First of all, I would to thank the many, many fans throughout this country that wrote cards and letters to Dusty Rhodes, The American Dream, while I was down. Secondly, I want to thank Jim Crockett Promotions for waitin’ and takin’ the time ‘cause I know how important it was, Starrcade '85 it is to the wrestling fans, it is to Jim Crockett promotions, and Dusty Rhodes The American Dream. With that wait, I got what I wanted, Ric Flair the World's Heavyweight Champion. I don’t have to say a whole lot more about the way I feel about Ric Flair; no respect, no honor. There is no honor amongst thieves in the first place.He put hard times on Dusty Rhodes and his family. You don’t know what hard times are, daddy. Hard times are when the textile workers around this country are out of work, they got four or five kids and can’t pay their wages, can’t buy their food. Hard times are when the auto workers are out of work and they tell ‘em to go home. And hard times are when a man has worked at a job for thirty years, thirty years, and they give him a watch, kick him in the butt and say "hey a computer took your place, daddy", that's hard times! That's hard times! And Ric Flair you put hard times on this country by takin’ Dusty Rhodes out, that's hard times. And we all had hard times together, and I admit, I don’t look like the athlete of the day supposed to look. My belly's just a lil’ big, my heiny's a lil’ big, but brother, I am bad. And they know I’m bad.There were two bad people… One was John Wayne and he's dead brother, and the other's right here. Nature Boy Ric Flair, the World's Heavyweight title belongs to these people. I’mma reach out right now, I want you at home to know my hand is touchin’ your hand for the gathering of the biggest body of people in this country, in this universe, all over the world now, reachin’ out because the love that was given me and this time I will repay you now. Because I will be the next World's Heavyweight Champion of this hard time blues. Dusty Rhodes tour, ‘85.And Ric Flair, Nature Boy… Let me leave you with this. One way to hurt Ric Flair, is to take what he cherishes more than anything in the world and that's the World's Heavyweight title. I’m gon’ take it, I been there twice. This time when I take it daddy, I’m gon’ take it for you. Let's gather for it. Don’t let me down now, ‘cause I came back for you, for that man upstairs that died 10-12 years ago and never got the opportunity to see a real World's Champion. And I’m proud of you, thank God I have you, and I love you. Love y’a

Of course, you guessed it it’s Dusty Rhodes’ Hard Times promo.

Virgil Runnels Jr., made a visceral connection with the common man that became the core of his on-screen character throughout nearly four decades inside the squared circle. The "son of a plumber," Dusty Rhodes played to the blue collar/working class more so than almost any other pro wrestler. Dusty would often compare his struggles against the NWA world champion to the struggles of middle America. His blue collar wrestler gimmick was created for Mid-Atlantic Wrestling (Jim Crockett Productions), the ancestor of WCW. A few posters explained that pro-wrestling promotions do cater to their fanbases. Mid-Atlantic Wrestling had a blue collar audience, like many other promotions. If WCW survived, I can imagine them turning towards blue collar Americans.

On racism, in 1992, Ron Simmons became the first unquestionable black champion of a major nationally televised wrestling promotion when he beat Vader for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. No cartoony costume, no Nation of Domination loosely based on white perceptions of the Nation of Islam and the Black Panther Party as he later got in WWE.

It is interesting to note, that Booker T also had five different reigns as WCW World Heavyweight Champion after him, you should compare that with WWE and how they regularly portray African Americans or foreigners.

There always was a segregation of wrestling fans along political lines. Unfortunately, there isn’t any progressive federation able to compete with WWE, which is why pro-wrestling has such a bad political reputation nowadays.

If WCW survived we could have seen a polarization between WWE and WCW with WCW catering to the opposite political spectrum.

 

[Neoteros]

Snip

Damn, that was cool. No wonder Vince hates his family so much.

 

[marathag]

A few posters explained that pro-wrestling promotions do cater to their fanbases. Mid-Atlantic Wrestling had a blue collar audience.

So did upper Midwest with the AWA
'The Crusher, the Wrestler that made Milwaukee famous' was their Blue collar entry decades before Steve Austin did much of the same for the WWF

 

[Alstein]

On racism, in 1992, Ron Simmons became the first unquestionable black champion of a major nationally televised wrestling promotion when he beat Vader for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. No cartoony costume, no Nation of Domination loosely based on white perceptions of the Nation of Islam and the Black Panther Party as he later got in WWE.

It is interesting to note, that Booker T also had five different reigns as WCW World Heavyweight Champion after him, you should compare that with WWE and how they regularly portray African Americans.

Ron Simmons had the benefit of BIll Watts, who despite his racism, was big on realism, and felt like legitimate black athletes would make great champions because "that's how it is in sports". Bill Watts also had the Junkyard Dog as his main attraction for years, despite JYD having very little actual wrestling skill.

I think we're actually seeing a segregation of wrestling fans along political lines some today even. Conservatives tend to like WWE, leftists tend to go for the alternatives.

 

[Neoteros]

Ron Simmons had the benefit of BIll Watts, who despite his racism, was big on realism, and felt like legitimate black athletes would make great champions because "that's how it is in sports". Bill Watts also had the Junkyard Dog as his main attraction for years, despite JYD having very little actual wrestling skill.

I think we're actually seeing a segregation of wrestling fans along political lines some today even. Conservatives tend to like WWE, leftists tend to go for the alternatives.

AEW in particular seems to be targeting a younger and, if not "progressive", at least "not conservative" demographic, but that might just be due to Kenny Omega's own personal preferences - the dude is, after all, a major weeb.

Tellingly, AEW employs a transgender athlete (Nyla Rose) but, I've been watching their episodes and that fact about her hasn't been mentioned at all, at least in the episodes I've watched already. Compare and contrast Jim Cornette's fantasy booking of AEW, when he suggested they play that up for heel heat. The same guy can barely stand the thought of AEW existing at all, and despises cosplayers and gamers almost as much as Vince Russo - Kenny is both, of course.

After the recent revelations about Cornette's business practices and sex life, the AEW gang probably got to laugh last - the assholes in their midst have been dealt with quite swiftly, too.

But even they needed a billionaire to back them, despite having been set up by, basically, the best the indies had to offer.

 

[Alstein]

NJPW draws a similar crowd in the US as well, at least from the shows I've attended of theirs. NJPW I think doesn't realize how they draw in the US though, which has led to some mistakes on their part.

There's a lot of overlap between NJPW and AEW fans, despite NJPW disliking AEW. Cornette is just out of touch- he's not actively right-wing (he doesn't like the right-wing fans he's getting now). Cornette said his problem with the Progressive LIberal gimmick is that it should be a face not a heel for example.

 

[CultBoy]

Cornette is one of those figures the more I learn the less I like him. AEW is doing well I'm british rightish of centre and it's the only wrestling program I bother to watch anymore.

Probably helps I'm as bigger nerd as Kenny Omega so I get all the refrences they do!

 

[Neoteros]

NJPW draws a similar crowd in the US as well, at least from the shows I've attended of theirs. NJPW I think doesn't realize how they draw in the US though, which has led to some mistakes on their part.

There's a lot of overlap between NJPW and AEW fans, despite NJPW disliking AEW. Cornette is just out of touch- he's not actively right-wing (he doesn't like the right-wing fans he's getting now). Cornette said his problem with the Progressive LIberal gimmick is that it should be a face not a heel for example.

To be honest, Japanese companies tend to be kind of insular, whatever they specialize in - it's one of the reasons why K-Pop was able to make it big in the West while J-Pop actually lost popularity even among weeaboos: despite all their mistakes (up to and including some very racist and/or sexist shit) K-Pop companies were/are more than willing to exploit new media for all its worth and take risks in the name of profit, while J-Pop companies still think we're in 1999.

Like, Stardom seems to be by far the most gaijin-friendly wrestling promotion in Japan (for more or less the same reasons why Riho gets cheered like crazy whenever she's on AEW) but even them, I had to give up on checking them out because finding anything about them online is either very expensive or very hard. I also find it darkly amusing how Japan's got the best women's wrestling in the world, despite all its gender-related issues, while the relatively more egalitarian West lagged behind until just a few years ago, and all because of the nefarious influence of just two people - namely, Mildred Burke's shite husband and the even more shite Fabulous Moolah who, unsuprisingly, got along quite well with fellow trash human being Vince McMahon.

The AWA had some good women's wrestling back then (if only because even their Western talent, such as Madusa, trained in Japan) but as soon as Vince took over, it was over for them. And women's wrestling outright got banned in Britain until the 1980s, too.

 

[Mister Abbadon]

If it instead of becoming more scripted it became more of an actual sport following Greco-Roman competition rather than ridiculous personalities in morality plays it would a least be politically neutral with some athletes being liberal and others being conservative.

Probably wouldn't be as popular but still.