There is no shortage of good programming about professional wrestling. That seems a little ironic because the actual programming that professional wrestling puts out is not meant to be taken seriously. Very serious things happen to professional wrestlers, but it only gets formally communicated to the audience if it serves the story....and there are many parts of that story that are not at all serious. The line between fiction and reality is very blurred and so there are times when something goes horribly wrong that the audience thinks it's part of the show. And there are times when you're told something horrible has happened, and you might even witness it happening, and it is all scripted. In many ways, it served as a prototype for how politics looks today. Kayfabe is the part of wrestling that is only supposed to be discussed backstage. The audience isn't supposed to be in on anything that is kayfabe. There is a lot of kayfabe in politics where you'll find that people who behave like mortal enemies on television are actually working together behind the scenes, but they have to sell their hatred of the other party to their home constituency. I'm going to spend a few paragraphs pointing out how pro-wrestling isn't really any different than anything else that is respected in society, and try to explore the reason why it doesn't get any respect...at least not the typical kind.
Gen-Xers grew up in a golden age of pro-wrestling on television, and many of the larger than life characters that we spent our Saturday mornings, Monday evenings, and occasional Saturday late nights following are the subject of many good documentaries now. Dark Side of the Ring is a series that deep dives into some of the more interesting and controversial things that took place behind the scenes. 350 Days is an in-depth foray into the life of a pro-wrestler that provides great insight into what this type of career asks of its biggest performers. Also worthy of mention is Nature Boy, which is a profile of the one of a kind Ric Flair through ESPN's excellent 30 For 30 medium.
For fiction, one of the best dramas of the late aughts is The Wrestler (2008), which is ultimately a story about the humanity of professional wrestlers told through one of the most authentic performances ever delivered by a mostly unheralded Mickey Rourke. What The Wrestler does as a movie is pretty incredible. First it rehabilitated Rourke's career, after some turmoil in his personal life and a DUI arrest. Second, it was a very honest portrayal of the humanity behind the larger than life personalities that trash talk and throw each other around for a living. Pro wrestlers including Rowdy Roddy Piper were reported to have been very emotionally impacted by the movie and many of them commented on how Rourke's character became very real for them. They consider Rourke and his character, Randy "The Ram" Robinson a member of their fraternity and describe Rourke as somebody who "gets it." Third, it uses the incredible talents of Marissa Tomei to make the connection plain as day that Tomei's portrayal of "Cassidy" (an exotic dancer whose real name is Pam) is shining a spot light on wrestling as the male version of exhibitionism without ever mentioning it directly. These are men who hurt each other and perform dangerous and often harmful stunts as entertainment for people who want to see violence without authentically being a part of it. Stripping is extreme sex without love, genuine affection or emotional investment, and wrestling is violence without death or serious injury. Both feed the id without any real risk on the part of the audience member. Usually.
Rourke didn't want to do The Wrestler when he first read the script. He didn't like the "fakeness" of pro-wrestling. And now we're getting into the respect factor. It's really interesting that once you press on why wrestling is not worthy of respect, you'll start to realize you're falling into a trap. Any accusation that you make about the world of pro-wrestling is actually one that no institution is impervious to. Ted Dibiase (dee-bee-yah-see) in his wrestling days went by the moniker "The Million Dollar Man" back in the late 80s and early 90s. He sold himself as an arrogant heel that treated everyone else as though they were beneath him because of his incredible wealth. In the documentary 350 days, DiBiase tells a story of being interviewed by Robin Leach for an episode of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. DiBiase was borrowing WWE owner Vince McMahon's mansion for the interview since that fit better for Leach's show than his actual very humble trailer. During a break DiBiase said to Leach "you know this isn't my house right?" To which Leach replied "don't worry, we do things like this all the time." But wrestling is fake. 10-4. While training for The Wrestler, Rourke reported that he kept hurting himself until some of the other wrestlers showed him how to take a fall and land properly. It still hurt like hell to do it, but he stopped injuring himself to the point where he had to stop. So one might say, he learned how to fake fight and make it look real. Fair enough. What do you think stuntmen do in an action movie? Action movies don't get made fun of for that. Wrestlers do. And stuntmen still get hurt, and so do wrestlers. A lot. Tune into any pro-wrestling program at any time and I guarantee you every match will feature people who are nursing some type of injury, possibly even a serious one, all while doing their best to convince the audience that they are in the best shape of their life. So what's so fake about wrestling that isn't fake anywhere else? The rivalries are just as real or fake as the ones that play out on Fox News and MSNBC. The characters are just as fake as any that you would see in the movies. The action is just as real as any stunts you would see in a circus trapeze act or a superhero movie. What's fake about wrestling? The outcome is predetermined. Ah, there the wrestlers will agree with you. But hold on a minute, how is that any different than a movie script? What else is fake? One area that I would argue to a pro-wrestler that is fake is that some moves would be downright deadly unless they were being done by professionals who wanted to make sure they didn't do significant harm to a colleague. If a move like a pile driver were actually what it is supposed to look like it is, nobody would ever walk away after being the recipient of one.
I'm not saying that being on the receiving end of it even when done correctly is pleasant, but if what was being portrayed was real, there would be millions of stories of wrestlers that died or were paralyzed permanently after receiving their first pile driver. So yeah, consider the pile driver to be the Schrodinger's Cat of sports entertainment- it is both real and fake at the same time in that it takes incredible strength, skill, courage, trust and pain tolerance to participate in it, and yet the victim's head and neck is not bearing the brunt of the weight of both participants being dropped on them.
So maybe you don't like the way the stories are told in pro-wrestling, or the drama that it offers isn't your cup of tea. It isn't usually mine either, although sometimes it is a guilty pleasure of mine. Still, why can't it at least get as much respect as say......The Avengers, a series of 7,534 (and counting) movies since 2008 that continue to get all kinds of respect at the box office?
In my opening post announcing the Big Empty Movie Awards, I mentioned there would be a Superhero category and that this is a genre in need of its own superhero to save the genre. I just got done watching the Snyder cut of Justice League and found myself saying that watching modern superhero movies is like watching professional wrestling....there's a lot of incredibly dramatic violent fighting going on where nobody gets hurt the way somebody would get hurt if this were to really happen. Consider the Superhero category to be kicked off.
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