The Kayfabe

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“The worst sound in our business is silence. That means they don't care.”

–Vince McMahon

Over the past week I took the time to watch the Netflix limited series Mr. McMahon. Now I must confess that professional wrestling, or more specifically wrestling entertainment, was a huge part of my childhood growing up. 

In the early years of my childhood it wasn’t unusual for me to be visiting a friend for a sleepover, or to have a friend visiting me, only to wake up on Saturday mornings to click on the TV to watch Pro Wrestling, or as they used to say here in the South…Wrassling. 

Being a GenXer looking back now I’m convinced that the era of Pro Wrestling served to be a real cultural spearhead that engaged the kids of my generation in a way that not many other forms of entertainment could manage to do. 

Why do I say this? 

I say this because the thing that made Pro Wrestling so effective was the storylines. I mean aside from the amazing athleticism and competition that was involved with the sport, it was the development of the characters, the connection those characters had with their audience, and the stories that they told that captivated the audiences which consisted of kids like myself, my brother, and most all of my friends. 

Within those storylines my generation got to witness many superstars in Pro Wrestling that appealed to the age old narrative of the good guy versus the bad guy with guys such as Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair that became these larger than life figures that made the entertainment from the sport of Pro Wrestling most impactful. 

Now if you’re in any way familiar with this then you know exactly what I’m talking about. However, it’s also a known fact that as my generation got older the sport of Pro Wrestling also changed in order to appeal to different age demographics and as a result there were times when those storylines were both entertaining and controversial. 

It’s safe to say that there were times when the storylines were no longer aimed towards appealing to the same age demographic of kids, but rather aimed to appeal to teenage and college aged men as the sport progressed through its storylines from the 1980s and into the late 1990s.  

Now I want to be clear about something here because I don’t want this message to get lost in my analysis of why I am choosing to discuss this sport in this episode, or the controversial personalities involved in it, especially concerning Vince McMahon himself. 

I am aware that Vince McMahon is a controversial figure and currently had to step away from the sport due to certain sexual allegations coming from people that are supposedly attached to the sport. I’m not here to pass judgment on Vince, or to act like I know what it is exactly that he did or didn’t do in terms of any potential crime that may, or may have not been committed. 

However, I will credit Vince McMahon for having at one time created one of the greatest forms of entertainment that I’ve ever experienced as a kid growing up in the 1980s and I’m sure there’s a lot of you in my audience that would agree. 

On that note, there’s another more significant reason I chose to watch this Netflix special to begin with. I was recently doing some thinking and for some strange reason there were some things that I had remembered seeing in Pro Wrestling that I felt drew some stark parallels between that sport and all the craziness we’re currently seeing in the world right now.

Blurring The Lines of Reality

Out of respect for you just in case you do have an interest in seeing the Mr. McMahon limited series I don’t want to give away too much as I really just want to take the opportuni