September 20, 2023 • 45 mins
Sorry for Abraham's poor mic quality this episode! It'll be back to normal next time. Why do people become pro wrestlers? Why do people watch professional wrestling? This semi-ancient/semi-recent theatre is underrated for the real risk and exploitation of the performers. But it ropes people in with it's narrative story, athletic performances, and incredible stunts. Listen in for the deep dive into the psychology of professional wrestling.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:03):
You're listening to Why we Do whatwe Do? Welcome to Why We Do
what we Do. I'm your host, Abri, but I'm roast Jane.
Oh dude, that's so much fun. You know the views the mus struck
(00:26):
me in the moment or what dopsychology podcast? Sometimes we're a fighting podcasts
as it were. Today we talkedabout all the things that people do and
why they do them and all thatsort of fun stuff and yeah, that's
us. Yeah, and today we'retalking about professional wrestling. So as a
child of the nineties, I grewup with the wrestling boom that was,
you know, the carry over fromthe eighties and all the big stars and
(00:48):
all that and uh and then intothe nineties with the clash between w c
W and WWF and all that funstuff. And so we're gonna talk about
all that stuff a little bit.But yeah, we're talking about kind of
why people even like this thing whenthey know it's stage. Yeah, what
is it? Why is it?Why is it? Again? I guess
what do you? What is it? When was it? Why is it?
(01:11):
And why do they? Great ifyou're listening to this on the day
that it publishes, I mean,first of all, good on you for
staying so up. Today's Yeah,podcast free. That is impressive. Congratulations
on that. If that's the case, then let us join together and celebrating
that. It is National case ODay. Yes, and for our vegan
friends, hopefully your case so it'svegan. It's a National Care for Kids
(01:34):
Day, which is a good generalrule. Yeah, yeah, I think
we can. We can all agreeon that. National Crime and Intelligence Analyst
Appreciation Day to all those black opspeople out there, thank you, thank
you, yes, thank you tomy FBI agent. It's also National fried
Rice Day. Good day, likethat National punch Day, So get your
fist ready. I was gonna sayit's very apt for this episode. It
(01:59):
is also out for this episode NationalGibberish Day, because a lot of times
when you see these guys talk notintelligible at all. Yeah, they all
sound like Sylvester still love. Yeah. This is Adopt a Less Adoptable Pet
Week. And by that we donot mean go into a zoo and take
an animal. No, we meangoing to an animal shelter where they're animals
(02:19):
that are having trouble being adopted andgive them a home. Like older adopt
all pets and animals with disabilities andstuff like that. Please go adopt them.
Yeah. Yeah, holmes they needlove, they need holmes, they
need love. I have a friendwho adopted a chihuahua that was missing an
eye and named it the Professor.It was great, huge. So there
was the Professor and Batman and misterBatman. I'm sorry, mister Batman.
They live together. That person's aBCBA. Now it's also National Astronomy Week.
(02:45):
Hey, I love that. Uhhuh, International Clean Hands Week.
I'm go ahead and make that internationalClean's Hands decade. Let's go ahead and
keep those hands clean. Yeah,especially with everything going on. Yes,
but at least for now, theofficial holiday is week. Let's all work
together to make it century. Yeah, wash your hands. It's also National
Farm and Ranch Safety and Health Week, so big fan of that for people
(03:07):
who are working on farms and ranchesto stay safe. Yeah, and thank
you all for keeping us alive.Yeah, we would like to keep you
alive. Yes, speaking of whichis National go Kart Week, so hell
yeah, go out there and dothe go kart thing. Oh love go
carts so much fun that they reallyare many NASCAR for children or grown ups.
We love it. Yeah, big, big go kart advocates over here.
(03:30):
Why we deal what we deal.But as we said, we're talking
about fiction and play acting today,and that is to say, we're going
to find out what Billy Corgan murder, samurai swords, and panda bears I'll
have in common. It's a wildride. I mean, I think most
people know professional wrestling is in itselfa ridiculous thing, but it gets a
(03:52):
little bit wilder. So let's talkabout what we are talking about. We're
not talking about wrestling in terms oflike greco roman wrestling or grappling or anything
like that. We're time about professionalwrestling. And professional wrestling is a type
of entertainment involving wrestling matches whose progressand outcome are planned in advance, typically
between performers and established character roles.So it's usually a stage thing. The
(04:13):
match itself might have some improvisation init, they might have some things that
go on in it, but initself, the outcome is usually predetermined.
And that is the definition of professionalwrestling. Yeah, it's a stage play
where the theme of the play ofevery play is gratuitous violence, yes,
but for fun. While the historyof wrestling and grappling sports is very rich.
(04:34):
Its earliest recorded moment was found inancient Mesopotamia, dating back till around
three thousand BC. But we're notactually talking about that, as we said,
we're talking more of the show thewrestling entertainment world. Yes, and
professional wrestling found its start in theearly eighteen hundreds in Western Europe and the
United Kingdom. Is a form ofentertainment and showmanship, so it was basically
(04:55):
set up as a way to entertainfolks in their communities. Now, some
of you may, even if you'renot very familiar with the world of professional
wrestling, may have heard that thereare all these fun names for professional wrestal
wrestlers, like the Undertaker and suchand things of that nature, the Ultimate
Warrior exactly. Now, these thisis a long standing tradition because some early
wrestlers performed under such names as HerculeanFlower, Edward the Steel Eater, Gustav
(05:21):
Devon, Jon the bone Wrecker,etc. They get that right, okay,
And in some instances they would challengemembers of the public to see if
they could knock them down for money. Which also, there's probably something we
should do something on like like carneyssometimes and like the carnivalis freak show things.
We're about to Yeah, we're gonnaget Yeah, We're we're gonna do
(05:46):
We're gonna do some Carney dives realreal quick. So sometime in eighteen forty
eight, professional wrestling saw its debutin the Circus. Jehan Ex Broyat established
what they called flat hand wrestling aspart of the circus troop in what would
be described as a performance art.So this flat hand wrestling, what we
know today is wrestling kind of likesome of the evolution of it started as
(06:08):
this idea of flat hand wrestling,not the greco Roman wrestling, as a
performance art within the circus. Okay, so why is this different? Well
because during some of these acts,professional wrestlers professional in this case meaning it's
their job, would work with othermembers of the troop to identify quote unquote
dumb oafs and patrons who were easilyduped into other carnival games, which obviously
(06:29):
is a hallmark of that sort ofindustry. They would challenge patrons of the
carnival to try to pin the wrestler, only for the wrestler to quickly pin
that person and take their money.So got some hoodwinking going on, Yes,
now, Within the wrestling community,there is a term called mark.
We're gonna basically unpack this. Theterm mark originated from the Carnival Troop.
Members would mark or like use chalkto identify easy victims. They would mark
(06:55):
on their back or their shoulder sothat other members of the carnival could pinpoint
them and trick them into getting intothese carnival games, the Midway games and
get money from them. So theywould they would essentially be marked for victimization.
Well, that sounds like one ofthose apocryphal stories of like how a
term came to be. Yeah,you know, describing a person as a
mark. That's interesting. Yeah,that's exactly where it came from. Wow.
(07:16):
The term is now also used underthe wrestling community to describe someone who
believes that the sport is real.More about that later, as we'll get
into it. Yeah, we'll talkabout what's real and what's not and all
that fun stuff. So in theearly nineteen hundred, professional wrestling began to
gain in popularity, with some eventsselling nearly thirty thousand tickets, like the
nineteen eleven Frank Gotch George Hackenschmidt rematchat Kaminsky Park. So even in nineteen
(07:42):
eleven, they were selling thirty thousandtickets to these events. It's a lot
of people. Yeah, they're like, we can make money on this,
you guys. Let's just let's makesome money. Let's make a lot of
money. I mean, just tojust to put this in perspective, last
night, WWE had an event calledPayback and it had fourteen thousand people at
it. So like, yeah,if that tells you anything about like how
(08:05):
this is still a verily popular thing, but it's never really waned. Yeah,
all right. While there were countlessevents and wrestlers in the US and
Europe at this time, it wasn'tuntil the nineteen forties that the National Wrestling
Alliance or NWA you may have heardthe initials was born. This organization was
originally established as a committee to helpregulate wrestling and provide a quote unquote legitimacy
(08:30):
to the sport. Yep fun fact. NWA is currently owned by Billy Corgan
of the Smashing Bumpkins. So there'sour first tie in our first time.
Wow, I did not know that. That's wild. Yeah. NWA is
actually a professional wrestling organization similar toWWE. AW it's got its own titles.
It's got its own wrestlers, it'sgot its own show and stuff like
that. But it's a smaller kindof operation right now, Okay, got
(08:52):
you? Yeah, all right.Through this early period, there were quite
a few gimmick matches similar to whatyou would see today. An example of
this is Terrible Ted the wrestling Bear. He was an American black bear who
wrestled in North America between nineteen fiftiesinto the nineteen seventies. I think when
when I said the American black Bear, what you heard is a person dressed
(09:13):
as a black bear, or likesomeone who used the wrestling name black bear.
This was a actual bear, likethe animal, the four legged,
quadruped climbs up trees and eats liketo get people's trash. Bear. Yep,
yeah that's him. Another important point, he wrestled longer than so many
(09:35):
professional wrestlers actually wrestle. So twentyyears. Yeah, that's twenty years.
He was a twenty year wrestling bear. So man, oh, I mean
it's I'm telling you, it's awild time. It's a wild time.
We haven't even been doing this podcastfor twenty years yet I know this bear,
this bear has a longer wrestling careerthan we do. Also, what
a great name, Terrible, Tedthe Wrestling Bear. I mean, it
aligns so well with professional wrestling,it's so good. So around the same
(09:58):
time professional wrestling began to develop injap and in Mexico, both developing their
own unique styles of the sport.You may actually be familiar with the flying
style, like it's like high risk, like jumping off ropes and backlips and
all stuff and decorative mass that youfind of the members of the wrestling community
in South America and Mexico luchadors.Yeah, and so that's that's where that
started. And so Raymu Stereo andthose folks kind of helped bring that to
(10:20):
the United Theates a little bit moretoo. There's a lot of there's a
lot of people who are luchadors,and this started coming up around the same
time that Ted the Terrible Wrestling Bearwas around. Fun, Okay, there's
something to be said about, youknow, the animal exploitation and that sort
of thing and there, and that'swe've covered that other topics and we'll cover
that's more in the future, butfor now, understanding this is just part
of the history throughout the nineteen sixties. In nineteen seventies, the AWA and
(10:43):
WWWF are both created, which beginsthe sort of more aggressive competition and more
around territories like regional competition and nowterritories were established by the NWA and basically
governed who owned or promoted differentiation.So for instance, you had NWA in
Montana, Hollywood, and Iowa,but you also had AWA in Boston,
(11:05):
Maple Leaf Wrestling in Toronto, theWorldwide Wrestling Federation in DC in New York,
New Japan, Pro Wrestling in Tokyo, and World Championship Wrestling in Atlanta,
among many many others. There werea lot of wrestling promotions at this
time. Again, if you canmake money on it, it's a thing,
and they were yep. Oftentimes theseterritories would develop their own championship titles,
(11:28):
deal wrestlers from other territories for theirown and generally do you see a
lot of headbutting with other groups totout that they were the best of the
best, et cetera. So notI mean not terribly different from like sports
teams buying up the best players fromcompeting sports teams. You get like the
you know, the Yankees, forexample, doing that sort of thing,
right, So, yeah, verymuch like other sports. My team is
the best and I have a favoriteplayer. Then that's again very still similar
(11:52):
to what was going on here,and it makes a lot of sense.
And you just when you follow themoney, like you start seeing relatively similar
patterns emerge, right, I meanwhen you when you kind of dive into
the wrestling world, you have alike people have a favorite kind of organization
or company, they have their favoritewrestlers. Like, it's no different than
other sports. Like, it's reallylike it aligns really really well. Now.
When the World Wrestling Federation today's wwas we know it, split from
(12:16):
NWA in nineteen eighty two after Vincemcmann's takeover the organization, this began to
propel wrestling into a different kind ofentertainment stratospheres. What we started seeing at
that time was more TV appearances,more marketing, the development of more over
the top characters, Saturday morning cartoons, more merchandising. And the eighties were
really kind of absurd for wrestling.I mean, the amount of attention wrestling
(12:41):
was getting was pretty incredible for somethingthat was really when you watch it,
it's so very ridiculous. Yeah.Absolutely, When the nineties came around,
We're starting to get into slightly moremodern times. The WCWS started to begin
to gain traction and the Monday NightWars started, and this was essentially at
back and fourth for viewership for thetwo Monday night television shows for WWF and
(13:03):
WCW. If any of you rememberwhen Hulk Hogan went bad and we had
Nitro versus Raw, but if not, that was the whole thing, huh,
But he started to hear those names. I think more people of our
time are are a little bit morefamiliar. Yeah, you might be familiar
with like the nWo versus Degeneration Xand all those factions that come up and
all that. So it's a reallyfun time to watch, but it's also
(13:26):
really problematic. Popularity was taking inthe mid nineties before like all of that
kind of that rivalry started, andwrestling began to get quite a bit edgier.
And what you find is what peoplewill described as what's called the Attitude
era in the WWF, where manyof the segments on the show would show
off more riskay content in lieu ofmatches, and I'm gonna tell you right
now, it did not age well. As one example one wrestler's character.
(13:48):
His name is val Venus. Hewas a porn star who ended up leaving
porn to work in wrestling. Heend up losing a bet to a yakuza
esque type of group that was inWWF and had his penis cut off with
a Samurai sword in a segment thathappen on TV. They held his arms
and they put his penis on achopping block and they cut off with a
(14:09):
Samurai sword. That's tie into bythe way, Samurai sword. But that's
a fairly mild example of what happenedin this time period. It again,
it did not age well, allright. Also, what a ridiculous premise.
Yeah, I can understand why somepeople maybe were like, this isn't
really for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. And also he wasn't
like championship Like, he wasn't oneof the championship guys, so he was
(14:31):
like one of like the lower cardguys. Any kind of a penis,
go bigger, go home. Youknow, That's all I'm saying, you
know. And the two thousands,WWF changed its name to WWE due to
a conflict with the World Wildlife FundYEP. So for those of you who
don't know the World Wildlife Fund.It's logo is a panda bear. Oh
uha tie in number three. Ah? Yes, all right, so the
(14:54):
WWF changed its name. It alsobought WCW and things have been continuing ever
since. We also saw the developmentof Total NonStop Action Wrestling or TNA,
later changed to Impact Wrestling Lucha Underground, which was awesome according to Shane and
All Elite Wrestling or a EW.And not to say that I disagree,
I just am not familiar with it. Yeah. Yeah, Lucha Underground basically
(15:16):
started because like the storyline, andthis is something that happens in wrestling,
these really ridiculous storylines, but basically, something supernatural happens. They break into
an Aztec temple and there's a wrestlinggroup there, and that's what the entire
show is based on. It's funwhen you get into how ardull this is
but wow, the question that comesup often is why do people watch it
and why do these wrestlers do it? And I really want to unpack that.
(15:37):
But but first some ads. Okay, so we talked a little bit
about the when the wrestling, andwe have talked I think a little bit
about why the wrestling mostly in theterms of the financial part of it.
(15:58):
But now though, really but thewhy but why wrestling? Yes? So
one of the major criticisms of wrestlingis that wrestling is fake since the outcome
has always planned. But there's ahuge amount of athleticism that goes into being
able to keep up with a match. I mean, when you watch these
guys perform, they are incredible athletes. Even if what they're doing in stage,
they have to be in really goodshape to make this happen. Yeah,
(16:22):
they train like crazy. Regular workoutsinclude extreme amount of cardio, high
intensity interval or hit training, strengthtraining, among other things. Beginner's classes
may include a twelve week program thatteaches you how to fall, bounce off
ropes, communicate with your wrestling partner, call matches, etc. Of course,
this isn't the end of your training. An ongoing practice to develop your
(16:44):
character speak on a microphone that islike cut promos produced matches are also all
part of the process. There.It's a huge training thing. This is
probably not the best analogy to make, but when Walking Dead was on,
they had like actors who are goingto be extra zombies had to go to
like a zombie boot camp, trainhow to be zombies. That sounds like
(17:04):
there's kind of a similar thing,Like it's a very specific set of skills
that's needed to pull this off thatthey sort of had. They had like
pro wrestling camp basically. Really,I mean and honestly, I have a
friend who is, like, he'sa wrestler. He does it on the
side, and he that the amountof training he had to go through.
He had to go through like threestraight months of training as a wrestler to
(17:26):
be before he could ever be inthe ring with somebody. And that was
to perform at like house shows whereyou had to first of all confirm that
you were trained, but also youdidn't get paid anything. And we'll talk
and we'll talk more about that later. The ridiculous pay for this. Yeah,
So many wrestlers, while incredibly athletic, face life threatening injuries as a
(17:47):
result of performing these planned matches.Stone Cold Steve Auston famously broke his neck
during a match with Owen Hart whena pile driver, which is a move
that basically like drops you on yourhead onto a matt The pile driver went
wrong and owen Hart broke it,broke Stone ste Boston's deck. He was
paralyzed for a period of time andstunt Cold Sea Boston being probably the most
famous wrestler besides while COVID. Right, yeah, I think so. Maybe
you know John Sten is getting upthere, John is up there too.
(18:10):
Yeah, yeah, yeah exactly.But yeah, broken necks and limb I
mean, this is when you're doingstunt work, there is inherent danger.
That's why they oftentimes hire stunt actorsto do those things for movies. Yes,
because those people who are trained todo that. But nevertheless, and
because of that danger, you havebroken necks and limbs, ligament and muscle
tears, concussions. These are allvery common in the wrestling community, even
(18:33):
with these planned performances. But whywell, as we said, professional wrestlers
are basically trained to be stunt people, but at a much more extreme level.
I mean, for one thing,where some person may only film a
few movies a year, some wrestlerswill work every night for months or even
sometimes years on end. They're doinglive performances where they don't have the luxury
(18:53):
of special effects where you can obscurepart of what happened during a violent stunt,
so that someone can and land ona crash pad where they get they
have a wire that pulls them outof the way of something right where there's
green screen and CGI they're like,so there there's stunts that are more sometimes
athletic than they are inherently dangerous.There are obviously plenty of very dangerous stunts
(19:14):
that they pull off in movies,right, But these these wrestlers, like
everything they're doing has to be liveand on the spot, stunts that they're
doing with very little in the wayof additional infrastructure. It basically just comes
down to planning, right. Sothere's a lot of injuries have happened,
and the wrestling rings that they fallon are a very small layer of foam
and plywood. That's really all they'refalling on over and over and over again
(19:37):
for fifteen thirty forty minutes at atime. So it's not like one stunt
and you're done and you can moveon from it. It is consistently a
workout every night falling, and theylearn how to fall, You learn how
to fall on classes. But aright, it's really hard on your body.
People don't realize how hard it ison your body. It's a painful
spot, absolutely, yeah, Andyou think that that would mean you are
(20:00):
you are compensated sufficiently to make itall worth it, And we'll get to
that in a little bit. Yeah, and you are not. Now,
some reports do indicate the professional wrestlershave less of a chance to become a
contracted WWE wrestler than you would havebecoming an Olympian. So let me let
me say this a different way.You are more likely to be an Olympian
than you are to be a professionalwrestler in WWE. Wow, isn't that
(20:22):
wild? That is wild? Thatis surprising. See, it is like
that this is a thing you dobecause you can't do other real sports,
and it's it's actually not the case. It's it's really opposite, the opposite.
You're more likely to do a realsport and get famous and like win
money than you would to be aprofessional wrestler. All right, so you're
listening to this. We're hearing abouttheir injuries. We're hearing about how much
work it is, We're hearing abouthow difficult it is to break into this.
(20:45):
Why do people even do this?Sounds like it hurts a lot.
Well, there are a few reasons. One of the first ones I think
that jumps out to most people isfame, even though it's unlikely. There
are a few wrestlers who have gottenvery famous from their professional wrestling career.
One of the ones we just mentionedDwayne the Rock, Johnson, John Cena,
Dave Batista. All of these arehuge mega celebrities now and are all
(21:07):
former professional wrestlers who found success inHollywood. Even those who don't make it
to acting are often still widely knownfor the wrestling personas. We had Macho
Man, Randy Savage, Andre theGiant who was also in some movies,
Dusty Rhodes. Have all seen greatfame as wrestlers alone. Right now,
you might get to go, Ican make a lot of money on this,
and the chance to make good moneyin professional wrestling is there, but
(21:30):
it's very slim. Top wrestlers todaylike Roman Rains, he's like kind of
the champion right now at WWE.He makes about five million dollars a year.
Brock Lesner, who's another wrestler inWWE, he makes about twelve million
dollars a year. But according tozip Recruiter, the majority of professional wrestlers
make a little more than thirteen dollarsper hour on average. That is crazy.
You think about how much money theymake selling tickets for a single show,
(21:52):
and then they get paid thirteen dollarsan hour. That is some wildly
low. Yeah. Also, onething that we don't talk about in this
episode, but it's worth mentioning alot of WWE wrestlers, the people you
see on TV or contractors, they'renot even employees. Oh oh, that's
right. And the reason they likethat or employers like that. The employees
do not is because that means thatthey are not obligated to receive other benefits
(22:15):
of employment. They're not obligated tohealthcare, then obligated to insurance, they're
not obligated to retirement. They're basicallyseen as a gig worker. Functionally.
Yeah, yep, that's going toplay a role. We talk about some
of the horrific dark side of thewrestling world and a little bit Yeah all
right, the reasons we have fame, there's money, but there's also fun
(22:37):
as another reason people do this.Just like any hobby, professional wrestling is
simply a passion for some people.They enjoyed it to a degree, to
a degree that they're willing to riskanything and everything their homes, their bodies,
and relationships to pursue the dream ofwrestling and what that means. It's
no different than someone putting all theresources into a startup or a podcast that
doesn't really make any money, butwe do it anyway. Podcasts don't quite
(23:00):
have as many hit a head injuries. Some not zero heading us, but
fewer. It's never zero chance,right exactly. So that explains a little
bit about why professional wrestlers do that. But why do people like us?
Why do we watch it or whydo I watch it? Well, it
sounds like a cop out to saythat we watch it for the stories,
(23:22):
but that's actually what a lot ofresearch is finding and a lot of articles
are finding. Most people don't watchit for just kind of like the straight
up matches. There are some peoplethat do. They like the athleticism and
like the stunt work that's being done, but for the most part, people
really like to watch it because ofthe storylines. Professional wrestling is not just
about the matches, though they areentertaining. There are storylines that are full
of twists and turns. They're underdogheroes that you want to root for.
(23:45):
There are villains you want to seekget their just desserts. There's all kinds
of things that happen within the wrestlingworld that makes it a lot of fun
to watch, and that makes alot of sense. Like it's harder to
imagine someone carrying through paying that closeattention to a sport where it's like you
don't believe anything that's going on andthere's nothing to latch onto story wise,
Like the thing that would make itsort of carry it along is this having
(24:07):
this narrative that weaves throughout right.According to the Bleacher Report, people watch
wrestling for a variety of reasons.There's the humor, the action, the
drama, et cetera. That's allpart of the fun. Like they bring
jokes, they have a little likebeats, they have, you know,
a planned way to keep it exciting. But people also get invested in characters
and stories and they want to seethem through their arcs. They want to
see how it ends, they wantto see how they develop and all that
(24:30):
right, because at any point intime, any wrestler can be a good
guy or a bad guy. Theythey can change sides, they can do
all kinds of things. What's reallynice about this is like, because you're
watching this for so long and thesepeople are on TV every single week,
Like, you never really know what'sgoing to happen. The storylines can kind
of change week to week and youdon't really know. And some of them
are really good and some of themare really bad. I mean, it
(24:52):
just depends on what you like andyou know the writers at the time.
But some psychologists argue that watching wrestlingis an example of a defense mechanism called
sublimation. Basically, we watch wrestlingbecause we are aggressive, but never act
on the impulse, so we transferredto something more useful, like entertainment.
Supposedly, just to reiterate, sublimationis the unconscious psychological defense that reduces anxiety
(25:12):
that may result from unacceptable urges orharmful stimulae. So like, basically we
just kind of transplant it onto somethingelse and engage in the activity. It
doesn't mean that we actually do thething. How would you test to determine
if someone is doing this unconsciously?You can't, but you can certainly make
it up and call it a thingand then sell a book about it or
something. So yeah, thanks Freud, Yeah, that's the magical explanation for
(25:36):
why people watch it. It maybelaugh when this came up into all the
psychology stuff. I will also saythat sworn enemy of the podcast, Jordan
Peterson's name, came up in discussingwhy people like this, and so I
decided not to use his reference becauseit's our he's clearly our enemy. But
it was kind of in the samein the same boat. It's like not
being able to look away from acar crash, you know, a big
(25:59):
teary eyed car. There's probably alsosome amount of thinking about the social fund
that comes from talking with your friendsabout last night's match and thinking about like
what's coming up and how excited youknow. I think there is a social
engagement piece of this that we don'twant to ignore. But yeah, I
think, as you sort of said, like, there's also something inherently captivating
about like action sequences. We seepeople perform incredible stunts, we see people
(26:22):
climb over remarkable obstacles, or performthese athletic feats. I think people watch
honestly professional sports for a similar reasonA lot of the time is it's that
level of athleticism, that is,it takes an elite performer with an enormous
amount of training to be able topull it off, and that is something
that we find interesting because it's notsomething we do very easily, like it's
so difficult. So it's like likeI like watching virtuoso musicians playing their instruments
(26:47):
extremely well because of the amount ofwork that went in to produce such a
fluent and incredible skill set. Andso anyway, that's getting off on a
signed tangent. Why don't you wrestlewith these ads and we'll talk about the
dark side of the ring. Okay, we're back. We've been all sunshine
(27:11):
and rainbows so far with injury andnot getting paid anything. But let's get
into the actual even I think thedarker, grittier, less fun side of
wrestling. Yeah, I mean,I think it's worth unpacking because it does
sound like it's fun and it's forkids and all this stuff. I mean,
some of it is. But justlike any industry, there are countless
stories of some problems that are prettysignificant throughout professional wrestling. There are these
(27:34):
harrowing tales of problems about among wrestlersthat are incredibly shocking, and here are
a few examples. The first onethat I'm gonna share is from a wrestler
who went by the stage name ofDraws. His name was Darren Adrian Draws
off. He was known as Drawsand Puke when he was in WWE.
He went with Draws Puke wasn't reallygoing to work out, but he was
a wrestler that was injured during amatch. Basically, another wrestler was going
(27:56):
to pick him up the power bomband slipped and dropped him on his head
by accident and broke his neck,paralyzing him from the neck down. And
he was eventually able to regain movementwith his arms and upper body, but
was combined to a wheelchair until hispassing in June of twenty twenty three.
This happened in the nineties, bythe way, like late nineties, early
two thousands, and WWE did agood job of keeping them hired, keeping
(28:18):
Draws hired, and like keeping himin a job like he was a columnist.
He was like working with a WWE. He's helping produce matches and stuff
like that. But you know,he was injured for the rest of his
life as a result of this sport. Yeah Bruiser Brody. While in Puerto
Rico in nineteen eighty eight, Brodiewas stabbed during an altercation with another wrestler,
Josie Gonzalez, who he was lateracquitted with findings that he was acting
(28:38):
in self defense. But yeah,so wrestler dying in a locker room.
Yeah, Jake the Snake Roberts,so you might be familiar with that name.
While many wrestlers struggled with addictions,like Jeff Hardy, Rick Flair staying
in Scott Hall, Jake Roberts wasone of the more well known examples.
He would show up to matches underthe influence of a variety of substance,
including opiates an alcohol. He wouldwrestle under the influence, which is incredibly
(29:00):
dangerous. This one is a kindof a good Newstale like. He was
able to get sober through treatment andsupport and does discuss the damage that this
did. I mean, he isvery open and transparent about his struggles.
It's unfortunate that he's had some troublewith his family members as a result of
all the addictions and stuff, buthe is working at aw and he is
sober, which is a really greatthing to see after somebody who struggled for
(29:22):
many, many years. You cansee some wrestling matches where he is under
the influence and it is really reallybad. It's scary. That's tough obviously,
Maybe not obviously, but someone maybe thinking, and I would tend
to agree. What about steroids.So there's a steroids scandal. In the
case United States versus Vince McMahon,it was revealed that the company Doctor was
providing wrestlers with anabolic steroids since thelook of professional wrestlers included looking sort of
(29:48):
larger than life. You see theselike massive bodies. Yeah, terry distribution
was not only condoned, it waseven encouraged. And while McMahon was found
not guilty, this trial did alterdrug policies within the wrestling community and effectively
banned anabolic steroids. And then thelast main story that we're gonna talking about
is Chris ben wah And most peopleare probably pretty familiar with this one because
(30:10):
it was so horrific. So justa heads up, there's there's a lot
of violence, and if you wantto skip ahead a couple minutes, you
totally can. But this is oneof the more widely known examples of how
bad things can get. Following awelfare check to his home on June twenty
fifth of two thousand and seven,ben Wanda's family were found dead. It
was a term that ben Wah hadcommitted the murders and taking his own life
in this horrible event like so itwas a double murder suicide. The autopsy
(30:30):
report indicated that ben Wah's brain wasso severely damaged from years of professional wrestling
that it resembled an eighty five yearold Alzheimer's patient's brain, and this advanced
form of damage was similar to examplesfound in other people who have had repeated
concussions like chronic traumatic encephalopathy CTE ifyou're familiar with that. Like some of
the stuff going on at the NFL, it's been a major topic of discussion
(30:53):
in those high impact sports like MMAand NFL organizations, as well as professional
wrestling. It's something that's come upmore often in the last few years.
But they think that he was somebodywho suffered from that at a pretty extreme
level. Man, That is atough one. And this doesn't even include
the numerous reports of domestic violence,stone cold, reckless endangerment, the Plan
Right from Hell, sexual assault,Vince McMahon pay scandals, sexism, racism
(31:18):
that has occurred within the professional wrestlingworld, and even I think some of
the gimmicks they had some pretty racistYeah, gimmicks that were done able us
too. There's a character for alittle bit who was special needs and when
the bell would ring, he wouldlike immediately hop into wrestling mode, like
the minute he heard a bell,he would like be like a really skilled
wrestler, but he was developmentally delayed. Wowable. Yeah. While it has
(31:40):
reportedly gotten better overall following just imean countless charges of and lawsuits, the
world of professional wrestling still has quitea ways to go to. I think
make this a sport that's safer andless likely to result in these traumatic things
to these you know, these basicallyactors. Yeah, absolutely so I'm gonna
bring it back up a little bit. I think we need to do that
because that was because it gets realdark positively. So what does the research
(32:04):
say? We like research, youlike research? What does it all say?
Karrick in nineteen eighty focuses on thelanguage of professional wrestling. So professional
wrestling kind of has its own uniquejargon, which is really fascinating. First,
they have terms that are made upjust for the industry. Jobber mark
bump, which you know, jobberis like somebody who just like does the
job for somebody to make them lookbetter. The mark is the is the
person that believes it's real. Thebump is the fall you take. The
(32:28):
face is the hero, the heelis the villain, and they're all specific
to practices within the profession of wrestling. So, but there are like a
weird little fold to this. Muchof the language is not sports and athletic
oriented. It's more business focused.So terms like promoters, entertainment, top
men, workers are all business oriented, and that makes it a little bit
(32:49):
more unique than other I guess likesports, like specific sports like baseball,
football, stuff like that. Youdon't really hear a lot of the same
terms use the same way. Yeah, on dak and nineteen eighty nine reviews
how ethics and moral systems within professionalwrestling presentations often shift and change depending on
political climates. So, because thisis an entertainment industry like any if you
(33:10):
look back on movies, you'll seea similar thing. Well, movies will
sort of reflect in a way thepolitics of the era that either were popular
or aligned with a particular point ora person or ideology. And so for
instance, Sergeant Slaughter, originally agood guy and military soldier character, was
made a villain and joined the otherIranian wrestlers and an effort to piss off
fans for again entertainment to get peoplebuying you hate buying tickets and whatnot.
(33:36):
And this was during the eighties ninetieswhen the initial conflict with Saddam Hussein was
occurring under H. W. Bush'sturn. So this is the Bush senior.
That was a big deal. Peoplewere real mad about that, you
know, because he was supposed tobe like the stand up, good old
boy type of thing in it.Yeah, if you were so bad.
Campbell in nineteen ninety six discussed whythe bad guy always wins. So in
(33:57):
wrestling, a lot of times thebad guy will win and people get real
mad about it. But essentially theyargue that the primary demographic for wrestling fans
comes from urban labor workforces, whichare characterized by low income welfare recipients or
immigrants who find little success in doingthings quote unquote the right ways, which
they said, but basically like followingthe system and like in the land of
opportunity, this particular group tends tostruggle, right, because of all the
(34:19):
barriers blocked. It's because of asystem, not because of them, right,
The system is not set up tosupport them. To be clear,
So fans that enjoy seeing the badguy win, they do because it provides
an alternative value system and shows themthat there are multiple paths to success.
But basically that somebody can This isdirectly from the from the article quote one
can lift oneself from off the bottomof the pile by taking shortcuts and foul
(34:42):
play in pursuit of success in lifeend quote. It's a weird take,
it's a weird article, but thiswas something that was published in a scientific
journal about discussing like moral systems andalternative value systems within behavior like human behavior.
Weird. Yeah, I think itis probably, I mean, first
of all, because it's a stagethat means that you're supposing that that is
the value that they're trying to tapinto from the organizers and the producers of
(35:07):
this, And I really doubt thatthat was a discussion that very many of
them have ever had. If ever, I think that probably what it is
is that when you when the villainwins a lot, then you have hope
for the next time. There islike an entertainment factor. It's not that
predictable if the good guy wins everytime, right, Like you've got to
have that bad guy win, orif there's not that much drama, it's
(35:30):
not that fun. It's just yousee what's happening all the time. So
I think you need to shake itup with having the bad guy win.
That means that there's something to overcomelater. I think there are plenty of
other reasons that don't depend on thisidea that people are following their moral shiftings
of whatever that means. Yeah,it's real, it's real. Like I
said, when I was reading,I was like, I had to include
it because it was so strange.Yeah, it's a weird take. It's
(35:52):
a weird take, but I thinkthe article itself, it ignores a system
in lieu of personal behavior, likeindividual behavior, like it written, it's
written as if people are to blameinstead of understanding how behavior happens within a
system. And I thought that wasa really strange thing. But I had
to include because I was like,it's just so weird. It's such a
very specific take to say like thesethis group of people like seeing the bad
(36:13):
guy win because they can be badguys too. It's like, no,
yeah, like that's not how thatworks. Yeah, I don't think we
agree with Campbell here. No,Atkins in two thousand and two argues that
much of the appeal of professional wrestlingcomes from a cultural perspective. On a
weekly basis, at the time ofthis article, nearly fifty million people nearly
fifty million people are watching the eventsregularly despite it being fake like bid staged
(36:36):
performative. The ultimate hypothesis here isthat professional wrestling is doing something right since
so many folks are tuning in,but that the main cause may be culturally
based, and that could make sense. I think you could probably find places
of the world where they do nothave sports like this, or very few
people pay attention to it, andunless it is universal, we can assume
(36:58):
that it is cultural exactly. SoI think there's a couple other things,
though, I think are really interestingin this realm. Because I don't know
if I said this on the episode, but I said this when we were
talking on the patron recording, soall our patreons saw this. There is
not a lot of research on thephenomenon that is professional wrestling. It's a
lot of commentary. If there isany research, it's mostly from like a
business standpoint, So it wasn't anythingfrom a psychological standpoint that we could find,
(37:22):
but it was just like these weirdinteresting tidbits from like those different spaces.
I think the most interesting thing wasthe jargon more than anything else.
That is that is really cool.I mean, yeah, it's surprising.
I guess you wouldn't have thought,but it does actually make some amount of
sense. Let me break it downthat way. Yeah, some last things
that I think are worth sharing.The first professional World Champion ever was Paul
(37:43):
Pond's The Colossus in eighteen ninety eight. Who that's fun. Yeah. Japanese
wrestler Ricka Dozin, who was actuallyKorean, non Japanese, was considered one
of the greatest of all time.He was stabbed by yakuza in a nightclub
with a piss soaked knife, laterdying of his injuries. Wild. That's
terrible. Yeah, there's like there'slike weird like mafia stuff like embedded into
(38:07):
like so much underground stuff in thisIn this world too. Snookie, which
is also gross, has won morematches at pay per view with WWE then
Sting. So Sting, the professionalwrestler who has had decades of wrestling under
his belt, has lost more payper view matches at ww than Snookie has
huh. And finally, Bruno SamMartino holds the longest title reign in professional
(38:30):
wrestling history, with a total oftwo thousand, eight hundred and three days.
That is a lot of days.He was literally a champion for over
seven and a half years. Uhhuh. But you know, got nothing
on Ted the Black Bear. Thisguy is he looks like a like he
was built of stone, This BrunoSia Martino guy. But yeah, Ted
(38:52):
the Terrible Black Bear was, youknow, just an entirely different monster.
Yeah, all right, fun,Well, that was actually through that a
lot faster than I thought. Iwas thinking this might be a two partner,
but we we just kind of wejust kind of blasted through it.
There was so much information and soa little time. So I think a
couple of things, and I thinkwhat we need to do is, well,
let's just get through this. First. You had mentioned people get to
(39:14):
hear things that we stay off Mike, and that's a special group, an
elite group, you might even say, people that are known as our patron
supporters, who they help us dothis by join us on Patron where they
get access to those behind the scenescontent like you mentioned, and you can
join them and your list will beadded the names of such heroes as Mike,
m Meghan, Layla, Mike T, Justin, Kim, Joshua,
Brad, Stephanie, Olivia, Brianand Ashley. Thank you all so much
(39:37):
and everyone who's listening. You canyou can go over there if you'd like
to, Yes, please do.In addition, you can support us by
subscribing, leaving us a rating andreview, picking up some merch for our
merch store. And that was somethingelse I'm missing. They can support us.
I mean, you could start awrestling promotion, call it why we
Wrestle, what we wrestle? Imean you can do that. That'd be
wwwwww. I mean I support that. I do like the idea of having
(40:04):
there could be a wrestler that ispsychology theme. You can't call him the
brain because there's already already Bobby Heenan, but you can call him something.
You can't call them cerebral assassin either, because there's triple h. Never mind,
just start the promotion. That's that'swhat I would say. There you
go, or you know, Ijoint us some patron. Thank you so
much to all of you for listeningon my team. Shane and myself do
writing and fact checking, audio editingand production from Justin and our social coordinator
(40:28):
is Emma Wilson. Is there anythingelse before we get to our recommendations,
I might say this, do notcall wrestling fake to a wrestler, they
will take offense. It is notfake in the way that most people say,
like, it is real athleticism withpreplanned storylines. That's the best way
to describe it. Don't call itfake. You will get hurt. Yeah,
(40:49):
Well, and this, as yousaid, like it's it's not The
athleticism isn't fake, not at all. The work that they put into it
isn't fake. The injuries, thedanger isn't I mean that danger is a
little bit faked in the sense thatthey're scripted, but I mean the potential
for danger is very real. Yes, and they work really, really hard
at their jobs. So in asense it is performative. That does not
(41:12):
make it fake. I think youphrased it very very well any the way
you said it. So with that, we do have time for one more
ad break and then we'll come backwith these recommendations day. Okay, So
let's get to our recommendations. Remations. I am recommending a board game.
(41:45):
I don't think I've recommended this,although it definitely has thought it's occurred to
me that I might I'm recommending agame called Boop. You have definitely not,
because I have never heard you saythat like that. Okay, So
this is actually a sort of sequelto the original version of the game that's
just called Boop. But the reasonI recommend people go with Boop, which
(42:06):
is a Halloween themed version, whichis Boo plus Oop at the end,
so Boop so four os, isthat you have essentially the exact same game
plus an added component if you wantit, And so you can play the
original version of it with this sequelgame, or you can play it with
the added component, and it's great. It's one of those games with like
extremely simple rules and extremely high strategy. The rule is basically, put one
(42:30):
of your pieces onto the board.Where you put it will move like the
pieces that roll next to it haveto move away from it. That's it.
And then you want to try andline up your pieces three in a
row, which means you kind ofstrategically want to place them so that if
you place a piece next to oneone of your pieces, it will move.
It closer to another one of yourpieces so that you can get three
in a row and sure that way, and that's that's it. You want
(42:50):
to get three pieces in a rowand moving. Putting your piece on the
board moves all the pieces around it, including including your opponents. It's very
simple, but the strategy is immense. Like you and really go you know,
deep on trying to plan for likehow you're going to set yourself up
for getting your three in a rowor block your opponent from getting three in
a row or both of those things. The Halloween themed version of it is
(43:10):
is great. So that's a matrecommendation is boop. It's adorable. Yeah,
it's it's all cats, by theway, and the game board is
actually like a little quilted blanket,so you put these little wooden cats on
the guilt on the quilted blanket.That's amazing. I love that. Yeah,
all right, So my recommendation isa record. I haven't recommended a
record in a long time. It'sfor a punk band called the Penske File.
(43:34):
So on their on their Spotify itsays the Penske File do it for
the love of the damn thing.Friendship rock and roll creativity movement. Catharsis
their live shows or celebrations so onand so forth. So they are a
if you're familiar with kind of likethe Gainesville drunk punk sound, so stuff
like Dyling your four, stuff likehot Water Music in that realm, Flatliners
(43:57):
that you'll that you would like thisband. They have really good pop sensibilities.
They have really good just kind oflike punk song writing, Like that's
just really great. Their new recordis called half Glow and I have not
been able to stop listening to it. It's just a really good listen if
you like that kind of thing fun. Oh that's great, all right,
Well, if you'd like to tellus about a punk record or a silly
named board game, you should definitelyreach out to us. But specifically,
(44:21):
if you'd like to talk to usabout something that we said about wrestling,
if you'd like to add something correct, something very kindly, or give us
just heaping amounts of praise, youcan do that by leave us a writing
and review somewhere. You can alsoreach out to us correctly email us at
info at WWDWWD podcast dot com,or on the social media platforms, and
we'll happily talk to you there otherwise, Thank you so much for listening.
(44:42):
Thank you for recording with me today, Shane. Also, thank you for
your awesome work on the notes fortoday's episode. Thank you appreciate it.
Anything else on your end or anythingI forgot before we wrap up? Nothing
on my end? All right?Perfect? Then this is Apham and this
Shane. We're out. See.Yeah, you've been listening to Why We
Do What We Do. You canlearn more about this and other episodes by
going to WWDWWD podcast dot com.Thanks for listening, and we hope you
(45:07):
have an awesome day
You're listening to Why we Do whatwe Do? Welcome to Why We Do
what we Do. I'm your host, Abri, but I'm roast Jane.
Oh dude, that's so much fun. You know the views the mus struck
(00:26):
me in the moment or what dopsychology podcast? Sometimes we're a fighting podcasts
as it were. Today we talkedabout all the things that people do and
why they do them and all thatsort of fun stuff and yeah, that's
us. Yeah, and today we'retalking about professional wrestling. So as a
child of the nineties, I grewup with the wrestling boom that was,
you know, the carry over fromthe eighties and all the big stars and
(00:48):
all that and uh and then intothe nineties with the clash between w c
W and WWF and all that funstuff. And so we're gonna talk about
all that stuff a little bit.But yeah, we're talking about kind of
why people even like this thing whenthey know it's stage. Yeah, what
is it? Why is it?Why is it? Again? I guess
what do you? What is it? When was it? Why is it?
(01:11):
And why do they? Great ifyou're listening to this on the day
that it publishes, I mean,first of all, good on you for
staying so up. Today's Yeah,podcast free. That is impressive. Congratulations
on that. If that's the case, then let us join together and celebrating
that. It is National case ODay. Yes, and for our vegan
friends, hopefully your case so it'svegan. It's a National Care for Kids
(01:34):
Day, which is a good generalrule. Yeah, yeah, I think
we can. We can all agreeon that. National Crime and Intelligence Analyst
Appreciation Day to all those black opspeople out there, thank you, thank
you, yes, thank you tomy FBI agent. It's also National fried
Rice Day. Good day, likethat National punch Day, So get your
fist ready. I was gonna sayit's very apt for this episode. It
(01:59):
is also out for this episode NationalGibberish Day, because a lot of times
when you see these guys talk notintelligible at all. Yeah, they all
sound like Sylvester still love. Yeah. This is Adopt a Less Adoptable Pet
Week. And by that we donot mean go into a zoo and take
an animal. No, we meangoing to an animal shelter where they're animals
(02:19):
that are having trouble being adopted andgive them a home. Like older adopt
all pets and animals with disabilities andstuff like that. Please go adopt them.
Yeah. Yeah, holmes they needlove, they need holmes, they
need love. I have a friendwho adopted a chihuahua that was missing an
eye and named it the Professor.It was great, huge. So there
was the Professor and Batman and misterBatman. I'm sorry, mister Batman.
They live together. That person's aBCBA. Now it's also National Astronomy Week.
(02:45):
Hey, I love that. Uhhuh, International Clean Hands Week.
I'm go ahead and make that internationalClean's Hands decade. Let's go ahead and
keep those hands clean. Yeah,especially with everything going on. Yes,
but at least for now, theofficial holiday is week. Let's all work
together to make it century. Yeah, wash your hands. It's also National
Farm and Ranch Safety and Health Week, so big fan of that for people
(03:07):
who are working on farms and ranchesto stay safe. Yeah, and thank
you all for keeping us alive.Yeah, we would like to keep you
alive. Yes, speaking of whichis National go Kart Week, so hell
yeah, go out there and dothe go kart thing. Oh love go
carts so much fun that they reallyare many NASCAR for children or grown ups.
We love it. Yeah, big, big go kart advocates over here.
(03:30):
Why we deal what we deal.But as we said, we're talking
about fiction and play acting today,and that is to say, we're going
to find out what Billy Corgan murder, samurai swords, and panda bears I'll
have in common. It's a wildride. I mean, I think most
people know professional wrestling is in itselfa ridiculous thing, but it gets a
(03:52):
little bit wilder. So let's talkabout what we are talking about. We're
not talking about wrestling in terms oflike greco roman wrestling or grappling or anything
like that. We're time about professionalwrestling. And professional wrestling is a type
of entertainment involving wrestling matches whose progressand outcome are planned in advance, typically
between performers and established character roles.So it's usually a stage thing. The
(04:13):
match itself might have some improvisation init, they might have some things that
go on in it, but initself, the outcome is usually predetermined.
And that is the definition of professionalwrestling. Yeah, it's a stage play
where the theme of the play ofevery play is gratuitous violence, yes,
but for fun. While the historyof wrestling and grappling sports is very rich.
(04:34):
Its earliest recorded moment was found inancient Mesopotamia, dating back till around
three thousand BC. But we're notactually talking about that, as we said,
we're talking more of the show thewrestling entertainment world. Yes, and
professional wrestling found its start in theearly eighteen hundreds in Western Europe and the
United Kingdom. Is a form ofentertainment and showmanship, so it was basically
(04:55):
set up as a way to entertainfolks in their communities. Now, some
of you may, even if you'renot very familiar with the world of professional
wrestling, may have heard that thereare all these fun names for professional wrestal
wrestlers, like the Undertaker and suchand things of that nature, the Ultimate
Warrior exactly. Now, these thisis a long standing tradition because some early
wrestlers performed under such names as HerculeanFlower, Edward the Steel Eater, Gustav
(05:21):
Devon, Jon the bone Wrecker,etc. They get that right, okay,
And in some instances they would challengemembers of the public to see if
they could knock them down for money. Which also, there's probably something we
should do something on like like carneyssometimes and like the carnivalis freak show things.
We're about to Yeah, we're gonnaget Yeah, We're we're gonna do
(05:46):
We're gonna do some Carney dives realreal quick. So sometime in eighteen forty
eight, professional wrestling saw its debutin the Circus. Jehan Ex Broyat established
what they called flat hand wrestling aspart of the circus troop in what would
be described as a performance art.So this flat hand wrestling, what we
know today is wrestling kind of likesome of the evolution of it started as
(06:08):
this idea of flat hand wrestling,not the greco Roman wrestling, as a
performance art within the circus. Okay, so why is this different? Well
because during some of these acts,professional wrestlers professional in this case meaning it's
their job, would work with othermembers of the troop to identify quote unquote
dumb oafs and patrons who were easilyduped into other carnival games, which obviously
(06:29):
is a hallmark of that sort ofindustry. They would challenge patrons of the
carnival to try to pin the wrestler, only for the wrestler to quickly pin
that person and take their money.So got some hoodwinking going on, Yes,
now, Within the wrestling community,there is a term called mark.
We're gonna basically unpack this. Theterm mark originated from the Carnival Troop.
Members would mark or like use chalkto identify easy victims. They would mark
(06:55):
on their back or their shoulder sothat other members of the carnival could pinpoint
them and trick them into getting intothese carnival games, the Midway games and
get money from them. So theywould they would essentially be marked for victimization.
Well, that sounds like one ofthose apocryphal stories of like how a
term came to be. Yeah,you know, describing a person as a
mark. That's interesting. Yeah,that's exactly where it came from. Wow.
(07:16):
The term is now also used underthe wrestling community to describe someone who
believes that the sport is real.More about that later, as we'll get
into it. Yeah, we'll talkabout what's real and what's not and all
that fun stuff. So in theearly nineteen hundred, professional wrestling began to
gain in popularity, with some eventsselling nearly thirty thousand tickets, like the
nineteen eleven Frank Gotch George Hackenschmidt rematchat Kaminsky Park. So even in nineteen
(07:42):
eleven, they were selling thirty thousandtickets to these events. It's a lot
of people. Yeah, they're like, we can make money on this,
you guys. Let's just let's makesome money. Let's make a lot of
money. I mean, just tojust to put this in perspective, last
night, WWE had an event calledPayback and it had fourteen thousand people at
it. So like, yeah,if that tells you anything about like how
(08:05):
this is still a verily popular thing, but it's never really waned. Yeah,
all right. While there were countlessevents and wrestlers in the US and
Europe at this time, it wasn'tuntil the nineteen forties that the National Wrestling
Alliance or NWA you may have heardthe initials was born. This organization was
originally established as a committee to helpregulate wrestling and provide a quote unquote legitimacy
(08:30):
to the sport. Yep fun fact. NWA is currently owned by Billy Corgan
of the Smashing Bumpkins. So there'sour first tie in our first time.
Wow, I did not know that. That's wild. Yeah. NWA is
actually a professional wrestling organization similar toWWE. AW it's got its own titles.
It's got its own wrestlers, it'sgot its own show and stuff like
that. But it's a smaller kindof operation right now, Okay, got
(08:52):
you? Yeah, all right.Through this early period, there were quite
a few gimmick matches similar to whatyou would see today. An example of
this is Terrible Ted the wrestling Bear. He was an American black bear who
wrestled in North America between nineteen fiftiesinto the nineteen seventies. I think when
when I said the American black Bear, what you heard is a person dressed
(09:13):
as a black bear, or likesomeone who used the wrestling name black bear.
This was a actual bear, likethe animal, the four legged,
quadruped climbs up trees and eats liketo get people's trash. Bear. Yep,
yeah that's him. Another important point, he wrestled longer than so many
(09:35):
professional wrestlers actually wrestle. So twentyyears. Yeah, that's twenty years.
He was a twenty year wrestling bear. So man, oh, I mean
it's I'm telling you, it's awild time. It's a wild time.
We haven't even been doing this podcastfor twenty years yet I know this bear,
this bear has a longer wrestling careerthan we do. Also, what
a great name, Terrible, Tedthe Wrestling Bear. I mean, it
aligns so well with professional wrestling,it's so good. So around the same
(09:58):
time professional wrestling began to develop injap and in Mexico, both developing their
own unique styles of the sport.You may actually be familiar with the flying
style, like it's like high risk, like jumping off ropes and backlips and
all stuff and decorative mass that youfind of the members of the wrestling community
in South America and Mexico luchadors.Yeah, and so that's that's where that
started. And so Raymu Stereo andthose folks kind of helped bring that to
(10:20):
the United Theates a little bit moretoo. There's a lot of there's a
lot of people who are luchadors,and this started coming up around the same
time that Ted the Terrible Wrestling Bearwas around. Fun, Okay, there's
something to be said about, youknow, the animal exploitation and that sort
of thing and there, and that'swe've covered that other topics and we'll cover
that's more in the future, butfor now, understanding this is just part
of the history throughout the nineteen sixties. In nineteen seventies, the AWA and
(10:43):
WWWF are both created, which beginsthe sort of more aggressive competition and more
around territories like regional competition and nowterritories were established by the NWA and basically
governed who owned or promoted differentiation.So for instance, you had NWA in
Montana, Hollywood, and Iowa,but you also had AWA in Boston,
(11:05):
Maple Leaf Wrestling in Toronto, theWorldwide Wrestling Federation in DC in New York,
New Japan, Pro Wrestling in Tokyo, and World Championship Wrestling in Atlanta,
among many many others. There werea lot of wrestling promotions at this
time. Again, if you canmake money on it, it's a thing,
and they were yep. Oftentimes theseterritories would develop their own championship titles,
(11:28):
deal wrestlers from other territories for theirown and generally do you see a
lot of headbutting with other groups totout that they were the best of the
best, et cetera. So notI mean not terribly different from like sports
teams buying up the best players fromcompeting sports teams. You get like the
you know, the Yankees, forexample, doing that sort of thing,
right, So, yeah, verymuch like other sports. My team is
the best and I have a favoriteplayer. Then that's again very still similar
(11:52):
to what was going on here,and it makes a lot of sense.
And you just when you follow themoney, like you start seeing relatively similar
patterns emerge, right, I meanwhen you when you kind of dive into
the wrestling world, you have alike people have a favorite kind of organization
or company, they have their favoritewrestlers. Like, it's no different than
other sports. Like, it's reallylike it aligns really really well. Now.
When the World Wrestling Federation today's wwas we know it, split from
(12:16):
NWA in nineteen eighty two after Vincemcmann's takeover the organization, this began to
propel wrestling into a different kind ofentertainment stratospheres. What we started seeing at
that time was more TV appearances,more marketing, the development of more over
the top characters, Saturday morning cartoons, more merchandising. And the eighties were
really kind of absurd for wrestling.I mean, the amount of attention wrestling
(12:41):
was getting was pretty incredible for somethingthat was really when you watch it,
it's so very ridiculous. Yeah.Absolutely, When the nineties came around,
We're starting to get into slightly moremodern times. The WCWS started to begin
to gain traction and the Monday NightWars started, and this was essentially at
back and fourth for viewership for thetwo Monday night television shows for WWF and
(13:03):
WCW. If any of you rememberwhen Hulk Hogan went bad and we had
Nitro versus Raw, but if not, that was the whole thing, huh,
But he started to hear those names. I think more people of our
time are are a little bit morefamiliar. Yeah, you might be familiar
with like the nWo versus Degeneration Xand all those factions that come up and
all that. So it's a reallyfun time to watch, but it's also
(13:26):
really problematic. Popularity was taking inthe mid nineties before like all of that
kind of that rivalry started, andwrestling began to get quite a bit edgier.
And what you find is what peoplewill described as what's called the Attitude
era in the WWF, where manyof the segments on the show would show
off more riskay content in lieu ofmatches, and I'm gonna tell you right
now, it did not age well. As one example one wrestler's character.
(13:48):
His name is val Venus. Hewas a porn star who ended up leaving
porn to work in wrestling. Heend up losing a bet to a yakuza
esque type of group that was inWWF and had his penis cut off with
a Samurai sword in a segment thathappen on TV. They held his arms
and they put his penis on achopping block and they cut off with a
(14:09):
Samurai sword. That's tie into bythe way, Samurai sword. But that's
a fairly mild example of what happenedin this time period. It again,
it did not age well, allright. Also, what a ridiculous premise.
Yeah, I can understand why somepeople maybe were like, this isn't
really for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. And also he wasn't
like championship Like, he wasn't oneof the championship guys, so he was
(14:31):
like one of like the lower cardguys. Any kind of a penis,
go bigger, go home. Youknow, That's all I'm saying, you
know. And the two thousands,WWF changed its name to WWE due to
a conflict with the World Wildlife FundYEP. So for those of you who
don't know the World Wildlife Fund.It's logo is a panda bear. Oh
uha tie in number three. Ah? Yes, all right, so the
(14:54):
WWF changed its name. It alsobought WCW and things have been continuing ever
since. We also saw the developmentof Total NonStop Action Wrestling or TNA,
later changed to Impact Wrestling Lucha Underground, which was awesome according to Shane and
All Elite Wrestling or a EW.And not to say that I disagree,
I just am not familiar with it. Yeah. Yeah, Lucha Underground basically
(15:16):
started because like the storyline, andthis is something that happens in wrestling,
these really ridiculous storylines, but basically, something supernatural happens. They break into
an Aztec temple and there's a wrestlinggroup there, and that's what the entire
show is based on. It's funwhen you get into how ardull this is
but wow, the question that comesup often is why do people watch it
and why do these wrestlers do it? And I really want to unpack that.
(15:37):
But but first some ads. Okay, so we talked a little bit
about the when the wrestling, andwe have talked I think a little bit
about why the wrestling mostly in theterms of the financial part of it.
(15:58):
But now though, really but thewhy but why wrestling? Yes? So
one of the major criticisms of wrestlingis that wrestling is fake since the outcome
has always planned. But there's ahuge amount of athleticism that goes into being
able to keep up with a match. I mean, when you watch these
guys perform, they are incredible athletes. Even if what they're doing in stage,
they have to be in really goodshape to make this happen. Yeah,
(16:22):
they train like crazy. Regular workoutsinclude extreme amount of cardio, high
intensity interval or hit training, strengthtraining, among other things. Beginner's classes
may include a twelve week program thatteaches you how to fall, bounce off
ropes, communicate with your wrestling partner, call matches, etc. Of course,
this isn't the end of your training. An ongoing practice to develop your
(16:44):
character speak on a microphone that islike cut promos produced matches are also all
part of the process. There.It's a huge training thing. This is
probably not the best analogy to make, but when Walking Dead was on,
they had like actors who are goingto be extra zombies had to go to
like a zombie boot camp, trainhow to be zombies. That sounds like
(17:04):
there's kind of a similar thing,Like it's a very specific set of skills
that's needed to pull this off thatthey sort of had. They had like
pro wrestling camp basically. Really,I mean and honestly, I have a
friend who is, like, he'sa wrestler. He does it on the
side, and he that the amountof training he had to go through.
He had to go through like threestraight months of training as a wrestler to
(17:26):
be before he could ever be inthe ring with somebody. And that was
to perform at like house shows whereyou had to first of all confirm that
you were trained, but also youdidn't get paid anything. And we'll talk
and we'll talk more about that later. The ridiculous pay for this. Yeah,
So many wrestlers, while incredibly athletic, face life threatening injuries as a
(17:47):
result of performing these planned matches.Stone Cold Steve Auston famously broke his neck
during a match with Owen Hart whena pile driver, which is a move
that basically like drops you on yourhead onto a matt The pile driver went
wrong and owen Hart broke it,broke Stone ste Boston's deck. He was
paralyzed for a period of time andstunt Cold Sea Boston being probably the most
famous wrestler besides while COVID. Right, yeah, I think so. Maybe
you know John Sten is getting upthere, John is up there too.
(18:10):
Yeah, yeah, yeah exactly.But yeah, broken necks and limb I
mean, this is when you're doingstunt work, there is inherent danger.
That's why they oftentimes hire stunt actorsto do those things for movies. Yes,
because those people who are trained todo that. But nevertheless, and
because of that danger, you havebroken necks and limbs, ligament and muscle
tears, concussions. These are allvery common in the wrestling community, even
(18:33):
with these planned performances. But whywell, as we said, professional wrestlers
are basically trained to be stunt people, but at a much more extreme level.
I mean, for one thing,where some person may only film a
few movies a year, some wrestlerswill work every night for months or even
sometimes years on end. They're doinglive performances where they don't have the luxury
(18:53):
of special effects where you can obscurepart of what happened during a violent stunt,
so that someone can and land ona crash pad where they get they
have a wire that pulls them outof the way of something right where there's
green screen and CGI they're like,so there there's stunts that are more sometimes
athletic than they are inherently dangerous.There are obviously plenty of very dangerous stunts
(19:14):
that they pull off in movies,right, But these these wrestlers, like
everything they're doing has to be liveand on the spot, stunts that they're
doing with very little in the wayof additional infrastructure. It basically just comes
down to planning, right. Sothere's a lot of injuries have happened,
and the wrestling rings that they fallon are a very small layer of foam
and plywood. That's really all they'refalling on over and over and over again
(19:37):
for fifteen thirty forty minutes at atime. So it's not like one stunt
and you're done and you can moveon from it. It is consistently a
workout every night falling, and theylearn how to fall, You learn how
to fall on classes. But aright, it's really hard on your body.
People don't realize how hard it ison your body. It's a painful
spot, absolutely, yeah, Andyou think that that would mean you are
(20:00):
you are compensated sufficiently to make itall worth it, And we'll get to
that in a little bit. Yeah, and you are not. Now,
some reports do indicate the professional wrestlershave less of a chance to become a
contracted WWE wrestler than you would havebecoming an Olympian. So let me let
me say this a different way.You are more likely to be an Olympian
than you are to be a professionalwrestler in WWE. Wow, isn't that
(20:22):
wild? That is wild? Thatis surprising. See, it is like
that this is a thing you dobecause you can't do other real sports,
and it's it's actually not the case. It's it's really opposite, the opposite.
You're more likely to do a realsport and get famous and like win
money than you would to be aprofessional wrestler. All right, so you're
listening to this. We're hearing abouttheir injuries. We're hearing about how much
work it is, We're hearing abouthow difficult it is to break into this.
(20:45):
Why do people even do this?Sounds like it hurts a lot.
Well, there are a few reasons. One of the first ones I think
that jumps out to most people isfame, even though it's unlikely. There
are a few wrestlers who have gottenvery famous from their professional wrestling career.
One of the ones we just mentionedDwayne the Rock, Johnson, John Cena,
Dave Batista. All of these arehuge mega celebrities now and are all
(21:07):
former professional wrestlers who found success inHollywood. Even those who don't make it
to acting are often still widely knownfor the wrestling personas. We had Macho
Man, Randy Savage, Andre theGiant who was also in some movies,
Dusty Rhodes. Have all seen greatfame as wrestlers alone. Right now,
you might get to go, Ican make a lot of money on this,
and the chance to make good moneyin professional wrestling is there, but
(21:30):
it's very slim. Top wrestlers todaylike Roman Rains, he's like kind of
the champion right now at WWE.He makes about five million dollars a year.
Brock Lesner, who's another wrestler inWWE, he makes about twelve million
dollars a year. But according tozip Recruiter, the majority of professional wrestlers
make a little more than thirteen dollarsper hour on average. That is crazy.
You think about how much money theymake selling tickets for a single show,
(21:52):
and then they get paid thirteen dollarsan hour. That is some wildly
low. Yeah. Also, onething that we don't talk about in this
episode, but it's worth mentioning alot of WWE wrestlers, the people you
see on TV or contractors, they'renot even employees. Oh oh, that's
right. And the reason they likethat or employers like that. The employees
do not is because that means thatthey are not obligated to receive other benefits
(22:15):
of employment. They're not obligated tohealthcare, then obligated to insurance, they're
not obligated to retirement. They're basicallyseen as a gig worker. Functionally.
Yeah, yep, that's going toplay a role. We talk about some
of the horrific dark side of thewrestling world and a little bit Yeah all
right, the reasons we have fame, there's money, but there's also fun
(22:37):
as another reason people do this.Just like any hobby, professional wrestling is
simply a passion for some people.They enjoyed it to a degree, to
a degree that they're willing to riskanything and everything their homes, their bodies,
and relationships to pursue the dream ofwrestling and what that means. It's
no different than someone putting all theresources into a startup or a podcast that
doesn't really make any money, butwe do it anyway. Podcasts don't quite
(23:00):
have as many hit a head injuries. Some not zero heading us, but
fewer. It's never zero chance,right exactly. So that explains a little
bit about why professional wrestlers do that. But why do people like us?
Why do we watch it or whydo I watch it? Well, it
sounds like a cop out to saythat we watch it for the stories,
(23:22):
but that's actually what a lot ofresearch is finding and a lot of articles
are finding. Most people don't watchit for just kind of like the straight
up matches. There are some peoplethat do. They like the athleticism and
like the stunt work that's being done, but for the most part, people
really like to watch it because ofthe storylines. Professional wrestling is not just
about the matches, though they areentertaining. There are storylines that are full
of twists and turns. They're underdogheroes that you want to root for.
(23:45):
There are villains you want to seekget their just desserts. There's all kinds
of things that happen within the wrestlingworld that makes it a lot of fun
to watch, and that makes alot of sense. Like it's harder to
imagine someone carrying through paying that closeattention to a sport where it's like you
don't believe anything that's going on andthere's nothing to latch onto story wise,
Like the thing that would make itsort of carry it along is this having
(24:07):
this narrative that weaves throughout right.According to the Bleacher Report, people watch
wrestling for a variety of reasons.There's the humor, the action, the
drama, et cetera. That's allpart of the fun. Like they bring
jokes, they have a little likebeats, they have, you know,
a planned way to keep it exciting. But people also get invested in characters
and stories and they want to seethem through their arcs. They want to
see how it ends, they wantto see how they develop and all that
(24:30):
right, because at any point intime, any wrestler can be a good
guy or a bad guy. Theythey can change sides, they can do
all kinds of things. What's reallynice about this is like, because you're
watching this for so long and thesepeople are on TV every single week,
Like, you never really know what'sgoing to happen. The storylines can kind
of change week to week and youdon't really know. And some of them
are really good and some of themare really bad. I mean, it
(24:52):
just depends on what you like andyou know the writers at the time.
But some psychologists argue that watching wrestlingis an example of a defense mechanism called
sublimation. Basically, we watch wrestlingbecause we are aggressive, but never act
on the impulse, so we transferredto something more useful, like entertainment.
Supposedly, just to reiterate, sublimationis the unconscious psychological defense that reduces anxiety
(25:12):
that may result from unacceptable urges orharmful stimulae. So like, basically we
just kind of transplant it onto somethingelse and engage in the activity. It
doesn't mean that we actually do thething. How would you test to determine
if someone is doing this unconsciously?You can't, but you can certainly make
it up and call it a thingand then sell a book about it or
something. So yeah, thanks Freud, Yeah, that's the magical explanation for
(25:36):
why people watch it. It maybelaugh when this came up into all the
psychology stuff. I will also saythat sworn enemy of the podcast, Jordan
Peterson's name, came up in discussingwhy people like this, and so I
decided not to use his reference becauseit's our he's clearly our enemy. But
it was kind of in the samein the same boat. It's like not
being able to look away from acar crash, you know, a big
(25:59):
teary eyed car. There's probably alsosome amount of thinking about the social fund
that comes from talking with your friendsabout last night's match and thinking about like
what's coming up and how excited youknow. I think there is a social
engagement piece of this that we don'twant to ignore. But yeah, I
think, as you sort of said, like, there's also something inherently captivating
about like action sequences. We seepeople perform incredible stunts, we see people
(26:22):
climb over remarkable obstacles, or performthese athletic feats. I think people watch
honestly professional sports for a similar reasonA lot of the time is it's that
level of athleticism, that is,it takes an elite performer with an enormous
amount of training to be able topull it off, and that is something
that we find interesting because it's notsomething we do very easily, like it's
so difficult. So it's like likeI like watching virtuoso musicians playing their instruments
(26:47):
extremely well because of the amount ofwork that went in to produce such a
fluent and incredible skill set. Andso anyway, that's getting off on a
signed tangent. Why don't you wrestlewith these ads and we'll talk about the
dark side of the ring. Okay, we're back. We've been all sunshine
(27:11):
and rainbows so far with injury andnot getting paid anything. But let's get
into the actual even I think thedarker, grittier, less fun side of
wrestling. Yeah, I mean,I think it's worth unpacking because it does
sound like it's fun and it's forkids and all this stuff. I mean,
some of it is. But justlike any industry, there are countless
stories of some problems that are prettysignificant throughout professional wrestling. There are these
(27:34):
harrowing tales of problems about among wrestlersthat are incredibly shocking, and here are
a few examples. The first onethat I'm gonna share is from a wrestler
who went by the stage name ofDraws. His name was Darren Adrian Draws
off. He was known as Drawsand Puke when he was in WWE.
He went with Draws Puke wasn't reallygoing to work out, but he was
a wrestler that was injured during amatch. Basically, another wrestler was going
(27:56):
to pick him up the power bomband slipped and dropped him on his head
by accident and broke his neck,paralyzing him from the neck down. And
he was eventually able to regain movementwith his arms and upper body, but
was combined to a wheelchair until hispassing in June of twenty twenty three.
This happened in the nineties, bythe way, like late nineties, early
two thousands, and WWE did agood job of keeping them hired, keeping
(28:18):
Draws hired, and like keeping himin a job like he was a columnist.
He was like working with a WWE. He's helping produce matches and stuff
like that. But you know,he was injured for the rest of his
life as a result of this sport. Yeah Bruiser Brody. While in Puerto
Rico in nineteen eighty eight, Brodiewas stabbed during an altercation with another wrestler,
Josie Gonzalez, who he was lateracquitted with findings that he was acting
(28:38):
in self defense. But yeah,so wrestler dying in a locker room.
Yeah, Jake the Snake Roberts,so you might be familiar with that name.
While many wrestlers struggled with addictions,like Jeff Hardy, Rick Flair staying
in Scott Hall, Jake Roberts wasone of the more well known examples.
He would show up to matches underthe influence of a variety of substance,
including opiates an alcohol. He wouldwrestle under the influence, which is incredibly
(29:00):
dangerous. This one is a kindof a good Newstale like. He was
able to get sober through treatment andsupport and does discuss the damage that this
did. I mean, he isvery open and transparent about his struggles.
It's unfortunate that he's had some troublewith his family members as a result of
all the addictions and stuff, buthe is working at aw and he is
sober, which is a really greatthing to see after somebody who struggled for
(29:22):
many, many years. You cansee some wrestling matches where he is under
the influence and it is really reallybad. It's scary. That's tough obviously,
Maybe not obviously, but someone maybe thinking, and I would tend
to agree. What about steroids.So there's a steroids scandal. In the
case United States versus Vince McMahon,it was revealed that the company Doctor was
providing wrestlers with anabolic steroids since thelook of professional wrestlers included looking sort of
(29:48):
larger than life. You see theselike massive bodies. Yeah, terry distribution
was not only condoned, it waseven encouraged. And while McMahon was found
not guilty, this trial did alterdrug policies within the wrestling community and effectively
banned anabolic steroids. And then thelast main story that we're gonna talking about
is Chris ben wah And most peopleare probably pretty familiar with this one because
(30:10):
it was so horrific. So justa heads up, there's there's a lot
of violence, and if you wantto skip ahead a couple minutes, you
totally can. But this is oneof the more widely known examples of how
bad things can get. Following awelfare check to his home on June twenty
fifth of two thousand and seven,ben Wanda's family were found dead. It
was a term that ben Wah hadcommitted the murders and taking his own life
in this horrible event like so itwas a double murder suicide. The autopsy
(30:30):
report indicated that ben Wah's brain wasso severely damaged from years of professional wrestling
that it resembled an eighty five yearold Alzheimer's patient's brain, and this advanced
form of damage was similar to examplesfound in other people who have had repeated
concussions like chronic traumatic encephalopathy CTE ifyou're familiar with that. Like some of
the stuff going on at the NFL, it's been a major topic of discussion
(30:53):
in those high impact sports like MMAand NFL organizations, as well as professional
wrestling. It's something that's come upmore often in the last few years.
But they think that he was somebodywho suffered from that at a pretty extreme
level. Man, That is atough one. And this doesn't even include
the numerous reports of domestic violence,stone cold, reckless endangerment, the Plan
Right from Hell, sexual assault,Vince McMahon pay scandals, sexism, racism
(31:18):
that has occurred within the professional wrestlingworld, and even I think some of
the gimmicks they had some pretty racistYeah, gimmicks that were done able us
too. There's a character for alittle bit who was special needs and when
the bell would ring, he wouldlike immediately hop into wrestling mode, like
the minute he heard a bell,he would like be like a really skilled
wrestler, but he was developmentally delayed. Wowable. Yeah. While it has
(31:40):
reportedly gotten better overall following just imean countless charges of and lawsuits, the
world of professional wrestling still has quitea ways to go to. I think
make this a sport that's safer andless likely to result in these traumatic things
to these you know, these basicallyactors. Yeah, absolutely so I'm gonna
bring it back up a little bit. I think we need to do that
because that was because it gets realdark positively. So what does the research
(32:04):
say? We like research, youlike research? What does it all say?
Karrick in nineteen eighty focuses on thelanguage of professional wrestling. So professional
wrestling kind of has its own uniquejargon, which is really fascinating. First,
they have terms that are made upjust for the industry. Jobber mark
bump, which you know, jobberis like somebody who just like does the
job for somebody to make them lookbetter. The mark is the is the
person that believes it's real. Thebump is the fall you take. The
(32:28):
face is the hero, the heelis the villain, and they're all specific
to practices within the profession of wrestling. So, but there are like a
weird little fold to this. Muchof the language is not sports and athletic
oriented. It's more business focused.So terms like promoters, entertainment, top
men, workers are all business oriented, and that makes it a little bit
(32:49):
more unique than other I guess likesports, like specific sports like baseball,
football, stuff like that. Youdon't really hear a lot of the same
terms use the same way. Yeah, on dak and nineteen eighty nine reviews
how ethics and moral systems within professionalwrestling presentations often shift and change depending on
political climates. So, because thisis an entertainment industry like any if you
(33:10):
look back on movies, you'll seea similar thing. Well, movies will
sort of reflect in a way thepolitics of the era that either were popular
or aligned with a particular point ora person or ideology. And so for
instance, Sergeant Slaughter, originally agood guy and military soldier character, was
made a villain and joined the otherIranian wrestlers and an effort to piss off
fans for again entertainment to get peoplebuying you hate buying tickets and whatnot.
(33:36):
And this was during the eighties ninetieswhen the initial conflict with Saddam Hussein was
occurring under H. W. Bush'sturn. So this is the Bush senior.
That was a big deal. Peoplewere real mad about that, you
know, because he was supposed tobe like the stand up, good old
boy type of thing in it.Yeah, if you were so bad.
Campbell in nineteen ninety six discussed whythe bad guy always wins. So in
(33:57):
wrestling, a lot of times thebad guy will win and people get real
mad about it. But essentially theyargue that the primary demographic for wrestling fans
comes from urban labor workforces, whichare characterized by low income welfare recipients or
immigrants who find little success in doingthings quote unquote the right ways, which
they said, but basically like followingthe system and like in the land of
opportunity, this particular group tends tostruggle, right, because of all the
(34:19):
barriers blocked. It's because of asystem, not because of them, right,
The system is not set up tosupport them. To be clear,
So fans that enjoy seeing the badguy win, they do because it provides
an alternative value system and shows themthat there are multiple paths to success.
But basically that somebody can This isdirectly from the from the article quote one
can lift oneself from off the bottomof the pile by taking shortcuts and foul
(34:42):
play in pursuit of success in lifeend quote. It's a weird take,
it's a weird article, but thiswas something that was published in a scientific
journal about discussing like moral systems andalternative value systems within behavior like human behavior.
Weird. Yeah, I think itis probably, I mean, first
of all, because it's a stagethat means that you're supposing that that is
the value that they're trying to tapinto from the organizers and the producers of
(35:07):
this, And I really doubt thatthat was a discussion that very many of
them have ever had. If ever, I think that probably what it is
is that when you when the villainwins a lot, then you have hope
for the next time. There islike an entertainment factor. It's not that
predictable if the good guy wins everytime, right, Like you've got to
have that bad guy win, orif there's not that much drama, it's
(35:30):
not that fun. It's just yousee what's happening all the time. So
I think you need to shake itup with having the bad guy win.
That means that there's something to overcomelater. I think there are plenty of
other reasons that don't depend on thisidea that people are following their moral shiftings
of whatever that means. Yeah,it's real, it's real. Like I
said, when I was reading,I was like, I had to include
it because it was so strange.Yeah, it's a weird take. It's
(35:52):
a weird take, but I thinkthe article itself, it ignores a system
in lieu of personal behavior, likeindividual behavior, like it written, it's
written as if people are to blameinstead of understanding how behavior happens within a
system. And I thought that wasa really strange thing. But I had
to include because I was like,it's just so weird. It's such a
very specific take to say like thesethis group of people like seeing the bad
(36:13):
guy win because they can be badguys too. It's like, no,
yeah, like that's not how thatworks. Yeah, I don't think we
agree with Campbell here. No,Atkins in two thousand and two argues that
much of the appeal of professional wrestlingcomes from a cultural perspective. On a
weekly basis, at the time ofthis article, nearly fifty million people nearly
fifty million people are watching the eventsregularly despite it being fake like bid staged
(36:36):
performative. The ultimate hypothesis here isthat professional wrestling is doing something right since
so many folks are tuning in,but that the main cause may be culturally
based, and that could make sense. I think you could probably find places
of the world where they do nothave sports like this, or very few
people pay attention to it, andunless it is universal, we can assume
(36:58):
that it is cultural exactly. SoI think there's a couple other things,
though, I think are really interestingin this realm. Because I don't know
if I said this on the episode, but I said this when we were
talking on the patron recording, soall our patreons saw this. There is
not a lot of research on thephenomenon that is professional wrestling. It's a
lot of commentary. If there isany research, it's mostly from like a
business standpoint, So it wasn't anythingfrom a psychological standpoint that we could find,
(37:22):
but it was just like these weirdinteresting tidbits from like those different spaces.
I think the most interesting thing wasthe jargon more than anything else.
That is that is really cool.I mean, yeah, it's surprising.
I guess you wouldn't have thought,but it does actually make some amount of
sense. Let me break it downthat way. Yeah, some last things
that I think are worth sharing.The first professional World Champion ever was Paul
(37:43):
Pond's The Colossus in eighteen ninety eight. Who that's fun. Yeah. Japanese
wrestler Ricka Dozin, who was actuallyKorean, non Japanese, was considered one
of the greatest of all time.He was stabbed by yakuza in a nightclub
with a piss soaked knife, laterdying of his injuries. Wild. That's
terrible. Yeah, there's like there'slike weird like mafia stuff like embedded into
(38:07):
like so much underground stuff in thisIn this world too. Snookie, which
is also gross, has won morematches at pay per view with WWE then
Sting. So Sting, the professionalwrestler who has had decades of wrestling under
his belt, has lost more payper view matches at ww than Snookie has
huh. And finally, Bruno SamMartino holds the longest title reign in professional
(38:30):
wrestling history, with a total oftwo thousand, eight hundred and three days.
That is a lot of days.He was literally a champion for over
seven and a half years. Uhhuh. But you know, got nothing
on Ted the Black Bear. Thisguy is he looks like a like he
was built of stone, This BrunoSia Martino guy. But yeah, Ted
(38:52):
the Terrible Black Bear was, youknow, just an entirely different monster.
Yeah, all right, fun,Well, that was actually through that a
lot faster than I thought. Iwas thinking this might be a two partner,
but we we just kind of wejust kind of blasted through it.
There was so much information and soa little time. So I think a
couple of things, and I thinkwhat we need to do is, well,
let's just get through this. First. You had mentioned people get to
(39:14):
hear things that we stay off Mike, and that's a special group, an
elite group, you might even say, people that are known as our patron
supporters, who they help us dothis by join us on Patron where they
get access to those behind the scenescontent like you mentioned, and you can
join them and your list will beadded the names of such heroes as Mike,
m Meghan, Layla, Mike T, Justin, Kim, Joshua,
Brad, Stephanie, Olivia, Brianand Ashley. Thank you all so much
(39:37):
and everyone who's listening. You canyou can go over there if you'd like
to, Yes, please do.In addition, you can support us by
subscribing, leaving us a rating andreview, picking up some merch for our
merch store. And that was somethingelse I'm missing. They can support us.
I mean, you could start awrestling promotion, call it why we
Wrestle, what we wrestle? Imean you can do that. That'd be
wwwwww. I mean I support that. I do like the idea of having
(40:04):
there could be a wrestler that ispsychology theme. You can't call him the
brain because there's already already Bobby Heenan, but you can call him something.
You can't call them cerebral assassin either, because there's triple h. Never mind,
just start the promotion. That's that'swhat I would say. There you
go, or you know, Ijoint us some patron. Thank you so
much to all of you for listeningon my team. Shane and myself do
writing and fact checking, audio editingand production from Justin and our social coordinator
(40:28):
is Emma Wilson. Is there anythingelse before we get to our recommendations,
I might say this, do notcall wrestling fake to a wrestler, they
will take offense. It is notfake in the way that most people say,
like, it is real athleticism withpreplanned storylines. That's the best way
to describe it. Don't call itfake. You will get hurt. Yeah,
(40:49):
Well, and this, as yousaid, like it's it's not The
athleticism isn't fake, not at all. The work that they put into it
isn't fake. The injuries, thedanger isn't I mean that danger is a
little bit faked in the sense thatthey're scripted, but I mean the potential
for danger is very real. Yes, and they work really, really hard
at their jobs. So in asense it is performative. That does not
(41:12):
make it fake. I think youphrased it very very well any the way
you said it. So with that, we do have time for one more
ad break and then we'll come backwith these recommendations day. Okay, So
let's get to our recommendations. Remations. I am recommending a board game.
(41:45):
I don't think I've recommended this,although it definitely has thought it's occurred to
me that I might I'm recommending agame called Boop. You have definitely not,
because I have never heard you saythat like that. Okay, So
this is actually a sort of sequelto the original version of the game that's
just called Boop. But the reasonI recommend people go with Boop, which
(42:06):
is a Halloween themed version, whichis Boo plus Oop at the end,
so Boop so four os, isthat you have essentially the exact same game
plus an added component if you wantit, And so you can play the
original version of it with this sequelgame, or you can play it with
the added component, and it's great. It's one of those games with like
extremely simple rules and extremely high strategy. The rule is basically, put one
(42:30):
of your pieces onto the board.Where you put it will move like the
pieces that roll next to it haveto move away from it. That's it.
And then you want to try andline up your pieces three in a
row, which means you kind ofstrategically want to place them so that if
you place a piece next to oneone of your pieces, it will move.
It closer to another one of yourpieces so that you can get three
in a row and sure that way, and that's that's it. You want
(42:50):
to get three pieces in a rowand moving. Putting your piece on the
board moves all the pieces around it, including including your opponents. It's very
simple, but the strategy is immense. Like you and really go you know,
deep on trying to plan for likehow you're going to set yourself up
for getting your three in a rowor block your opponent from getting three in
a row or both of those things. The Halloween themed version of it is
(43:10):
is great. So that's a matrecommendation is boop. It's adorable. Yeah,
it's it's all cats, by theway, and the game board is
actually like a little quilted blanket,so you put these little wooden cats on
the guilt on the quilted blanket.That's amazing. I love that. Yeah,
all right, So my recommendation isa record. I haven't recommended a
record in a long time. It'sfor a punk band called the Penske File.
(43:34):
So on their on their Spotify itsays the Penske File do it for
the love of the damn thing.Friendship rock and roll creativity movement. Catharsis
their live shows or celebrations so onand so forth. So they are a
if you're familiar with kind of likethe Gainesville drunk punk sound, so stuff
like Dyling your four, stuff likehot Water Music in that realm, Flatliners
(43:57):
that you'll that you would like thisband. They have really good pop sensibilities.
They have really good just kind oflike punk song writing, Like that's
just really great. Their new recordis called half Glow and I have not
been able to stop listening to it. It's just a really good listen if
you like that kind of thing fun. Oh that's great, all right,
Well, if you'd like to tellus about a punk record or a silly
named board game, you should definitelyreach out to us. But specifically,
(44:21):
if you'd like to talk to usabout something that we said about wrestling,
if you'd like to add something correct, something very kindly, or give us
just heaping amounts of praise, youcan do that by leave us a writing
and review somewhere. You can alsoreach out to us correctly email us at
info at WWDWWD podcast dot com,or on the social media platforms, and
we'll happily talk to you there otherwise, Thank you so much for listening.
(44:42):
Thank you for recording with me today, Shane. Also, thank you for
your awesome work on the notes fortoday's episode. Thank you appreciate it.
Anything else on your end or anythingI forgot before we wrap up? Nothing
on my end? All right?Perfect? Then this is Apham and this
Shane. We're out. See.Yeah, you've been listening to Why We
Do What We Do. You canlearn more about this and other episodes by
going to WWDWWD podcast dot com.Thanks for listening, and we hope you
(45:07):
have an awesome day
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