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Professional Wrestling · Why We Do What We Do

0:03
You're listening to Why we Do what we Do? Welcome to Why We Do
0:16
what we Do. I'm your host, Abri, but I'm roast Jane.
0:22
Oh dude, that's so much fun. You know the views the mus struck
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me in the moment or what do psychology podcast? Sometimes we're a fighting podcasts
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as it were. Today we talked about all the things that people do and
0:34
why they do them and all that sort of fun stuff and yeah, that's
0:38
us. Yeah, and today we're talking about professional wrestling. So as a
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child of the nineties, I grew up with the wrestling boom that was,
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you know, the carry over from the eighties and all the big stars and
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all that and uh and then into the nineties with the clash between w c
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W and WWF and all that fun stuff. And so we're gonna talk about
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all that stuff a little bit. But yeah, we're talking about kind of
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why people even like this thing when they know it's stage. Yeah, what
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is it? Why is it? Why is it? Again? I guess
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what do you? What is it? When was it? Why is it?
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And why do they? Great if you're listening to this on the day
1:15
that it publishes, I mean, first of all, good on you for
1:18
staying so up. Today's Yeah, podcast free. That is impressive. Congratulations
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on that. If that's the case, then let us join together and celebrating
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that. It is National case O Day. Yes, and for our vegan
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friends, hopefully your case so it's vegan. It's a National Care for Kids
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Day, which is a good general rule. Yeah, yeah, I think
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we can. We can all agree on that. National Crime and Intelligence Analyst
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Appreciation Day to all those black ops people out there, thank you, thank
1:46
you, yes, thank you to my FBI agent. It's also National fried
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Rice Day. Good day, like that National punch Day, So get your
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fist ready. I was gonna say it's very apt for this episode. It
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is also out for this episode National Gibberish Day, because a lot of times
2:01
when you see these guys talk not intelligible at all. Yeah, they all
2:07
sound like Sylvester still love. Yeah. This is Adopt a Less Adoptable Pet
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Week. And by that we do not mean go into a zoo and take
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an animal. No, we mean going to an animal shelter where they're animals
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that are having trouble being adopted and give them a home. Like older adopt
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all pets and animals with disabilities and stuff like that. Please go adopt them.
2:27
Yeah. Yeah, holmes they need love, they need holmes, they
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need love. I have a friend who adopted a chihuahua that was missing an
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eye and named it the Professor. It was great, huge. So there
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was the Professor and Batman and mister Batman. I'm sorry, mister Batman.
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They live together. That person's a BCBA. Now it's also National Astronomy Week.
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Hey, I love that. Uh huh, International Clean Hands Week.
2:47
I'm go ahead and make that international Clean's Hands decade. Let's go ahead and
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keep those hands clean. Yeah, especially with everything going on. Yes,
2:55
but at least for now, the official holiday is week. Let's all work
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together to make it century. Yeah, wash your hands. It's also National
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Farm and Ranch Safety and Health Week, so big fan of that for people
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who are working on farms and ranches to stay safe. Yeah, and thank
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you all for keeping us alive. Yeah, we would like to keep you
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alive. Yes, speaking of which is National go Kart Week, so hell
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yeah, go out there and do the go kart thing. Oh love go
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carts so much fun that they really are many NASCAR for children or grown ups.
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We love it. Yeah, big, big go kart advocates over here.
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Why we deal what we deal. But as we said, we're talking
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about fiction and play acting today, and that is to say, we're going
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to find out what Billy Corgan murder, samurai swords, and panda bears I'll
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have in common. It's a wild ride. I mean, I think most
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people know professional wrestling is in itself a ridiculous thing, but it gets a
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little bit wilder. So let's talk about what we are talking about. We're
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not talking about wrestling in terms of like greco roman wrestling or grappling or anything
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like that. We're time about professional wrestling. And professional wrestling is a type
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of entertainment involving wrestling matches whose progress and outcome are planned in advance, typically
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between performers and established character roles. So it's usually a stage thing. The
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match itself might have some improvisation in it, they might have some things that
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go on in it, but in itself, the outcome is usually predetermined.
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And that is the definition of professional wrestling. Yeah, it's a stage play
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where the theme of the play of every play is gratuitous violence, yes,
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but for fun. While the history of wrestling and grappling sports is very rich.
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Its earliest recorded moment was found in ancient Mesopotamia, dating back till around
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three thousand BC. But we're not actually talking about that, as we said,
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we're talking more of the show the wrestling entertainment world. Yes, and
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professional wrestling found its start in the early eighteen hundreds in Western Europe and the
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United Kingdom. Is a form of entertainment and showmanship, so it was basically
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set up as a way to entertain folks in their communities. Now, some
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of you may, even if you're not very familiar with the world of professional
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wrestling, may have heard that there are all these fun names for professional wrestal
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wrestlers, like the Undertaker and such and things of that nature, the Ultimate
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Warrior exactly. Now, these this is a long standing tradition because some early
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wrestlers performed under such names as Herculean Flower, Edward the Steel Eater, Gustav
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Devon, Jon the bone Wrecker, etc. They get that right, okay,
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And in some instances they would challenge members of the public to see if
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they could knock them down for money. Which also, there's probably something we
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should do something on like like carneys sometimes and like the carnivalis freak show things.
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We're about to Yeah, we're gonna get Yeah, We're we're gonna do
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We're gonna do some Carney dives real real quick. So sometime in eighteen forty
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eight, professional wrestling saw its debut in the Circus. Jehan Ex Broyat established
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what they called flat hand wrestling as part of the circus troop in what would
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be described as a performance art. So this flat hand wrestling, what we
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know today is wrestling kind of like some of the evolution of it started as
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this idea of flat hand wrestling, not the greco Roman wrestling, as a
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performance art within the circus. Okay, so why is this different? Well
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because during some of these acts, professional wrestlers professional in this case meaning it's
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their job, would work with other members of the troop to identify quote unquote
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dumb oafs and patrons who were easily duped into other carnival games, which obviously
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is a hallmark of that sort of industry. They would challenge patrons of the
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carnival to try to pin the wrestler, only for the wrestler to quickly pin
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that person and take their money. So got some hoodwinking going on, Yes,
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now, Within the wrestling community, there is a term called mark.
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We're gonna basically unpack this. The term mark originated from the Carnival Troop.
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Members would mark or like use chalk to identify easy victims. They would mark
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on their back or their shoulder so that other members of the carnival could pinpoint
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them and trick them into getting into these carnival games, the Midway games and
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get money from them. So they would they would essentially be marked for victimization.
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Well, that sounds like one of those apocryphal stories of like how a
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term came to be. Yeah, you know, describing a person as a
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mark. That's interesting. Yeah, that's exactly where it came from. Wow.
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The term is now also used under the wrestling community to describe someone who
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believes that the sport is real. More about that later, as we'll get
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into it. Yeah, we'll talk about what's real and what's not and all
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that fun stuff. So in the early nineteen hundred, professional wrestling began to
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gain in popularity, with some events selling nearly thirty thousand tickets, like the
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nineteen eleven Frank Gotch George Hackenschmidt rematch at Kaminsky Park. So even in nineteen
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eleven, they were selling thirty thousand tickets to these events. It's a lot
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of people. Yeah, they're like, we can make money on this,
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you guys. Let's just let's make some money. Let's make a lot of
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money. I mean, just to just to put this in perspective, last
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night, WWE had an event called Payback and it had fourteen thousand people at
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it. So like, yeah, if that tells you anything about like how
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this is still a verily popular thing, but it's never really waned. Yeah,
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all right. While there were countless events and wrestlers in the US and
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Europe at this time, it wasn't until the nineteen forties that the National Wrestling
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Alliance or NWA you may have heard the initials was born. This organization was
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originally established as a committee to help regulate wrestling and provide a quote unquote legitimacy
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to the sport. Yep fun fact. NWA is currently owned by Billy Corgan
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of the Smashing Bumpkins. So there's our first tie in our first time.
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Wow, I did not know that. That's wild. Yeah. NWA is
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actually a professional wrestling organization similar to WWE. AW it's got its own titles.
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It's got its own wrestlers, it's got its own show and stuff like
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that. But it's a smaller kind of operation right now, Okay, got
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you? Yeah, all right. Through this early period, there were quite
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a few gimmick matches similar to what you would see today. An example of
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this is Terrible Ted the wrestling Bear. He was an American black bear who
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wrestled in North America between nineteen fifties into the nineteen seventies. I think when
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when I said the American black Bear, what you heard is a person dressed
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as a black bear, or like someone who used the wrestling name black bear.
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This was a actual bear, like the animal, the four legged,
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quadruped climbs up trees and eats like to get people's trash. Bear. Yep,
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yeah that's him. Another important point, he wrestled longer than so many
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professional wrestlers actually wrestle. So twenty years. Yeah, that's twenty years.
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He was a twenty year wrestling bear. So man, oh, I mean
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it's I'm telling you, it's a wild time. It's a wild time.
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We haven't even been doing this podcast for twenty years yet I know this bear,
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this bear has a longer wrestling career than we do. Also, what
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a great name, Terrible, Ted the Wrestling Bear. I mean, it
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aligns so well with professional wrestling, it's so good. So around the same
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time professional wrestling began to develop in jap and in Mexico, both developing their
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own unique styles of the sport. You may actually be familiar with the flying
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style, like it's like high risk, like jumping off ropes and backlips and
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all stuff and decorative mass that you find of the members of the wrestling community
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in South America and Mexico luchadors. Yeah, and so that's that's where that
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started. And so Raymu Stereo and those folks kind of helped bring that to
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the United Theates a little bit more too. There's a lot of there's a
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lot of people who are luchadors, and this started coming up around the same
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time that Ted the Terrible Wrestling Bear was around. Fun, Okay, there's
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something to be said about, you know, the animal exploitation and that sort
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of thing and there, and that's we've covered that other topics and we'll cover
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that's more in the future, but for now, understanding this is just part
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of the history throughout the nineteen sixties. In nineteen seventies, the AWA and
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WWWF are both created, which begins the sort of more aggressive competition and more
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around territories like regional competition and now territories were established by the NWA and basically
10:58
governed who owned or promoted differentiation. So for instance, you had NWA in
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Montana, Hollywood, and Iowa, but you also had AWA in Boston,
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Maple Leaf Wrestling in Toronto, the Worldwide Wrestling Federation in DC in New York,
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New Japan, Pro Wrestling in Tokyo, and World Championship Wrestling in Atlanta,
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among many many others. There were a lot of wrestling promotions at this
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time. Again, if you can make money on it, it's a thing,
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and they were yep. Oftentimes these territories would develop their own championship titles,
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deal wrestlers from other territories for their own and generally do you see a
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lot of headbutting with other groups to tout that they were the best of the
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best, et cetera. So not I mean not terribly different from like sports
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teams buying up the best players from competing sports teams. You get like the
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you know, the Yankees, for example, doing that sort of thing,
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right, So, yeah, very much like other sports. My team is
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the best and I have a favorite player. Then that's again very still similar
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to what was going on here, and it makes a lot of sense.
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And you just when you follow the money, like you start seeing relatively similar
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patterns emerge, right, I mean when you when you kind of dive into
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the wrestling world, you have a like people have a favorite kind of organization
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or company, they have their favorite wrestlers. Like, it's no different than
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other sports. Like, it's really like it aligns really really well. Now.
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When the World Wrestling Federation today's ww as we know it, split from
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NWA in nineteen eighty two after Vince mcmann's takeover the organization, this began to
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propel wrestling into a different kind of entertainment stratospheres. What we started seeing at
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that time was more TV appearances, more marketing, the development of more over
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the top characters, Saturday morning cartoons, more merchandising. And the eighties were
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really kind of absurd for wrestling. I mean, the amount of attention wrestling
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was getting was pretty incredible for something that was really when you watch it,
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it's so very ridiculous. Yeah. Absolutely, When the nineties came around,
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We're starting to get into slightly more modern times. The WCWS started to begin
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to gain traction and the Monday Night Wars started, and this was essentially at
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back and fourth for viewership for the two Monday night television shows for WWF and
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WCW. If any of you remember when Hulk Hogan went bad and we had
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Nitro versus Raw, but if not, that was the whole thing, huh,
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But he started to hear those names. I think more people of our
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time are are a little bit more familiar. Yeah, you might be familiar
13:18
with like the nWo versus Degeneration X and all those factions that come up and
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all that. So it's a really fun time to watch, but it's also
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really problematic. Popularity was taking in the mid nineties before like all of that
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kind of that rivalry started, and wrestling began to get quite a bit edgier.
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And what you find is what people will described as what's called the Attitude
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era in the WWF, where many of the segments on the show would show
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off more riskay content in lieu of matches, and I'm gonna tell you right
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now, it did not age well. As one example one wrestler's character.
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His name is val Venus. He was a porn star who ended up leaving
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porn to work in wrestling. He end up losing a bet to a yakuza
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esque type of group that was in WWF and had his penis cut off with
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a Samurai sword in a segment that happen on TV. They held his arms
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and they put his penis on a chopping block and they cut off with a
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Samurai sword. That's tie into by the way, Samurai sword. But that's
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a fairly mild example of what happened in this time period. It again,
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it did not age well, all right. Also, what a ridiculous premise.
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Yeah, I can understand why some people maybe were like, this isn't
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really for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. And also he wasn't
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like championship Like, he wasn't one of the championship guys, so he was
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like one of like the lower card guys. Any kind of a penis,
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go bigger, go home. You know, That's all I'm saying, you
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know. And the two thousands, WWF changed its name to WWE due to
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a conflict with the World Wildlife Fund YEP. So for those of you who
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don't know the World Wildlife Fund. It's logo is a panda bear. Oh
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uha tie in number three. Ah? Yes, all right, so the
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WWF changed its name. It also bought WCW and things have been continuing ever
14:58
since. We also saw the development of Total NonStop Action Wrestling or TNA,
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later changed to Impact Wrestling Lucha Underground, which was awesome according to Shane and
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All Elite Wrestling or a EW. And not to say that I disagree,
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I just am not familiar with it. Yeah. Yeah, Lucha Underground basically
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started because like the storyline, and this is something that happens in wrestling,
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these really ridiculous storylines, but basically, something supernatural happens. They break into
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an Aztec temple and there's a wrestling group there, and that's what the entire
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show is based on. It's fun when you get into how ardull this is
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but wow, the question that comes up often is why do people watch it
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and why do these wrestlers do it? And I really want to unpack that.
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But but first some ads. Okay, so we talked a little bit
15:50
about the when the wrestling, and we have talked I think a little bit
15:54
about why the wrestling mostly in the terms of the financial part of it.
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But now though, really but the why but why wrestling? Yes? So
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one of the major criticisms of wrestling is that wrestling is fake since the outcome
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has always planned. But there's a huge amount of athleticism that goes into being
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able to keep up with a match. I mean, when you watch these
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guys perform, they are incredible athletes. Even if what they're doing in stage,
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they have to be in really good shape to make this happen. Yeah,
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they train like crazy. Regular workouts include extreme amount of cardio, high
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intensity interval or hit training, strength training, among other things. Beginner's classes
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may include a twelve week program that teaches you how to fall, bounce off
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ropes, communicate with your wrestling partner, call matches, etc. Of course,
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this isn't the end of your training. An ongoing practice to develop your
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character speak on a microphone that is like cut promos produced matches are also all
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part of the process. There. It's a huge training thing. This is
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probably not the best analogy to make, but when Walking Dead was on,
16:56
they had like actors who are going to be extra zombies had to go to
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like a zombie boot camp, train how to be zombies. That sounds like
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there's kind of a similar thing, Like it's a very specific set of skills
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that's needed to pull this off that they sort of had. They had like
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pro wrestling camp basically. Really, I mean and honestly, I have a
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friend who is, like, he's a wrestler. He does it on the
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side, and he that the amount of training he had to go through.
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He had to go through like three straight months of training as a wrestler to
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be before he could ever be in the ring with somebody. And that was
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to perform at like house shows where you had to first of all confirm that
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you were trained, but also you didn't get paid anything. And we'll talk
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and we'll talk more about that later. The ridiculous pay for this. Yeah,
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So many wrestlers, while incredibly athletic, face life threatening injuries as a
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result of performing these planned matches. Stone Cold Steve Auston famously broke his neck
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during a match with Owen Hart when a pile driver, which is a move
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that basically like drops you on your head onto a matt The pile driver went
17:57
wrong and owen Hart broke it, broke Stone ste Boston's deck. He was
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paralyzed for a period of time and stunt Cold Sea Boston being probably the most
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famous wrestler besides while COVID. Right, yeah, I think so. Maybe
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you know John Sten is getting up there, John is up there too.
18:10
Yeah, yeah, yeah exactly. But yeah, broken necks and limb I
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mean, this is when you're doing stunt work, there is inherent danger.
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That's why they oftentimes hire stunt actors to do those things for movies. Yes,
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because those people who are trained to do that. But nevertheless, and
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because of that danger, you have broken necks and limbs, ligament and muscle
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tears, concussions. These are all very common in the wrestling community, even
18:33
with these planned performances. But why well, as we said, professional wrestlers
18:37
are basically trained to be stunt people, but at a much more extreme level.
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I mean, for one thing, where some person may only film a
18:45
few movies a year, some wrestlers will work every night for months or even
18:48
sometimes years on end. They're doing live performances where they don't have the luxury
18:53
of special effects where you can obscure part of what happened during a violent stunt,
18:59
so that someone can and land on a crash pad where they get they
19:02
have a wire that pulls them out of the way of something right where there's
19:04
green screen and CGI they're like, so there there's stunts that are more sometimes
19:10
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
19:17
everything they're doing has to be live and on the spot, stunts that they're
19:21
doing with very little in the way of additional infrastructure. It basically just comes
19:23
down to planning, right. So there's a lot of injuries have happened,
19:27
and the wrestling rings that they fall on are a very small layer of foam
19:33
and plywood. That's really all they're falling on over and over and over again
19:37
for fifteen thirty forty minutes at a time. So it's not like one stunt
19:41
and you're done and you can move on from it. It is consistently a
19:45
workout every night falling, and they learn how to fall, You learn how
19:49
to fall on classes. But a right, it's really hard on your body.
19:52
People don't realize how hard it is on your body. It's a painful
19:55
spot, absolutely, yeah, And you think that that would mean you are
20:00
you are compensated sufficiently to make it all worth it, And we'll get to
20:03
that in a little bit. Yeah, and you are not. Now,
20:07
some reports do indicate the professional wrestlers have less of a chance to become a
20:10
contracted WWE wrestler than you would have becoming an Olympian. So let me let
20:15
me say this a different way. You are more likely to be an Olympian
20:18
than you are to be a professional wrestler in WWE. Wow, isn't that
20:22
wild? That is wild? That is surprising. See, it is like
20:26
that this is a thing you do because you can't do other real sports,
20:29
and it's it's actually not the case. It's it's really opposite, the opposite.
20:33
You're more likely to do a real sport and get famous and like win
20:36
money than you would to be a professional wrestler. All right, so you're
20:40
listening to this. We're hearing about their injuries. We're hearing about how much
20:42
work it is, We're hearing about how difficult it is to break into this.
20:45
Why do people even do this? Sounds like it hurts a lot.
20:48
Well, there are a few reasons. One of the first ones I think
20:51
that jumps out to most people is fame, even though it's unlikely. There
20:53
are a few wrestlers who have gotten very famous from their professional wrestling career.
20:57
One of the ones we just mentioned Dwayne the Rock, Johnson, John Cena,
21:03
Dave Batista. All of these are huge mega celebrities now and are all
21:07
former professional wrestlers who found success in Hollywood. Even those who don't make it
21:11
to acting are often still widely known for the wrestling personas. We had Macho
21:15
Man, Randy Savage, Andre the Giant who was also in some movies,
21:19
Dusty Rhodes. Have all seen great fame as wrestlers alone. Right now,
21:25
you might get to go, I can make a lot of money on this,
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and the chance to make good money in professional wrestling is there, but
21:30
it's very slim. Top wrestlers today like Roman Rains, he's like kind of
21:33
the champion right now at WWE. He makes about five million dollars a year.
21:37
Brock Lesner, who's another wrestler in WWE, he makes about twelve million
21:40
dollars a year. But according to zip Recruiter, the majority of professional wrestlers
21:44
make a little more than thirteen dollars per hour on average. That is crazy.
21:48
You think about how much money they make selling tickets for a single show,
21:52
and then they get paid thirteen dollars an hour. That is some wildly
21:56
low. Yeah. Also, one thing that we don't talk about in this
22:00
episode, but it's worth mentioning a lot of WWE wrestlers, the people you
22:03
see on TV or contractors, they're not even employees. Oh oh, that's
22:07
right. And the reason they like that or employers like that. The employees
22:11
do not is because that means that they are not obligated to receive other benefits
22:15
of employment. They're not obligated to healthcare, then obligated to insurance, they're
22:19
not obligated to retirement. They're basically seen as a gig worker. Functionally.
22:26
Yeah, yep, that's going to play a role. We talk about some
22:29
of the horrific dark side of the wrestling world and a little bit Yeah all
22:33
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
22:41
simply a passion for some people. They enjoyed it to a degree, to
22:45
a degree that they're willing to risk anything and everything their homes, their bodies,
22:48
and relationships to pursue the dream of wrestling and what that means. It's
22:51
no different than someone putting all the resources into a startup or a podcast that
22:55
doesn't really make any money, but we do it anyway. Podcasts don't quite
23:00
have as many hit a head injuries. Some not zero heading us, but
23:04
fewer. It's never zero chance, right exactly. So that explains a little
23:11
bit about why professional wrestlers do that. But why do people like us?
23:17
Why do we watch it or why do I watch it? Well, it
23:18
sounds like a cop out to say that we watch it for the stories,
23:22
but that's actually what a lot of research is finding and a lot of articles
23:25
are finding. Most people don't watch it for just kind of like the straight
23:29
up matches. There are some people that do. They like the athleticism and
23:32
like the stunt work that's being done, but for the most part, people
23:34
really like to watch it because of the storylines. Professional wrestling is not just
23:38
about the matches, though they are entertaining. There are storylines that are full
23:42
of twists and turns. They're underdog heroes that you want to root for.
23:45
There are villains you want to seek get their just desserts. There's all kinds
23:48
of things that happen within the wrestling world that makes it a lot of fun
23:52
to watch, and that makes a lot of sense. Like it's harder to
23:55
imagine someone carrying through paying that close attention to a sport where it's like you
24:00
don't believe anything that's going on and there's nothing to latch onto story wise,
24:04
Like the thing that would make it sort of carry it along is this having
24:07
this narrative that weaves throughout right. According to the Bleacher Report, people watch
24:12
wrestling for a variety of reasons. There's the humor, the action, the
24:15
drama, et cetera. That's all part of the fun. Like they bring
24:18
jokes, they have a little like beats, they have, you know,
24:21
a planned way to keep it exciting. But people also get invested in characters
24:25
and stories and they want to see them through their arcs. They want to
24:27
see how it ends, they want to see how they develop and all that
24:30
right, because at any point in time, any wrestler can be a good
24:33
guy or a bad guy. They they can change sides, they can do
24:37
all kinds of things. What's really nice about this is like, because you're
24:40
watching this for so long and these people are on TV every single week,
24:42
Like, you never really know what's going to happen. The storylines can kind
24:47
of change week to week and you don't really know. And some of them
24:48
are really good and some of them are really bad. I mean, it
24:52
just depends on what you like and you know the writers at the time.
24:55
But some psychologists argue that watching wrestling is an example of a defense mechanism called
25:00
sublimation. Basically, we watch wrestling because we are aggressive, but never act
25:03
on the impulse, so we transferred to something more useful, like entertainment.
25:07
Supposedly, just to reiterate, sublimation is the unconscious psychological defense that reduces anxiety
25:12
that may result from unacceptable urges or harmful stimulae. So like, basically we
25:17
just kind of transplant it onto something else and engage in the activity. It
25:21
doesn't mean that we actually do the thing. How would you test to determine
25:23
if someone is doing this unconsciously? You can't, but you can certainly make
25:27
it up and call it a thing and then sell a book about it or
25:30
something. So yeah, thanks Freud, Yeah, that's the magical explanation for
25:36
why people watch it. It maybe laugh when this came up into all the
25:40
psychology stuff. I will also say that sworn enemy of the podcast, Jordan
25:45
Peterson's name, came up in discussing why people like this, and so I
25:48
decided not to use his reference because it's our he's clearly our enemy. But
25:52
it was kind of in the same in the same boat. It's like not
25:55
being able to look away from a car crash, you know, a big
25:59
teary eyed car. There's probably also some amount of thinking about the social fund
26:03
that comes from talking with your friends about last night's match and thinking about like
26:07
what's coming up and how excited you know. I think there is a social
26:11
engagement piece of this that we don't want to ignore. But yeah, I
26:14
think, as you sort of said, like, there's also something inherently captivating
26:17
about like action sequences. We see people perform incredible stunts, we see people
26:22
climb over remarkable obstacles, or perform these athletic feats. I think people watch
26:26
honestly professional sports for a similar reason A lot of the time is it's that
26:30
level of athleticism, that is, it takes an elite performer with an enormous
26:34
amount of training to be able to pull it off, and that is something
26:37
that we find interesting because it's not something we do very easily, like it's
26:41
so difficult. So it's like like I like watching virtuoso musicians playing their instruments
26:47
extremely well because of the amount of work that went in to produce such a
26:51
fluent and incredible skill set. And so anyway, that's getting off on a
26:56
signed tangent. Why don't you wrestle with these ads and we'll talk about the
27:00
dark side of the ring. Okay, we're back. We've been all sunshine
27:11
and rainbows so far with injury and not getting paid anything. But let's get
27:15
into the actual even I think the darker, grittier, less fun side of
27:19
wrestling. Yeah, I mean, I think it's worth unpacking because it does
27:25
sound like it's fun and it's for kids and all this stuff. I mean,
27:26
some of it is. But just like any industry, there are countless
27:30
stories of some problems that are pretty significant throughout professional wrestling. There are these
27:34
harrowing tales of problems about among wrestlers that are incredibly shocking, and here are
27:38
a few examples. The first one that I'm gonna share is from a wrestler
27:41
who went by the stage name of Draws. His name was Darren Adrian Draws
27:48
off. He was known as Draws and Puke when he was in WWE.
27:51
He went with Draws Puke wasn't really going to work out, but he was
27:53
a wrestler that was injured during a match. Basically, another wrestler was going
27:56
to pick him up the power bomb and slipped and dropped him on his head
28:00
by accident and broke his neck, paralyzing him from the neck down. And
28:03
he was eventually able to regain movement with his arms and upper body, but
28:07
was combined to a wheelchair until his passing in June of twenty twenty three.
28:10
This happened in the nineties, by the way, like late nineties, early
28:12
two thousands, and WWE did a good job of keeping them hired, keeping
28:18
Draws hired, and like keeping him in a job like he was a columnist.
28:21
He was like working with a WWE. He's helping produce matches and stuff
28:23
like that. But you know, he was injured for the rest of his
28:26
life as a result of this sport. Yeah Bruiser Brody. While in Puerto
28:30
Rico in nineteen eighty eight, Brodie was stabbed during an altercation with another wrestler,
28:34
Josie Gonzalez, who he was later acquitted with findings that he was acting
28:38
in self defense. But yeah, so wrestler dying in a locker room.
28:42
Yeah, Jake the Snake Roberts, so you might be familiar with that name.
28:47
While many wrestlers struggled with addictions, like Jeff Hardy, Rick Flair staying
28:49
in Scott Hall, Jake Roberts was one of the more well known examples.
28:52
He would show up to matches under the influence of a variety of substance,
28:56
including opiates an alcohol. He would wrestle under the influence, which is incredibly
29:00
dangerous. This one is a kind of a good Newstale like. He was
29:03
able to get sober through treatment and support and does discuss the damage that this
29:07
did. I mean, he is very open and transparent about his struggles.
29:11
It's unfortunate that he's had some trouble with his family members as a result of
29:15
all the addictions and stuff, but he is working at aw and he is
29:18
sober, which is a really great thing to see after somebody who struggled for
29:22
many, many years. You can see some wrestling matches where he is under
29:26
the influence and it is really really bad. It's scary. That's tough obviously,
29:30
Maybe not obviously, but someone may be thinking, and I would tend
29:34
to agree. What about steroids. So there's a steroids scandal. In the
29:37
case United States versus Vince McMahon, it was revealed that the company Doctor was
29:42
providing wrestlers with anabolic steroids since the look of professional wrestlers included looking sort of
29:48
larger than life. You see these like massive bodies. Yeah, terry distribution
29:52
was not only condoned, it was even encouraged. And while McMahon was found
29:56
not guilty, this trial did alter drug policies within the wrestling community and effectively
30:00
banned anabolic steroids. And then the last main story that we're gonna talking about
30:06
is Chris ben wah And most people are probably pretty familiar with this one because
30:10
it was so horrific. So just a heads up, there's there's a lot
30:12
of violence, and if you want to skip ahead a couple minutes, you
30:15
totally can. But this is one of the more widely known examples of how
30:18
bad things can get. Following a welfare check to his home on June twenty
30:22
fifth of two thousand and seven, ben Wanda's family were found dead. It
30:23
was a term that ben Wah had committed the murders and taking his own life
30:26
in this horrible event like so it was a double murder suicide. The autopsy
30:30
report indicated that ben Wah's brain was so severely damaged from years of professional wrestling
30:36
that it resembled an eighty five year old Alzheimer's patient's brain, and this advanced
30:40
form of damage was similar to examples found in other people who have had repeated
30:44
concussions like chronic traumatic encephalopathy CTE if you're familiar with that. Like some of
30:48
the stuff going on at the NFL, it's been a major topic of discussion
30:53
in those high impact sports like MMA and NFL organizations, as well as professional
30:57
wrestling. It's something that's come up more often in the last few years.
31:00
But they think that he was somebody who suffered from that at a pretty extreme
31:03
level. Man, That is a tough one. And this doesn't even include
31:07
the numerous reports of domestic violence, stone cold, reckless endangerment, the Plan
31:11
Right from Hell, sexual assault, Vince McMahon pay scandals, sexism, racism
31:18
that has occurred within the professional wrestling world, and even I think some of
31:21
the gimmicks they had some pretty racist Yeah, gimmicks that were done able us
31:25
too. There's a character for a little bit who was special needs and when
31:29
the bell would ring, he would like immediately hop into wrestling mode, like
31:32
the minute he heard a bell, he would like be like a really skilled
31:34
wrestler, but he was developmentally delayed. Wowable. Yeah. While it has
31:40
reportedly gotten better overall following just i mean countless charges of and lawsuits, the
31:45
world of professional wrestling still has quite a ways to go to. I think
31:48
make this a sport that's safer and less likely to result in these traumatic things
31:52
to these you know, these basically actors. Yeah, absolutely so I'm gonna
31:57
bring it back up a little bit. I think we need to do that
32:00
because that was because it gets real dark positively. So what does the research
32:04
say? We like research, you like research? What does it all say?
32:07
Karrick in nineteen eighty focuses on the language of professional wrestling. So professional
32:10
wrestling kind of has its own unique jargon, which is really fascinating. First,
32:15
they have terms that are made up just for the industry. Jobber mark
32:19
bump, which you know, jobber is like somebody who just like does the
32:21
job for somebody to make them look better. The mark is the is the
32:23
person that believes it's real. The bump is the fall you take. The
32:28
face is the hero, the heel is the villain, and they're all specific
32:31
to practices within the profession of wrestling. So, but there are like a
32:36
weird little fold to this. Much of the language is not sports and athletic
32:40
oriented. It's more business focused. So terms like promoters, entertainment, top
32:45
men, workers are all business oriented, and that makes it a little bit
32:49
more unique than other I guess like sports, like specific sports like baseball,
32:54
football, stuff like that. You don't really hear a lot of the same
32:57
terms use the same way. Yeah, on dak and nineteen eighty nine reviews
33:01
how ethics and moral systems within professional wrestling presentations often shift and change depending on
33:07
political climates. So, because this is an entertainment industry like any if you
33:10
look back on movies, you'll see a similar thing. Well, movies will
33:13
sort of reflect in a way the politics of the era that either were popular
33:17
or aligned with a particular point or a person or ideology. And so for
33:22
instance, Sergeant Slaughter, originally a good guy and military soldier character, was
33:27
made a villain and joined the other Iranian wrestlers and an effort to piss off
33:30
fans for again entertainment to get people buying you hate buying tickets and whatnot.
33:36
And this was during the eighties nineties when the initial conflict with Saddam Hussein was
33:39
occurring under H. W. Bush's turn. So this is the Bush senior.
33:45
That was a big deal. People were real mad about that, you
33:46
know, because he was supposed to be like the stand up, good old
33:50
boy type of thing in it. Yeah, if you were so bad.
33:52
Campbell in nineteen ninety six discussed why the bad guy always wins. So in
33:57
wrestling, a lot of times the bad guy will win and people get real
33:59
mad about it. But essentially they argue that the primary demographic for wrestling fans
34:02
comes from urban labor workforces, which are characterized by low income welfare recipients or
34:07
immigrants who find little success in doing things quote unquote the right ways, which
34:10
they said, but basically like following the system and like in the land of
34:15
opportunity, this particular group tends to struggle, right, because of all the
34:19
barriers blocked. It's because of a system, not because of them, right,
34:21
The system is not set up to support them. To be clear,
34:23
So fans that enjoy seeing the bad guy win, they do because it provides
34:29
an alternative value system and shows them that there are multiple paths to success.
34:32
But basically that somebody can This is directly from the from the article quote one
34:37
can lift oneself from off the bottom of the pile by taking shortcuts and foul
34:42
play in pursuit of success in life end quote. It's a weird take,
34:45
it's a weird article, but this was something that was published in a scientific
34:50
journal about discussing like moral systems and alternative value systems within behavior like human behavior.
34:54
Weird. Yeah, I think it is probably, I mean, first
34:59
of all, because it's a stage that means that you're supposing that that is
35:02
the value that they're trying to tap into from the organizers and the producers of
35:07
this, And I really doubt that that was a discussion that very many of
35:10
them have ever had. If ever, I think that probably what it is
35:15
is that when you when the villain wins a lot, then you have hope
35:20
for the next time. There is like an entertainment factor. It's not that
35:22
predictable if the good guy wins every time, right, Like you've got to
35:27
have that bad guy win, or if there's not that much drama, it's
35:30
not that fun. It's just you see what's happening all the time. So
35:31
I think you need to shake it up with having the bad guy win.
35:35
That means that there's something to overcome later. I think there are plenty of
35:38
other reasons that don't depend on this idea that people are following their moral shiftings
35:44
of whatever that means. Yeah, it's real, it's real. Like I
35:47
said, when I was reading, I was like, I had to include
35:50
it because it was so strange. Yeah, it's a weird take. It's
35:52
a weird take, but I think the article itself, it ignores a system
35:55
in lieu of personal behavior, like individual behavior, like it written, it's
36:00
written as if people are to blame instead of understanding how behavior happens within a
36:05
system. And I thought that was a really strange thing. But I had
36:07
to include because I was like, it's just so weird. It's such a
36:09
very specific take to say like these this group of people like seeing the bad
36:13
guy win because they can be bad guys too. It's like, no,
36:15
yeah, like that's not how that works. Yeah, I don't think we
36:17
agree with Campbell here. No, Atkins in two thousand and two argues that
36:21
much of the appeal of professional wrestling comes from a cultural perspective. On a
36:24
weekly basis, at the time of this article, nearly fifty million people nearly
36:29
fifty million people are watching the events regularly despite it being fake like bid staged
36:36
performative. The ultimate hypothesis here is that professional wrestling is doing something right since
36:40
so many folks are tuning in, but that the main cause may be culturally
36:45
based, and that could make sense. I think you could probably find places
36:50
of the world where they do not have sports like this, or very few
36:52
people pay attention to it, and unless it is universal, we can assume
36:58
that it is cultural exactly. So I think there's a couple other things,
37:00
though, I think are really interesting in this realm. Because I don't know
37:05
if I said this on the episode, but I said this when we were
37:07
talking on the patron recording, so all our patreons saw this. There is
37:10
not a lot of research on the phenomenon that is professional wrestling. It's a
37:15
lot of commentary. If there is any research, it's mostly from like a
37:17
business standpoint, So it wasn't anything from a psychological standpoint that we could find,
37:22
but it was just like these weird interesting tidbits from like those different spaces.
37:25
I think the most interesting thing was the jargon more than anything else.
37:29
That is that is really cool. I mean, yeah, it's surprising.
37:31
I guess you wouldn't have thought, but it does actually make some amount of
37:35
sense. Let me break it down that way. Yeah, some last things
37:37
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
37:49
wrestler Ricka Dozin, who was actually Korean, non Japanese, was considered one
37:53
of the greatest of all time. He was stabbed by yakuza in a nightclub
37:58
with a piss soaked knife, later dying of his injuries. Wild. That's
38:02
terrible. Yeah, there's like there's like weird like mafia stuff like embedded into
38:07
like so much underground stuff in this In this world too. Snookie, which
38:12
is also gross, has won more matches at pay per view with WWE then
38:16
Sting. So Sting, the professional wrestler who has had decades of wrestling under
38:22
his belt, has lost more pay per view matches at ww than Snookie has
38:27
huh. And finally, Bruno Sam Martino holds the longest title reign in professional
38:30
wrestling history, with a total of two thousand, eight hundred and three days.
38:36
That is a lot of days. He was literally a champion for over
38:39
seven and a half years. Uh huh. But you know, got nothing
38:43
on Ted the Black Bear. This guy is he looks like a like he
38:47
was built of stone, This Bruno Sia Martino guy. But yeah, Ted
38:52
the Terrible Black Bear was, you know, just an entirely different monster.
38:55
Yeah, all right, fun, Well, that was actually through that a
39:00
lot faster than I thought. I was thinking this might be a two partner,
39:02
but we we just kind of we just kind of blasted through it.
39:05
There was so much information and so a little time. So I think a
39:07
couple of things, and I think what we need to do is, well,
39:10
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
39:15
elite group, you might even say, people that are known as our patron
39:19
supporters, who they help us do this by join us on Patron where they
39:22
get access to those behind the scenes content like you mentioned, and you can
39:25
join them and your list will be added the names of such heroes as Mike,
39:30
m Meghan, Layla, Mike T, Justin, Kim, Joshua,
39:32
Brad, Stephanie, Olivia, Brian and Ashley. Thank you all so much
39:37
and everyone who's listening. You can you can go over there if you'd like
39:39
to, Yes, please do. In addition, you can support us by
39:43
subscribing, leaving us a rating and review, picking up some merch for our
39:45
merch store. And that was something else I'm missing. They can support us.
39:50
I mean, you could start a wrestling promotion, call it why we
39:52
Wrestle, what we wrestle? I mean you can do that. That'd be
39:55
wwwwww. I mean I support that. I do like the idea of having
40:04
there could be a wrestler that is psychology theme. You can't call him the
40:07
brain because there's already already Bobby Heenan, but you can call him something.
40:10
You can't call them cerebral assassin either, because there's triple h. Never mind,
40:14
just start the promotion. That's that's what I would say. There you
40:17
go, or you know, I joint us some patron. Thank you so
40:20
much to all of you for listening on my team. Shane and myself do
40:22
writing and fact checking, audio editing and production from Justin and our social coordinator
40:28
is Emma Wilson. Is there anything else before we get to our recommendations,
40:31
I might say this, do not call wrestling fake to a wrestler, they
40:37
will take offense. It is not fake in the way that most people say,
40:40
like, it is real athleticism with preplanned storylines. That's the best way
40:45
to describe it. Don't call it fake. You will get hurt. Yeah,
40:49
Well, and this, as you said, like it's it's not The
40:52
athleticism isn't fake, not at all. The work that they put into it
40:55
isn't fake. The injuries, the danger isn't I mean that danger is a
41:00
little bit faked in the sense that they're scripted, but I mean the potential
41:02
for danger is very real. Yes, and they work really, really hard
41:07
at their jobs. So in a sense it is performative. That does not
41:12
make it fake. I think you phrased it very very well any the way
41:15
you said it. So with that, we do have time for one more
41:17
ad break and then we'll come back with these recommendations day. Okay, So
41:30
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
41:49
me that I might I'm recommending a game called Boop. You have definitely not,
41:53
because I have never heard you say that like that. Okay, So
41:59
this is actually a sort of sequel to the original version of the game that's
42:01
just called Boop. But the reason I recommend people go with Boop, which
42:06
is a Halloween themed version, which is Boo plus Oop at the end,
42:08
so Boop so four os, is that you have essentially the exact same game
42:15
plus an added component if you want it, And so you can play the
42:17
original version of it with this sequel game, or you can play it with
42:22
the added component, and it's great. It's one of those games with like
42:24
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
42:34
pieces that roll next to it have to move away from it. That's it.
42:37
And then you want to try and line up your pieces three in a
42:38
row, which means you kind of strategically want to place them so that if
42:42
you place a piece next to one one of your pieces, it will move.
42:45
It closer to another one of your pieces so that you can get three
42:46
in a row and sure that way, and that's that's it. You want
42:50
to get three pieces in a row and moving. Putting your piece on the
42:52
board moves all the pieces around it, including including your opponents. It's very
42:57
simple, but the strategy is immense. Like you and really go you know,
43:00
deep on trying to plan for like how you're going to set yourself up
43:04
for getting your three in a row or block your opponent from getting three in
43:07
a row or both of those things. The Halloween themed version of it is
43:10
is great. So that's a mat recommendation is boop. It's adorable. Yeah,
43:15
it's it's all cats, by the way, and the game board is
43:19
actually like a little quilted blanket, so you put these little wooden cats on
43:22
the guilt on the quilted blanket. That's amazing. I love that. Yeah,
43:25
all right, So my recommendation is a record. I haven't recommended a
43:30
record in a long time. It's for a punk band called the Penske File.
43:34
So on their on their Spotify it says the Penske File do it for
43:37
the love of the damn thing. Friendship rock and roll creativity movement. Catharsis
43:40
their live shows or celebrations so on and so forth. So they are a
43:45
if you're familiar with kind of like the Gainesville drunk punk sound, so stuff
43:52
like Dyling your four, stuff like hot Water Music in that realm, Flatliners
43:57
that you'll that you would like this band. They have really good pop sensibilities.
44:00
They have really good just kind of like punk song writing, Like that's
44:05
just really great. Their new record is called half Glow and I have not
44:07
been able to stop listening to it. It's just a really good listen if
44:10
you like that kind of thing fun. Oh that's great, all right,
44:15
Well, if you'd like to tell us about a punk record or a silly
44:17
named board game, you should definitely reach out to us. But specifically,
44:21
if you'd like to talk to us about something that we said about wrestling,
44:23
if you'd like to add something correct, something very kindly, or give us
44:28
just heaping amounts of praise, you can do that by leave us a writing
44:30
and review somewhere. You can also reach out to us correctly email us at
44:34
info at WWDWWD podcast dot com, or on the social media platforms, and
44:38
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
44:44
your awesome work on the notes for today's episode. Thank you appreciate it.
44:46
Anything else on your end or anything I forgot before we wrap up? Nothing
44:51
on my end? All right? Perfect? Then this is Apham and this
44:52
Shane. We're out. See. Yeah, you've been listening to Why We
44:57
Do What We Do. You can learn more about this and other episodes by
45:00
going to WWDWWD podcast dot com. Thanks for listening, and we hope you
45:07
have an awesome day