Via the excellent Postmodern Conservative, I found Dylan Waco’s post on Matthew Randazzo V’s book Ring of Hell, about the very dark side of the wrestling industry. As a recovering wrestling fan (where’s Alchoholics Anonymous for me!) I found the whole thing equal parts fascinating and sickening. Let’s quote Dylan.
I want to briefly focus on a relatively minor charge dug up by Randazzo that would be considered scandalous in any other context. While discussing the ins and outs of the dojo training in Japan, Randazzo makes note that world renowned wrestling superstar Jushin Liger would often walk up to helpless trainees and punch them full tilt in the face for no reason. In a chapter where ritual sexual humiliation and outright murders are discussed this does not seem so bad, but lets think about this for a moment. The defense of Liger’s behavior has been something along the lines of “hey, wrestlers have to be toughened up and getting hit is part of their job”. While it is true that bumps in wrestling do hurt and often times wrestlers do absorb full contact strikes to the head, would this line of defense be considered seriously in any other business? I work in a restaurant, where burns are far more commonplace than are unprotected legitimate punches to the face in the choreographed “sport” of pro wrestling. Still if I had been purposely burned at random for months in order to “prepare me” for the inevitable dangers of the job I would have had sued the pants off of the place. In wresting if you complain, let alone sue or fight back, you are tossed out of the brotherhood forever. Just ask Jim Wilson. If you allow yourself to be punched in the ears until you are concussed and bleeding you become a superstar. Just ask Chris Benoit.
Many laymen are totally unaware of the economic realities of the wrestling business. Even most fans have literally no idea that wrestlers do not receive pensions or health insurance from their employers. They do no have a union or any other collective bargaining agency and the paranoid nature of most of the performers almost assures they never will. For the most part they pay their own travel expenses and are required to get themselves from place to place while keeping up with their hectic road schedules. When these details become known the most common response is “regulate it”, but would that help?
Regulations would likely have the same effect on the independent wrestling companies that they had on small artisans and farmers during the Progressive Era. In other words it would make them extinct. This would strengthen McMahon and the corporate class even more and would leave those concerned few who take the lives of pro wrestlers and their families seriously back at square one. In light of these facts Randazzo’s implied call for abolition hardly seems crazy.
The modern wrestling industry has no true parallel historically, but I like to compare it to Hassan I Sabbah and The Assassins. Vince McMahon is the “Old Man On The Mountain” himself guaranteeing glory, immortality and honor, but dispensing only copious amounts of drugs and loose women. His empire promotes placelessness, if not outright homelessness, in service of an undefined “greater good”. The Assassins were promised heaven. What the hell is McMahon really promising other than a place for long time marks to fulfill their fantasies by showing their creepy level of commitment to a business that leaves their bodies broken and homes shattered?
I have not read Randazzo’s book. But there are some things I’d point out.
Firstly, for a lot of people, being a wrestler is glamorous. Secondly, the top bracket of wrestlers do very well financially. Not just the Hulk Hogan/Rock superduperstars – guys on the level of Adam Copeland or Bret Hart make/made millions a year. This is still only a very small number of people, mind. But that’s the structure of so many entertainment industries – the guy taking bump in front of 20 people at a tiny local show is like the wannabe waiting tables in Los Angeles, hoping for his big break in the movies. The lure of the millions at the tiny top end, and the perceived glamour of the business, keeps enough people interested that Vince McMahon and Hollywood studios alike can get away with paying peanuts to replaceable talent. This is also (so I read) the structure of drug cartels, to which arguably wrestling bears equal resemblence, but the issue here is not that Vince McMahon is an evil cultist/drug pusher as Dylan writes, but the economics of the marketplace. It is a category error typical on the left to label individuals as evil/selfish/exploitative and blame their supposed moral failings for what are in fact the simple laws of supply and demand.
The other complaints Dylan makes in his piece are also simple matters of economics. Wrestling is popular, so it can get a national TV deal – that’s why when US cable TV became national, so did wrestling. That is not going to change for the convenience of wrestlers’ families. There is cruelty and violence in the workplace firstly because it is a way of reinforcing heirarchy, that one person is more “in” than another, and secondly because wrestling attracts people who enjoy violence. Dylan should not be baffled by Jushin Thunder Liger punching random trainees in the face. No doubt he does it because he likes punching people, and because it makes him feel important. The wrestling companies don’t mind because giving their wrestlers this non-financial compensation enables them to pay them less. The trainees very much do mind, I don’t doubt, but they are utterly replaceable and they know it. Getting randomly punched in the face is lowering their effective level of compensation but as long as there’s a huge queue of people who would jump at the opportunity to train with NJPW (and there is) it’s simply not an issue.
Finally (I promise!) banning wrestling would be hugely counter-productive. There are millions of extremely devoted wrestling fans and they want to watch – and often participate. Since 2001 this has – thank God – moved from jumping off each others’ houses to small independent cards. Remove those independent cards and we’ll return to backyard wrestling, which will become hugely popular once that’s the only place to get your wrestling fix, what with no WWE, TNA, etc. And that’s aside from the fact that a ban is hugely unrealistic and utterly unenforceable – you’ll be amazed how quickly all the pro wrestling companies become MMA companies!
Randazzo correctly notes that regulation would be counter-productive, but his conclusion – that the only thing to do is therefore ban it – is almost a parody of the modern left and it’s Something Must Be Done mentality. The least bad option is clearly that the government should do nothing, but where’s the fun in that for the Helen Lovejoys of this world? Besides, is it really only the dead hand of government that can clean up pro wrestling? The irony is that what is actually needed is exactly what Randazzo is doing – educating the public on the brutality, cruelty and downright evil of the wrestling industry. That way consumers can, if they so choose, bring the best kind of pressure on wrestling companies. If it is in the companies’ financial interests to clean up their act, you better believe they’ll do so.
I used to be a wrestling fan, I drifted away from it, and now I will absolutely not watch it since the Benoit incident. And I’m not the only one – WWE ratings have fallen markedly. In the same way that the consumer reaction to their (lack of) ethical standards forced the likes of Nike and Nestle to behave themselves, I have to hope that the consumer reaction to the Benoit incident will do likewise. I don’t want to wear shoes made by child labour, and I don’t want to watch a soap opera produced by barbarism and cruelty. And conservative that I am, I don’t think other people do either, and I trust the market to sort this out.
YMMV.
