On a guilty pleasure

This post marks the end of what I would refer to as 'radio silence.' Since the last entry, life has pursued many twists and turns - all of which have pulled attention away. In addition to my family, work, my duties in municipal government, and work on a 12th anniversary re-issue of 'The Case for Commonwealth Free Trade', I said goodbye to my father. For those who have dealt with loss of this nature, it is easy to appreciate the process required to find a 'new normal.' In some ways the selection of this topic, while out of keeping with other posts, fulfills this need.

This Monday evening, I will be sitting in a local arena watching professional wrestling.

From experience, this admission will elicit one of three responses – admiration, hostility or indifference.

For those who are fans of wrestling, or ‘sports entertainment’ as it is often called – little needs to be said. Fans of anything share an unspoken affinity, like two people driving the same sports care or motorcycle giving each other a smile and a knowing nod. For those who are indifferent, even less needs to be said.

Critics of the sport, on the other hand, do not content themselves with taking a polite pass - a ‘thanks, but no thanks’. Any indication that you are a fan or are even mildly curious about the whole thing, and you are treated to a litany of catty, passive aggressive shots that start with the ‘fakeness’ of it all, but quickly degenerate into a critique of educational level and socioeconomic standing that are none too complimentary. Given my dislike of eating liver, it would be akin to me launching into a litany of ad hominem invectives against those who might enjoy the dish with a side of onions, or attempting to organize a protest to shut down any restaurant within a 30 mile radius that deigns to cook and serve the delicacy.

It is not within my power to persuade anyone of anything they vehemently oppose, nor should I feel the compulsion to defend what I honestly enjoy as a fully legal public pursuit. I do, however, want to share some thoughts about wrestling, and why I am a fan.

To begin, I am simply in awe of the men and women who are part of it all – that rarest of combinations, of brawn and brains, of spirit and determination, of personalities larger than life. Consider what those at the top of their profession need to do in order to be just that.

You are required to have the physique of a professional body builder, the toughness of a rugby player, the endurance of a marathon runner, the acrobatic skill of a Cirque du Soleil performer sans wires or nets, and – after you have spent fifteen to twenty minutes exerting yourself, you are required to then grab a microphone and address a cheering (and jeering) crowd numbering in the tens of thousands with the timing and delivery of a comic who learned improve at Second City. Furthermore, if you are a WWE wrestler, you are doing it 300 nights a year – across North America and around the world.

The nature of the contest may be ‘scripted’ (or ‘fake’ in the less charitable view) but it is rather difficult to use computer graphics or green screens to replicate this action – particularly under the klieg lights of a live event. And yes, wrestling fans suspend disbelief for a period of time during a performance, much like many of wrestling’s critics suspend disbelief that Robert Downey Jr. does not have a flying metal suit or that British actress Emilia Clarke is not, in fact, the ‘Mother of Dragons.’ Wrestling is escapism, like a Hollywood blockbuster, video game or an engrossing novel or television show. It might not be your preference for escapism, but to rest your critique on the ‘authenticity’ of it is to suggest that you live your life free of the encumbrances of indulging your own imagination.

To succeed in this milieu, you have to be in peak physical condition. Gone are the days where a tall guy with a large girth and a bad attitude could be a star. You need to be muscular, flexible, and the master/mistress of endurance. When I was a kid, the only wrestler that would climb to the top of the corner ropes and do a mid-air somersault was Edouard Carpentier. Now, you would be hard pressed to find any who don’t. In the case of a wrestler like Adrian Neville, you see mid-air moves reminiscent of an Olympic diver doing a half-pike off the 5 metre board. Of course, the diver has water to land on, as opposed to Neville who has a combination of the mat and an opponent for their soft landing.

This goes to another point, related to both the mental and physical conditioning, of wrestlers ‘playing through the pain.’ In a WWE match that inaugurated the ‘Universal Championship’, the Irish wrestler Finn Balor prevailed to win, despite fighting a third of the match with a dislocated shoulder. It reminds all that as tough as these individuals are, and as easy as they make their moves look, it is a serious business that has resulted in many an injury. Having said that, injuries that would routinely have the rest of us book of work for weeks on end result in temporary absences and rehabilitation, if that.

Of course, like a musician, actor, or comedian, you need to pay your dues. Listen to the interviews of any top star in the field, and you hear stories all too familiar. It starts with the young boy or girl who grows up as a fan of an individual wrestler, or of the sport itself, and the dream to succeed. There are the years of taking on low paying jobs in order to pay for wrestling school and training, the requisite time in the ‘indies’ where you are just as likely to be selling tickets and t-shirts, sweeping floors, and helping crews put up and take down the ring as you are to actually wrestle a match. You stay in cheaper accommodation and share with the others. You travel from town to town in a van, trading off on the driving and dealing with rain, mud and snow.

After years of the circuit, smaller companies, or wrestling in Japan or Mexico, you get your shot to join the WWE at their Performance Center, which is akin to a professional team’s spring training camp for a college athlete. If you don’t get cut, you find yourself on the roster for their NXT brand – and months or years proving your metal – until you get the chance to perform in one of the two marquis brands, Raw or Smackdown.

From the moment a budding wrestler comes out of a training school to the moment they walk out on the main stage, ten to twelve years can pass. Not ten to twelve easy years – years of sprains, injuries, fatigue, loneliness and, most likely, self-doubt.

To rise to the top of the industry requires a mixture of physical and mental prowess, and no shortage of personality. It comes as no surprise, then, that these athletes excel at pursuits beyond the ring.  More than a few have sought, and/or attained, political office (namely former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura), have pursued higher education and advanced degrees (Harvard law graduate David Otunga and PhD candidate Xavier Woods), stand-up comedy (Mick Foley, Dolph Ziggler), or leading roles in Hollywood movies (Dwayne Johnson, John Cena, Dave Bautista).

For those who haughtily dismiss those in the profession as knuckle-dragging thugs, consider the case of Glenn Jacobs, who in his ring persona ‘Kane’ dons a leather facemask and appears to be a 7-foot tall hybrid of Friday the 13^th protagonist Jason Voorhees and a minion of a Mad Max villain. His Wikipedia page reads, in part, that:

“Jacobs … is actively involved in libertarian politics and publishes his views via a blog. Jacobs supported Texas Congressman Ron Paul for President in 2008. He is a member of the Free State Project and delivered a speech at the organization's 2009 New Hampshire Liberty Forum. He has also spoken at the Ludwig von Mises Institute… promoting the Austrian school of economics…Outside of wrestling, Jacobs also works as an insurer and he and his wife own an Allstate agency in Knoxville, Tennessee…In March 2017, Jacobs announced that he was officially running for the mayoral seat of Knox County as a Republican.”

He has appeared on CNBC and referred to himself as a ‘Rothbardian.’ Ironically, I would venture to guess that a great percentage of the very people who cast dispersions on the intellect of a man like Jacobs would have to look that term up on Google to know what it even means!

But the critique against professional wrestling is as likely to be leveled at its fans as much as its luminaries.

When one attempts to speak for a large number of people, you can easily get yourself into trouble. It is far better to speak for yourself.

Modern society, to a large extent, is one dominated by shades of gray. Every day, whether it is in our home life, our careers, or our relationships or in our civic engagements, we are exhorted to seek out and promote nuance. It is a world where every thought, idea, preference or predilection is subjected to codicils and qualifiers.

Grey is not a primary colour. To get gray paint, you need to mix white paint with black. Grey exists as a compromise between the two, giving just enough to satiate, but never enough to fully satisfy.

Professional wrestling is athletic skill and prowess wrapped up in a Manichean parable of good and evil, of ‘face’ and ‘heel’. In the ring, there is black and white. In the seemingly brutish pantomime, we see the kind of contest we are deprived of in other parts of our lives. We see the contest, and we either see the triumph of good or of evil. If we are duly emotionally invested, we are either happy or disappointed, but we are never frustrated. Frustration comes from a lack of resolution, and in the ring things do get resolved – if not at that moment, one soon to follow.

Two of the most popular television shows in the world are ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘The Walking Dead.’ The worlds they paint do have a fair amount of grey, but whether you are Jon Snow or Rick Grimes, you are all too often presented with challenges and dangers not resolved by a committee meeting. Like wrestling, they provide the viewer with the kind of clarity and definition that the modern world often does not.

In my political writing, I am often frustrated by the level of nepotism and cronyism that has infected our private and public institutions. While the children of poor and working class families scrape and claw to get a chance at a better life, we are all too often treated to stories of the son/daughter/nephew/niece who is parachuted into some sinecure. The idea of paying your dues seems to be an endangered ideal.

Wrestlers, by contrast, succeed by paying their dues – night after night. This even extended to the son of the WWE Chairman, Shane McMahon, in Wrestlemania 32. In the ‘Hell in a Cell’ match, McMahon jumped off the top of a 20-foot steel cage and landed on a table, which promptly collapsed, earning him a trip out of the arena on a paramedic’s stretcher.

Was it an extreme act? Yes. Was it dangerous? Extremely so. But in a world where the ‘boss’s son’ is often an overpaid, overworked, obnoxious lout who looks down on the front line staff with haughty disdain, it was the ultimate portrayal of ‘lead by example’. Just as soldiers are fiercely loyal to the commander who fights alongside them rather than sitting in the base camp, people respect the matching of words with deeds. Nicholas Nassim Taleb has written extensively about the concept of ‘skin in the game,’ and the tendency of elites to insulate themselves from the consequences of their policies and decisions. In wrestling, no one is exempt, and in that knowledge is a harsh beauty.

In a world where many of the people at the top seem to exempt themselves from the rules, regulations and edicts they put in place, there is a clear and visceral attraction to a world where no one gets a free pass.

Beyond all of the larger themes, though, it is also a touchstone for me.

As a kid, when the Maple Leaf Wrestling circuit used to come to the area, I would go with my father and my grandfather. We would sit in the stands of the old arena and watch the stars of the time – Killer Kowalski, Edouard Carpentier, Mad Dog Vachon – compete. My most enduring memory was during a match involving the iconic Andre the Giant, when an irate spectator leaped out of the audience and grabbed him by the back of his trunks. From that moment until the security officials intervened, Andre calmly began walking around the ring, pulling the older, slender man like a boat pulling a waterskiier. It took about ten seconds for my grandfather to exclaim “Hey, isn’t that so-and-so?!” naming a character who lived a couple of miles up the road from us, who I would see on a rocking chair on his front porch every day as my school bus passed by.

Wrestling was an outing – but it was a bonding experience as well. Those who have known all three of us as adults could be forgiven for believing that very little common ground existed. We lived different lives, pursued different goals, and had very definite personalities – but there were things we shared, and wrestling was one of them.

My grandfather left us in 2006, and it has been scarcely six months since my father has passed. As for me, I fell away from watching or even following wrestling for the longest time. And yet, next week’s show will be the second one I’ve attended in less than a year.

Like the last time, I won’t be alone. I’ll be with my own son.

Wrestling, for me, is like bringing together various threads and strands. It ties the past to the present, the departed with the living. It connects 1977 with 2017, and reminds me of a time when the world was a lot less complicated and nuanced than it has become. It is also a world with clarity and definition, where there is a connection between cause and effect, where hard work and sacrifice meet reward, where the good guy or gal stands a chance of winning the day. For a brief period of time, it is a world that corresponds not to your head, but to your heart and your gut. It is a world of no excuses – where the BS that often confounds and complicates our lives can go down for the ten count.

Of course, I am doubtful that anything I have written would dissuade any individual that ‘professional wrestling’ is some cultural shibboleth for low-brow or uncouth predilection. Of course, I’ll be too busy having a good time with my son and cheering on Shinsuke Nakamura to worry about that.