THAT'S HARD TIMES, DADDY

THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMPACT OF

PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING

No, this isn't a work.

I'll start by acknowledging the "wrestling is fake" lobby. Well, of course it is. If wrestlers did half the shit they do to each other in the ring for real, they'd fucking kill each other. What are you, simple? That aside, wrestlers regularly perform nightly with the kind of injuries that would put 'legitimate' athletes on the shelf for weeks and months at a time. And while wrestlers may just be playing characters, I'd like you to look at the last movie you watched and tell me if the actors therein were being themselves. For that matter, tell me if the fight scenes were choreographed with stuntmen in place of the actors. They were? I rest my case. The crazy bastards who make their living in professional wrestling don't have the benefit of choreographers, they don't have rehearsals or retakes and they do all their own stunts.

Anyway, to the point. Much like how Dave Lister described boxing in Red Dwarf, wrestling is one of the great working class escapes, from this uniquely bizarre form of entertainment's birth in carnivals and sideshows, through the days of Gorgeous George (who inspired a young Bob Dylan), to the UK's cult heroes Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks; from "The American Dream" Dusty Rhodes to everybody's favourite belligerent redneck "Stone Cold" Steve Austin.

Laugh at the crap perm all you like;
this man could beat you like a runaway slave

For the first look at wrestling's sociological aspect, I'll analyse the aforementioned Dusty Rhodes. When I first saw Dusty—real name Virgil Runnels—I wondered why he was nicknamed "The American Dream". All I saw was an overweight guy with a silly voice and a dodgy hairdo. Wait, now I get it. I kid, I kid. But what Dusty, billed as "the son of a plumber", did for people is simple to understand. He proved that you didn't need to look perfect or be in great shape to get respect, and with his legendary "Hard Times" promo, he put into words the concerns and problems of every underpaid steelworker; every mechanic who worked all the hours of the day to provide for a family he barely saw; every construction worker who saw the government taking more and more of his wage packet at the end of every month.

This was a stark contrast to the way everybody else was acting in the 1980s, the most egocentric and self-obsessed decade in recent memory, and an even starker contrast to the character played by his rival, "Nature Boy" Ric Flair: a cocky, arrogant heel who bragged about flying in Lear jets and being chauffeured around the country in limousines. It's classic storytelling: build up a heel character who possesses all the traits your audience despises, and then bring in a charismatic, good-hearted babyface to knock his sodding block off and strike a blow for the common man (which, funnily enough, was Dusty's gimmick a few years later in the then-WWF).

The dream of every underpaid worker in the world

Then there's "Stone Cold" Steve Austin. A man who'd been wrestling for several years got himself a new gimmick in the WWF: a foul-mouthed, beer-guzzling redneck who took no crap from anyone. The fan response to his character was impressive, with the usual response to a rulebreaker being thrown out the window: jaded 1990s fans could really relate to this man's disregard for authority. But it was when the WWF's owner, Vince McMahon, placed himself in Austin's sights that the Texas Rattlesnake's star went supernova. The Austin-McMahon feud would rage for a good few years, which is a hell of a long time in the world of pro wrestling, and it always drew big money. Why? Because everybody on this planet who's ever worked a day in their life would love nothing more than to hit their boss in the face with a steel chair.

If you'd had a hard day at work, with your boss riding your ass about something you didn't give a shit about, then the next best thing to smacking him yourself would be to watch Austin kicking his boss all over whichever arena they were in that week. Even as a schoolboy, which I was during the Austin-McMahon battles, you could still take heart from Austin's actions: "Vince McMahon" was basically shorthand for "anybody who told you what to do". It's an angle that's been periodically returned to ever since, most notably with CM Punk in 2011, and most recently with Daniel Bryan this past summer.

But the first time is always the best.

Short glossary of pro wrestling terms used in this post:

Angle: a storyline

Babyface: a good guy, a hero

Gimmick: a wrestler's character

Heel: a bad guy, a villain
Promo: an interview or other speech given (or 'cut') by a wrestler

Work: something that is predetermined or otherwise fixed. The opposite of a shoot.