The Brotherhood of The Ring: WWE

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A GOOD SOAP OPERA? RECENTLY, while getting my morning news via social media—as one does—I got to learn that John Cena had turned heel. What a shocking turn of events this was. The American sweetheart who could do no wrong for over two decades was now suddenly the baddie, just months before his looming retirement.

Is this how he was going to go out, a revolting villain figure w walking away to a chorus of boos? From a career ‘babyface’—the 'good guy’ in the narrative storytelling world of professional wrestling (aka the pretend kind)—Cena had turned to the dark side. The wrestling world was stunned, in that very specific overdramatic, hysterical way that people tend to react to WWE news.

Cena was the compassionate do-gooder with all the Make-A-Wish Foundation requests. The likeable fellow with the goofy role in The Bear. People have been doing his trademark invisibility cloak celebration thing as homage for years. He was the man who’d sing praises of another career babyface (in a very different genre of pretend entertainment), one Shah Rukh Khan. As a Reddit post discussing a photo of the two together pointed out, Cena seems like just a wholesome guy; and both him and Khan have the same iconic dimple! How could he betray us like this?

To be clear, I haven’t followed wrestling, and World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE, formerly WWF) since my mid-teen years, around the same time Cena first debuted. I have at best an academic interest in it today. But Cena’s turn felt like a calculated move, designed to drum up interest around WWE’s showpiece event, WrestleMania.

Now with Netflix airing WWE events on its platform, and making available for viewing decades worth of old archives from major events, the spectacle has found an even bigger stage.

It took me back to the ‘glory’ days of wrestling—the infamous Attitude Era of the late ’90s and early 2000s—when it arguably peaked in pop culture notoriety. It was a rite of passage of sorts, to be introduced by an older cousin or a friend’s friend to this magical world. To absorb its universe and characters and internalise them, to delight in all the fighting. This was something polite society frowned upon; you got to live in the grey, lurk in the shadows vicariously. And then the inevitable bursting of the bubble (spoiler alert): the discovery that it’s not real. Everything is pre-decided in a boardroom; storyboarded, choreographed and rehearsed before they even hit the ring. They don’t even hate each other’s guts, that’s all ‘kayfabe’, the art of maintaining the illusion. No tooth fairy, no Santa Claus, and now this.

THE LATE ’90S, THE COMPANY —under its controversial and now-disgraced promoter/trailblazer/evil monster Vince McMahon—was pushing boundaries in ways previously unimaginable. Gone were the cutesy good versus evil plotlines of its early years, where Hulk Hogan would invariably turn up to save the day at the end and rip his shirt off. Instead, we got raw, edgy, complex, and really just very noxious and obscene storylines with no clear heroes and villains. Everyone was a heel and an anti-hero. The in-ring action— the fights—went from silly, digestible farce to nasty black comedy.

Charismatic performers like The Rock, ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin, or Triple H were pulling in huge crowds who’d parrot their moves and catchphrases on command. As kids, we’d re-enact entire plotlines despite protestations from every possible adult we’d encounter. This naturally included all the fights and duels, chockfull of cursing, flying off tables, ramming into each other headfirst, special moves, finishers, celebrations. Injuries could happen, just as they could in the real (but not actually) world of wrestling. But that’s the price you have to pay.

Once, at a birthday party, Friend A gave Friend B a stunner in front of me during an impromptu re-enactment. The Rock vs. Stone Cold, a match for the ages. Friend B went flying upside down; for a few seconds, we were scared that he’d snapped his neck or, worse, that he was going to snitch. Mercifully, he just got up a little dazed and so we resumed the fighting after a brief pause. Today, with the benefit of hindsight and no lasting physical damage, I can understand how ridiculously stupid and dangerous it all was; we really should have listened to the grown-ups. Others were not as lucky, and kids did routinely get hurt. At the time though, it was exhilarating.

The wrestlers back then were not just breaking rules but actual laws; people were being set on fire, kidnapped, murdered, disappeared. Wrestlers were dying and coming back to life. (At least in the world they were set in.) The themes and stories were immoral, uncomfortable and sexually explicit, the fights gratuitously violent, the women scantily clad, the wrestlers foul-mouthed rebels. It was catnip to the unformed teenage male mind. The accompanying video games—WWE Raw or Smackdown—and the merch just added to the allure.

John Cena

(What we didn’t know at the time, and probably wouldn’t have cared much either way, was that the real-world wrestling industry itself has always been plagued by scandal and controversy, with credible accusations of misconduct, harassment, abuse of power, tales of appalling behaviour, drug use, and so much worse being regular occurrences. McMahon’s many controversies eventually lead to his ouster from the company he built, while the Chris Benoit tragedy—a double-murder-suicide linked to the much-loved performer’s severe brain trauma—remains one of its darkest chapters.)

Without essentialising the complex experience of gender and identity, the way we’re socialised in society means that there are clear boy hobbies and girl hobbies. While many girls back in school did indeed enjoy pro wrestling, it’s not a stretch to say that this was a field where the boys outnumbered the girls by some distance. The violence, combined with the theatre and performance art aspect—the emotional investment it commanded from fans—made it irresistible. Of course, at this point, most of us knew that everything was in some way staged. But this make-believe world of moral depravity and filth became a vessel through which we could channel the uncertain volatility of puberty and beyond.

That said, the storylines were also easy to connect with emotionally, as the perverse themes were underpinned by a simplicity and broadness that, realistically, only soap operas can manage. It was designed to be manipulative, catering shamelessly to the male gaze. The sense of rule-breaking rebellion, brotherhood and betrayal, masculine machismo, individualism, brashness, and unfiltered violence,

was intoxicating. But it regularly crossed lines. The sexually suggestive and exploitative stories of the ‘divas’—the women of wrestling—would not, for good reason, be met with the same casual, inuendo-laced hoots of approval today, for instance. A lot of the material should perhaps have been flagged off as too mature and unsettling for impressionable teenagers. And some for adults too. Essentially though, it feels like the charm of wrestling, and the appeal to teenage boys, lay in its uniquely liminal positioning.

It was neither kids entertainment or Cartoon Network, childish pastimes teenagers of every hue try to disassociate from. Nor was it impenetrable arthouse cinema with suspect lighting. It was something in between, both adult and not. Both cartoon and black-and-white. And at its heart was just two guys battering the daylights out of each other. Followed by ratatat, braggadocio trash-talk with not a second to breathe.

WRESTLING, AS A PIECE IN PSYCHOLOGY Today discussing the form’s appeal to the grown man points out, has the added bonus of “pageantry” that sets it apart from other combat sports. This is sappy drama in a form packaged for men. A morality play dressed in tights and six-packs. The appearance of sport; the added masala of fictionalised pantomime storytelling—it’s male fantasy and wish-fulfilment.

The fights may be choreographed and predetermined, but the violence is often very real. Performers have always put their bodies on the line for their craft, and suffer brutal in-ring injuries for it. To cite one of the most tragic incidents of professional wrestling, still remembered to this day, the wrestler Owen Hart died during a stunt when a harness lowering him on to the ring malfunctioned.

Eventually, the controversies and public outrage piled up, and the organisation had to rein it in. The World Wildlife Fund, the OG WWF, took back its name and the wrestling WWF was rechristened as WWE. The Attitude Era came to an end; the adult themes were toned down to appeal to a younger demographic once again. There was now a more sanitised product that didn’t force parents to frantically monitor their children’s behaviour every day. Cena, in fact, was a product of this era, building his impressive legacy largely through his likeable, good-boy behaviour in the ring.

Watching classic matches on Netflix and reliving these eras, or indeed the current ones being aired in real time—as streaming platforms try to establish themselves as major players in live broadcast— makes me realise how gullible we were to be emotionally stirred by the juvenile wordplay and insult comedy that the wrestlers threw at us. They were hamming it up, we were lapping it up.

But that doesn’t make it any less fun, does it? With age and distance, I can identify the absurdist campness running through the scripted drama of professional wrestling. But it’s in that camp territory where wrestling thrives, where it’s at its most seductive. This is reality TV except that the silly arguments spill over not into gentle shoving matches, handbags, or fisticuffs. But actual hardcore 20-man brawls. Real enough to trick you into caring, and fanciful and fraudulent enough to provide an escape from that very reality.

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