Politics and Pro-Wrestling
Ohhh yeaaaa!
If you have followed Being Libertarian’s social media accounts you probably have noticed quite a few professional wrestling memes and gifs. We have even done WrestleMania watch alongs on Twitter. There are a few reasons for this.
First, the political world and the pro-wrestling world are very similar.
Libertarians and professional wrestling fans are typically in the same demographic.
There are many pro-wrestlers who are involved in politics.
Lastly, I’m a lifelong fan of professional wrestling. WWF/WWE, NWA, AWA, WCW, ECW, TNA, Impact, AEW, Japanese, Lucha…you name it, I’ve seen it. Even Nacho Libre.
I first remember watching wrestling during the build up to WrestleMania 2 between Hulk Hogan and “Rowdy” Roddy Piper. I was immediately hooked. The first WrestleMania I watched live was WrestleMania 3 and my first time attending a show was at the Richmond Colosseum around the 4th grade.
I’ll never forget the first match I watched in person. “The Honky Tonk Man” & Greg “the Hammer” Valentine vs Bret “Hitman” Hart and Jim “the Anvil” Niedhart, The Hart Foundation. Bret gave his famous sunglasses to the kid right beside me. I had never been so jealous. I’m over it though. Sort of.
The feeling of being in the front row in a full arena and watching the mass of people cheer and boo on command was intoxicating. It’s no wonder so many politicians have learned the performance art of professional wrestling promos.
For those not familiar with a wrestling promo, it’s a segment on the show where a wrestler talks to the crowd or their opponent for the purpose is selling tickets for the next week or the next big match. A wrestler’s job when he/she has a microphone in their hand is presenting the next matchup as the most important event in history. It’s always the goal. This is usually accomplished with short, memorable one-liners. Much like in politics, sound bites are key.
Name calling, digging up dirt, getting in the opponent’s head, standing out, grabbing attention, and ultimately swaying the audience to buy a vote sounds pretty familiar to wrestling fans and political junkies alike.
No wonder there has been so many crossovers from wrestling to politics. Jesse Ventura shocked the world to become Governor of Minnesota. Linda McMahan was appointed to the Administrator of the Small Business Administration for the Trump administration. Rhyno won the Republican Primary for the Michigan House of Representatives although he was defeated in the general election. Glenn Jacobs (Kane) is the 7 foot, 320 pound Mayor of Knox County, Tennessee. All of these had success in the political arena because they understand how to work a crowd and sell themselves.
The biggest movie star in the world and “most electrifying man in sports entertainment,” Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, has even been steadily hinting of a possible presidential run in the future.
Politics and professional wrestling go hand in hand. Remember the Iron Sheik vs Sergeant Slaughter or when Slaughter turned on America to become an Iraqi sympathizer?
Even former President Donald Trump is in the WWE Hall of Fame for his role in hosting WrestleMania back to back in Atlantic City as well as participating on the sidelines in a main event of WrestleMania years later. However, he wasn’t the first president with wrestling connections. Abraham Lincoln was a skilled wrestler and was even honored with an award from the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 1992.
Much of wrestling is a story about good vs evil. One’s wrestler is a hero, the other’s a villain. Easy formula. The same goes with politics at a surface glance. Except the good politicians and the bad are subjective and real good people in politics is extremely rare.
That’s why suspension of disbelief is another big similarity between wrestling and politics. Most wrestlers are playing a role or a character. That character may be nothing like the person that goes home at night. In the modern world of wrestling, where the curtain has been pulled back, fans can see the stars being themselves behind the scenes much more than they could at any time in history. It’s obvious some “baddies” are funny, likable people with totally different personalities than they portray on screen. And some of the most popular good guys have had shady private lives. Most fans don’t care in the slightest.
I’ve seen this first hand as I have the unusual skill of accidentally meeting WWE legends in odd places. The Undertaker at a car wash, Mick Foley on a water rapids ride in an amusement park, and “Stone Cold” Steve Austin in an airport on my honeymoon. What are the odds? That’s a lot of menacing characters to meet and yet each were amazingly polite, friendly, and professional in real life.
The same holds true in the political world. How many times have we seen an anti-gay conservative outed as gay themselves? Many Democrats position themselves as being champions of the working man, yet they are obvious limousine liberals who are in the top 1% they claim to rail against.
The suspension of disbelief is real in wrestling and politics because in both cases people know they are watching a show with audience participation and that allows people to become passionate about winners and losers.
As the quote goes,
“We know they are lying, they know they are lying, they know we know they are lying, we know they know we know they are lying, but they are still lying.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
In wrestling, it’s all in good fun and it’s a legitimate occupation full of hard working people. In politics, hardly. And the consequences are sometimes devastating.
For example, the politicians that are seen on camera pushing the hardest for masking and social distancing are often the ones caught without masks and distancing when they think the cameras aren’t rolling. In other words, they care the least.
Obama, AOC, Biden, Newsom, Northam, Pelosi, Hochul, Whitmer, and Lightfoot have all broken the protocols they advocate. No wonder half of the nation’s citizens will never trust government’s public health efforts again.
So what lessons can we learn from watching politics from the eyes of a pro-wrestling fan?
Remember it’s a show. We know “Hangman” Adam Page isn’t a real cowboy. He doesn’t ride a horse to every town or hang out at the Yellowstone Ranch. We know Irwin R. Schyster wasn’t a real IRS agent…thankfully. We also know Finn Balor isn’t a real demon. John Cena isn’t invisible. Adam Cole isn’t a baby. Ric Flair isn’t a real “Nature Boy.” OK, kidding. He is. Sometimes a wrestler is who they say they are. Even more rare is the politician who says who they really are. Look for the performance.
As you watch the political arena, remember, like in wrestling, opponents work together to keep themselves safe and get paid from the same company.
Yes, there is real drama. But it’s so diluted with scripted teleprompters, obviously dishonest press secretaries, and pre-screened “media” questions. On big issues (spending, war, drug war, stoking division, filling prisons, signing bills that no one reads, fiat currency) they are the same.
One last lesson from the pro-wrestling world that we can apply to politics is competition. In wrestling it’s opponent vs opponent. But for this point I’m not talking about just getting better quality candidates. I’m talking about competing governments.
There has been a lot of mainstream talk about a “national divorce” or secession. With all the polarization in the U.S. it was inevitable. Sarah Silverman even contemplated on her show how red America and blue America would be better off separate. They could live by their drastically different rules and moral codes and see who comes out better. It’s a far better path for peace than for half of a nation to rule the other when they can’t even share social media platforms.
Pro-wrestling fans have learned the competition lesson a few times. Back in the late 90’s Ted Turner’s WCW began to gain momentum and it caused the WWE to adapt their product to be a more edgy and relevant show. Thus began the “Monday Night Wars.” Monday Night Raw and Nitro kept us constantly switching channels to make sure nothing was missed. “Stone Cold”… “The Rock”… DX…Goldberg…and Big Show were made during this time. It was the hottest, most must see TV in my lifetime. Then it was over.
Management problems at WCW caused it to die a sudden death and Vince McMahan quickly bought it and absorbed essentially the whole wrestling market including ECW.
Don’t get me wrong. There are amazing things that have been done in the time between the collapse of WCW and today but things sometimes felt stagnant. And why not? WWE was, for the most part, the only place to become a wrestler that people would recognize on the street. This led to WWE setting the standards for how the business worked. Essentially, it was as close to being a monopoly as you can get.
In order to have any threat of competition with another wrestling company you would need to find a billionaire who just happens to be a huge passionate wrestling fan. In 2019 Tony Kahn, co-owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars of the National Football League, founded All Elite Wrestling. Through the pandemic AEW not only survived, but thrived. They even brought back live crowds way sooner than WWE and the people showed up.
Now, stadiums full of people are singing every word of the entrance music of their favorite stars. AEW acquired major names in pro-wrestling like Chris Jericho, Sting, CM Punk, Jon Moxley, Big Show, Christian Cage, and Bryan Danielson. Although WWE isn’t viewing AEW as true competition yet they are doing some major overhauls and even planting seeds for a return of “The Rock” to challenge his cousin, Roman Reigns.
AEW’s existence as a major alternative for wrestling has been a boom for fans, wrestlers, and even WWE. Wrestling is fun again.
Options are always good. That’s why there are so many problems with government. It’s a monopoly. It’s almost like having 50 States with 50 different ways to live could lead to competition to attract people to the places with better policies.
There are probably more similarities but I’ll save them for another day… because freedom matters. (And that’s the bottom line)
