Convergent Wrestling

Participatory Culture, Transmedia Storytelling, and Intertextuality in the Squared Circle

CarrieLynn Reinhard, Christopher Olson, CarrieLynn D. Reinhard, Christopher J. Olson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351233965
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book examines how the current era of "convergence" has affected, and is reflected in, the world of professional wrestling, which combines several different genres, including drama, action, comedy, horror, science fiction, and even romance. Professional wrestling's business practices exist at the intersection of bottom-up fan-centric strategies and strict top-down corporate control. Meanwhile, the wrestlers themselves combine aspects of carnival hucksters, actors/actresses, comedians, superheroes, martial artists, or stuntmen, and the narratives consist of everything from social critique to geopolitical allegories, and from soap opera melodramas to stereotyped exploitation. Bringing together the latest scholarship in the field, Convergent Wrestling analyzes various texts, business practices, and fan activities to explore the commonalities that define professional wrestling and consider how it exists in today's new media ecology. In addition, the book considers the professional wrestling industry from several different angles, from massive multinational conglomerate World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) to local indie federations. As such, it will appeal to scholars with interests in popular culture, media and cultural studies, and fan practices.

1 Introduction

Defining convergent wrestling

CarrieLynn D. Reinhard and Christopher J. Olson

In the 1980s, Vince McMahon used the term “sports entertainment” to placate reluctant advertisers who balked at the idea of associating themselves with professional wrestling, which carried a negative connotation (Fannin, 2018).¹ In the process, McMahon acknowledged how professional wrestling’s true nature lies in the concept of convergence. As a neologism, the label sports entertainment reveals professional wrestling as both a real sport involving the potential for bodily injury and a scripted entertainment that features specific outcomes intended to perpetuate character arcs and storylines. Because of this convergence between reality and fiction, professional wrestling emerges as a polysemous text that incorporates a range of different elements designed to appeal to a polyvalent audience. Professional wrestling “combines practically every form of popular culture” by being “part sporting event, part rock concert, part soap opera, part political debate, part morality play, as well as part soft-core pornography” (Leverette, 2003, pp. 101–102).

As Michael Ball (1990) notes, professional wrestling is a useful text for studying various aspects of popular culture because, in addition to merging different forms of entertainment, it boasts a rich symbolism that provides valuable insight into prevailing sociocultural and political discourses. For instance, professional wrestling recalls traditional sporting events because it straddles the line between televised event and live spectacle, thus allowing for “the comparison of media-constructed events […] with the actual participatory events consisting of spontaneous un-televised happenings and crowd reactions” (p. 4). Yet professional wrestling also features choreographed, predetermined matches that function as “mini-plays or dramas” (p. 4). Wrestlers, meanwhile, adopt personas that often evoke predominant stereotypes and present themselves “for the approval or disapproval of the crowd and [are] kept, rejected, or modified as required by popular demand” (p. 4). This recalls Roland Barthes’ (1957) assertion that “as soon as the adversaries are in the ring, the public is overwhelmed with the obviousness of the roles” and that “each physical type expresses to excess the part which has been assigned to the contestant” (p. 5). Thus, the convergence of various references, genres, identities, and practices makes professional wrestling an excellent platform for examining and considering the ideological implications of a wide array of popular culture texts.

This book seeks to demonstrate how the theoretical concept of convergence allows for greater understanding of the nature, texts, and practices of professional wrestling. The chapters included in this collection reveal how professional wrestling exists at the intersections of different identities, realities, practices, and conventions. Sometimes, professional wrestling requires the blending, blurring, and merging of that which exists at opposite ends of the same spectrum – things that can completely contradict one another. Professional wrestling functions as a prime example of convergent media and therefore becomes a vital text within the twenty-first-century media ecology. Rather than dismiss so-called sports entertainment for blurring the line between authenticity and artifice, we believe professional wrestling’s importance lies precisely in how it combines fiction with reality, and in how it mixes (and sometimes remixes) various forms of entertainment and modes of storytelling inside the ring.

The chapters in this anthology take one of two main perspectives on professional wrestling: they either view it as a site of convergence or analyze how the era of convergence has changed the overall perception of professional wrestling. Thus, the chapters collected here use this perspective of convergence to view professional wrestling in new ways and to see it responding to contemporary industry and sociocultural conditions. The authors analyze the texts, business practices, and fan experiences that relate to and constitute professional wrestling. This introductory chapter presents an overview or primer of the terms and concepts that make up both professional wrestling and convergence. Rather than cover all aspects of professional wrestling and convergence, the following sections merely introduce readers unfamiliar with either topic to some key historical moments and terms used to define and delineate both areas of study.

Professional wrestling: a primer

Professional wrestling first emerged in the United States during the nineteenth century, when regional fairs and carnivals staged exhibitions in which two men tested their masculinity and physical toughness against one another (Beard & Heppen, 2011). Such exhibitions may have originated with Irish and English immigrants performing “all in” grappling during their public brawls, with such trials of strength migrating from bars to carnivals (Wrenn, 2007). However, these contests often proved slow and grueling, and by the early 1900s audiences lost interest in them (Ball, 1990). In response, wrestlers incorporated more exciting moves into their repertoires, though these occasionally resulted in serious injury. To avoid hurting themselves and/or their opponents, wrestlers began planning their matches ahead of time (Beard & Heppen, 2011). Upon entering the ring, the competitors wrestled in earnest until one emerged as the crowd favorite, at which point they launched into their choreographed routine, with the preferred wrestler emerging victorious. As such, the wrestlers minimized the potential for injury. More importantly, audiences initially appeared to enjoy these scripted matches more than the legitimate contests, though that changed once they learned the contests were fixed (Ball, 1990). Nonetheless, by the 1930s professional wrestling completely abandoned any pretense of being a genuine sport and instead shifted entirely to a form of scripted entertainment (Beard & Heppen, 2011).

Over time, various wrestlers and promotions helped popularize professional wrestling on a global scale, and the business experienced several ups and downs as it evolved over the last 100 years. By the 1940s, professional wrestling had become so popular that many promoters banded together to increase the sport’s visibility and enhance their own profit margins, leading to the creation of the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) (Ball, 1990). The NWA served to “promote wrestling, standardize rules, and to bestow national titles” throughout the United States (Ball, 1990, p. 55). Its formation coincided with a boom period for American professional wrestling, which lasted throughout the 1950s. During this time, many wrestlers gained widespread fame and national notoriety, including Gorgeous George, Verne Gagne, and Antonio Rocca.

Unfortunately, wrestling’s popularity soon waned, leading to a fallow period that persisted until the early 1980s, when McMahon stepped in and changed the business forever. After inheriting the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) from his father, McMahon used cable television to transform the company from a regional wrestling promotion to a multinational entertainment conglomerate (Maguire, 2005). Along the way, McMahon drove many of his competitors out of business, essentially ending the era of the regional territories (Beekman, 2006). By the mid-1980s, WWF had become a ratings giant around the world, and WWF pay-per-view events routinely drew huge crowds and generated massive profits (Maguire, 2005). McMahon also turned wrestlers like Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, and “The Macho Man” Randy Savage into internationally renowned superstars. Despite competition from Ted Turner’s World Championship Wrestling (WCW), which briefly beat WWF in the ratings in the late 1990s but was eventually purchased by McMahon, professional wrestling in the U.S. essentially became a monopoly. By the late 1990s, the WWF rebranded itself as World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), and the company is now widely recognized as both the worldwide leader in sports entertainment and a thriving multimedia empire.

Professional wrestling currently exists as a business and a hobby around the world, with different wrestling styles endemic to specific nations and cultures, such as puroresu in Japan and lucha libre in Mexico. Each wrestling culture features its own conventions or approaches to performing matches, crafting performances, and telling stories. For example, in lucha libre, the wrestlers (known as luchadores for men and luchadoras for women) are either rudos (tough guys) or technicos (technicians); the former represent the story’s villains, while the latter function as the story’s heroes (Levi, 2008). The popularity of lucha libre spawned films featuring famous wrestlers who rarely appear without their iconic mask, a common and important feature of Mexican wrestling. Meanwhile, modern puroresu focuses less on the theatrics common in American professional wrestling, leading to the development of a stiff or hard-hitting approach (aka “strong style”) that incorporates martial arts and legitimate submission holds (Gross, 2016; Wrenn, 2007). Some wrestling companies are synonymous with these specific styles, such as Asistencia Asesoría y Administración (AAA) in Mexico and New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW) in Japan, and the Internet has helped them reach audiences worldwide.

The Internet has also helped smaller promotions and federations outside of the WWE reach audiences beyond their local or regional scope. Such indie wrestling recalls the original configuration of professional wrestling before WWE forced the different regional federations out of business. An indie wrestling promotion typically exists within a specific city or geographic region and may even be the only promotion within that region (for examples, see Heppen & Beard, 2018; Mathewson, 2018). Thus, that federation could be a fan’s only avenue for seeing live, non-WWE wrestling in a more intimate setting. Indie wrestling shows often take place at high school gymnasiums or bingo halls, or sometimes at larger venues. Major metropolitan areas like Chicago or the Twin Cities have large enough populations of wrestling fans to support multiple federations. Some federations like Ring of Honor and CHIKARA have become popular beyond their regions, thanks in part to online distribution of their shows.

Across these different nations, cultures, and federations, professional wrestling utilizes its own insider terminology, which is rooted in the carnival tradition. The first and possibly most important term is “kayfabe.” As mentioned, professional wrestling is scripted and features predetermined outcomes, though it often presents itself as real competition. Kayfabe refers to the portrayal of these staged events as real or true (Litherland, 2018). Essentially, kayfabe concerns the idea that the in-ring events and the relationships between characters (known in the industry as “gimmicks”; Beard & Heppen, 2011) are genuine rather than predetermined or staged. It is a code word of sorts for maintaining this reality when wrestlers interact with the public. In the past, performers were expected to maintain kayfabe always, meaning that wrestlers who were friends backstage but feuding on the show often avoided appearing together in public. Acknowledging the inner workings of the business is known as “breaking kayfabe” and was frowned upon in the past, though something unscripted and thus real (otherwise known as a “shoot”) occasionally transpired within a match or storyline. These days, however, the Internet has altered the notion of kayfabe by throwing wide the curtain that once kept backstage secrets hidden from the eyes of the public.

Thus, kayfabe maintains the illusion of professional wrestling as a legitimate sporting competition and obscures the fact that every match outcome, feud development, and character interaction is scripted and predetermined (Litherland, 2018), which has now become something of an open secret. Indeed, performance is the true intention of any wrestling match; professional wrestlers, whether working for WWE or an indie fed, whether in the United States or elsewhere, seek to put on a show and build drama in the ring, using everything from their gimmicks to their move sets (Beard & Heppen, 2011). As such, wrestling must be considered a hybrid of sport and theater (Mazer, 1998). Professional wrestling provides audiences with a highly physical spectacle that incorporates “the transgressive, violent urges generally repressed in everyday life” (Mazer, 1998, p. 6). It offers a simulation of reality, though one filtered through an extremely heightened lens, and uses this platform to tackle “the intelligible figuration of moral situations ordinarily secret” (Barthes, 1957, p. 7). In other words, professional wrestling presents the moral struggle between good and evil, right and wrong, order and chaos as a theatrical and altogether violent spectacle, and kayfabe reinforces the idea that what happens in the ring is real or true by creating a simulation or hyperreality (Mazer, 1998).

One of the ways that professional wrestling advances this narrative of morality is through character alignments. Wrestlers may be heels, faces (aka babyfaces), or tweeners (Beard & Heppen, 2011). In basic terms, heel equates to villain or bad guy, face means hero or good guy, and tweener refers to morally neutral or ambiguous characters who exist in the liminal space between heel and face. Faces and heels first emerged in the early days of wrestling; savvy promoters recognized the need for clearly defined heroes and villains, and they convinced wrestlers to adopt gimmicks as either virtuous faces or despicable heels. This development proved vital for professional wrestling as an industry and became “an essential aspect of drawing fans to matches in which they had no vested, personal interest” (Beekman, 2006, p. 64). Even now wrestlers often adopt broad gimmicks that position them as either faces or heels depending on predominant sociocultural attitudes and stereotypes. For instance, in the 1950s George Raymond Wagner assumed a thinly veiled homosexual heel gimmick under the name Gorgeous George. Meanwhile, faces tend to be morally upstanding individuals who advocate for positive behavior while also expressing strong nationalist sympathies, as exemplified by Hulk Hogan or John Cena.

Tweeners exist between these two poles, conforming more to the idea of an antihero than either a true hero or a villain. Often these characters exhibit dark personalities and employ underhanded tactics to win matches. They also disrespect authority and attack heels and faces alike. Despite this behavior, tweeners tend to remain beloved by fans, especially in the twenty-first century as the notion of kayfabe continues to break down and audiences have more access to the performers behind the characters. Tweeners appeared recently in professional wrestling, as character alignments were much more clearly defined during the industry’s early days. Tweeners truly emerged during the latter half of the twentieth century with characters like Bad News Brown and Diesel displaying heelish personas but nevertheless finding popularity among wrestling fans. Tweeners became increasingly common in the late 1990s during the so-called Attitude Era, a period that saw morally ambiguous characters like The Rock, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, and Triple H achieve unprecedented popularity.

Despite professional wrestling’s scripted nature, mistakes still happen inside the ring (otherwise known as the squared circle). Industry insiders and fans refer to these mistakes as botches. Accidents happen because, while the outcomes are predetermined, the actual matches are largely improvised (Mazer, 1998). Wrestlers discuss their actions ahead of time, but when they step inside the ring they work together to construct their match “moment-to-moment from sequences of moves according to traditional patterns and scenarios that are decided in advance” (Mazer, 1998, p. 23). Wrestlers train for years to learn these moves and develop their skills, all so they can avoid injuring one another while putting together an exciting spectacle for the fans. In the process, they create a dramatic performance akin to a play that “presents a theme or set of themes emphasizing certain values and ideologies” (Ball, 1990, p. 128). These themes extend beyond good versus evil to include youth versus age, America versus the world, education versus experience, and more, all made apparent by the wrestlers’ ideological positioning as faces or heels.

The moves employed by wrestlers can range from pedestrian, like the clothesline or Irish whip, to common, like the suplex or DDT, to dangerous, like a piledriver or brain buster. A match usually ends with a pin for a three-count or a submission hold leading to a tap-out. A match may also end in a disqualification when another wrestler interferes, or one wrestler involved in the match performs an “illegal” action or uses a “foreign object.” Other matches will be built around special circumstances and rules, such as a triple threat in which three wrestlers battle simultaneously, or a steel cage match in which the competitors must escape from a steel cage surrounding the ring. During any match, wrestlers will interact with the crowd through a call-and-response to generate heat (i.e. provoke a crowd reaction) and get over (i.e. getting the crowd to buy into the wrestler’s character), meaning they can become popular with the audience – which could mean life or death for their career.

Professional wrestling fans have traditionally been called marks, a holdover term from the industry’s origins on the carnival circuit (Wrenn, 2007). Insiders apply this label to anyone who appears to believe that ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction: defining convergent wrestling
• 2 Wrestlers, fans, and power dynamics at live events
• 3 Kayfabe as convergence: content interactivity and prosumption in the squared circle
• 4 Wrestling with characters: viewer engagement in contemporary television wrestling
• 5 Sports entertainment: toward a high concept of professional wrestling
• 6 WWE’s corporate documentary: convergence, collective memory, and the case against Warrior
• 7 Who is the “baddest bitch in the building?”: genre convergence and the inversion of gender roles in Lucha Underground
• 8 Allusion and the reality of power: professional wrestling and technology’s role in the re-creation of the referee
• 9 “Ultimate! Atomic! Buster!” Street Fighter, professional wrestling, and visual semiotics
• 10 Pile-driving the fourth wall: audience as participant in CHIKARA professional wrestling
• 11 The pro-wrestling audience as imagined community: reflecting on the WWE universe as a “fan-generated narrative” body
• 12 “What’s best for business”: the WWE Cruiserweight Classic and managing renegade audiences through affective economics
• 13 Wrestling fandom and digital convergence: the kitsch class consciousness of Sirius XM’s Busted Open Radio
• 14 “I’ve been in the danger zone!”: Botchamania as a site of cultural convergence for the modern internet-savvy wrestling fan
• 15 Conclusion: future endeavors
• Index