Tonight is the Royal Rumble, World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)’s first flagship pay-per-view (PPV) of the year. It is also one year since I started watching wrestling again.
Our family first got Sky TV in 1991 and as soon as we did, me and my siblings were hooked. Primarily it was me and my brother. I’ve always viewed wrestling as sort of like a testosterone fueled soap opera. Viewer-wise, the gender split for wrestling viewing is currently 65% male, 35% female. I’ve not been able to find any research on soap viewing but I would imagine that the split is roughly the opposite.
I guess what I’m saying is I want my soap opera to have oiled up men in pants grappling with each other and making each other groan. Don’t judge me. It makes me manly.
There is still an undercurrent of sexism within wrestling. Women, whilst gaining a bit more prominence since I initially started watching, are still treated as inferior and sometimes as sex objects – mainly by Jerry “The King” Lawler. For anyone who doesn’t know who he is, imagine the wrestling equivalent of Andy Gray and you’re probably pretty close.
The women’s title had been renamed the “Divas Championship” since I had last watched which seemed like a step in the wrong direction to me. The womens division did seem to be larger and perhaps had a bit more prominence but – as with football – it is still generally seen as insignificant and is paid nowhere near as well. This website has a list of wrestler’s salaries.
AJ Lee, who is the current Divas champion and has recently surpassed the record for longest reigning female champion is on an annual salary of $104,300 (£63,000) which pales into insignificance when compared to the two men who fought in the title unification fight at Hell in the Cell last month. Current champion Randy Orton is on $1,600,500 (£970,000) and John Cena who is on $2,750,000 (£1,700,000).
The conclusion from all of this is that men like to watch largely naked well paid men cuddling each other. The treatment of women in wrestling is something that bugs me but my moral conscience is not strong enough to stop me from watching. I’d like to think that, in some way, being an enlightened viewer may help persuade the WWE to treat women better, but I’m not sure exactly how that would work.
Going back to the soap opera element, obviously I know that wrestling “isn’t real.” Although what people mean by that statement, I’m not entirely sure. It’s like saying that Eastenders isn’t real. I guess what they mean is that the results are fixed. Fine, that’s the whole point. It’s what keeps the storylines going. I didn’t think this when I was little though.
One of my school colleagues had a dad who worked in television in some way, possibly a cameraman. When Summerslam came over to London in 1992, he got to go up with his dad and hang around back stage. I thought he was indescribably cool for having this opportunity. When he came back, I thought he was less cool. This is because he told me that he had seen The Undertaker and Kamala having a cup of tea and discussing what the were going to do in their match. I was convinced he was making it up. This sort of thing just couldn’t happen. It was like being told that santa didn’t exist all over again. I was sure that I was being lied to but I couldn’t work out why someone would lie about something so important.
Over time, I got a full understanding of what it was and how it worked and I still had an appreciation of it. No-one does spectacle or entertainment quite like the WWE and at the age of 34, I can still get excited when something happens like the underdog Daniel Bryan managing to win the world championship from John Cena.
Sure, some of it isn’t very exciting at times, and WWE still have a habit of managing to take a story line or character that threatens to be really interesting or exciting and throw it away in favour of maintaining the status quo.
I watched wrestling on and off over the times that I’ve had Sky but over the course of the last year, I’ve been watching every pay per view and the odd Raw or Smackdown in between or reading about them on the internet when I can’t. It’s safe to say, I’m addicted again. It is, by and large, as much fun as it has always been, and – I find – much more exciting than Eastenders.