Features
-
The Spectacle of Bill Goldberg
It’s fall 1997, and while you don’t realize it at the time, you’re watching something special. It’s another episode of Monday Nitro—the Four Horsemen are falling apart, WCW is struggling to regroup in the face of the nWo, and Sting watches from the rafters while Hulk Hogan and Roddy Piper threaten everybody with a Halloween…
-
On Deplatforming Wrestlers
Update as of 7/14/20: This morning, Shlak posted a video addressing this history and GCW announced that members of hate groups are unwelcome at their events. Content warning for a discussion of abuse, misogyny, rape culture, neo nazi groups, and stories related to the #SpeakingOut movement. There are bad people in the world of professional…
-
A Brief History of Creeps In Professional Wrestling
[Content Warning on this piece for discussion of sexual violence and trauma.] Over the last two weeks, wrestling has been confronted with a problem that, frankly, too many people within and without the industry have known was coming for some time. When #MeToo began spreading at a pace faster than anyone in the entertainment industry…
-
The Big Boss Man: Wrestling As Copaganda
Let’s start with the refrain: All cops are bastards. It has been nearly a month since George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, and every single night since then, in the wake of protests across the country, local, state, and federal officials have abused their power again and again and again, pepper…
-
The New Day and Black Power In WWE
I need to begin this piece by acknowledging that I am not the right person to write it, that despite my own marginalization I am a white woman and, as such, regardless of whether or not I am seen as a woman or a man, the institution of American policing, the carceral state, capitalism itself,…
-
The Forgotten Sons Are White Supremacist Cosplay On National TV
On Sunday, I asked why wrestling, a century-plus long engagement between the performing arts, sports, and the public, saw its role in the fabric of American society as distraction, arms flung wildly in the air to draw the attention of its viewers away from content other forms of entertainment, even ones geared towards children, regularly…
-
Why Is Wrestling Satisfied with Being a Distraction?
I won’t sugarcoat it: right now, there are few things less important than professional wrestling. Between last week’s torrent of grief in the wake of the deaths of Hana Kimura and Shad Gaspard, the ongoing trauma and anxiety stemming from the country’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, and this week’s series of protests in response…
-
On Dead Wrestlers
Initially, this was going to be an essay about Owen Hart, an essay on the resting unease with which I’ve regarded the work (and ultimately the occupation) of one of my favorite wrestlers for the majority of my life. I haven’t seen the episode of Dark Side of the Ring about the negligence that led…
-
Pokémon’s Ash Ketchum Is One of the Greatest Wrestling Managers Ever
I’m pretty sure I don’t like professional wrestling anymore. Don’t get me wrong—I love it and likely always will, but unlike in February and early March, where I was watching every episode of WCW Monday Nitro leading up to Lex Luger’s 1997 WCW Championship win, it’s no longer the kind of thing I seek any…
-
On Johnny B. Badd, Wrestling’s Little Richard
Richard Wayne Penniman, who revolutionized American music and culture as Little Richard, passed away yesterday at the age of 87. I am nowhere near knowledgeable enough about the history of rock and roll to eulogize him, nor is that my function as a wrestling critic, but when someone of the stature and influence of Little…