Wrestling acts as a positive example of sports
Matt Porter
In the past, I have argued that people should stop being pretentious and watch professional wrestling. However, the reactions to my article ranged from lukewarm to “please stop defending such a homophobic, masochistic, jingoistic sideshow that is the WWE,” which sent me into a reclusive shock and a refusal to believe that my fellow classmates did not take up wrestling as the new American sport. I have now become more resolute in my goal than ever before, and like Mormon missionaries who spend two years of their lives getting rejected by strangers, I have come back to spread the good word.
There have been important developments recently in the WWE universe, especially after WrestleMania XVIII. For those of you who don’t follow the WWE, WrestleMania is like the Super Bowl of wrestling, except genuinely entertaining, and all of the big name matchups and title fights are saved for this event. WrestleMania has become wildly successful for the WWE and in 2009 WrestleMania set a record for the highest grossing one-day entertainment event with $52 million in sales. This year’s match-ups were nothing if not monumental, with John Cena facing the Rock, CM Punk fighting Chris Jericho, and Triple H trying to break the 19-0 winning streak of the Undertaker at WrestleMania.
All three of these matches were historic for various reasons. The Rock versus Cena was a once-in-a-lifetime matchup between two titans that once dominated the sport, but it seems unlikely that he will come back to wrestling for good. This matchup was more of a lifetime achievement award for Dwayne Johnson and an easy way for the WWE to cash in on fans from our generation that still remember when the Rock was the “Most Electrifying Man in Sports.”
The Triple H vs. The Undertaker fight was also more about the end of era and the first real public acknowledgement that the Undertaker would no longer return to WrestleMania. The match that meant the most for the future of wrestling was the match between CM Punk and Chris Jericho, a true face versus heel match.
Again, for those that don’t watch wrestling, there are four fast-and-loose categories that most wrestlers fall under, which are: heels, suits, faces and evil. Heels are villains you love to hate, and often are just overly cocky show-offs that think they are the best rather than being the best. Just imagine any quarterback character in a teen movie — that’s heel. A suit is any person that works for management and dresses in, surprisingly, a suit. Think of the Boss from “Office Space,” except with big muscle cannon arms. Faces, short for baby faces, are the heroes of WWE and the people you should root for. If you had kids you would want them to date a face. Finally, evil characters are just pure evil. They are different from heels because they aren’t annoying — they just are actually from Hell.
What was so interesting about the CM Punk-Chris Jericho fight was the kind of face Punk has become and what that means for the future of faces in the WWE. Punk is straight-edge, and for the early years when he broke into wrestling he was mocked and reviled for it — essentially a heel. Over time, however, he won over the hearts and minds of wrestling fans despite his stance to move from a heel to a face that fans love to cheer for. CM Punk was a symbol of major sports trying to move beyond a fast-and-loose steroid era that ended up taking the life of Chris Benoit. The conflict between Punk and Jericho will continue, and it will be interesting to see how professional wrestling will take on the social ill of alcoholism.
With this victory, wrestling has helped change the face of its sport from steroid-ridden hunks to lean 180 pound athletes by changing who we consider to be a face.