Pro Wrestling

How to tell your girlfriend you watch pro wrestling

Admitting your pro wrestling habit to a loved one could traditionally be difficult. But the industry has evolved.

July 19, 2023

My girlfriend and I had our first fight after she watched AEW: Collision.

The honeymoon period is over. The rose-colored glasses have been smeared. There is some rain falling on our parade. And there are new tinges of dark in the light of her brown eyes. Oscuridad en la luz, mi amor. Why? Because we had to have the “Chris Benoit talk.”

The plan was to watch Collision together via text and facetime as we are in a long-distance relationship but CM Punk yelling about the Owen Hart Foundation Tournament derailed all that. He was belting out a canned babyface promo that I’ve heard a million times but for my beloved, it was a rabbit hole to the darkest parts of wrestling’s fandom. She first looked up Owen Hart. Then Vince McMahon and his path to sainthood. Then Eddie Guerrero and, of course, Chris Benoit.

The vibe of the night immediately changed after Punk’s promo. Texts like “I think you literally have my entire heart since I’m watching this” gave way to ones saying “I’m reading about this Owen Hart guy, and this is so sad,” “Vince McMahon is a POS,” and “…this Benoit guy, my god.” The scariest text? “Yea, we’re going to a show when you visit next week.”

I called her immediately because she was venturing too far into the dark side of the ring and forcing me to go to a musical. I was trying to redirect her attention to Ricky Starks vs. Hobbs but I was met with a maelstrom of shock, confusion, and disgust as she demanded to know: “what was [she] watching?”, “are all wrestlers like Chris Benoit?”, and “you’re buying the orchestra seats, right?”

It took me an hour and a half and a couple hundred bucks for tickets to “New York, New York ” but I saved our relationship as CM Punk pinned Samoa Joe. I was relieved that she didn’t find out about Katie Vick but I was sad, tired, and morose. Sad and tired because our night was ruined as I spent most of it explaining how, why, and what wrestling is and morose because she was right; wrestling has many awful things to answer for and it is, fairly, stigmatized.

But while we’ve all had to have the “Chris Benoit Talk,” the “Owen Hart Talk”, or, heaven forbid, the “Katie Vick Talk” with a loved one, wrestling still has so much to offer. There are so many ways to defend pro graps, but it is likely hard to gather your thoughts as you see the faces of your friends, family, or romantic partners wince in disgust when you tell them about your dirty Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday night habits. So I’d like to help you navigate these awful times when your fandom comes into question because, seriously, this musical I’m going to is two and a half hours long. FTR vs. Bullet Club Gold wasn’t worth this pain. Anyway, here are some arguments you can use:

Wrestling is a theater where everyone is welcome

Professional wrestling is the most versatile art form made in the live-action medium. It can be any genre, tell any story with any sort of character, and is produced in real time. It can tell you fables of indomitable good overcoming domineering evil. There are poignant stories of friends and families coming together. And there are myths of the lost and damned finding purpose and strength in the night that are all told in a longform, episodic nature.

You can have the story of “Hangman” Adam Page, wrestling’s anxious millennial cowboy. Hangman’s story begins with him spiraling after losing out on a chance to become a world champion as self-doubt ushers him into the throngs of anxiety and alcohol. What ensues is a classic and truly poignant underdog story as it takes Hangman two years to crawl from the wreckage to the top of the mountain. But for as much as Hangman is wrestling’s classic protagonist, complete with long blonde hair and southern sensibilities, what about how The New Day propelled themselves to stardom by attaching unicorn horns to their heads?

Kofi Kingston, Xavier Woods, and Big E formed The New Day in 2014 and lit the wrestling world ablaze via the power of positivity, friendship, and pancakes. After realizing the creative powers that be had no idea what to do with them, The New Day decided to do things themselves and found success by openly rejecting every common story sensibility and trope in professional wrestling. Instead of being serious and aggressive in their matches, they donned unicorn horns, wore pink and rainbow themed gear, twerked, and threw pancakes at their adversaries. Instead of cursing and screaming in their promos, they berated their opponents with elaborate SNL-style skits. And instead of promoting themselves as one-dimensional alpha males, they routinely talk about their mental health woes to inspire and empower others, they participate in charities and community outreach initiatives, and they will not shut up about how much they love The Golden Girls.

The result? The New Day is still going strong nearly 10 years later. They have accumulated innumerable tag team championships, Xavier Woods won the 2021 King of the Ring Tournament. Big E won the WWE Championship in 2021. Kofi Kingston won the WWE Championship in 2019 in front of 80,000 people chanting his name (myself included) at WrestleMania 35.

Professional wrestling will always feature traditional matches with traditional characters such as the strongmen, d-bag meatheads, and beer-drinking rednecks, but it will also give a home to the weird, the off-kilter, and the damned. “Stone Cold” Steve Austin won the WWE Championship many times by a beer-drinking redneck, but he often had to dodge literal thunderbolts that The Undertaker threw at him. The Rock may have electrified fans with his catch phrases and designer clothes en route to becoming a huge draw in Hollywood, but Mankind with a leather mask and disfigured ear once beat him for the title using a forklift. Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan molded the “traditional” professional wrestling archetypes in the ’80s, but they had to contend with the tassel-covered, cocaine-fueled Sting, “Macho Man” Randy Savage and Ultimate Warrior just as MJF with his Burberry scarf must face Darby Allin with his face paint and skateboard, a dinosaur named Luchasaurus, and whatever the hell Danhausen is.

Professional wrestling can do and will do whatever it wants, and that’s the magic. It’s not about the matches and their results, it’s about the characters and the stories they tell using the ring as a plot device. There can be standard matches between meatheads in rings for belts, there can be supernatural, spoopy characters like The Undertaker challenging people to fights in graveyards, and you can have Danhausen winning matches by putting curses on people and it all flies. Wrestling is theater with no rules and everyone is welcome.

Despite its reputation, wrestling has become surprisingly progressive

I took a good friend of mine to Full Gear 2022 in Newark this past November and he was expecting something akin to a MAGA rally. Like my girlfriend, he had the standard preconceived stereotypes regarding wrestling and assumed its characters and fanbase are designed to cater to the NASCAR crowd. So he quietly braced himself for debates with slovenly men about women’s reproductive rights, voting laws, and systemic racism but instead, he found an arena composed predominantly of men chanting “Oh scissor me, daddy!”

The Acclaimed was a revelation for my friend as he realized that modern professional wrestling is progressive and accepting. Describing The Acclaimed is like describing a force of nature; you just kind of have to see them but, here goes. The group is composed of “Platinum” Max Caster who is the second coming of “Thuganomics” era John Cena in that he comes out spitting venomous raps and rhymes about his opponents and current events; Anthony Bowens, the openly gay, statuesque powerhouse of the team whose main goal is to ensure LGBTQ+ representation in wrestling; and “Daddy Ass” Billy Gunn, the elder statesmen who supports and guides the team from experience earned battling The Rock, Stone Cold, and The Undertaker during the Attitude Era in WWE. Together, they are one of the hottest acts in current pro wrestling by virtue of their skills within the ring, their values outside of the ring, and, well, their electrifying entrance that sees Caster dropping some bars and Bowens screaming “scissor me, Daddy Ass!” at the top of his lungs as the three interlock their fingers in a scissor formation to the delight of the audience. Just watch the video below:

Anyway, The Acclaimed making their entrance helped my friend to realize he wasn’t at a MAGA rally. He saw how excited the fans were for people of color thriving, how a gay man in Anthony Bowens was welcomed with open arms by wrestling’s faithful, and how a veteran wrestler – whose heyday was during an era in wrestling that was openly sexist, misogynistic, and homophobic – was wearing pink and calling himself “Daddy Ass.” Somewhere between The Acclaimed’s entrance and the entire area doing the “scissor” hand gesture along with them, my friend was convinced that wrestling can and has changed. Everyone loves The Acclaimed not just for how exciting they are, but because they help show how far wrestling has evolved.

Women’s wrestling regularly gets top billing

“It’s awful what happened to Chyna,” was something my girlfriend kept repeating over and over during our conversation last Saturday night. She was right. Chyna is one of wrestling’s greatest tragedies as her trailblazing story deserved a better ending than what was written for her. Despite being one of the top draws in WWE at the height of their popularity, she was never featured or compensated appropriately, nor is she given a proper pedestal in the company’s history. Her story, unfortunately, is not unique as this was the prevailing notion towards female wrestlers prior to the mid 2010s, but thankfully, women’s wrestling has come such a long way.

WWE had very little interest in promoting or developing female stars prior to the mid 2010’s. Their hiring and recruitment policies saw them seeking out would-be models for the sake of aesthetic appeal for their programming and hoping they would be interested in learning the craft. As such, properly trained female wrestlers were forced to scour the globe for bookings in other promotions in Japan, Mexico, and the UK who appreciated their abilities, but being a female wrestler in that era was something of a fool’s errand. After all, no matter how much time and energy you put into developing your skills, there was no promise of making it “big” as WWE and other top promotions weren’t interested. NXT changed all that.

Shifts in WWE’s management led to a culture change within the company and they began to develop female stars as a part of their NXT developmental program. There was a sudden but powerful increased emphasis placed on the women’s that saw the rise of Becky Lynch, Charlotte Flair, Sasha Banks, and Bayely in WWE’s developmental circuit. Meanwhile, you had audiences demanding more from women’s wrestling on mainline Raw and SmackDown programming, and TNA/Impact, a rival wrestling promotion, and the UFC had proved that female performers and competitors could be draws. It was a perfect storm that heralded the winds of change needed to give female wrestlers the opportunity to be stars.

And now? Women wrestlers are featured prominently on television, given significant and thoughtful storylines, and are regularly in main events of shows. None of this is better edified than with Becky Lynch, Charlotte Flair, and Ronda Rousey main eventing WrestleMania 35. There is still more work to be done as they are often not given equal time to the men and I am sure there are still compensation inequities that are less readily apparent, but we have come a long way from “bra and panties matches”. Thanks to the efforts of the aforementioned, I was thankfully able to quell my girlfriend’s angry diatribe about sexism in wrestling and she probably is going to love Zelina Vega once I send her some clips.

So while I’ll be taking my girlfriend to a show on Broadway instead of an AEW: Collision taping in Newark, NJ this coming Saturday, wrestling will still have a place in our relationship. Not because it was the root of our first fight, but because it has been a part of my life for over 20 years. Yes, we will have to have “The Katie Vick Talk,” “The Boogeyman Talk,” “The Hulk Hogan Racist Sex Tape Talk,” and she’s going to find Dark Side of The Ring eventually but, I’ll be able to take each storm as it comes because there is more to love about wrestling than there is to hate.

Professional wrestling no longer seeks to appeal to the lowest common denominator via shock television, it wants to be a theater for heroes, villains, the damned, and the dreamers. Professional wrestling is no longer just the realm of the tall, the muscular, and the male, it is a stage for the mighty regardless of race, gender, or preference. And beyond all that, professional wrestling has come too far to let its past hold it back. So I’m sorry my love, you’re going to be seeing a lot more of The New Day.