Since when is wrestling essential

Originally published 4/14/20

Just hours after Florida's surgeon general advised that we keep social distancing in place until a vaccine can be developed - which could be a year or more - professional wrestling, or, as we used to call it, wraslin', was back on television, deemed "essential services" by our Governor. And I thought only South Carolina made embarrassing decisions. The governor must have made that decision some time ago, apparently without telling anyone because we had not seen it in the 24-hour new cycle, only appearing in the news late last night, after "Monday Night RAW," the WWE's signature live show, aired in prime time. We actually caught a snippet of it whilst flipping channels last night. It caught our eye because there was wrestling, but without 15,000 people cheering it on, which is weird, and anticlimactic. I know it was weird because I've seen wrestling live, and in person. Yes, I will admit that. Went to wrestling, got the t-shirt.

Here's Michael wearing his wrestling merchandise in 2014, at Litchfield Beach.

We were fans early in our marriage, when we were still giddy in love and willing to try new things. And, for a lack of anything better to watch on Monday nights, we got reeled into the soap opera that is wrestling. You see, wrestling isn't really about two people fighting one another in a ring. It's about the quintessential battle between good and evil, the strength of family, and the ability to persevere. And the good old American value of getting paid lots of money to be ridiculous.

We started watching, and we just couldn't look away. Michael's favorite was Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, mostly because he was a Miami Hurricane back in the day. By the time we came to wrestling he had essentially eclipsed the sport and gone on to blockbuster films, all of which we see, on the big screen. My favorite protagonist was John Cena, because he's cute, and because he's the good guy. He was strong and powerful with a visible admiration for our country, and an admirable off-stage persona as well, granting more wishes for the Make-a-Wish foundation than any other celebrity, more than 600.

How we saw John Cena from our seats, at right.

We plunked down in front of the TV on Monday nights, much to our children's dismay, who shook their heads at us and went to their respective bedrooms. This was before we knew we could stream Netflix, so we were totally dependent upon what only 500 channels were showing at any one time. Wrestling is not just about competition, we discovered. The show is not three hours of wrestling; it's probably half wrestling, the rest full of commentary, posturing and drama. It was about stories - or soap operas, like moms used to watch - in which there was a continuing drama between two, or three, or four people, about who loved who, who was the best, who had betrayed whom. Much like real life, except they settled their grievances in the ring, and the best man - or woman - didn't always win. Now, I am a fan of the happy ending, but wrestling's sometimes surprising endings disappointed me when the bad guy won, but didn't haunt me; I knew that next time, or eventually, the good guy would win.

It is, surprisingly and for some reason forgivingly, badly acted, as well. Maybe that's why I could withstand the bad guy winning. It's so not real. It's so believably unbelievable that you just can't look away. And, if you pay close attention, the WWE is in a different city, at a different arena every Monday night. What a brutal schedule those guys have. So I said to Michael, if they come to Greenville, we're going. He agreed. And just a few months later, they arrived in Greenville, at our arena. Tickets were reasonable, so we conned Michael's cousin and her husband, a beautiful, sophisticated, up and coming young couple to come with us. Chesnee and Matt had just moved to Greenville, and we had begun a regular rotation of dinners with them. They were hip downtowners whom we knew were destined to become movers and shakers in the redeveloping city that was quickly becoming upscale and youthful. Chesnee is an art curator at the county museum of art, and Matt was working with entrepreneurs at Clemson University in developing programs at their downtown Greenville location. They were so hip, and we felt hip just being with them. Besides, they were great fun to be with. They did not, however, know anything about wrestling, and so agreed to go with us. Chesnee comes from a family with deep roots in the South. She has immaculate, classic taste, and kowtows to no fad or trend. She is petite, likely dresses from the conservative choices in the JCrew catalog, and moves her small body carefully and deliberately. Matt played basketball at the College of Charleston, but maintains that was a fluke. He, too, manages himself purposefully, though his sense of humor breaks through often, and laughter punctuates much of his demeanor. We gathered in front of the arena, the four of us, and waited for the doors to open for Monday Night Raw in Greenville. Chesnee began to look around at the crowd, I'm certain wondering what she had gotten herself into. A lot of dads with young sons, carrying signs to grab the attention of their favorite character. Young adults, casually dressed in tattoo-exposing shirts, before tattoos were commonplace. Many bellies that had received a lot of beer, BBQ and french fries over the years. Definitely a different socioeconomic and culture class than any of us were used to in our everyday lives. We all marveled at the scene around us, and Chesnee snuggled in closer to Matt. Even the ticket-taker knew we were a little out of our element, especially Chesnee, conservatively dressed in a gray turtleneck sweater and black jeans. "Hey wait a minute!" he declared when Chesnee presented her ticket. "Who let princess in here?" Chesnee was genuinely surprised that he sensed her trepidation. "What?" she said. "What do you mean?" "Princess!" he declared again, laughing and looking around. "What are you doing here?" She looked back at Team Cannon for support, and we laughed at the man's insight, assuring him that we would take care of her during the event. Once in, we found our seats, on the floor, but a ways back from the ring, which seemed much smaller in person than it did on TV. Michael and I allowed the inner redneck in us to emerge, and we went to buy t-shirts. I think we were shocked that Matt and Chesnee didn't want a t-shirt, but looking back, I see that now.

T-shirts, fresh from the merch guy, at right. Michael got The Rock's shirt, I got John Cena. Both shirts have since been retired.

Wrestling in person is much different than on TV. Mostly, you don't see all the drama and sidebar conversations that cameras provide insight to. You don't even hear the commentary in the live setting. You just see wrestlers appear every once in a while, yelling without microphones at 15,000 people because there's no way they could be amplified; wrestling costumes and the very act of wrestling precludes it.

In person, it was a lot less interesting, I have to admit. We returned to couch-watching wrestling for a bit, wearing our t-shirts, until the repetition of the story lines lost our interest, which often happens in slow-moving soap operas. We caught up on wrestling just this week during one of our many quarantine movie binges. We watched "Fighting with my Family," a movie on Netflix about the rise of the wrestler Paige, the inaugural NXT champion, which is the development arm of the WWE. The movie showed the physicality and discipline of the sport (I'll use that word kind-a loosely) and the drive behind some of its participants - like Paige, who grew up in a family of wrestlers and actually knew how to wrestle, while others were seeking fame any way they could get it, without much knowledge of the sport. I think wrestling is entertainment that requires a lot of physicality and training, as well as character development and line recitation. It's fun to watch, and definitely provides a good guy to cheer for and a bad guy to boo. But is it an "essential service," along the lines of grocery stores and pharmacies? Michael and I were watching the Dallas Mavericks basketball game in mid-March when announcers learned that an NBA player (not in that game at the time) had tested positive for COVID-19, and professional sports all but shut down immediately after that game was over. Concern was raised because the NBA plays a sweaty, fast-paced game in an enclosed arena, and teams travel cross-country weekly, much like the WWE... But it's been a month since that declaration, and we're going on more than three weeks of restaurant, retail, educational and non-essential work closures. I think our capitalist country has had all it can bear, both of this "quarantine" (which some haven't even been able to stick to, as Hillsborough County, in which Tampa is located, enacted a curfew just last night because 100+ groupings continue) and unemployment is beginning to take spiritual and monetary tolls on our country's psyche. And because we're led by a president who said last week during a news conference that all the information he needed to decide whether to open the country was, and he pointed to his head, I think we know it will be sooner rather than later that we get back to work and eating out. The Governor of Florida reinforced that message when he had the surgeon general yanked from a news conference yesterday for saying we may keep distancing for up to a year, just hours before WWE (an event that cannot be executed by maintaining 6-foot distances) went live - albeit without an audience, but do you know how many people it takes to produce a live event? Our country is at war with this virus, our president has said. I would agree that we are at war, but not with this virus. The virus instigated this fight, like an older brother who pokes his little brother and then sister and laughs as they duke it out. Now the war is between money (resources) and lives, as many wars are. And money always wins, and lives are sacrificed for it. Those who are losing money because their minimum-wage workers can't work are beginning to wince at the profits they can no longer see, barely noticing that their minimum wage workers are unable to pay rent this month, and that those workers are actually at risk for contracting the virus in the crowded restaurants and sports arenas in which they do their work, and whom have limited access to testing and treatment, should they feel ill. So many NBA players were tested when they discovered one player had it because the league had money and means to utilize a private testing company. The hourly workers who clean their locker rooms and serve ice cold beers weren't given the same access, exposing clearly who is on the front lines of this war. The government stimulus check that arrives in bank accounts tomorrow will be an appreciated gift, but I cannot imagine that it will close the gap that many are straddling, nor is it a long-term fix for those who are now four and five weekly paychecks behind. It's like a gauze bandage on a wound that needed surgery, stitches and antibiotics. Dallas Mavericks owner and Shark Tank investor Mark Cuban forecasted a slow return to a fully functioning economy on a FOX News interview last week. We watched Cuban - whose politics I don't know but whose success is well documented - that day that the virus hit the NBA, as he paced worriedly on the edge of his home court. I disagree with his conservative estimate that our country will return slowly to normal, whether it be a new or the old normal. Americans aren't wired for this - for restriction, for scarcity, for immobility. We ran away from all that a couple hundred years ago and live fully into freedom, excess and personal prerogative. And being restricted by a virus that we can't even see, except for in graphs and the death-ometer on CNN? Please. Michael reveled in the confluence of events, that the quarantine (a word rooted in the the number 40) happened during Lent, which is the 40 days before Easter during which Christians sometimes deprive themselves of luxurious things to emulate the 40 days that Christ spent in the wilderness being tempted by the devil. Was this God's idea of a literal cosmic joke? Spinning us back 2000 years to remind us of what he sacrificed for us, humanity, that had become, at that time excessive, depraved and reprehensible? Of course it's not. I do believe God has a sense of humor, but I don't think he's mean and vindictive. Yes, he appears that way in the Old Testament, but the New Testament sacrifice and rebirth of his Son that we just celebrated changed the way he looks at the world. Did we, humans, change? Not really. We're still sinful and selfish, but we now have an opportunity, each day, to repent, ask and give forgiveness, and try again tomorrow. Which means that after this is all over, whenever that my be, politicians will continue to disagree, businessmen will seek to make a profit, workers will struggle to pay the rent and 15,000 fans will gather to witness the continuing drama in the WWE.