Professional wrestling and the essential story behind it and so much else.

Hulk Hogan in his prime

“Wrestling is not about winning or losing, but about creating moments that will be remembered for a lifetime.” ⁠– Hulk Hogan, Speech at the WWE Hall of Fame ceremony

"The best way to bring folks together is to give them a real good enemy." The Wizard of Oz in Wicked.

For the life of me, I've never quite understood professional wrestling. Is it a sport? Is it a soap opera? What is it, and why is it so popular?

Wrestling matches are admittedly faked, and no real outcomes matter, nor are there actual championships. The outcomes of each match are predetermined in advance, so why is there so much interest in a "sport" where there is no real contest? Would anybody go to a baseball or football game if they knew it was fixed so that one team always won? (Mind you, one of the big problems in both sports is the huge salaries that large city teams can lay out to dominate smaller market teams and routinely reach the playoffs.)

World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), used to be called the World Wide Wrestling Federation, but now they lean into the entertainment side of the business more than anything. The wrestlers here are superstars with fake names and colorful costumes who trash talk each other, and not the Olympic athletes we see every four years in the actual wrestling competitions.

The WWE is to wrestling like the Harlem Globetrotters are to basketball and the new Savannah Bananas are to baseball. They play to the audience for laughs and spectacle, making each match a performance that will be remembered long after last week's football game is forgotten.

Macho male energy courses through the WWE and its wrestlers, and it gives an important outlet for those who want to be tough guys in a polite society that only allows toughness in action movies and cop shows. In that way, it's cathartic to see grown men (and women) pound on each other, but there's something bigger going on here.

Professional wrestling is driven, like so many other forms of entertainment, by the battle between good and evil. Wrestlers are divided into two exaggerated camps- Faces and Heels. The Faces are the good guys like Hulk Hogan, John Cena, and the Rock. They are the ones audiences are supposed to root for and they usually come out on top. The Heels are the bad guys like Randy Savage, Andre the Giant, and Triple H. They taunt the audience and the good guys with over-the-top villainy, and the battle between Faces and Heels becomes an epic one that engrosses audiences. No one seems to care that it's fake. It's a show. Might makes right and good triumphs over evil. In a world where the rich and powerful seem to get away with everything, this feels like justice.

This story is central to societies and most of the stories they tell themselves. Good vs Evil. And guess which camp most of us think we're in? Most action and superhero movies are built around the battle between heroes and villains. The Avengers vs. Thanos, Batman vs the Joker, Harry Potter vs. Voldemort, Luke Skywalker vs. Darth Vader, Simba vs. Scar etc....

Never mind if the villain is a cartoon version that would likely never exist- the more despicable they are, the better. Look at any war in history and one of the first things you notice is that the "good guys" start looking for ways to demonize others- transforming them into something less than human. This can simplify any complex disagreement into an existential fight where evil must be beaten down and defeated. Just like the Heels in wrestling.

In our confusing and complicated world, politicians take advantage of this built-in weakness of humans to pit one group against another. They are always looking for new villains to unite against- immigrants, transexuals, racial minorities, religious minorities and more. This is both dangerous and effective- it's how we created the holocaust and slavery.

I'd like to think that humanity has progressed past the point where a simple cartoon villain could drive people to hatred and violence. The reality is that there are no villains out there- just people who let bad experiences get the worst of them. Most people are complicated mixtures of both hero and villain, and can be inspired or tempted to go either way in the right circumstances. The hero in us must be willing to stick to our values and not give in to hate. As Master Yoda said, "Hate leads to the dark side."

Professional wrestlers and most fans know that it's all a performance. After the match, they go back to being friends and colleagues and go back to their everyday lives where heroes and villains are harder to detect. Dwayne, "The Rock" Johnson has transitioned from pro wrestling to become a popular action movie star. Being a Face helped him with that good guy image.

Johnson has said, "Wrestling was like stand-up comedy for me. Every night I had a live audience of 25,000 people to win over. My goal was never to be the loudest or the craziest. It was to be the most entertaining.... Not only do I think being nice and kind is easy but being kind, in my opinion, is important."

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