To say skilled wrestling is a rousing type of leisure is an understatement. This yr alone, followers of World Wrestling Leisure and All Elite Wrestling have witnessed a Samoan household mafia civil battle, a spooky horror villain faction rebellion, a gothic cuckoldry revenge drama, and a poisonous yuri romance-turned-bitter rivalry take form contained in the squared circle. Actually, skilled wrestling is a gymnastic redneck anime cleaning soap opera, and it’s stunning. What’s not so charming is how the parasocial relationships between wrestlers and their followers have given rise to unhealthy tribalism.
Wrestling firms have lengthy been in an ebb and circulate with each other, such that when one fails to ship the products, the opposite will take up the slack, and WWE and AEW aren’t any completely different. WWE—underneath the guiding hand of Paul “Triple H” Levesque—focuses on long-term reserving, the place wrestlers like Cody Rhodes, Roman Reigns, and Seth Rollins enable the drama from their scripted feuds to tell the death-defying actions they carry out within the ring. In the meantime, its competitor AEW exists as the choice to WWE, the place the athleticism and work fee of youthful expertise like Maxwell Jacob Fredman, Will Ospsrey, and Swerve Strickland take middle stage over the monologue-heavy diatribes that plagued the WWE of disgraced former CEO Vince McMahon’s period.
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However in case you requested a wrestling fan what they considered the opposing fandom, they’d sling mud, referring to WWE as “the Fed” and AEW as “All Friendship Wrestling.” Whereas this Chicago Cubs vs. White Sox-esque cross-town rivalry was initially spawned by each firms taking overt kayfabe-breaking potshots at one another in numerous TV segments and backstage interviews to pop their audiences, it has since change into much less the stuff of playful jabs and extra made up of poisonous banter.
Having lurked on-line in wrestling circles and attended a number of AEW occasions in Chicago, I’ve witnessed followers needlessly yucking one another’s yum. This typically manifests in followers heckling AEW exhibits by chanting CM Punk’s identify—a chant as soon as reserved for WWE occasions at any time when they didn’t like no matter pageantry was occurring contained in the ring—mocking one another about crowd sizes, or harassing wrestlers like Ricky Starks for having associates that work in WWE and assuming he’s going to leap ship. Whereas spirited discourse and studying up on “the dust sheets” will at all times be part of wrestling fandoms, having an unhealthy parasocial relationship with their expertise is simply weirdo habits—particularly when these exact same wrestlers don’t really feel that method about one another in anyway.
Followers offended over the perceived battle strains of AEW and WWE are lacking the advantages of the symbiotic relationship between each firms. In actuality, WWE and AEW wrestlers are ecstatic that competing promotions like AEW exist as a result of it implies that laid-off wrestlers or expertise that by no means received an excellent run, like Malakai Black or Ethan Web page, gained’t be out of labor upon their departures from both firm. Likewise, each firms have taken pointers from each other to reinforce their presentation. As an illustration, WWE has lately been using AEW’s crowd work strategies by having wrestlers like Sami Zayn stroll into the present as a chilly open, identical to Jon Moxley does in his entrances. Likewise, AEW has been taking pointers from the melodramatic love triangle between Dominik Mysterio, Rhea Ripley, and Liv Morgan to tell their angle between Toni Storm, Mariah Might, and Mina Shirakawa.
“There’s this bizarre factor occurring now in skilled wrestling the place I’ll see followers on-line, the way in which they impart with one another, it’s like all-out battle,” AEW wrestler Maxwell Jacob Friedman stated in a City Corridor interview with Busted Open. “Simply so that you guys know, that’s not what’s occurring with the wrestlers. We’re all rooting one another on as a result of, realistically, the higher the 2 firms are doing, the more cash we’re gonna make. So cease arguing. We’re all freaking having a blast.”
With no shadow of a doubt, skilled wrestling is bigger than ever. But tribalism disguised as unbridled assist is extra dangerous to the craft than supportive. It’s tantamount to an individual saying they like pancakes being indicative of them hating waffles. You possibly can have two truffles, identical to how one can have two wrestling firms sharing the identical house. Whether or not you could have the time to dedicate 12 hours every week to look at each packages is one other story.
