Cory Barker | Vox

WrestleMania, explained

2016-05-16T04:41:09-04:00

Dolph Ziggler challenges Rusev during a Road to WrestleMania match held in Bremen, Germany, in February 2016. | Joachim Sielski/Getty Images

This Sunday, World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) will hold its biggest show of the year, WrestleMania. The 2016 edition of WrestleMania is the 32nd such event put on by WWE, the most recognizable pro wrestling organization — or, to use WWE parlance, “sports entertainment company” — in the world, and is expected to break its own indoor attendance record with 100,000 fans packed into Dallas’s AT&T Stadium. If recent viewing patterns hold, another 1.5 to 2 million people will be watching live on Pay-Per-View and WWE’s streaming platform, the WWE Network.

Like all pro wrestling events, WrestleMania features matches with preordained outcomes. The production process is similar to that of any other form of scripted entertainment: Onscreen talent collaborates with a staff of writers to develop an ongoing story and then works with “agents” (usually former performers) to craft the major plot points and flow of the matches. But the wrestling itself is not “fake” — at Sunday’s show, WWE Superstars (the company’s term for its male talent) will compete in matches featuring ladders, a 5-ton, 20-foot-tall steel cage, and a variety of other weapons. Given the stakes of performing at WWE’s self-proclaimed “Granddaddy of Them All,” it’s likely someone will get hurt for real.

WrestleMania functions both as a season finale for a year’s worth of WWE storylines and a springboard for the future

Still, WrestleMania is about far more than carnage. As WWE’s seminal showcase, it offers the pomp and circumstance of the Super Bowl crossed with the Rose Bowl Parade. Every year WrestleMania gets bigger — and longer — with a week’s worth of events leading up to Sunday’s five-hour main show, all broadcast live on the WWE Network. WrestleMania is also uncommon as a narrative platform, functioning both as a season finale for a year’s worth of WWE storylines and a springboard for the future.

If you’re not a wrestling fan, you probably know WrestleMania exists but associate it with the past and names like Hulk Hogan, who helped the event reach mainstream popularity in the 1980s. Yet despite a few brief lulls, WrestleMania’s popularity never truly waned; now it’s arguably bigger and more profitable than ever.

How did WrestleMania become a significant pop culture event?

When Vince McMahon replaced his father as the head of WWF in 1982 (WWE was previously known as WWF, for World Wrestling Federation), his primary goal was to move wrestling out of its territory-based approach and toward more national prominence. (At the time, wrestling spanned several regional leagues, like the American Wrestling Association in the Great Lakes or World Class Championship Wrestling in Texas; imagine the Big 10, SEC, and ACC, but more corrupt.)

To accomplish this, McMahon signed a number of local talents (including Hogan) to exclusive contracts and expanded the company’s audience with TV shows outside of its home in the Northeast. But it was WWF’s relationship with the burgeoning cable channel MTV that truly paved the way for WrestleMania. In live specials that aired on MTV in 1984 and ’85, WWF talent intermingled with A-listers like Cyndi Lauper and Andy Warhol, turning wrestlers like Hogan, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, and Wendi Richter into household names.

Even before WWF unveiled the first WrestleMania in March 1985, it had already become a pop culture sensation; mainstream media coverage sent anticipation through the roof. But the massive success of that event — seen by more than 1 million people through closed-circuit television, a record-breaking figure — officially solidified the company as a star-friendly, forward-thinking, moneymaking machine.

The WrestleMania formula centers on long-simmering feuds punctuated by huge moments and satisfying payoffs

Between the crossovers with MTV and WrestleMania appearances by Muhammad Ali and Mr. T, WWF developed enough clout to recruit big names to subsequent supercards and sell NBC a primetime show, Saturday Night’s Main Event. Meanwhile, the demand for WrestleMania 2 helped jump-start the Pay-Per-View market that still thrives to this day. From ticket sales to a massive merchandising arm, WWF developed a multifaceted revenue stream comparable to those of the most successful sports leagues.

The early triumphs of WrestleMania peaked in 1987, where a reported 93,000 people watched Hulk Hogan bodyslam his friend turned rival Andre the Giant (of The Princess Bride fame) in Detroit’s Silverdome. Although WrestleMania 3 is thought to be the event’s pinnacle, it continued to draw massive crowds through the early ’90s as Hogan faced a series of wrestling icons like “Macho Man” Randy Savage, the Ultimate Warrior, and patriot turned Iraqi sympathizer Sgt. Slaughter. It was during this period that WWF solidified the WrestleMania formula: long-simmering feuds punctuated by huge moments and satisfying payoffs.

A temporary lull gave way to a second major boom in the late ’90s, as edgier Superstars like “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and The Rock helped WWF score historic ratings for its weekly show, Monday Night Raw — not to mention major magazine covers and more crossover appearances on MTV and Saturday Night Live.

In this “attitude era,” cartoonish “good versus evil” morality plays were replaced by unprecedented levels of violence, sex, and innuendo. The WrestleMania guest stars were edgier too: fresh-out-of-prison Mike Tyson, former Bill Clinton mistress Gennifer Flowers, disgraced Major League Baseball star Pete Rose, and nu-metal heroes Limp Bizkit. Along the way, WWF tinkered with the ‘Mania formula, offering fewer but longer and more spot-heavy matches and even allowing main event “heels” (wrestling lingo for bad guys) to leave victorious.

In recent years, WWE has savvily incorporated reality into its own "reality," improving WrestleMania in the process

WWE chair Vince McMahon has his head shaved by Donald Trump and Bobby Lashley after losing a bet in the Battle of the Billionaires at Wrestlemania 23 in 2007.

WrestleMania is now an institution. It’s been covered all this week by major news outlets, including live look-ins on ESPN. The spectacle WWE creates, and the number of non-wrestling stars it recruits, is astonishing and occasionally surreal.

Kim Kardashian served as a guest host in 2008, long before she was one of the most famous people in the world. As many have pointed out over the past year, Donald Trump has a longstanding relationship with the WWE, feuding in a storyline with McMahon in 2007 and joining the company’s Hall of Fame in 2013. In 2015, a wonderfully broad Russian villain named Rusev entered the arena on a tank. Later, The Rock and UFC superstar Ronda Rousey beat up Triple H and Stephanie McMahon, two members of the company’s real-life management.

It’s that blurring between scripted spectacle and reality that has morphed WrestleMania yet again, into something even better than it was in Hogan or Austin’s day. Modern WWE regularly drops the facade that wrestling is “real,” through behind-the-scenes documentaries and Hall of Fame ceremonies that acknowledge the performative nature of the art form. More impressively, reality — or “reality” — now seeps into WWE storylines.

Catalyzed by a 2011 fourth-wall-breaking verbal assault by CM Punk (embedded above), performers regularly move in and out of character onscreen and on social media and pull from real-life circumstances or backstage conflicts that fans read about online as a way to generate even more of a reaction.

Modern WWE regularly drops the facade that wrestling is "real"

This shift to what ESPN’s David Shoemaker calls the “reality era” has significantly altered how WWE tells stories leading up to, and during, WrestleMania. Scripted feuds are still settled and new allegiances are still formed, but WWE is forced to work even harder to surprise or satisfy “smart” fans who know their live reaction can have an impact on storylines. For these fans — who are generally older than WWE’s target demographic of young kids and teens — the response to WrestleMania season is an annual referendum on what WWE is doing right, or more commonly, doing wrong.

Fans know that wrestling “isn’t real”; they agree to play along for the same reasons that people who read books or watch TV do so with their favorite texts: to be immersed in a world and its stories. WWE constantly tells fans that all that matters is the response in the arena (or, increasingly, on social media). You cheer, you boo, you essentially vote for who’s at the top of the card.

But in integrating “reality” into certain storylines — by using performers’ real names, their real histories outside WWE, or their real-world conflicts with one another — and leaving it out of others entirely, WWE puts itself in a precarious position. Fans can sense when certain Superstars or storylines are being pushed onto them by corporate mandate or when their response is being ignored — and increasingly, they are fighting back.

The last two WrestleManias have been defined by this struggle over control of WWE’s soul. At WrestleMania 30 in 2014, rogue fan support for perennial underdog Daniel Bryan — a small-in-stature performer who had a successful wrestling career before coming to WWE — forced the company to change its main event plans and give Bryan the championship-winning moment. A similar thing happened in 2015, when WWE positioned Roman Reigns, a very green performer with the right “look” (huge muscles, flowing locks) for a major WrestleMania storyline. He wasn’t ready. His work on the microphone, a key component of modern WWE where competitors spar verbally before duking it out physically, was severely lacking, and fans could tell. So they did the only thing they could: boo. This rejection of WWE’s latest corporate chosen one forced another swerve, with Reigns leaving the event a loser, not the Next Big Thing.

In both cases, WWE openly antagonized very vocal segments of its fan base, resulting in arena after arena full of disgruntled boos on the “Road to WrestleMania,” the company’s most important period of the year. Things got so bad in early 2015 that #CancelWWENetwork was a trending hashtag on Twitter. Yet in both cases, the company weathered the outcry to ultimately give fans something they wanted.

Put another way, given that the nature of pro wrestling is to garner any response — good or bad — for as long as possible, WWE stoked the fires of fan frustration just long enough to guide those fans into openly accepting the eventual climax of the story. In 2014, outrage was written directly into the story; Bryan led a fan-oriented “Occupy” movement against the evil “Authority” until the powers that be, played onscreen by real WWE executives, had no “choice” but to let Bryan prove his merits. In 2015, WWE took a more subtle approach: Reigns was framed as a “controversial” (read: hated by half the audience) Superstar before getting physically dominated by legitimate tough guy and former UFC champion Brock Lesnar in the WrestleMania main event.

That’s the thing about WrestleMania: The story is never calcified, and it never stops. It’s a season finale, a season premiere, a sporting event, and a live elimination show all at once. Wrestling is often linked to daytime soaps as a way to delegitimize both as “low culture,” but the comparison is apt; both wrestling and daytime soaps continually weave stories together, rewrite and remix their own histories, and regularly drive their fans mad with bad decisions. But there’s always the next day, the next episode, the next chance to right the wrongs.

What's in store for this year’s event?

On paper, WrestleMania 32 looks like it’s going to be terrible. WWE’s roster of Superstars has been wrecked by injuries. The aforementioned Bryan just retired due to lingering concussion issues, longtime stars John Cena and Randy Orton are both out with gnarly ailments, and 2015’s longest-reigning champion, Seth Rollins, tore his ACL late last fall. It’s so bad that every person who left WrestleMania 31 with a title will miss 32 with an injury. Imagine if, when the Broncos and the Panthers competed against each other in this year’s Super Bowl, they’d played without Cam Newton, Von Miller, and Peyton Manning. Or imagine if your favorite TV show aired a finale without three of its five leads.

Likewise, WWE’s insistence on telling certain stories and the fans’ insistence on resisting those stories in hopes of forcing the company’s hand yet again has reached new heights. Roman Reigns is back in the main event with all indications that this year is his coronation as the champion — and the fans know that, so they’ve booed him out of the building at every televised event for three months.

WWE tried to overcome this negative response by simply keeping Reigns off TV for weeks, slotting fan favorite Dean Ambrose in the hero spot against conquering dictator and champion Triple H. It hasn’t worked. On the final episode of Monday Night Raw before WrestleMania, the “Ro-man Sucks” chants were louder than ever, while the villainous Triple H continued to garner support. Wrestling fans love to be manipulated, but have grown to rebel when they see the invisible hand of WWE management forcibly guiding them.

All signs currently point to a lackluster, talent-light WrestleMania, making it all the more likely that the event will turn out surprisingly great

WrestleMania 32’s other projected main event features the Undertaker, a 51-year-old great with his best days far behind him, facing off against Shane McMahon, Vince’s son, who was never a full-time competitor and hasn’t been with the company since 2010. Meanwhile, the two most popular performers left standing, Ambrose and former UFC champion Brock Lesnar, are paired with one another in what feels like WWE’s annual attempt to placate hardcore fans.

Nevertheless, the fact that all signs currently point to a lackluster, talent-light WrestleMania only makes it more likely that Sunday’s event will turn out surprisingly great. WWE wants it to be the biggest WrestleMania ever, and so it will be. Old guys Undertaker and Shane McMahon are certain to suffer for everyone’s cheers. Someone’s entrance will top the tank. The Rock might bring the entire cast of his Baywatch film to the ring. Trump could easily make another appearance.

Ultimately, though, WrestleMania will succeed yet again, because unlike all other forms of scripted entertainment, WWE can — and will — change its plans in real time. The lingering resentment with storylines will be front and center yet again. Fans might not get exactly what they want, but if recent history is any indication, WrestleMania will offer resolutions so magnificently crafted that they’ll seem like they were the plan all along. Superstars thought to be “held down” by the corporate machinations driving WWE in real life will create moments that fans remember forever.

Beyond the grandeur, guest stars, or orchestrated violence, it is WWE’s willingness to constantly tinker with WrestleMania and the company’s complicated negotiation with its audience that makes this major event so exceptional. WrestleMania 32 should be no different.

Late-night TV is focusing on politics more than ever. Here’s why.

2019-03-05T17:07:34-05:00

Late-night TV and politics have always been tightly linked, and not just through easy monologue jokes or soft-launch candidacy announcements.

In 1959, for example, Tonight Show host Jack Paar interviewed Fidel Castro on Cuban soil in the middle of the Cold War; in 1961, he broadcast live from the construction of the Berlin Wall. In the early 1970s, Dick Cavett hosted the infamous Vietnam War debate between current Secretary of State John Kerry and fellow veteran John O’Neill, and later lambasted the Senate Watergate Committee while broadcasting from a hearing room in Washington, DC.

But in more recent years, late night’s political interest has moved to cable. With the likes of David Letterman, Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien, and Jimmy Fallon guiding late night at the broadcast level, the political engagement demonstrated by Paar and Cavett fell by the wayside on network television — and Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s block of programming on Comedy Central became the site for a proper mix of political commentary and entertainment, while events like 2010’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear accentuated their desire to raise real awareness of contemporary problems in Washington. Though modern politicians like President Obama now make the rounds on all the late-night shows, it was their stints on The Daily Show or The Colbert Report that were most anticipated (particularly by younger viewers).

2015 saw more host turnover than any year in recent memory. And although Letterman’s departure from The Late Show and late-night TV in general is the move with the most historical import, it’s the influence of another host who said goodbye — Stewart — that seemed to stretch the furthest this year.

Jon Stewart's exit from The Daily Show helped to spur late night's renewed interest in politics

When Stewart announced his impending departure from The Daily Show in February by noting that the show “doesn’t deserve an even slightly restless host,” the news didn’t come exactly as a surprise. Not because he took a long break in 2013 to direct Rosewater, but mostly because he seemed worn down — by a polarized government, an incessantly craven 24-hour news cycle, and a prevailing sense of cynicism. Yes, toward the end of Stewart’s tenure, his reaction moved from awe to anger more readily, but his ability to expose and assess bureaucratic fallacies is now inspiring another era of late-night TV that took off this year — one with an ardent and broader interest in the political sphere.

This rededication to political critique stems at least in part from the aforementioned host turnover. Three of the new hosts this year — Colbert, Larry Wilmore, and Trevor Noah — are former Daily Show correspondents who not only improved their craft by working in a productive creative environment but also benefited from the more overtly political realm of basic cable. None of them owes his career to Stewart or The Daily Show, but all three have successfully translated their experiences on that show to bigger platforms, whether on Comedy Central or CBS.

The swap of the year came on CBS’s Late Show, with Letterman’s retirement making way for the energetic Colbert. Transitioning into a new role as “himself” hasn’t been much of a challenge for Colbert, who has found smart ways to package commentary of the election cycle to broadcast audiences. Rarely does it seem like Colbert is playing it safe, whether he’s slaying media coverage of Donald Trump by acknowledging his own obsession with the Donald or going full nerd by cosplaying as Stanley Tucci’s flamboyant character from The Hunger Games in celebration of a presidential hopeful losing hope.

But Colbert’s best work has come in his interviews, where his passion for politics makes up for any deficiencies in technique. Conversations with Vice President Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Jeb Bush, and Trump made headlines, but even less flashy instances like his brief chat with presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin illustrate a fidelity to inform and contextualize current events without relying on the same tired talking heads.

At Comedy Central, Wilmore and Noah have provided more than hollow diversity. When it debuted in January, Wilmore’s The Nightly Show immediately differentiated itself as a destination for sharp conversations about subjects that unfortunately defined America this year: racism, hate speech, and police brutality. Early in his tenure, Wilmore jokingly announced that “all of the good Bad Race Stuff happened already,” but his best moments ultimately came in response to the controversial Ferguson police report, cable news’s coverage of protests in Baltimore, racist chants at a University of Oklahoma fraternity, and the Democratic Party’s uneasy relationship with the Black Lives Matter movement.

One of The Nightly Show‘s biggest strengths is its roundtable discussion, where Wilmore pokes and prods his guests into talking about big topics without dominating the conversation with his own takes. While this approach occasionally leads to some panelists (usually comedians) bowling over their peers, it also produces relatively honest discussions like February’s panel with four black women discussing dating and interracial relationships.

And as The Nightly Show was settling into its own, Noah took the reins of Comedy Central’s flagship program The Daily Show and spent the fall steadily growing more comfortable in the chair previously filled by Stewart. Noah hasn’t been shy about playing up the “global perspective” he supposedly brings to America, most notably in a segment comparing Trump to the worst dictators from his home continent of Africa. Yet, he hasn’t just used his outsider status for mocking equivalences. Noah’s breakdown of the American response to the terror attacks in Paris began with a playful impersonation of the ISIS helpline, but ultimately became a compelling and moving performance from someone who, just a few months into the job, was already affected by the depths of fearmongering and dangerous rhetoric employed in this country.

Of course, late-night TV’s commitment to starting a real dialogue about worldwide affairs wasn’t limited to those hosts in new positions. Emboldened by his success last year, John Oliver went longer and deeper to lambaste government surveillance programs, sex education, sports stadium financing, and many countries’ treatment of refugees on HBO’s Last Week Tonight. Oliver’s detailed examinations are more journalism than jokes and sometimes run 20 minutes or longer — a style that, on the surface, doesn’t work in a world of short attention spans and lip-syncing celebrities. And yet, Last Week Tonight spent 2015 further entrenching itself as the heir apparent to the spreadability of The Daily Show.

Oliver was initially able to workshop his acrid, brazen tone during his 2013 run as substitute host on The Daily Show. And now his angry takedowns are prime shareable content for those who spent the past 15 years viewing Stewart as the go-to source for political commentary.

Viewing patterns and current events help, too — but even "easy" topics like the 2016 election are pushing hosts to try new things

I don’t want to overstate Stewart’s influence too much here. While it’s probably fair to suggest that the lasting success of Stewart’s Daily Show — and subsequently The Colbert Report — convinced Comedy Central to stay on the politically engaged track, or assured CBS that Colbert could transform his style just enough to appeal to a broader audience, the business of late night is different than it was even five years ago.

Like with all TV shows, networks recognize that viewers aren’t necessarily going to watch late-night shows live anymore. Many of us are using that time to catch up on other things saved on our DVRs, and the sheer quantity of late-night programming between 11 pm and 1:15 am makes it challenging for even the most die-hard fans to keep up with multiple shows in a given week. As a result, these shows are watched the next morning over breakfast and dispersed via social media in piecemeal clip form.

The diminishing of live viewership means that late-night shows likely have more opportunities to try different things, or potentially to be more explicitly political or controversial. The Daily Show has proven that amid all the clutter, people will share clips of well-crafted, politically oriented material. So there’s sufficient precedent that suggests politics is a great way to build your show’s brand.

Also good for a late-night show’s brand? Campaigns and dysfunction. With the 2016 presidential campaign cycle ratcheting up to overdrive and the near-constant barrage of terrible world events, the news provided hosts ample material to excavate and lampoon this year. Nightly monologues have been littered with riffs from the campaign trail, extended jokes about the length of televised debates, and, of course, the unavoidable Trump of it all. The unfortunate reality of late night is that bad things make for great TV.

It helps, however, that many of the current hosts are willing to engage with sociocultural issues in their own ways.

For instance, Seth Meyers is part of a different but similarly influential lineage of social commentators: Saturday Night Live head writers and Weekend Update hosts. This year, Meyers made an important change — ditching the monologue and heading straight for the desk — and used it as a reason to give important non-Trump issues like the recent Paris climate change summit, campaign contributions, and Houston’s equal rights ordinance what he’s calling “a closer look.” While these segments might recall Weekend Update, in truth they display that, like many of his peers with much better time slots, Meyers has grown especially skilled at mixing jokes and commentary without devaluing the significance of a given topic.

Even Conan O’Brien did his best work of 2015 by going boldly where no late-night host had gone since Paar in 1959: Cuba. Conan isn’t interested in “being political” like many of his late-night brethren, but in doing what he does best — awkwardly experiencing a new culture — he used his segments from Cuba to give viewers a playful but not exploitive snapshot of a world that is sort of new to us, too.

And yet, Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show is the current late-night champion

Regardless of whether or not they’re inspired by Stewart and The Daily Show, there’s one thing all late-night hosts have in common: They’re losing to Jimmy Fallon and The Tonight Show. While many of Fallon’s competitors have more directly engaged with the world outside entertainment, his Tonight Show continues to be an oasis of celebrity games, musical performances, and genre-hopping impressions.

This is not a bad thing; Fallon and his team have a knack for producing segments that suggest anything can happen while also keeping high-profile guests very comfortable. Likewise, his energy and enthusiasm are regularly unmatched — even when Nicole Kidman is revealing details of their botched first date in one of the year’s best segments.

Still, it’s hard to ignore the differences between Fallon and his competitors when his soft, playful approach extends to his recent interviews with Trump and Hillary Clinton. In both candidates’ appearances on The Tonight Show, Fallon leaned very heavily on his impression of Trump, producing an admittedly amusing but toothless bit involving Trump and a mirror and an even less successful phone call sketch with Clinton that wouldn’t have been out of place on a middling episode of SNL.

It’s even more telling that Fallon spent 2015 padding his lead. This fall, The Tonight Show averaged nearly 4 million viewers and a 1.10 rating in the 18-to-49 demographic. Colbert’s Late Show, meanwhile, averaged 3.14 million viewers and a .77 in the 18-to-49 demographic — and those numbers include the higher ratings Colbert scored in his earliest days behind the Late Show desk, when viewers were curious to see how he’d transition to broadcast and whether he could replace Letterman.

This is in addition to Fallon’s dominance in the digital sphere, where his pop culture riffs are tailor-made for piecemeal consumption. (For example, Fallon’s segments with Trump have roughly double the YouTube views of Colbert’s segments with Trump.) Meanwhile, both Wilmore and Noah’s shows have predictably turned in lower ratings than their predecessors in the same time slots, and are similarly struggling to penetrate the online conversation as regularly. Turns out, it’s hard to replace legends.

The Tonight Show’s continued success — and the growing prominence of Jimmy Kimmel, a host who privileges rubbing shoulders with celebrities and, lately, debuting blockbuster trailers — demonstrates that variety show–esque products from Fallon, Kimmel, and the car karaoke king James Corden are still very appealing to viewers. This isn’t new. People have always preferred to watch inoffensive shows before bed (this is the recipe for Jay Leno’s success), and of course we like to share funny, brief videos featuring celebrities doing odd stuff.

However, in such a tumultuous year, with so many great shows that are more politically engaged, one has to wonder if the audience is as worn out as Stewart appeared to be before he stepped down. Insightful social commentary might make the rounds on social media and drive traffic for websites, but it offers only a temporary catharsis that is replaced by the next day’s tragedy or political faux pas, or instills in us a false sense of progress, just for watching.

And yet, there’s Stewart, appearing on both The Daily Show and The Late Show, calling for Congress to renew the Zadroga Act. Likewise, there’s Oliver, regularly racking up many millions of views, streams, and shares for treatises on noncommercial topics such as prisoner reentry. If Stewart can be reenergized so quickly, larger audience interest can be, too — even if Stewart isn’t on TV every night, and even if Colbert isn’t playing “Colbert.” If 2015 established late-night TV as a place for wider array of political conversations, then 2016, with the increased spotlight of the election, is sure give those operating after 11 pm more material to push those conversations even further.