Wrestling’s Great White Hope

Within the context of society, wrestling has always played a unique role – be it from echoing a paranoia as it relates to ‘foreigners’ or to acting as a socially prescient view of the future when it comes to issues of race.  Many tend to dismiss professional wrestling as low-brow entertainment, wrongly observing it as a crude expression put forth to exploit/entertain the lowest America has to offer.

Why is this?  When the stereotype of a typical wrestling fan is brought up, what inevitably is the image conjured?  A loud, obnoxious, beer-swilling ‘redneck.’

The racist implications of this stereotype not withstanding, traditionally professional wrestling in America has been viewed as a ‘white’ form of entertainment.  The biggest stars the industry has seen are men like Hulk Hogan, Goldberg, and Steve Austin, with The Rock proving to be the lone exception to this.  Not only that but the promoters and bookers behind the scenes have been almost exclusively white. Vince McMahon.  Eric Bischoff.  Paul Heyman.  And, in the end, who is it assumed these ‘white’ promoters/bookers end up marketing their product to?

The ‘redneck.’

How has this come to be, especially from a form of entertainment that long ago championed minority heroes?  Long before Vincent K. McMahon turned the then WWF into an international juggernaut, his father, Vincent J. McMahon, ran a promotion that catered largely to New York City’s large immigrant population.  The most prominent champions of Vince Sr.’s era being Latino hero Pedro Morales and Italian strongman Bruno Sammartino – his confidence in them both so much so that combined they held the company’s top title for over most of the ’60s and ’70s.

Additionally, this dedication to reflecting a diverse sampling of his audience wasn’t only reflected in the top of the card, but also in the undercard as well – stars ranging in ethnicity from Tito Santana to Ivan Putski to Chief Jay Strongbow were prominent figures for the company, and men who openly embraced their distinct backgrounds.  This isn’t even touching upon how wrestling largely introduced most of America to the Isle of Samoa.

So how did a company that drew based on racially diverse heroes come to define an industry that is in large part looked down upon for its under-the-table racism?

Hulk Hogan.  Not specifically the man himself, but the changes that took place in his wake.

While many would argue that the smaller territories contributed a good deal to wrestling’s negative image that would ignore the fact that many of these same territories relied on ethnic heroes for their business.  From ‘High Chief’ Peter Maivia in Roy Shire’s San Francisco territory to the Junkyard Dog in Bill Watts’ Mid-South, most of wrestling’s territories would place minority wrestlers at the top of their card with the understanding they were as much a draw for the local population as their ‘white’ counterparts.  This in large part changed thanks to Vince McMahon’s representation of Hulk Hogan.

Throughout the course of the ‘80s the diversity of the WWF was phased out in favor of a predominantly Anglo view.  The Jimmy Snukas and Tony Atlases of the world were replaced with King Kong Bundys and Hillbilly Jims.  Or worse, any sign of ethnicity was used as means to prey on the fans’ xenophobic fears.  This was not a new concept for American wrestling, in fact, proving to be one of its earliest draws with men like Fritz Von Erich and Baron Von Raschke playing evil German heels during and after WWII; but, it was something that struck wrestling hard during the ‘80s – from evil Russian bears to mystical Japanese warriors to the Persian Iron Sheik himself representing the entire Middle East despite its many cultural differences.  Anything non-American became evil when placed next to the good, white, Christian American hero in Hulk Hogan.

This outcome itself isn’t entirely the fault of McMahon, as a variety of explanations can be made.  One of the more interesting explanations involves the concept of ethnic identity, or rather, how one views himself and his lineage within the confines of his surroundings.

Vince Sr. was a second-generation American, the son of Irish immigrants.  It would have been very hard for such a person to disassociate himself from his family’s past, being confronted by constant reminders that his family wasn’t what was in line with ‘traditional white America’ at that point in time.  Especially given the fact that the country still wasn’t too far removed from a very pronounced anti-Irish sentiment, even in the cultural melting pot that was/is New York.  It could be explained then as a possibility that Vince Sr.’s faith in strong ethnic heroes for his company was a direct response to his own upbringing, as he still had a sense of his own ethnic identity and he well understood the power that one’s identity can hold as marketing potential.

Conversely, his son, Vince Jr., is a third-generation American who had no ties to his own ethnic identity, as Vince Sr. left Vince’s mother while Vince was still a baby.  Vince wasn’t introduced to his legitimate father until the age of 12, looking to a string of surrogates for guidance until that point.  Here we see a man who only knows himself as part of ‘traditional white America’ even if he was being raised by a single parent in an era where that was uncommon.  Not only that, but his own exposure to other cultures would have paled in comparison to his father.  Vince Sr. was born in Harlem, NY, and then spent the rest of his life both living and working within the ethnically diverse region, whereas his son, Vince Jr., was born in Pinehurst, North Carolina, and then spent a good duration of his formative years living in the area until moving onto Maine and then finally New York.  It would be hard to argue that Vince Jr. saw (and continues to see) himself as anything but a white American.  So then it would make sense that he would feel more comfortable promoting characters more in line with his own worldview.

Another distinct, and probably the most obvious, possibility for Vince’s promoting Hogan as his great white hope is that Vince was only exploiting what he saw around him at the time.  Hogan wouldn’t have become such a phenomenon had their not been an audience for his act.  And the ‘80s was exactly the right mix of chest-beating patriotism and social paranoia that almost anything that exploited those two topics could ride to a wave of success.

In fact, the Hogan character can be viewed in many ways as an extension/corruption of Rocky Balboa, a ‘70s underdog transformed into a ‘80s American superhero.  Hogan’s rise to fame was even predicated on an appearance in Rocky III, facing off against Balboa as arrogant heel Thunderlips.  But it was Rocky IV, where Balboa bested a Russian monster that threatened American supremacy, that proved to the franchise’s most successful film domestically, and a template for Hulkamania’s success.  It should be noted, though, that preying on Cold War fears of ‘foreigners’ was a successful business model for many, Vince McMahon only being one in a long line.

In the wake of Hogan’s success, Vince notably has done little to change his outlook on what America wants.  When Hogan died off in popularity for him, McMahon ignored a Canadian everyman to instead recreate his great white hope in men like Diesel and Lex Luger.  He even went so far as to create an imaginary foreign threat by taking a rotund Samoan wrestler and turning him into an evil Japanese sumo wrestler.  Or creating an evil Finnish environmentalist.  The only time Vince was able to recapture that original success was when he was forced to subvert the image he had so long relied on – transforming the good, white, Christian American hero into a foul, crude, anti-authoritarian American anti-hero.

The irony here is that little changed save for the actions.  We were still being graced with an Anglo hero while minority workers were being cast into gimmicks that weren’t even subtle in their racism (Kaientai, Los Boriquas, and the reformed Nation of Domination).  The only change that came was when one of those minority wrestlers, through sheer force of personality, was able to turn himself into arguably as big a star as any who had come before him.  But again, this seems to have been negated as when that hero stepped aside, the next to emerge was another in the mold of Vince’s great white hopes – John Cena.  In an ironic twist, though, Cena’s original popularity stemmed from the fact that he was an anti-hero that shared many characteristics with black culture only for Vince to fully get behind him after gentrifying his character completely.

Inevitably, these are possible reasons why wrestling and its fans have largely come to be defined as crude, uncultured ‘rednecks.’  In continuously searching for his next great white hope, McMahon has unintentionally installed a glass ceiling for not only his minority workers, but all wrestlers of any minority.  By playing to blind patriotism, McMahon unintentionally stumbles into cultural insensitivity (Muhammad Hussan) or outright racism (Saba Simba).  These ultimately effect wrestling’s image as a whole since McMahon’s view of wrestling is the most widely accepted.  This isn’t to damn McMahon or to chide wrestling’s critics, it’s simply putting this perspective of wrestling into a context we can understand.  Once we understand the problem, we can confront it.

The question now is what do we do about this problem?