Professional wrestling has quite a few stereotypes and stigmas attached to it. Many of them are well-known, but there's one that really doesn't get a whole lot of play, and it's that the main event in most major companies has been traditionally white-bread. I could count on both hands the number of non-white World Champions in any of the five really major companies in the last 20 years (just for fun, Ron Simmons, Yokozuna, Booker T, The Rock, Ron Killings, Samoa Joe, Homicide, Eddie Guerrero, Great Khali, Masato Tanaka, Chavo Guerrero, Mark Henry, Takeshi Morishima... okay, I needed more than both hands for that, but not much more...).
Now, I'm not about to go all Al Sharpton on everyone, because it is what it is. Mostly white people get into pro wrestling, or at least they have traditionally. Sure there was a Junkyard Dog here and a Tony Atlas there, but up and down the card, the diversity came from foreign wrestlers if it came at all. Only more recently did more minority talents start to trickle in, but now they seem to be gathered at a force more in tune with what the make up of wrestling fans and even America is. The list of potential breakout stars who aren't white is pretty formidable:
Kofi Kingston, Shelton Benjamin, Kenny King, MVP, R-Truth, Yoshi Tatsu, Sonjay Dutt, Hernandez, D'Angelo Dinero/Elijah Burke, Human Tornado, Bobby Lashley, Ezekiel Jackson, Homicide, Jay Lethal, Cryme Tyme, Primo Colon
There's a good chance that within 5 years, every racial group will be well-represented in the main event in all three of the big companies... okay, in the WWE and the two companies that THINK they're bigger than they are (TNA, ROH). Honestly, I think this is a great step for professional wrestling. Again, I'm not one to play the race card, and I don't think diversity for diversity's sake is anything that needs to be valued. However, I'm not dumb. I know that people like to see people who look like them succeed. So why not court people of all races and ethic persuasions to watch your show by pushing talented people of that race/ethnic persuasion?
While wrestling has been woefully behind the times in this regard, many companies are actually in position to make it happen, and again, (although I hate sounding like a broken record) this will help when it comes time to stay above water when competing with UFC for PPV buys. The WWE has already started with the trend, beginning Kofi Kingston's megapush to the top. Kofi, who before Sunday didn't show much outside of being bland and faking being a Jamaican, busted out huge at Bragging Rights and on RAW and looks to be one of the WWE's go to players for the next few years, along with CM Punk and the aforementioned MVP.
The country is not getting less diverse. In fact, white people may become outnumbered by all minority groups put together in the near future. With the number of minority "blue chippers" waiting in the wings, all the companies see the writing on the wall. While the moment where any given company having more than one minority big-time main eventer is long overdue, the fact that they're getting there signals a sign of the changing times and a welcoming of more minority fans, especially African-Americans, who were even minorities among minorities in American professional wrestling.
And while they're seemingly last to the table for high-level integration, here's hoping that wrestling, and more importantly wrestling fans (keep the snickering to yourself!) become among the first to start looking at wrestlers from a colorblind perspective.
Banner by K. Sawyer Paul
