Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Leftism and Wrestling: Watch Your Dogpiles

What he tweeted was gross, but man, that dogpile would be better saved for management
Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein
Even though capitalists and conservatives run and populate the wrestling business, as an artform, it lends itself to leftist ideals. This series hopes to show wrestling fans why they should embrace the left, not just for the sport/art, but also for themselves.

Emma was released on Sunday, and the overwhelming reaction was shock, disbelief, hope for a better indie run, and just general disappointment at WWE squandering yet another talented wrestler. However, one wrestler had a, well, different reaction to the whole thing:

Of course, that's a screenshot and not an embedded tweet because Rush deleted the offending missive after he got dogpiled by nearly every wrestler. Some of them were milquetoast burns, but others got pretty problematic. Jack Gallagher took the opportunity to question whether Rush knew English, and while nothing was on the surface wrong with how Bray Wyatt admonished him, it bears noticing that he's currently going through a divorce of his own fault where his now ex-wife is hanging him out to dry. Of course, I'm not just talking about in WWE, but outside of the company too, even people like Tessa Blanchard, who allegedly bullied a wrestler out of STARDOM, Darius Carter, who nearly killed Pete Dunne, and LuFisto, who without context isn't bad, but who decided to take the opportunity to slam Rush and wonder why he has a job in WWE and Jessicka Havok, who used racial slurs on Twitter that were uncovered during her tryout, didn't. It's been a rough couple of days so far for NXT's newest televised wrestler, not entirely undeserved. Rush also has garnered a reputation for unprofessionalism, even before getting to WWE. So he'd already not made a lot of friends in the industry.

That being said, it was a dumb tweet trying to get Asuka over in kayfabe. It was tasteless, and honestly, given Emma's reaction, insanely thoughtless. However, Rush is only 22 years old, old enough to garner attention and work in the real world, but young enough to plausibly claim the immaturity card. William Regal probably had the best reaction, but honestly, Twitter dumbassery happens every day. I mean, no one's taken Bubba Ray Dudley's Twitter account from him, and he can't keep from embarrassing himself. It's the dogpiling, and the intensity of it in this case. One might think Rush murdered his wife and kid and then skirted all responsibility by killing himself. But all he did was make a shitty tweet. The truth is nothing brings out wrestler outrage like an easy target doing something undeniably idiotic. You saw it with the reaction to Jared Followill.

To say it's a wrestling only thing though is disingenuous. People everyday find easy targets and wail on them. The major problems either get lip service, or they're tacitly accepted. The rage that people feel for their situations at the hands of the elites manifests by punching down at targets they can abuse without recourse. When the people doing the real oppressing have resources to enact violent retribution against any kind of difference in opinion, it's easy to see why people would rather swallow frustrations with the system and instead lash out online, whether it be yelling ineffectually at politicians or unfortunately blaming minority groups unjustly. Why risk retaliation from power that is virtually Teflon when you can yell epithets at groups already lower than you on the food chain?

But, as intrepid Twitter user @Doc_Sneeze pointed out, what if the disaffected hordes all got together and punched up instead? Wrestlers, or any group of minorities, workers, or whomever, getting together to gang up on the boss, and I don't mean Sasha Banks, would produce so much more good for workers. Yes, the power castes have more resources, but resources cannot overcome manpower. In wrestling specifically, where labor IS the product, a mass uprising of wrestlers to get things like unionization, better pay, health insurance, or even something as piddling as better creative would make management shit itself.

The not-so-secret secret in wrestling is that its proletariat skews more pro-capital than seemingly any other industry. The problem is that wrestlers stand to gain the most through unionization and collective bargaining because without them, wrestling doesn't exist. You can automate most other industries, but even if you could get machines to wrestle, the cost of creating artificial intelligence to put in a cyborg/robot to wrestle would not only be astronomical even for the minimum two that you'd have to redress for a full card, but I don't need to remind you about the dangers of creating AI that might end up gaining understanding of self and well everyone's at least heard of the Terminator franchise.

But hey, they'd rather rip on the young kid with lack of seasoning and a cocksure head on his shoulders, like every single one of the people criticizing him had the arcane locker room protocols of wrestling programmed in their heads when they went got to their schools for training. To be honest, I'd be surprised if half of them knew how to put their pants on in the morning without someone needing to give them cues. Rush tweeted something gross and stupid, sure. Emma has every right to be mad at him, and his non-apology that he posted felt even more insulting. But before jumping on the pile, one needs to know whether their input will be constructive or just white noise at best and destructive to a young man's career at worst. Destroying Rush is just sending another minority out of a potentially lucrative position and back into an unknown quagmire. But mounting undeniable pressure against Vince McMahon or Gabe Sapolsky or any other promoter who thinks they can bully the roster is more than worth it. Dogpiles aren't necessarily bad at all, but you just gotta know where to use them. Make sure they're breaking down the wall, not suffocating one of your own.