Wednesday, October 16, 2019

On Mike Bennett and Free Movement of Labor

If Bennett wants out of WWE, he should allowed to be out
Photo Credit: WWE.com
Mike Bennett (called Mike Kanellis in WWE) signed a five-year extension with WWE earlier this year. That's why it was so surprising, at least without any other context, that he'd ask for his release from WWE on Monday. The reason he gave in that Notes screenshot was that he was only wrestling one time a week. While I would be content to be paid money to work for 15 minutes a week at best, I'm also not a prideful professional wrestler, one who takes pride in their output and isn't nominally in the business as a means to an end. I buy Bennett's reasoning only so much.

Another reason I think he might be out the door in WWE is that after signing that contract, thus taking his services away from a scene that frankly could use bodies as they're getting sucked up by WWE and to a lesser extent All Elite Wrestling, they rewarded him by putting him in an angle where his wife Maria Kanellis "admitted" that the baby with which she is currently pregnant, was not sired by him. It didn't lead to any payoff other than Becky Lynch pinning him on RAW in the aftermath. One of these days, people are going to have to reconcile Vince McMahon putting yet another angle on television where his talent is mocked and ridiculed for no payoff other than to sate his cruelty, but honestly, I've been shouting about it for years, and my response was to quit the company altogether.

The reactions to this request have run the entire gamut, but a frightening enough amount of people are blasting him for wanting out of a contract he had just signed. They say he has a commitment to WWE to see his contract through to the end, which in a perfect world might be the case. However, Bennett works for a capricious billionaire who doesn't care if he lives or dies as long as he doesn't sign with AEW or Ring of Honor. That same billionaire would under different circumstances release Bennett from his company at a whim for whatever reason, and people would take the side of capital. It's not a hypothetical. Long ago when WWE hegemony was unquestioned and New Japan Pro Wrestling was still a spectre from across the sea, McMahon released whoever he wanted whenever he wanted no matter how much those people wanted to remain with his company and received the elevated fiduciary benefits of remaining there.

In the current day, no matter what the circumstance, McMahon will keep anyone under contract by any means necessary, whether it be refusing a release request, which is what will probably happen with Bennet, or tacking time onto an existing deal to cover for time lost due to injury while suffered on the job. The latter sounds hella illegal under normal circumstances, but current day America is creeping further and further towards autocratic fascism by the day, and the ways that it allows businesses to pillage and abuse labor have been in place before Donald Trump took office. Either way, McMahon will do anything he can not to acquiesce to the wishes of his talent, because talent is insignificant to him. He won't classify them as employees; what makes anyone think he'll let a piddling peasant out of a contract he just signed? He's doing the same thing to Luke Harper and Lio Rush, although the latter may stay with WWE at this point past the expiration of his current contract given current circumstances.

The question, easily answered, by the way, now becomes should WWE talent be allowed to move as freely as McMahon's whims allow him to keep his roster, and the answer is a resounding yes. WWE isn't unique in the regard of the way it treats labor, but the current growing leftist/socialist movement is looking to liberate workers from oppressive conditions. If Bennett isn't happy in WWE, and given that he wants to wrestle more than once a week and not have to treat his family as a point of shame, he should be allowed to leave to pursue what makes him happy. Any wrestler should. Anyone who works for WWE in any capacity should.

The thing that everyone who licks the boots of WWE management either doesn't realize or ignores is that if they wanted to, they could oust McMahon, work as a wrestler-owned collective, and still have a modicum of success similar to what WWE is having right now. In no way shape or form could McMahon maintain WWE if everyone in the company quit on him. The only reason that no one thinks in this way anymore is because society has been drilled to remember that the people who have money are their betters, and that is not true at all. McMahon didn't earn his money from the ground up; he stole what his father built to start. It's the same way with anyone with a billion dollars. Either their parents were modestly rich and they got an interest free loan to start a business with a cushy backup plan if they failed (Jeff Bezos), or their parents were filthy rich and they were trust fund children (almost everyone else). No one who has a billion dollars earned either. They hoarded it from marginalizing and squeezing labor. That's why labor unions rose up at the turn of the 20th Century, to take their fair share from the Carnegies and Rockefellers of the world.

The tale of Mike Bennett is only another in the cautionary tale of why wrestlers should be unionized, and why every moment that they aren't is wasted. It's one thing to say that Bennett should be able to leave WWE whenever he wants, but the only way he can do it is if he and every other wrestler collectively bargains for that right that should be theirs by virtue of their labor being valuable. If the roster, hell, the whole industry doesn't act, it's their lives and livelihoods at stake. Then again, just as rat bitch Hulk Hogan ratted out the first attempts at unionization to Vince McMahon all those years ago, I bet Seth Rollins would probably sniff any attempts out and snitch on his "brothers." That guy has never met a boot he didn't wanna lick.