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| All McMahon cares about is money, and finally, someone outside the bubble has taken notice Photo Credit: WWE.com |
The criticisms regarding the worker classification abuse have been made in wrestling circles for years now. I know a huge chunk of my intellectual capital on this very site has been used to highlight these abuses. I don't want to say the other stuff wasn't important, because that would make me a squealing liberal nutsac-for-a-brain who thinks you can only focus in on one injustice at a time. That being said, I wish that people outside of the industry paid attention to this shit in addition to the other stuff. Well, maybe they could have focused in on this INSTEAD OF the ribaldry of the Attitude Era, because tasteless humor when it's not racist or sexist or any other kind of -ist or -phobic ain't hurtin' no one. But the fact that Oliver is finally looking at it means people are paying attention.
One of the points Oliver made is that McMahon DOES listen to the fans on occasion, but I think going after him might be too little, too late. Would he listen to fans who break out with "EMPLOYEE" chants at Mania, even if Oliver's reach extended to enough wrestling fans to make it happen? I don't know. As a rule, rich people love nothing more than accumulating more wealth. McMahon feels like he's the stubborn type. Yeah, he listened to the people tweeting #GiveDivasAChance because in the long run, he saw it as a business opportunity. Recruiting more fans because they enjoy seeing representation is monetizable rot! However, unless he saw fans leaving in droves over mistreatment of workers, he wouldn't pull the trigger on adding so much extra cost to his overhead. I mean, employee protections don't safeguard people in other businesses fully. Besides, even if fans left, it probably wouldn't affect the mountains of cash the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, NBC/Universal, and FOX are paying him over the next few years.
The road for change is at the end of two different paths. The less realistic one is taking a chance and trying to prod at Paul Levesque and Stephanie McMahon. Of course, like Papa Vince, they are rich and enjoy getting richer while everyone else is languishing. Why else would salaries for NXT superstars and main roster women be so depressed? However, they also love nothing more than getting good press. Stephanie especially revels when someone in "respectable" media says something remotely nice about the company. Prodding Vince might get you nowhere, but if media outlets changed their focus to the McMahon-Levesques, they might be able to get some change. Granted, that change probably would be infinitesimal at best, just something that they could throw up to get good press and still maintain a similar grind backstage. I mean, would a person with their workers' best intentions in mind send Tommaso Ciampa out there to work main roster shots when he already had neck problems diagnosed? But yeah, Triple H is the "good cop."
The more realistic shot for change is if the roster decided to unionize and take their demands to management directly. For this to work, the entire roster, main event guys all the way down to PC recruits, would have to decide to bargain as a single unit. Everyone knows what happened the last time someone wasn't part of the unionization plans. Anyway, collective bargaining has proven to work time and time again, from the early days of unionization during the tail end of the Industrial Revolution through now, where teacher strikes have made gains when implemented. WWE might be able to replace one singular wrestler, but if the entire roster revolts, well, good luck running a Mania main event of like Pat Buck vs. Ho Ho Lun at the last minute. Of course, wrestlers as a rule have been brainwashed by industry propaganda to some effect; they are, as a group, the most unflinchingly loyal to management as an entity of any labor group I've observed. Still, if Roman Reigns has spoken out for a need for an offseason, maybe hope springs somewhere in WWE locker rooms.
Still, I feel like Oliver's idea to help spring change through crowd chants is wrongheaded and reflective of neoliberal beliefs that the populace in general can act for moral good. It is, however, the only thing I can really critique about his segment. The fact that someone outside of myself or David Bixenspan or other lefty wrestling fans or podcasters is taking note of this behavior is huge. I hope I'm wrong in that it won't do much good, because public pressure can work, as long as it's exerted by the right forces on the right pressure points. No one can cause too much harm by making a good-faith attempt, right?
As a postscript, a lot of people are mad at the Roman Reigns "looks like a pedophile" joke. It's off-color, definitely, but in context, uh, it fits with Oliver's oeuvre of irreverent commentary. Anyone acting like it negates his points is off-base. One, I mean, you can find 70 different examples of off-color language WORSE than that in a given WWE program, and two, it shows the rancid tendency for wrestling fans to attack anyone they deem an outsider through putting knives out at minutiae rather than understanding the big picture. It happened before, most notably with people yelling and screaming at the guy wanting to combat racism in WWE because he didn't list The Rock as a Black Champion, and sadly, it'll happen again. Time is, unfortunately, a flat circle.
