On Wrestlers and Their Politics

Cena misspoke, and in the process, he showed what most wrestlers are made of
Photo Credit: WWE.com

John Cena will be in the next installment of The Fast and the Furious, the ninth one, to be exact. Well, it's technically the tenth movie, but Hobbs and Shaw, a movie starring fellow former wrestler Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson with a cameo appearance from current wrestler Roman Reigns, was a spin-off (mainly because Johnson and franchise anchor Vin Diesel allegedly cannot get along at all), but I don't want to be too pedantic. Anyway, he got in trouble with the Chinese government when, in promoting the movie in Taiwan by referring to that island as her own country. The Western capitalist world (and Sporcle, apparently) recognizes Taiwan as a country, but China does not. In fact, China considers Taiwan as a rogue province, and the leaders get really antsy at best when someone goes against their claim. This isn't endemic to the mean ol' scary Communist nation, because Turkey will get mad if you recognize the Armenian genocide, and the United States will get pretty pissy if you bring up that she was one of the last nations in the world to outlaw slavery. Governments across the board tend to get really mad if you tell people within them that they're wrong.

Anyway, Cena, when learning he ran afoul of the Chinese government, issued an apology in Mandarin, a language he learned when he was at the crux of WWE's expansion effort into the country.

Per popular request, here's Mr. John Cena's apology video with English subtitles. I kept all the incoherence in the video, as well as the curious absence of what he's actually apologizing for pic.twitter.com/WmJlRcyOID

— Tony Lin 林東尼 (@tony_zy) May 25, 2021

This move certainly appeased the Chinese government, but it caused an uproar with a certain crowd back home. Generally, American politicians have been frothing at the mouth to start some shit with China, from garden variety trade wars to both Donald Trump AND Joe Biden entertaining the idea that COVID-19 was either a deliberate or accidental deployment of biological warfare. The Republican party loves slamming anyone who has an opinion left of what Joe Manchin averages as an agent of the Chinese Communist Party, but Democrats love taking their potshots. Anyway, the apology was almost as unpopular with one group of people as the original statement was with a whole other. My favorite criticism, though, is when people accuse Cena of having no principles. It shows a tacit misunderstanding of the role of a wrestler as public figure, and the reason why someone like Sami Zayn espousing hardcore leftist ideologies is so rare is not because wrestling companies generally have gag orders (they might, but I don't think they'd be nominally effective), but it's because most wrestlers reside in a throbbing mass somewhere right of center with more of them further to the right than they are to the left. Most wrestlers are also not stupid in terms of knowing where their bread is buttered, so even some dingbat like Drake Wuertz, who somehow lasted an entire year as an out racist Q-Anon operative before WWE fired him is still rarer than a two-time Trump voter who keeps their mouth shut because they know leftists and "snowflakes" buy their merch too.

 The only principles that most wrestlers have are how to make money. In this regard, Cena is perhaps the one who shows the world what a wrestler is made of, more than Hulk Hogan, whose career flopped, more than Johnson, who developed his own apolitical public language that keeps focus on his brand, more than Dave Bautista, who is more actor than wrestler it seems. People can debate the merits of a wrestling personality all they want in these bubbles where fans populate, but the outside world sees this and maybe it clicks for them the first time that wrestling is just full of descendants of carnies who just want the next dollar and not to burn their territories. It's one thing for a non-wrestling fan to bristle the first time someone like Cena nakedly shows them how whorish wrestlers can be. When someone who's been in the business, around the business, exposed to the business reacts with surprise or disgust, it's naïve at best, maybe overly idealistic.

Sure, you want your pro wrestling figures to take stands for good as wrestling grows more, becomes more lucrative, and gets more avenues for widespread distribution. The monkey's paw tradeoff here is that if you want more wrestlers to take stands, they will show you who they are. Zayn, Batista, Kevin Nash, Mick Foley - all of these guys are unicorns in an industry full mostly of soft conservatives who will chase tax cuts and "free market solutions" like they were horses and those items were carrots dangled out in front. Some of them tell you their affiliations through the industry. As it turns out, "WE the People" Jack Swagger is Jake Hager in real life. Cody Rhodes' horrendous "American Dream" promo on Anthony Ogogo said more about Rhodes thinks is babyface material than most of the things he talks about as an inclusive Executive Vice President. Most people stay quiet or let their transgressions go on a more personal level, like when people such as MJF or Chelsea Green post fan art without crediting the artist first.

But if every wrestler who wasn't already out as a lefty or some whacked out Q freak like Wuertz or John Zandig or some Reddit libertarian like TJP came out and said they were registered Republican and were, at best, "Never Trump" people who still somehow believed in things like "compassionate conservatism?" Would it change your mind on being a wrestling fan? If it did, I could not blame anyone, but the naïveté involved thinking that any industry had a majority of people aligned with your value system would have to be staggering. It's not just wrestling where these kinds of people congregate; it just happens to be the industry that is most amenable to accept that kind of person.

This line of thinking should not dissuade anyone from speaking out, or Speaking Out to be more germane to the topic, because you shouldn't accept terrible people doing terrible things. It should also be noted that not every creep, abuser, or rapist in wrestling is some basement-dwelling Q freak. David Starr was perhaps the most vocal leftist in wrestling, and everyone saw what happened with him. There are dangerous predators and virulent ideologies at play, and then there are just dudes who picked the wrong party and kinda don't say much about it. As much as the ideal political system anywhere would have people like Bernie Sanders on the right wing instead of the left, there's still a lot of inertia to overcome to get there, a lot of hearts and minds to win over. Meanwhile, the idea that every form of entertainment or hobby must be ideologically pure will only lead to a miserable life with absolutely no way to dull the pain of existence. It's in this regard that the viewer has to turn the sensitivity dial to see how much they're willing to forgive. Obviously, "forgiving nothing" is horrible and leads to an enjoyment of absolutely zero wrestling, and "forgive everything" just allows these shitheads to get away with everything without at least feeling aggrieved enough to yell about being "cancelled."

Perhaps the best example of calibration comes with two timely wrestlers, both of whom are dead, and both of whom have had issues while they were alive. People's views on New Jack were colored differently by how much rope they gave him for losing his temper in the ring, but one place where he felt legitimately in the wrong was with respect to his daughter, Washington Heights. Transphobia is a virulent character quality to have, but there's a difference between keeping it to yourself and lashing out at those closer to you, which is bad but something contained, and spreading that hate to everyone within earshot and further. I'm not saying this aspect of New Jack's life is good or should be papered over. If that's a non-starter with you, I understand.

That being said, there's a difference between someone like New Jack and someone like the Ultimate Warrior, who spent most of his life after wrestling speaking homophobia on college campuses, running bigoted websites, dedicating his life so that everyone marginalized felt bayonets at their throats. There's being a bigot and keeping that radius close to your vest and then proselytizing that bigotry so that your goal was to make sure the largest swaths of vulnerable people possible suffered. It's why more people felt like they could celebrate someone like New Jack, or Road Warrior Animal (whose crime was being a sexist meathead) and not someone like Warrior.

Most wrestlers may not publicly reach levels of even New Jack. Most of them are going to be like Cena, saying what they need to say in order not to fumble the bag. I don't think it should be surprising when they say whatever they need to say to keep their revenue streams open, and I don't think most of them, even those who are right-leaning, are worth the agony of writhing over. If you spill your vitriol over everyone, you won't have anything left for when it's really needed anyway. Trust me; as long as wrestling exists under capitalism (and maybe even after capitalism is extinct, which I seem to think will not happen in my lifetime), there will be a litany of people worth going after. Puppets caught in the middle of petty nationalistic jerk-off contests probably aren't worth it.