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| Scherr's tale should be a warning for wrestlers and all labor. Photo Credit: WWE.com |
It's one thing for an executive to transparently show their greed for all to see. It's another for a member of the labor class to blindly go to bat for the capital class' naked greed. Adam Scherr, who up until yesterday portrayed Braun Strowman in WWE, was a good little foot soldier for his bosses until he wasn't a foot soldier anymore. A lot of people celebrated his release because of an Instagram post last year where he bashed indie wrestlers for utilizing GoFundMe to make ends meet as they lost bookings due to a global pandemic that was just beginning (and, contrary to popular belief, has not yet ended). Mind you, Scherr was financially secure during this time of lost bookings because he worked for WWE. Sure, he missed out on live date bonuses, but wrestlers the stature of Scherr or Joe Anoa'i (Roman Reigns) or Colby Lopez (Seth Rollins) have downside guarantees that ensure payment regardless of whether there's a live gate attached to their appearances. Scherr ate up the "Bootstraps Mentality" bullshit shoveled to him by his bosses and by useful right wing idiots like Mike Rowe, who preach one thing as dictated to them by their masters in capital, like Dennis Prager or the Koch Brothers (or more accurately, the remaining Koch Brother).
The misconception by people in labor class that doing free public relations for the capital class is what leads to this kind of cheerleading. The wrestling industry is the most inured with this kind of mentality even as it's clearer and clearer in the present era, where match quality feels more important than ever, that labor is more important and should have more power. People like Scherr or Shayna Baszler will go on the offensive to do propagandizing for McMahon and Khan and Kevin Dunn and Paul Levesque thinking it will reap them favor in the end. For someone like Baszler, the reward they get is being put in embarrassing storylines with cruel payoffs, ironic since she herself has been at the forefront on Twitter bashing All Elite Wrestling's comparatively minor gaffes compared to the shitshow WWE constantly as going on. There isn't enough room in any box-like structure to fit every single one of WWE's narrative mistakes, and the fact Baszler keeps getting put in moments to fill even more box-like structures isn't an ironic accident, or at least it doesn't feel like one. It's a power-play. It's a reminder that even if you suck up to McMahon, he will put you in your place.
For Scherr, the penalty was much steeper. He yelled at indie wrestlers not even calling him or his company out trying to get some charity in a time when they needed it. In return, McMahon, or Khan, or whosever decision it was to release him over any number of other highly paid wrestlers on the roster, repaid him by putting him in a similar situation, all to flex capitalist muscle. In some ways, the capital class wants to mimic La Cosa Nostra, but at least the Mafia rewards loyalty. Vince McMahon doesn't reward loyalty. He doesn't reward grabbing the brass ring. He doesn't reward anything except being able to put money in his pocket.
The real tragic part about it, if you want to look for the tragedy, is that Scherr, according to reports, knew that his presence in the company was far more important than his bosses adjudged it to be, During his most recent negotiations, he was able to get himself a base salary of $1 million. Some speculate that salary was the reason they decided to cut him, even though he had been a huge part of their narrative as recently as WrestleMania, where he got the special "try and make the boss' son look good" match, a position held by guys like Sami Zayn, Kevin Owens, AJ Styles, and The Undertaker in recent history. To wit, Scherr earned that money with the amount of work he put in in high profile situations. Wrestlers will always stand up for themselves in sporadic instances, but it will never, ever click with them that they not only can have the best all the time, but they can collectively bully promoters as part of a union. But unionization and "the bootstraps mentality" are incompatible, because the former requires collective action, and the latter feeds into the cult of the ubermensch. Part of McMahon's ghettoization of wrestling is getting rid of things like stables and kayfabe camaraderie between babyfaces, and that certainly filters through out of character, even if I don't believe things would be that much better on the labor front if McMahon were somehow never able to be successful in this business.
While I appear to paint a sympathetic picture of Scherr, I won't begrudge anyone for indulging in this bit of karmic retribution, especially indie wrestlers who felt the pile-on from his numerous Twitter followers. If the raving antics of Jim Cornette have taught anyone anything, it's that wrestling fans on this site don't even need to be asked to pile on someone. That being said, people get caught up in Henchman Syndrome a lot, where they will pile on lower level people and act like them getting their just desserts is justice while putting absolutely no pressure on the real evil. It's name comes from comics or other revenge stories where a protagonist will indiscriminately kill or maim the low-level grunts of the main villain and save their existential baggage about killing people for the big bad guy. I'm not saying he didn't say something incredibly stupid last year or doesn't have faulty, inaccurate ideology, but he's a symptom, not a pathogen.
If you take anything from his tale, it should be caution. Capital is not your friend, and management will almost always take capital's side over yours. The only solidarity you can find is with fellow workers. Wrestlers do not get this, and so McMahon can continue to do what he does to his roster at his own whims. You may not be a wrestler, but you probably are in the workforce. You can learn the right lessons from this situation and apply them in your everyday life. It's a fight out there, and unlike wrestling, it's all a shoot.
