Like I love wrestling but it’s also a capitalist’s wet dream. Brand EVERYTHING, sell merchandise for a one off joke/feud that will last maybe a few weeks, merchandised props, your own body is a commodity.
And therein being a ‘true fan’ becomes based on how much money you either A. have to play around with or B. are willing to shell out at your own detriment for a show or 1 (or 3 or 10) of ~20 shirts someone has floating around. Like. Fuck.
Yunno I don’t know that I agree. Unless you’re hooked up with Vinnie Mac’s crew of bloodsuckers- and even then, unless you’re either someone they feel they cannot do without or someone they simply don’t want anybody else to have, wrestlers I think we can all agree aren’t being paid near enough for what they go through on a daily basis
Their ‘marketable skills’ (it is a cold and sorry world) have a pretty limited shelf life…people like Terry Funk / Yuji Nagata / etc. who wrestle so long and so late are A. the outliers and B. probably at a certain point doing it because they have no other choice. Just this past weekend I went to see a show Dan “The Beast” Severn was headlining at 59 years of age and there were barely more people present in the audience than there are years under his belt. His knees are clearly shot and god knows how long he traveled or how much he spent even getting to the show; he was signing pictures as he left, and thanked us for coming. He’s a sweet guy.
Mick Foley – MICK FOLEY! Keeps a screen actors guild membership for the healthcare, otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to afford hip replacement surgery he desperately needed even though he’d just done another long and presumably well paid stint as Raw GM. They don’t have unions, health care or pension plans and the clock is always ticking on their most profitable years.
Like….tbh, hell yeah brand everything, hell yeah sell everything. Will thinks he can make some dollars off Hiromu’s goof ass pretending he’s a cat, then go right tf ahead and bless his high-risk heart. There’ll come a time he’ll be broken down and exhausted and driving himself halfway across the UK to some show in bumfuck Wales to wrestle in front of 78 people and a dog.
Shinsuke uprooted his entire life & moved across the literal world to put up with shitty booking in a racist company in front of a jingoistic audience – if I can say ‘Oh by the way thank you for literally saving my life’ by buying a couple shirts so he can support his kids who’re prolly going through the wringer taking racist abuse at american schools for their accents, than yeah. Yeah, I’m gonna buy some shirts, and maybe kicking a few dollars his way paying through the nose for what is so expensive it must be FedEx cross-border shipping might help convince the human trashbags he’s working for not to bury him completely. Unlikely, but there’s always a chance.
I’m not even a huge fan of Kenny Omega! But damn right I bought his shirt at Hot Topic b/c if it helps NJPW in their expansion & supports them having their shit in american stores while they get raided and boxed out by WWE I’m all for it. Do I wish all this weren’t true? Of course. I wish they were paid better, and I wish they were well-supported long into old age, and I wish they were taken seriously as athletes and performers and I wish they didn’t have to travel like 320 days a year away from their families and I wish they had an off season to rest and I wish they didn’t have to deal with creepass stalker fans & racist assholes & grabby misogynists. I wish Vince McMahon & his merry band of horrible trash men weren’t like real-life versions of the Monopoly Man caring only about capital and not about wrestling & weren’t so dead set on burying their competition by any means necessary.
But all of that is true, so, I’m not gonna criticize wrestlers who’re just trying to live, for making coin while they can.
Mooncustafer 