83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff - Strictly Business with Eric Bischoff #29: The Psychology of Wrestling Fans

Episode Date: June 5, 2023

In this week's episode of "Strictly Business," Eric Bischoff and Jon Alba welcome in Dr. CarrieLynn Reinhard, who shares with them her studies on the psychology of wrestling fandom. Why do fans feel the way they do? What do they connect with? Special thanks to this week's sponsors! BlueChew- Try BlueChew FREE when you use our promo code WRESTLEBIZ at checkout--just pay $5 shipping. Factor-Head to FACTORMEALS.com/WRESTLEBIZ50 and use code WRESTLEBIZ50 to get 50% off your first box Fite+- Fite+ is the ultimate digital platform for live sports and entertainment, and they are now offering a free 7-day trial at TryFite.com FOLLOW ALL OF OUR SOCIAL MEDIA at https://83weekslinks.com/ Stop throwing your money on rent! Get into a house with NO MONEY DOWN and roughly the same monthly payment at SaveWithConrad.com On AdFreeShows.com, you get early, ad-free access to more than a dozen of your favorite wrestling podcasts, starting at just $9! And now, you can enjoy the first week...completely FREE! Sign up for a free trial - and get a taste of what Ad Free Shows is all about. Start your free trial today at AdFreeShows.com If your business targets 25-54 year old men, there's no better place to advertise than right here with us on Strictly Business. You've heard us do ads for some of the same companies for years...why? Because it works! And with our super targeted audience, there's very little waste. Go to AdvertiseWithEric.com now and find out more about advertising with Strictly Business. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the final trivia question, what is the largest mammal in the world? Sir in the orange, phone away, please? Um, my Kid a Smart Smoke alarm sent an alert through the ring app. See, the train monitoring agent is calling now. Hello? The Kid a Smart Smoke alarm sends real-time mobile alerts in the ring app. And with a subscription, emergency health can be requested even when you're not home. A compatible ring subscription is required for 24-7 smoke and carbon monoxide monitoring, sold separately. Get rid of your credit card debt, get a lower monthly payment, and skip your next two house payments at save withconrad.com.

NMLS number 65084, equal housing lender. You don't need perfect credit or money out of your pocket to save thousands with save withconrad.com. Find out how much money you can save right now at save with Conrad.com. How's it going, everyone? It's time for another edition of Strictly Business with Eric Bischoff presented to you by the podcasteed and ad-free shows network. I'm John Albo, of course, and we have a very special episode for you this week. Now, Eric is on the road traveling, so we weren't able to get you quite a fresh episode,

but I'm going to bring you something this week that most. of you have never heard before and frankly it's one of my favorite things that eric and i have ever done together you see about a year ago eric and i were exclusively doing strictly business on the ad-free shows network so only if you were a subscriber you could get strictly business now for the past several months we've been doing it for the main feed for all of you even though i highly encourage you to subscribe to the ad-free shows network at ad-freeshows.com if you haven't thought but since we started doing that uh you may have noticed that we've been showing some conversations we had prior to things going onto the main feeds. And that's what you're going

to get today. One of my favorite conversations that Eric and I have had on this show. And one of the reasons that I thought this week would be great for it was because if you go back to last week, which of course, 83 weeks.com, you can find that all in the archives. If you're not subscribed already, what are you doing? Go into the archives. Find last week's episode. And Eric and I got into a pretty spirited conversation about wrestling fan tribalism. People who only are WWE fans or only are AEW fans and they want the other company to fail at all costs. It just blew my mind that there are some people who think like this.

And look, if you're one of them, hey, it's not that I'm necessarily speaking down on you, but I want to understand you. I want to get it. I would love for you to explain it to me. I don't have the luxury of all of you guys explaining it to me. So Eric and I actually brought in an expert to try to understand the sociology and psychology of wrestling fans. Dr. Carrie Lynn Reinhardt is our guest on this week's episode. This is a fantastic conversation about the psychology of wrestling fandom.

I don't need to list off for accolades now. You're going to hear them all in just a couple of moments. but we're talking a doctor here who is able to break down why wrestling fans love wrestling. Eric Bischoff and I live to enlighten on Strictly Business, and I guarantee you you will be enlightened coming out of this episode. So without further ado, a special presentation of Strictly Business, I give you our conversation with Dr. Cary Lynn Reinhard. Well, there's a great way to kick off your weekend

because we have an awesome guest here with us on Strictly Business this week. And before I even introduce her, I just want you to know that Eric's been talking this one up for a long time. He's very excited about this one. She is Dr. Carey Reinhard, and she's joining us here on Strictly Business. Dr. Carey, how are you? I'm good. It's finally getting to be the weather I like in Chicago, so it means it's going to change tomorrow. But I'll enjoy it for today and hopefully be able to sit out and grill on the fourth as well.

There we go. How did we come across, Dr. Carrey Lynn Reinhardt here? Well, interestingly enough, we have a mutual acquaintance in a gentleman by the name of Brad. I always butcher his last name, Luzukian. Is that close, Carolyn? I believe so. I think so. Anyway, Brad is a professor on the West Coast.

I can't remember what university he's at. Forgive me. Brad, I'm sorry. professor of biology who just happens to be he wrote a book called the wax pack and i am not a baseball fan never have then but i found the book to be in he reached out to me and asked me if i assist him in possibly finding a television outlet for him based on the book it's a really cool book it's about brad when he was a younger uh before he settled out in life and he lost a girlfriend that he was madly in love with and didn't have a lot of direction, didn't know what he was going to do.

And he picked up a pack of old baseball cards that he had when he was a kid and thought to himself, and I'm paraphrasing all of this, but basically he looked at this back soon, I wonder what all these cats are doing. And some of the people in that deck of cards never really lasted very long in the majors. Some of them went on to, you know, become household names in the sport. And he just packed his shit up in a car and decided to drive across the country and go interview these people and find out what their lives were like. like. And long story short, didn't get him a TV deal. Came close. Actually got Brian Gwerz over at

the Rocks production company pretty interested because Brian was a huge baseball ball. Still is. Anyway, it didn't go anywhere. And Brad reached out and said, hey, I'm working on another book. And there are six wrestlers. I'm not going to spill the beans. I'll let Brad do that when he's ready. But it's basically a story about six individual wrestlers who were all a part of a very major event of WrestleMania. Not going to say which one. And he's out traveling. around right now interviewing these wrestlers. I helped him find a few of them. And he stopped by my house here in Wyoming. And I told him, you know, I said, man, I'm really looking. I want to have a conversation with somebody who's really researched the subject. Why do people watch

wrestling? Because it's fascinating. I love that I just, I love any question that starts with why. Why do people do the shit they do? Why do people say the things they say? Why do people watch wrestling? a lot of people watch golf. So it's just fascinating me. What motivates a human being to get interested in anything, I think, is interesting. And then Brad said, hey, I have just the person for you. Introduce me to Carrie Land via email. We started the conversation, and here we are.

So we have someone here who's going to help us understand quite literally wrestling psychology in a totally different way than we've ever been taught. So Dr. Carey, I would love to hear. more about how this became a fascination of yours because it is incredibly niche and I'm very much looking forward to hearing more. So how did that all come into the equation for you? Well, I actually, I will credit my partner for this. He grew up a professional wrestling fan and actually when I got the email last Monday, my friend and his friends, they just started geeking out about all of this. But we started talking about. We started talking about. We started talking

talking about professional wrestling, I think around 2014, and I had for years. I've never watched it. I kind of came from that position of looking down on it, that kind of old general perception. And he was doing his master's program at the time, and he started talking about some academic concepts and how they might relate to professional wrestling, which is what lit up my interest. Because I'm like, ooh, anytime you can put academic stuff to pop culture stuff, I'm really interested. So the more we talked about it, the more interested I got in it. I started watching, I think it was actually main event because I remember it was the Ms. and he was like my first end road. I don't know why. I don't remember why, but it was the Ms.

Then we watched some Lucha Underground and essentially just took off from there. We went to a live show here in Chicago. AW and started really paying attention to what we're doing when they were at, oops, sorry about that, I started paying attention to what fans were doing while they were at these shows. And I just got really interested in it and I started to see past the stereotypes that I had grown up with. And because like Eric was saying, that why question is such a great question. And it drives all of my academic research. I've always wanted to understand how people make sense of their world.

And given the interesting aspect of K-Fabe and the blurring between reality and fiction, I really got into it. And I really wanted to see where everything was going. And did you, you came across McFoley. I may be, you know, getting ahead here just a little bit. but in reading some of your materials as a part of your process or investigation or research, you came across McFoley. What stood out about McFoley to you?

I think the fact that I first saw McFoley really, it was he did a guest spot on the Daily Show where he was talking rather progressively and myself being a progressive political person, that really broke open and shattered. these stereotypes that I had carried with me for so long about professional wrestlers and the ideas of jingoism and sexism and all of that. And McFoley just blew that apart. So he really became my first big interest. So I started learning more about him. We watched a documentary about him. And I found him really fascinating. And then to think about his willingness to do what he's done to himself while still being this really compassionate person, I found the contradictions in him

fascinating. So I wanted to look more, and the more I looked, it wasn't just him embodying these contradictions. And that anytime you can show me contradictions or where things aren't lining up nice and neat, that's interesting. And that's something I want to go look into. I'm glad Mick was your first real interest in this regard because he is a fascinating, very, very complex person and even, you know, the different characters that he's portrayed are, if you just look at them and you're not a wrestling fan, you just think, oh, it's just over the top human cartoony nonsense. But there's a lot more behind it with Mick. But before, and we're going to go, again, I don't have a format.

I don't have a list of questions I wanted to ask. I just wanted to kind of see how this unfolds. But going back to the reason I was so interested, if you had to, if you're in an elevator, three-story building, not many of them left anymore, but a three-story building, it's a short ride. Why do people watch professional wrestling? Oh, the good old elevator pitch.

They watch professional wrestling because just like any other form of entertainment, they emotionally connect to it, whether it is the athletics, the characters, or the story. stories. There's something that they, on a very fundamental level, identify with and connect to. And that brings them pleasure. And we all need as much pleasure as we can get in our lives. You mentioned the athleticism, the story, the characters. In your research, did you find one of those elements that kind of dominated the majority of the people that you spoke with,

or is it kind of even across the board? I don't know if I would say that one dominates more than others. I know, like, when I was talking with Brad, he was talking more about the athleticism. And I know for me, too, I grew up as a very awkward, klutzy type of person who, when I was in kindergarten, I couldn't even do a somersault.

I needed help doing a somersault, and that's how I got chicken on. You sound a lot like John. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and maybe, you know, you can relate then because I've always then loved seeing people who can do those types of things with their bodies. And like martial arts experts, it's just of that, but it's also the characters, you identify with people and the way that we identify with people, either because we see them as similar to us or there's something.

we wish we could be, that connects as well. And then the drama of the storylines and that basic structure that we've, as humans have created for stories for millennia now, I think any one person will have a combination of those things. And it can vary across promotion, wrestler, time of their life. I don't think it's just one overarching thing that connects us. to it. And it might actually be then if you find a confluence of those things, if you find that you're liking all those aspects at the same time, I think that can actually draw you in more, especially emotionally, which makes you more, they always called suspension of disbelief, which I don't really like the term, but it is that idea. You're more willing to go along with what

you're seeing, even if you can see the whiffs and the botches and you can see the artifice, you're still so invested in it, you're willing to go along with all of it. I'd love to own in on one concept there that you brought up, and that is seeing some of yourself in a character or in a storyline, perhaps, because I think that's a big element of any art form that somebody connects with. It doesn't have to be professional wrestling. be a movie. They see a character and they feel with that person. There's empathy. There's emotion that hits them deep at their core. How much does that play in based on your research to emotional connection to product and driving people to, because listen, there are the casual

wrestling fan that we always talk about here on the show. And then there are the people who are at every event, they are investing tons of money in it because it connects with them at that deep emotional level. So how much was that on the precedent scale in your research that you found? I think that goes to the overall concept of fandom overall, because if you look at fandom overall, you're going to have this entire range of high emotional investment and bordering and tipping over into obsession, which can be very problematic. and then the more casual as you were just saying i don't let me see how do i want to put it the more invested bordering on or tipping into obsessive is definitely going to be the smaller percentage

because that's just what we see across all of of popular culture and fandom and so on and so forth those individuals may also have a little harder time with what i'm I like to call the imaginative literacy of recognizing the distinction between the performance and the authentic person. So all of Eric's Twitter followers, got it. And that would make sense, too, because the more invested you are in something, the more likely you are to engage in behaviors that allow you to express that aspect. And the more likely your fandom, for example, then becomes part of your overall identity, which can be very problematic and cause at the very least defensiveness, and then all kinds of things from that. So I don't think that's like a large percentage. I think the largest percentage are going to be the people who do have a significant emotional investment in the the athleticism or the characters or the storyline.

And so they will watch the television shows all the time. They'll try to pick up the pay-per-views, as long as they have the financial resources to do so. If they have a local promotion that they're a fan of, they'll try to go as many times as possible, and they'll be into it. They aren't just going because it's a fun night out. There's something that's really drawing them to it.

The casual fans... And maybe I'm letting my bias here show, too, because I am far more in the AEW camp than the WWE camp right now. But I do think we see a lot of casual fans, but, and this is something I haven't measured yet, I have a hypothesis that there are probably more casual fans circulating in WWE than there are in AEW. And it might be simply because of how new AEW is on the scene, that, that they haven't done things that have resulted in people kind of pulling back and becoming more casual.

And I haven't done any research. I just mouth off a lot. You're good at it. But I've said consistently over the decades now, or decade I should say, almost probably two since the internet's been a thing, that the largest or the noisiest groups of fans on social media represent the smallest portion of the audience.

And I always used to say, you know, 10% of the people make 90% of the noise in social media. Fair statement? Yes, and there's actually research that goes into that. I mean, the fact that you look back at the presidential campaigns, the 2016 and 2020, and how influential social media spaces like Twitter and Facebook were, But there's such a small percentage of American citizens actually in those spaces, yet because they're able to use those spaces to, you know, shout into the void and then be joined by other people shouting into the void, all of that shouting gets really loud. And so when you have that ability to be heard and to make yourself, well, at least be noisy, it is that small percentage then. who are so invested in something that they are willing to take the time, the money,

the emotional labor that goes into it to just put everything out there. And unfortunately, a lot of times from politicians to corporations, that's who gets listened to, are those vocal minority. And one of the other perspectives that I have is, and I'm glad to hear you're a fan of, AEW, because I'm interested in why. What is it about AEW that makes you prefer that product over WWE right now? I was actually just writing a book chapter on this, so I have it totally in my head still. Aside from political issues, for me, the main thing with AEW is that the people behind it

are not embarrassed to be fans themselves. So you have... That's putting it mildly. Yes, exactly. Have you seen Tony Conn in a scrum? Oh, my God. The one after Forbidden Door, which I was at, I was at the Forbidden Door Show,

but the one where he and Claudio were talking, and then he just like latches on to Claudio. That is like, I've seen so many fans hug that same way, And Claudio seemed kind of weirded out by it. But that was totally a fanboy hug that Tony Conno's new. And it's, it is great because I think what that means is that the Young Bucks and Tony and all of them, they're much more willing to listen to the fans and to give the fans what they want, like CM Punk, Claudio, those being some of the worst kept secrets of all time.

And I could just see like WWE, for instance, you know, all of that talk being out there that this really fan popular person was going to be making a comeback. And then, you know, WWE does something where they undercut that entire arrival, which is I'm legit surprised they haven't done that with Cody Rhodes. So I do think that coming from that position of love, because, Because at its core, fandom is about the love of something. It's having that passion for something. But having that as your core means that you're going to treat not just the wrestling and the wrestlers with more respect, but the wrestling fans with more respect. And recognize that these are, for the most part, pretty smart fans at this point. They're still going to mark out because we're emotional creatures.

It's what we do. But we also know things. We know that there's all these other promotions out there and that when a person comes to AEW, it's not like they were just freshly formed out of clay and put in the ring for us. So having that recognition of the fans' intelligence, I think is going a long way for creating this reciprocity then

between the fans and AEW and how the fans stay, so passionate even during very long tapings that they do during, not how shows, but whenever they're on the road. The fans care and the producers behind AEW have so far demonstrated how much they care about the fans. You know when Eric Bischoff is on the road, he does not travel alone. He, of course, has Mrs. B with him at all times. And hey, we're human. right you never know when the mood is going to strike but thankfully eric bischoff is always caring blue chue with him in this episode of strictly business is sponsored by blue true let's not be afraid to talk

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4-imprint offers quick turnaround options, too. Visit 4imprint.com and see how easy ordering can be. For certain Okay, so For the final trivia question What is the largest mammal in the world? Reminder, no phones allowed. Sir in the orange, phone away, please?

Um, my kid a smart smoke alarm sent an alert through the ring app. Okay, sure. No, there's smoke in my house. Yeah, right. A smoke alarm texting you. That's a new one. See? The train monitoring agent is calling now. Hello?

The Kidda smart smoke alarm sends real-time mobile alerts in the ring app. And with a subscription, emergency help can be requested even when you're not home. Well, okay, back to trivia. Now, seriously, you and the green, why are you on your phone? Blender texting you about a smoothie recipe? Visit Kidda at KIDDE.com to learn more. A compatible ring subscription is required for 24-7 smoke and carbon monoxide monitoring sold separately. And wrestling is fascinating in that sense because it's really one of the only unique

art forms where you can consistently week to week evaluate what are the fans looking for and how can we service that. Does that, in your opinion, make the fan experience different than any other art form as well? I do. And I think this is what I've been most fascinated with. It's this idea of a co-construction. So, I mean, we, whether or not you think that K-Fabe is dead or has just morphed or whatever, in order for the performances, the athleticism and the character and story work, to be believed and to be bought into, the fans have to do that. There has to be this co-construction between the wrestler slash promoter,

however you want to put the producer in there, and the fan. And it's not a, what we would call it, an asynchronous buy-in. If you think about television shows and movies, you have those producers who might spend months and years crafting something that they then just give to people. And it's up to the fan to say whether or not, or just the viewer to say whether or not they're going to go along with what they saw. I just watched that latest Dr. Strange movie,

and I was not on board for any of it. I was not going to go along with that. I thought it was silly, bad logic all over the place. But that's asynchronous. Nothing I do at the time of watching that movie is going to change the movie. What I noticed right away from my first live event was how much what we were doing in the crowd

was impacting what was happening in the ring. And that's far more of a synchronous type of engagement. The first show I went to, A-A-W, Windy City, and I think it was 2015 or 2016. It was the first time that Pentagon Jr. and Phoenix were there, which is why we were there. But there was also someone I never heard of, Ethan Page. And Ethan Page during that match, he was not as fit as he is now. So some of the fans called him out on it.

And his response to being called out of shape and so on and so forth was to a essentially pulled down his pants, his entire trunks and underwear, and moon the audience and started doing like jumping jacks and wrestle for a little bit with his pants down. I'm pretty sure he did not plan to do that going into that match. And if he did, it's off to him. He's a smart guy. He is a smart guy. But his response to the fans and the way that he changed, the entire match in those moments, was utterly fantastic. And I've been a huge fan of them ever since. But that's that type of what I call content interactivity possible with professional wrestling that you don't really get anywhere else. I've been to live.

We had a little bit of a delay here. I didn't mean to interrupt you. I'm sorry. No problem. But I mean, I've been to live sporting events where, you know, you'll have. crowd noise and crowd and crowd interaction and the players may request it because then it plays on the home field advantage but it's still nothing really where they're going to completely change what they're doing right because you know that's supposed to be unscripted anyway one of the fascinating kind of evolutions for me people in my generation You know, I grew up in Detroit, you know, I was born, 67, so I was born to 55. By the time, 61, 62 came around.

I'm six, seven years old. I'm kind of getting into professional wrestling. And it was in a small studio, you know, the televised wrestling show was no big deal. But wrestling has evolved a lot over the years. And one of the things that I've noticed, and I think people in my age group, either my peers in the industry or just fans, is that the wrestling performance today, in many cases, is not as, it's not as in sync with the audience as it used to be. You'll hear guys like Rick Flair, Roddy Piper, before he passed,

and same with Randy Savage. Hulk Hogan certainly is a good friend of mine. There are, the performers of that age relied heavily on going out there and reading that crowd. and deciding what they were going to do based on that sense of what the audience wanted or didn't want. They very rarely would go to the ring. They knew what the end was going to be. They knew the last 60 seconds of a 15 or 20 minute

or sometimes 60 minute match. They knew what the last 15 seconds were going to be like, the last minute. But they waited until they got out there and they read the crowd. They felt the crowd. And then the match kind of, have developed as a result of that one-on-one kind of communication.

So I'm one-on-one, but you know what I mean? Whereas now, when you watch wrestling, because there is so much emphasis on the athleticism, and there's so much of it that even with me, even in WCW, you know, the middle of 95, and then certainly as my time near progress, certainly when I got to WWE, you sit down now you watch listen to guys layout matches and it's got nothing to do with that crowd you're not reading shit they're they're going out there with a script in their mind and they're going to get their stuff in their spots as they call it the the things that they want the audience to remember them for they're going to want to do it no matter what and how the audience reacts

and if the audience happens to react right and usually when guys are throwing themselves off the top of cages and jumping off balconies and setting themselves on fire and bleeding all over the place, you're going to get a crowd to react. But it's not because of any synchronicity. It's just guys going out there and doing, they're going to get their stuff in. And I think the quality of the matches and the relationship to the audience has been affected as a result. Do you think that's a fair statement or am I just fucking shit?

Well, those are not mutually exclusive statements. No, I think there is a lot to that because there, once you get the larger crowds that we have now for televised shows, it does become a lot harder to be able to play to the audience in the same way, especially with the audiences push further and further back away from the ring. It's much harder to be able to attend to what anyone is doing within that space at that point. I'm sorry. Go ahead. No, no, no. I want you to continue. I want to hear the rest of your thought.

Well, the way I've heard it described is that, you know, now the wrestlers have to play to the stands farther in the back, but it's also they are playing to the television camera. And that's like this big change. And I think there are still some wrestlers who have done it. I think just this past Wednesday, Ethan Page was wrestling Orange Cassidy at AEW. And some kids said something because all of a sudden Ethan Page is mopping off

to someone in the fan and flipping them off. So there are still wrestlers who, having had that experience in the Indies in the smaller crowds and whatnot, they remember that you still need to play to the audience. But that audience that they can play to in these larger shows then is maybe three or four rows circling the ring. That's not accounting for everyone that's higher up in the stands,

as well as everyone that's watching through the television cameras. I can sit and watch an AEW show on TNT or TBS, and it is a completely different experience than being at an AEW show, which is a very different experience from being at an AAW show. Whether it's good or bad, that's a trickier one for me to answer because I think also the increase, well, the increases we saw in the cinematic matches, for example, I think there's some really interesting things that can come about from that But then it becomes a social arts movie, in a sense,

and it loses that audience interaction. That being said, at Forbidden Door, and I've seen this even on the televised shows for AEW, I still see wrestlers doing things like pounding on the mat or the turnbuckles to try to get the audience to clap along and do that power-up clap. That's because they're not over. I'm going to burst your bubble at Kaylin so when you see wrestlers you know begging the crowd

you know to react to them and pounding you get anything involved the talent that does that are generally just not that popular or over so they have to beg for reaction so the rockers weren't over are you kidding me right now what just say I'm pretty sure I've seen a lot of over wrestlers do that Oh, my goodness, Eric. What? I do watchalongs with Arne Anderson and some of the greatest tag teams of all time from 1985, your golden era of wrestling,

and they're all slapping the turnbuckles, getting the crowd going, what? Come on, man. I'm sorry, Karen. This is what I deal with here. Did Arn Anderson ever hold a world championship? Oh, get that. What?

all right i'm going i'm going a little too far there aren't going to be pissed whatever i'm i'm clipping this off and sending that to him right now that is unbelievable well but okay let's let's talk about that then dr carey uh there's that time period where fans and i don't know how back your research has gone because as you said you weren't watching back then but in that time period fans felt with everything a body slam gets this major reaction And the art has evolved over time, obviously. And with that, reactions have changed. In your experience, and you kind of touched on this before,

but why have those interactions change and how fans invest in what they're watching? I think part of it is that there are so many different styles. For one thing, there's so many different styles coming together in any one show at this point. that I've heard a lot of people refer to it as, you know, the classic three-ring circus so that if you're not interested in what's going on in one ring, you pay attention to another ring. But it also means then there's so many different types of wrestling to appease

and appeal to different types of fans so that you can go to a show like the Forbidden Door Paperview, and maybe you're really invested in a certain style of wrestling, certain group of wrestlers, but then the next match comes on and that's not really your thing so you kind of tune out unless someone, you know, does a power up and they're trying to get the audience back into it. Even at smaller shows, I see this and there have been wrestlers who've definitely called out fans for that. So I think part of it is we have so much wrestling out there. We have so many different interests out there that if what you're seeing is not lining up with your interests, you know, you maybe stop paying attention for a little while and wait until it comes back.

On the other hand, I do think there is the issue of larger scale audiences. It is harder to feel that your presence there matters because anything that you're saying or doing is getting lost within that larger aggregate response. I will go to shows like I did a forbidden door and I will shout things out but I know there's absolutely no way anyone is hearing me except for the other fans. I'm annoying probably when I'm doing so. So it's harder to feel like your specific presence there matters. And I even find when I watch via television, I usually am doing something else as well unless there's a match I'm really emotionally invested in, like if it's got Eddie Kingston, for example,

then I pay attention. So I think that is coming into it as well. I think, and this is the trickier one. I do think that more awareness as to what KFAB is, as to how things are constructed, also presents the challenge of, If you're not emotionally invested in what you're seeing, it's harder to get into it. And so you start to pay less attention at that point, too.

So there's a lot of different factors, I think, that come into it. I can probably say more, but I don't know exactly where else to go on it right now. What, what, in all the research you've done on this topic, what's been the most surprising to you? What have you learned that makes you, I don't know, I don't want to say respect or appreciate professional wrestling more, but what's the one thing that you really were surprised at that you've learned along the way? Well, one thing I found was there was research and I think was in the early 80s, I think it was for a dissertation, if I remember correctly. But there was an old research study that looked at the nature of wrestling fans. And what they found was kind of already back then blowing apart some of the stereotypes that the general public has about wrestling fans. Because the stereotypes tend to be, you know, lower income, lower education, people who are more easily duped is essentially the idea.

But this research in surveying wrestling fans found a lot of middle class, a lot of college educated, and started to really try to blow that apart. But because no one was really paying attention back then, the stereotypes have persisted to this day. So I think that was surprising, that recognition that what we're seeing today in terms of smart fans and smart fans and so forth was likely happening back then as well. It's not necessarily that people everywhere before Vince McMahon came out and said that wrestling is fake, it's not like everyone believed what they were seeing all the time.

And I think that is something that we have to challenge ourselves when we think back to older wrestling and older wrestlers. It's the fact that, you know, there might have been other reasons that people were going along with it other than being duped to go along with it. It's interesting you said that. I'll keep the story really short,

but when I was an executive at Turner as president of WCW, I often flew first class because Turner was paying for it, not because I was. And, you know, I had my little carry-on bag and I had my Turner broadcasting name tag on and all that. And inevitably, I'm in first class and I'm sitting next to somebody who is,

evidently, well off or whatever. at least well enough off to buy a first class ticket. And you know how it is. You're on a flight for two or three hours and some people like to chit-chat. I don't. I prefer to be left alone, but, you know, I'm not rude. And somebody sit next year and they look down and said, oh, you work for Turner Broadcasting. What do you do there?

I'm on television. Oh, television. What do you do in television? Do you run a camera? What are you, writer, director? What do you do? Professional wrestling. Did you say professional wrestling?

Oh, man, I can't believe people still watch that crap. Man, I used to watch you as a kid, but I can't believe people still watch that. And then they go through the list of, and I can always tell. I could tell how old someone was. I could tell you pretty much what part of the country they grew up in just by the questions they would ask next, which is whatever happened to Dick the Bruiser. Okay, this person's from probably Chicago, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Midwest, someone. whatever happened to dick the bruiser oh he he died whatever what happened to this guy oh he's

he died he died too oh what happened to this guy oh he got run over by a milk truck whatever so you go through the list of people and then it's like hmm what about last week when randy savage and diamond dill's page got it's like okay yeah you don't watch wrestling anymore you're in the closet you don't want anybody to know but here you are like first class probably making six figures and you're a wrestling fan dude you just outed yourself Happens all the time. You know what else is interesting, too? And I'm really glad you brought that up because that's one of the things that I know

WWE and when I was president of WCW, one of the biggest challenges we had as a business was convincing advertisers that this is not all lower social, economic, you know, demographics. We're talking about here. People active wrestling fans actually have a full set of teeth for the most part. Some of them are rocket scientists. some of them argued cases before the Supreme Court. One of my, a good friend of mine and a follower is a huge wrestling fan, has argued cases in front of the Supreme Court.

And he's a huge wrestling fan. So I think, you know, WWE and WCW certainly while I was there, that was a big challenge. And I think over time, even the advertising community slowly, like really, it's taken decades, are finally going, okay, That may not be my cup of tea, but it is my customer. It is my markets cup of tea. And you're seeing more, I want to say, blue chip advertisers.

You still don't see Mercedes-Benz or Rolex advertising and wrestling. But you're seeing a lot of what would otherwise, you know, 15 years ago, people wouldn't go near professional wrestling. The only people that bought advertising and professional wrestling because of the stereotype that you just talked about were what I would always refer to as opportunistic buyers. I mean, then Mars, they didn't care. Who watched? As long as they had at least one eye in ear, at least one ear, they can see in here, they're all right with that.

But over time, because now I think culture, advertisers, executives are starting to realize what you discovered back then. It's really not what we think. Yeah, and I think actually another part of it, too, is that we've had a larger cultural and social shift just about fandom overall. The social media and the ability for fans to connect with one another, but also to spread information, to essentially become de facto wings of any marketing campaign, indicates just how important fans are. And again, fandom at its core is all about love and emotions. So recognizing the importance of emotions to driving fan behavior and thus driving essentially loyal consumer behavior. is something that I think we've only seen the industry paying more attention to within the past 20 years. So I think that has been an important aspect to this too. It might be that those advertisers advertising on raw smackdown dynamite and rampage,

maybe they still have those stereotypes and they have kind of like that elite high culture versus low, working class culture, conception of professional wrestling. But they also know that there are fans there and that those are fans are loyal and if the fans are loyal to the wrestling if you're then positively associated with the wrestling then they're going to be loyal to you and that's legit a balance that we're talking about in psychological theory so last week was memorial day weekend here in the united states and i spent the entire weekend cooking it was absolutely amazing but the worst part about cooking is that it can be exhausting and sometimes you just don't want to you want something that is wholesome you want

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On a bonus episode of Arne, the Enforcer watches back Beach Blast 92 with the Ultimate Heel and Baby Face in Rick Rood and Ricky Seenboat. Draw me a baby face, something that everybody could get behind. Kids, women, old folks, young folks, men, you know, all guys wanted to be him. Women, I'm sure, wanted to be with him. He was the all-around package. on volume 55 of the ask conrad series conrad talks about some of his dream podcast partners including a couple of degenerates you know from inside the business and taking over and nxte and all that i don't think you could get a better podcast partner than triple h there just because he's done so much however if you're talking about wanting to learn more about the psychology of wrestling and what makes a match and how to develop talent and all that could you beat sean michaels Hey, that's just a small taste of what Ad Free Shows has waiting for you, including a brand new perk, getting to join in on the live recordings of the shows with four levels to choose from. See for yourself while Ad Free Shows is the best value in wrestling today.

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A compatible ring subscription is required for 24-7 smoke and carbon monoxide monitoring sold separately. It's like how in recent years sport, like teams that win, championships, a World Series, a Stanley Cup, they get presented a WWE championship belt because now all of a sign it's acceptable. Now, WWE is a PG product, it's higher brow. So now you can do something like that. But you scratch something that I really want to pick your brain about. And you kind of hinted at it earlier. My belief is that pro wrestling is in such a bubble. It's an insulated bubble. A lot of fans live in that. And what I mean by that is,

This is, I'm kind of reaching into my experience as a traditional sports reporter that covered the NFL, the NBA, Major League Baseball, et cetera. Things that happen in pro wrestling sometimes would never happen in any other body of sport or whatever. Case in point. Everything going on with Vince McMahon right now. We don't got to get into the weeds of it, but he allegedly stepped down as CEO and then immediately winds up on TV with fans bowing down to him. that same exact day. That only happens in the world of professional wrestling. Why do you think that is that a lot of fans

almost make it socially acceptable to be in this insulated environment for better or for worse? It's interesting because I'm not sure it's just professional wrestling. I was talking about this topic with some people yesterday about how any popular culture to an extent

and any fandom to an extent operates within an echo chain. It operates within that bubble as you were just describing it. Partly it operates that way, and I don't know exactly the case that you were just describing with Vince McMahon and worshiping fans. But again, the more that fans associate their fandom, that thing they love with how they see themselves, then that also relates to how they see other people and how they make determinations about other people. people. So fans can develop very insular communities that they then engage in boundary policing and gatekeeping so that only people that agree with them are going to be able to communicate with them. So if I were to look further into what is going on with Vince McMahon and his fans,

to an extent, I think that might be happening there, where you have people who think that maybe the allegations against Vince McMahon are, you know, fake news, for example. And it's a lot easier to buy into these types of theories and ideas if you are within that bubble and you aren't having your ideas challenged. Maybe. Maybe, yeah. Go ahead. And that's interesting. I'm going to keep a really open mind to that and think about that for the rest of day because there's there's a lot there but may i suggest look at i mean if you're in a rock and roll band in the 60s and the 70s and the 80s and you weren't doing illegal drugs and

bang and groupies by the car load and tearing up hotels and getting arrested for that you really weren't a rock and roll guy right it was expected maybe not expected but it was it was understood. It's just doing what they do. And maybe it's the expectations, you know, wrestling fans are, you know, this is an over-the-top, loud, I mean, how many crazy things have we watched while we've been watching professional wrestling over the years? And in context, to wrestling fans, whatever the allegations are, the investigations reveal, to an average wrestling fan, it's just, man, it's like Mick Jagger smoking a joint. It's just not that big a deal in that world.

Right. There is, I think, this idea of how, you know, we are all not just one type of fan of something. We don't just have a set of beliefs that are completely divorced from all of the other beliefs and emotions that we have. If you look at research on attitudes, for example, and attitudes are essentially just combinations of beliefs and feelings we have about. something. We have a lot of those. We gain our attitudes through our education and our experiences. And it would be, maybe it would be great if my fandom attitudes, so my beliefs and feelings about my fandom, in this case, AEW or WWE, could be completely divorced from my political beliefs or my religious beliefs or my moral values and things like that.

But they're very interconnected, that's just how our brain works. So I would imagine that the fans who are willing to say, well, those allegations about McMahon, they don't matter. Then maybe that's just all part of a work and all these explanations or rationalizations that they may engage with to explain why they're still watching and supporting WWE, that's going to be all connected to all of their other political relationships. religious, moral, and so forth beliefs, individuals who aren't willing to go along and accept that what they're seeing is a work or what they're seeing doesn't matter for the overall fandom, most likely have different attitudes and different ways of handling what we call cognitive dissonance when your attitudes and your behavior aren't lining up with one another. I think a lot of what I see as still the very loyal WWE fans on Twitter are also more likely to dismiss allegations as unimportant or to see this as, you know, just part of the fun of professional wrestling, part of the pleasure they get that over-the-topness.

But then I also see others who left WWE's fandom because of that as well. So it is complicated, but then we also get to the idea of, well, the ones who are perhaps saying that they're okay with it are also being very vocal and getting more attention because of that. Or maybe people are just, they're just numb to it. I mean, politicians. I think that's a big part.

Bill Clinton was more popular after he had sex with Monica Lewinsky than he ever was before. Maybe we've heard so much of this, not only, you know, wrestling is wrestling. We're inundated with it in politics. It's everywhere in politics. It exists in so many other facets of our life, and we hear about it day in and day out. Maybe people just are becoming desensitized to it.

Desensitized, apathetic. I think there's a lot of people out there these days who want their escapism and their entertainment to not have to deal with all of these. the hard things that are happening in our life. And I completely understand that. I mean, we all need that escapism to, you know, blow off steam. Otherwise, we'd explode and we don't want that.

That's especially in the United States right now. You've studied a lot of other, I mean, pop culture is kind of a big umbrella for you. If you had to, and I know I'm asking you to generalize, and you can't, you just got done saying, we're not all the same, what? I'm going to ask you anyway. If you could, how would you compare wrestling fans in their unique fandom to any other genre of pop or section of pop culture?

That's fascinating because, of course, I would see overlaps in terms of what I call like the internal behaviors and the external behaviors. So the feelings, the thoughts, the beliefs, and then the actual observable things they do. As an example, I was really into the Tomaso Champa, Johnny Gargano storyline in NXT, really into it. I met them at AEW and everything. One of the first matches I saw was Tomaso Champa versus Phoenix, and Tomaso broke or hit his nose and busted it open right in front of me. Loved him since. And I thought I was unique in that I was essentially in my head writing fan fiction for those two characters when they were in NXT. And I thought no one else was doing that.

Then I go to the website Archive of One's Own, thousands, thousands of stories being written about professional wrestlers. That is something that is very common across all kinds of popular culture, fans. And what is even more interesting was that usually when we see fan fiction, it's being done by women. So that also kind of blows apart the stereotypes of professional wrestling. Suddenly there's all of these other women that must be out there enjoying professional wrestling the same way. So we definitely see those types of overlaps coming in. I think the big difference is in terms of that potential for the synchronous interaction. interaction.

I think maybe the closest would be going to listen to a band or a musician or maybe see a theater performance live. But even like live theater, we have associated it for so long with high culture that we're not doing the Shakespeare style active audience during the plays anymore. We're expected to sit and be quiet and be respectful in all. of that. So it's not even the same type of interaction there. And even with musicians, they are, might be responding to some people, but they're going out with a set that they're going to play through. And again, you can cheer and you can holler. As long as you don't jump up on

the stage and try to grab anyone, it's usually pretty standard, almost theater-like experience. So that potential for professional wrestling fans to have more of an impact on what is going on, I think it gives that fandom a different type of sense as to the fans' role within it compared to other types of popular culture and fandoms. It's so funny you said that there was a Twitter thread I actually retweeted last night that said,

pro wrestling and musical theater are the exact same business, live performance art that revels in the outlandish while showing the limit of the human body, which used to be mainstream and is now increasingly niche. And I thought that was a funny and appropriate comparison here in that sense. What about comic books? If you look at fans of comic books, and I'll never forget the first time I went to a ComicCon. I was invited to a Comic-Con. I think it was in Toronto.

Never been to one. I'd heard about them. I kind of generally knew what they were, but didn't really pay any attention, could care less. I never thought I'd go to one. And I was asked to make an appearance at a Comic-Con. I thought, well, what the hell? I don't have anything to do with comics. Why would anybody want me to come to a Comic-Con or a meet-and-greet?

And I walked in, and there was probably 15, 18,000 people a day were coming through this convention center for a three-day period. And the first time I walked through the doors and I'm walking over to the, area of the venue where I was supposed to, you know, find a table for myself, and I was bombarded. I had more reaction in a Comic-Con than I would at a traditional wrestling event. And it really opened my eyes that there are two, there are two different worlds, I guess, but man, there's some real crossover there. Have you looked at, you looked at comic book fans and that part of pop culture? Oh, yeah.

Yeah, some of my first research was actually, when I was in graduate school, was looking at comic book fans and it was also going to San Diego Comic-Con and seeking all of that as well. The interesting thing I find, again, is the fact that I don't know, it might be interesting to find out how many people are just professional wrestling fans. because I go to smaller live events, I go to the bigger live events, and the people I'm seeing there are exactly the same type of people I would see at the nerdiest comic book convention, whether it's the mecca of San Diego or C2E2 here in Chicago, which has a lot of professional wrestlers come, and that's where I saw met McFoly, met DDP, and met some other people too.

There's just a lot of overlap. And part of it, if you look at science fiction and fantasy fandoms in general, they have this history of providing alternatives to mainstream content, identities, and beliefs that individuals who often see themselves as outsiders will gravitate towards. So that outlandishness of professional wrestling, that knowing it's, real fake and all of these things, people will gravitate to that because it's not necessarily reflecting

the mainstream. It's not sports that really often reflect a mainstream culture and mainstream beliefs. It allows people to connect with others who feel that they're outsiders, that they're different from those around them. And coming from a small town, being able to connect with my friends who were into Dungeons and Dragons,

who were into video games, who were into science fiction and fantasy and Monty Python, that helped. And it wasn't just that we were all into one thing. We were all into all of these similar things because it separated us from everyone else that we saw around us who liked going to all of the sports games. And we just wanted to stay up and play D&D for as long as we could with Doritos and Mung-Doo fueling us. That was Eric's

chocolate. That's crazy. I just find the sociology of anything very fascinating because it really helps you get an understanding of the shared human experience that we have and wrestling is so unlike

anything else in that sense. There are people who I worked in indie show last night at the ECW arena. It was a sold-out show and I got my ass kicked by this just tough woman who I mean she beat the shit out of me

and I had friends who were just like I know right you wish you could but was it a fan who did that or was it actually a wrestler Oh no no she managed against me and she beat the shit out of me so but the point here being I have friends who know me from my background

of being on TV as a sportscaster and they're like, I just don't get it. What you do is just so out there. So I guess what I'm bringing all this up for to ask you, Dr. Carey, is, and this is my last question at least, what is the socially acceptable standard for a professional wrestling fan

to explain why they love what they love? Oh, that is a tricky one, because I don't know exactly how much it has changed. I think a lot of younger people, I mean, I'm Gen X, but I think Gen Y, Gen Z, they see less of that guilty pleasure aspect where it's not acceptable, it's not meeting what they should be doing, because there is more acceptability for just being a fan and expressing how your emotions towards something. I think for older people, I might be wrong, but I have a feeling there is still more of that guilty pleasure and that hiding in the closet aspect that I know Eric you were saying

before, people my age and older, they might point to things like, well, just how much much money is involved in these industries and how large of a capitalist presence they have and how much profit they make. I no doubt believe that with having now a former U.S. president who is in the W.W.E Hall of Fame, they can point to that as well to say, you know, there's some legitimacy here. You have wrestlers who have gone off and, you know, run for office and held political office. This isn't just this kind of weird entertainment that people take part in. So I think older individuals, older fans are more seeking that legitimacy, likely because they have more of a memory, especially as kids, of the pushback that a lot of wrestling has received.

I don't think younger people these days are going to be as concerned about legitimacy, especially understanding K-FAB the way that they do now, it makes professional wrestling more akin to any other type of fictional entertainment for a lot of people. Just with the added level of very real athleticism, that can lead to very real injuries. And they like to maybe even then focus on that aspect that the athleticism and the injuries are what, make it real. And so it's not completely fictional. I'm not investing in something completely childish and fictional. There's real things to it and there's real consequences. So people my age are still, I think, wrestling with that one about that being real injuries and athleticism

versus scripted and predetermined. I agree. I think we should all embrace our Gen Z. Some of us, all of us, have a little bit of Gen Z in this, so embrace the good part. I like that. Actually, Carrie Lynn Reinhardt, professor at Dominican University, department chair of arts and sciences. You've got a whole lot of stuff going on and a wrestling fan. Yeah. Which is your biggest props, you know, for me. But you're also, tell me about pro wrestling studies.org.

What can our listeners find there? So that is the website for this academic association. I co-founded with some fellow fans who are also professors. It's the Professional Wrestling Studies Association. We like to say that we like having smart conversations about professional wrestling. We don't just have academic conversations. So I was the first president of the organization. And one thing we did is we create yearly an online

day of conversations, presentations. We bring in professionals, we bring in fans, we bring in scholars, and we just talk about a lot of different aspects of professional wrestling. So this past one that we just had, Russell Posium 3 was, oh, I'm going to forget his name now, the man who runs headlocked comics, and I'm just quote, Mike Kingston, almost blinked on his name. So we brought him as as our professional keynote to talk about how you develop wrestling characters. It's completely free and online. We try to bring in people from around the world. And it's what we're trying to do is engage the public of professional scholars and fans who want to talk about professional wrestling from a more knowledgeable

perspective. So that's what we do there. We also have our Twitter account, on the website. We have a blog where we have interviews and reviews and stories, all written to be completely accessible to anyone who'd be interested in reading them. I'm going to be checking that out a lot because I think what you're doing is so fascinating. As someone who's been, I was in the business for over 30 years. I'm not in the business any longer, but, you know, on the outside looking in now and watching the industry. And I just think what you're doing is fascinating. and I'm going to encourage anybody that follows me or listens to me on either 83 weeks or here and after shows to check it out.

It's pro wrestling studies.org. Go to it, participate. Learn a little bit, man. One of the things that John and I do here, and I always joke about it, but I'm not really joking. I'm pretty dead serious, is we live to enlighten. And we like to present the idea that, you know, there are a lot of really smart wrestling fans out there.

and clearly you're one of them. And we thank you so much for joining us here, man. Happy to do so. It's always great to talk about these things and to hear and learn from the masters. We would love to have you on again down the road. If there's a particular topic that's noteworthy, newsworthy in your world or in the world of wrestling that we'd like to get your perspective on.

I hope we can reach out to you and have you on again. This has been great. Yep, I'm always available. What a fantastic conversation with Dr. Carey. I love when we bring people on who are much smarter than I am. I know that doesn't seem like it would be too hard, but I really do enjoy it because I love learning just like all of you guys do. And I promise you next week,

Eric Bischoff is going to be back in the saddle. We'll be back with another edition of Strictly Business here on the podcast, Heed and Ad Free Shows Network. And if you want to join us on Strictly Business, you can, not just by subscribing at adfreeshows.com or 83weeks.com, but also by heading on over to Advertise witheric.com. Get your product, get your website, get your business out in front of thousands and thousands of listeners and viewers every single week. Go to advertise witheric.com and join our team here at Strictly Business.

This has been absolutely fantastic. Thank you for tuning in to Strictly Business with Eric Bischoff. We will see you next time.