Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of WWE

Episode Date: June 24, 2025

The lights dim. The murmuring crowd nibbles subpar soft pretzels anxiously. The Sounds Like a Cult theme music begins to blare at ear-splitting volumes, pyrotechnics nearly blinding an old lady caught in the front of the mob as a spandex-clad (think Barbie meets Barbarella) Reese Oliver steps into the ring to tackle her biggest opponent yet: The Cult of the WWE. *DINGDINGDING* This time, Reese is flying solo— no tag team parter— but the glitzy world of WWE is too flashy, mythical, and impressively immersive to knock out alone. Joining her is James Bryant (of the YouTube investigative commentary duo Fundie Fridays) to help demystify: the sacred chants, fak- *ahem* scripted storylines, and secret right wing ties lying beneath the sequins that characterize this cult. If you’ve never watched wrestling, the inherent culty nature of WWE might not occur to you at first glance, but we invite you to ponder…Why are toddlers and senior citizens alike crying about John Cena in 2025? Is wrestling fandom culture ripe with toxic masculinity, or a healthy expressive outlet for unironic passion? Why does WWE’s storytelling feel less like sports *yawn* and more like a shared religious experience? Is Vince McMahon’s empire the ultimate cult of spectacle, or just capitalism in a sparkly Lucha mask? And wtf is his wife doing in the white house? Tag someone who smells what The Rock is cooking—this one’s a steel chair straight to the dome. Subscribe to Sounds Like A Cult on Youtube!Follow us on IG @soundslikeacultpod, @amanda_montell, @reesaronii, @chelseaxcharles.  Thank you to our sponsors! Go to https://Adamandeve.com. Just enter offer code SLAC at checkout. This is an exclusive offer so be sure to use this code SLAC to get your discount, 100% Free Shipping and get it fast with Rush Processing  Head over to https://ThriveMarket.com/SLAC to get 30% off your first order and a FREE $60 gift.  Go to https://Quince.com/slac for free shipping on your order and 365-Day returns. Head to https://www.squarespace.com/CULT to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain using code CULT Please consider donating to those affected by ICE activity in the LA Area. Team SLAC are donating to the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, an LA-based immigrant rights organization providing legal services, policy advocacy, and direct aid to those most impacted. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hey, it's Bobbi from the Really Good Podcast. I don't get excited about much, but I am counting down the days because Prime Day is coming. From July 8th through 11th, Prime members can shop some of the best deals of the year on Amazon. Prime Day is now four whole days, basically a lifetime in internet years, which means more time for spontaneous finds you'll feel great about. I've been using the same curling iron since high school. It smokes and somehow I'm still here saying she's fine. On Prime Day, beauty products like fancy curlers will be on a deal. Because it's finally time to retire the vintage fire hazard I've been clinging to. Whether it's a sleek new kitchen gadget or something stylish and sparkly, Prime Day is your moment to explore and discover your next favorite Amazon find. So don't forget, shop great deals

this Prime Day, July 8th through 11th. Get ready to treat yourself, you'll be glad you did. The views expressed on this episode, as with all episodes of Sounds Like a Cult, are solely host opinions and quoted allegations. The content here should not be taken as indisputable fact. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. The only thing you're not allowed to call wrestling is fake. Every one of us wrestling fans has watched people we love

hurt themselves and their careers doing this stuff, which is why fake is a term we don't like. Predetermined, fixed, you know, that type of stuff. Scripted, yeah. You can tell a kid, John Cena sucks. You can mess with him. What you can't do is look at him and go, it's all fake. He's ruining the magic.

That will get you beat up. That will get fans going, what the fuck is wrong with you? This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the modern day cults we all follow. I'm today's host, Reese Oliver, Sounds Like a Cult's coordinator, and in 11 days as of this recording, holder of one whole bachelor's degree in rhetoric and theater. Thank you very much. Every week on this show, we discuss a different fanatical fringe grouper guru from the cultural zeitgeist from strip clubs to catholic school to try and answer the big question,

this group sounds like a cult, but is it really? And if so, which of our cult categories does it fall into? A litheir life, a watch your back, or a get the fuck out? After all, like Hannah Sings it, a cult is what you make it. And not every culty-looking group these days is equally ruinous. Some cults are dangerous and devastating and life-ruining, and others are honestly just for funsies. The point of this show is to analyze all of the fun ways culty behaviors show up in everyday life, including the places you might not think to look, or places that, like a professional

hot dog eater or our current news cycle, you can't help but gape at in awe, equal parts perturbed disgust and visceral fascination. That is certainly how I have been feeling the past few Monday nights, which is my chosen denomination of this week's cult's Sabbath, sitting down in front of my television to prepare for my very first solo episode. If you haven't noticed, Amanda has abandoned me in the proverbial Walmart aisle to prepare to walk down the actual wedding aisle. Boring. Yawn. I'm kidding. I'm really excited. Anywho, I'm honored to be stepping into the ring in her stead to tackle the monstrous cult of the WWE. Wrestling is not a topic that is super straightforwardly in my wheelhouse. I don't know if you would guess that by like looking at me or having heard any of

my previous episodes. But as we explore just a few of the infinite tributaries of culty behaviors that lie just below the surface of this week's cult, I am confident that you will come to find it just as juicy and entertaining and deserving of a slack episode as I do, at least from like a meta-theatrical standpoint. This is a cult that I have observed in my peripheral for most of my life. You know, I had a divorced dad, but only one that really gripped me as something I needed to dive into as a cult recently for reasons we'll get into. But also, if you haven't noticed, this is somewhat of a theme on Sanzaka Cult right now. We're having a little bit of a Cult Boy summer, if you will. We've covered Zuckerberg, we've covered incels, Playboy,

all of these male-dominated cults. It's a cult boy summer. It is important to diversify your tastes, dear culties. And as icked as I am by both sports and violence, I do like fun little outfits. And after all, this show is all about learning human nature from wacky subcultures that you might not have thought to investigate in the first place. But before we dive in to this very multifaceted, deeply layered, incredible conversation, I'm so excited for you guys to listen, I do want to provide a disclaimer. Now I am approaching this episode assuming that most of you like me have very little wrestling knowledge or WWE knowledge. For those of you like me have very little wrestling knowledge

or wwe knowledge. For those of you listening that are more familiar with the very very intricate world of wrestling, I would like to say a please don't be mean to me I will cry and b the world of wrestling is simply too damn big for me to cover it all in one episode. If you're a wrestling fan I am sure you know that there are a bajillion subcults that exist within this cult, and if a part two is desired, or I don't know, maybe some form of undetermined exploration of smaller subcults, who's to say? I am more than happy to deliver a rematch, as I genuinely had such a difficult time choosing what topics to cover today. All that I humbly ask is that you reframe any omissions you find yourself bumping up against, not as negligence, but as a girl having an awful lot of subject matter to cover in an hour of airtime,

two weeks before she graduates. Bear with me, y'all! That being said, I'm so excited for you all to listen to my conversation with James. Let's get into it. Let's get into it. [♪ music playing, chimes am excited as well. I'm some dweeb from the Midwest. Wrestling got me through a lot of terrible times in my life and I learned a lot about it by mistake on the way. So James, give me the lowdown on what got you into wrestling in the first place and what red flag initially made you realize that it was a little bit culty. Okay, actually it's very funny because I have two very distinct answers to those questions. The thing that got me into wrestling was a person. His name was Ray. He was a friend of mine

from third grade and back then it was all WCW, the NWO and all that stuff. And it was fine. It was okay. But I was just like, even as a kid, I was like, this is boring. And my friend Ray's like, you're missing out. The WWF, that's what you gotta be watching. Invited me over for a sleepover.

We watched it. I laid eyes on Cain for the first time ever, and it changed how my brain functions. In terms of what got me to realize there may be something a little more, and I'm always careful with the word cult just because I'm kind of used to it in the wake-o-y kind of way, but I did start to notice the fandom was a little strange, actually around 2010. So back in 2009, 2010, Linda McMahon, who is Vince's wife and the like co-CEO of WWE, kind of the behind the scenes person, she wanted to be a senator. And WWE had spent the better part of a decade before, well, two decades by then, really

being as controversial as possible on television and putting out a lot of stuff that was just very easy for her opponents to go, hey, look at this, isn't this weird? Hey, look at all these times that your daughter slapped you on TV and that time that your husband divorced you and then supposedly put you in a comatose state

and then made out with a 25-year-old in front of you. Y'all remember all of that. And so in a desperate effort to fix that for her, they started what was called the Stand Up for WWE campaign. And it was basically just ads they would run on the show of everybody. If you look it up on YouTube, they had everybody. They had wrestlers, they had fans,

they had production people, they had complete randos, like business office people, just being like, this is actually a really great company and let me tell you why and it's really sad that they're doing all these attacks. Including them asking fans to post their own messages online about how much they loved WWE and how important it was to them and how it wasn't trash TV and it wasn't this terrible thing. And that was a moment where I kind of went, that's a little bit of a weird thing

for a wrestling show to do. I've never had Kroger reach out to me and be like, hey, can you post online that you love us and that any union concerns you might've heard about are certainly overblown because you love us so much? It was very strange. So stand up for WWE was really the moment where I was like there's more going on here.

And then obviously that as of March of this year kind of came to its terrible inevitable conclusion when Linda McMahon was named Secretary of Education. So obviously this thing sprawls out far beyond the confines of the squared circle. Karly Oh yes, at this point, the cult has surpassed its own cultishness and is now one in the same with the cult of America as all of the best slack topics tend to be. Now for all of our listeners who know absolutely nothing about wrestling, you're probably like, what's a McMahon? All of that sounds insane. Is it a sport? Is it theater? It sounds like a billion things. It kind of is. According to an article on AVclub.com that is essentially a beginner's guide to WWE, quote, wrestling is at once a form of low art, crafting stories in broad strokes with little

nuance and a complex morality tale that muses on many themes tackled by TV's best dramas, family, love, honesty, trust, betrayal, friendship. It's sport, it's entertainment, it's business, and it's a lot of fun." End quote. And wrestling is so fun because it was originally just entertainment, you know? It has its roots in the carnival circuit with these fixed matches, kind of just vaudevillian jaunty little entertainment. Since then it has undergone many eras. We have the 50s through the 80s, the territory era as it's known, which contained multiple different promotions. The word to my understanding for all of these different companies.

You were mentioning the NWA, which is the National Wrestling Alliance. There's also the WCW, which is World Championship Wrestling or previously known as the Universal Wrestling Corporation. Lots of different sub companies in the wrestling world. Different kind of sex of the wrestling cult if you could. And then moving through to the late 80s and early 90s, this is our golden era. Televise Wrestling is really taking off here as Vince McMahon, our guy, is monopolizing the industry and he creates the label of sports entertainment for wrestling. Late 90s, early 2000s, we have the attitude era and this is where our WWE celebrities are emboldened in the larger cultural zeitgeist. The Rock, Obvi, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Vince McMahon himself, John Cena.

My introduction to WWE was John Cena in the Fred movies. And I think that is a result of this era. Our current era, or maybe that would be of our current era, the reality era. I don't know, what do you think? You covered a lot there. I would argue we're in the reality era right now. I would also say that at least as of 2020, particularly the rise of another company, All Elite Wrestling, which is a whole other entity unto itself,

but we're in kind of what I would call a second golden age. It's a very good time to be a wrestling fan right now. You're seeing more diversity of storylines, of people, of characters, of approaches to not only the sports element, which is very important. There is an extreme athleticism to all of this. You mentioned fixed, which is reasonable. The only thing you're not allowed to call wrestling is fake.

Every one of us wrestling fans has watched people we love hurt themselves and their careers doing this stuff. Which is why fake is a term we don't like. Predetermined, fixed, you know, that type of stuff. Scripted. Yeah. And you're absolutely right in terms of the history. The product we know today probably most came to fruition in that first golden era you talked about. Under Vince McMahon, it expanded.

Well, there's a lot to that, because in the territory era, those territory bounds were well-respected. If you were a wrestler in the American South, you stayed in that territory because that's the people that hired you. Same with the North. There was not a lot of movement and it was well respected among the promoters

that you didn't do that. Vince's father, Vince Sr., he particularly was like, we don't touch those, we don't mess with those, we're in New York territory, we don't mess with any of that down there. And then he died and Vince bought the company with his wife, Linda, and they promptly threw that out the window.

They very actively started poaching talent and they were able to do it because nobody else was doing it at the time. They were signing people to new contracts, they would even occasionally sign people just for them to stay home so that they weren't working for somebody else and then when they choked out these other promotions they started buying them up too. A lot of this came out of Vince's idea for a national wrestling product. At the time, he was kind of pioneering closed circuit, which was more regional. You couldn't watch it everywhere.

And he wanted a national product. And so he did that. He and Linda, very particularly Linda negotiates a lot of their TV contracts. They started negotiating with national television. They also recognized that back in the territory era, wrestling was hard. I mean, it was greedy, greedy, greedy, violent. And it was also kayfabe. That's a word I might use a lot.

Kayfabe is the wrestling storyline. It's where everything is real. So John Cena and Randy Orton, they're buddies in real life. In kayfabe, they fricking hate each other. Now, in the era of, you know, the the internet in the era of Twitter and cell phone cameras There's an old video game I played about vampires where one of the vampires said we live in the age of cell phone cameras fuckups aren't tolerated anymore And that's kind of what happened with wrestling back in the day if you were caught hanging out with a guy you were feuding with

You'd be fired hacks on Jim Duggan and the iron sheet very famously they were feuding They got pulled over in a car, doing drugs together, they were arrested, and they were fired, not because of the conduct, but because they'd given up the goat. People now knew they were actually friends. And that just kind of highlights, back in the day, that stuff was believed. Guys got stabbed, people were threatened.

You did not violate the sanctity of that order. And honestly, if you expand outside the WWE, it went even harder. Very famously in Mexico, there were several prominent luchadors who would never take their masks off in public. To this day, there are no pictures of their face that is confirmed.

The very famous luchador, El Santo, reportedly only took his mask off to shower. He would sleep in it. He would go to every event. And he hired someone to guard the door to his bathroom to make sure no one could come in and see him without that mask on. That is so culty.

That's, and see, I'm getting Garmin's vibes. It's all a loop. Back then, they were trying to preserve the superhero element of it all. People tended to like tough guys, real down and dirty, bloody, beat them up type dudes. Vince recognized in the 80s that we need somebody a little bit more accessible. Somebody the kids can enjoy.

Somebody the adults can enjoy. Someone that everyone can rally around. Enter Terry Bollea, better known as Hulk Hogan. Hulk Hogan was the build around star. I don't mean to give Hogan too much credit. There were hundreds of talented wrestlers putting on kinds of work. Hogan himself couldn't have been who he was without the incredible heels, bad guys who helped him be that figure. But Hogan was the first national wrestling star. There were guys before him who were a big deal. There was

no nationally recognized star. Hogan was that him who were a big deal. There was no nationally recognized star. Hogan was that first star. And ever since then, the WWE has tried and sometimes succeeded, sometimes failed at replicating that single star model. Nowadays, they kind of abandon that because you have a lot of niche interests and people like who they like. They like different folks. And also, the internet promotes that. You can't have one or two wrestling magazines telling you Hulk Hogan's the guy. After Hogan left in the early 90s, they had trouble, they couldn't decide, is it Shawn Michaels,

is it Bret Hart, is it Diesel? Oh wait, Diesel just left, okay, what do we do now? Eventually they found Stone Cold Steve Austin, although even then he kind of shared spotlight with The Rock and a couple others. The Stone Cold in particular was positioned as a villain opposite Vince McMahon.

And it was very much a working man's type of feud. Stone Cold got to beat up his boss and you got to watch because you couldn't beat up your boss. You wanted to go to work on Monday and kick the crap out of Bill because he's a dick, but you can't because you'll get fired. Stone Cold's not going to get fired. He's going to make Vince look like an idiot every single week. And Vince is going to laugh himself to the bank.

There's a very primal element to pro wrestling too, which is in a world where things are increasingly getting more complicated every day, we crave the simple. We crave good guy and bad guy. We crave someone to attach our faith and our drive and our hopes and dreams to and somebody to go, boo, you suck. And we really love it when those two people fist fight each other. It's very primal drives behind it. It's an attempt to simplify the world. And the modern era, ever since like 2000, at the dawn of the internet, everything's kind of gone haywire. John Cena is often considered the last great build around star.

Except people didn't like him a lot of the time. That was something that happened. But he was like a mom and children favorite though, right? He was like a family favorite, as I understand it. Yeah, sorta. That was correct. But at the same time, when you say mom and children, well, that means dad's probably not cheering for him. And when dad doesn't start cheering for him,

kids have different reactions. I've always, I've been to probably 20 to 30 live wrestling shows in my life. And I tell people, wrestling kids are cooler than regular kids. They're tougher than regular kids. I remember very distinctly, I had a moment where I was at a thing

and it was one of these moments you were talking about. I was at a pay-per-view, I think it was in 2010, John Cena came out. All the grown men in the arena were booing him, like, you know, I was, and all of the kids and the moms were cheering him on. And I went, you suck, Cena. I was playing along.

And a little kid next to me, he's about seven or eight, looked up and went, he doesn't suck. And I went, you suck. And he looked at me and then he looked at his dad and his dad, I'm not kidding you, this kid's dad looked at him and went, sorry kid, John, you suck. And he looked at me and then he looked at his dad and his dad, I'm not kidding you, this kid's dad looked at him and went, sorry kid, John Cena does suck. This is so culty.

This is so many different brands of culty. What the fuck? And we had a blast with it. There's a famous shot recently from all the lead of a wrestler throwing a cup of water in a kid's face. And everybody's like, you can do that. And I'm like, that kid knew ahead of time and he thought it was the coolest thing that kid was asking for. I guarantee you, nobody yells at a wrestler like a

nine-year-old. Let me tell you that right now because they know they can get away with it. But that was something and John Cena is a very interesting figure because he highlighted the transitional difficulties that they had. In an era of social media, WWE was trying to replicate the past in a time where it didn't work anymore. But they were clever. They bumped him back down the card. They let him bring up some other talent. They took him off TV for a little while.

Didn't hurt that he was doing a bunch of movies there for a bit. And they cultivated a brand that was more varied. There were stars for everyone. And nowadays, I tell people, to get you into wrestling, all I have to do is find your person. And if I find your wrestler

I will have you hooked because it just makes too much sense It's too easy to get into other than that. It's Cirque de Soleil, but they kick each other. How do you not love that? Hey everyone, I'm Carlos and I'm the host of jumpers jump podcast I just wanted to take a quick break to let you know that Amazon Prime Day is coming. That's right people, July 8th through the 11th, you can shop for some of the best deals of the year on Amazon. And it's not just one, not two, not even three, but four days of epic deals. If you've been waiting for the right moment to finally grab that one or a few items, you've

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That's A-N-G-I.com. You set up some wonderful, wonderful context. I feel like if you didn't know what the world of wrestling operated like before you certainly do now. And what you said actually leads really great into the culty side of the fandom here. And my first question for you in this regard, you've kind of touched on it a little bit, but how much are fans in the know, re-fiction

versus fact, like the K-Fabe of it all, and how much do they care? Does this vary? Oh, God. Every question's interesting. Back in the day, K-Fabe mattered a lot. It's really interesting because there is a moment that people call the death of K-Fabe. Basically, Vince McMahon didn't want to pay a bunch of penalties and taxes and fees associated with actual sports, but he was also in the middle of a big feud

with WCW and they were doing some cool reality based stuff at the time. And he went, how do I beat this reality crap? I take the wind out of their sails. I tell everybody it's pre-scripted and then we look cool and get to do a bunch of stuff with undead wizards. That makes a lot more sense. And I'll reference the undead wizard a lot. That's the undertaker.

He's the gold standard for wrestling and kayfabe and suspension of disbelief he has killed at least one person on screen he has electrical powers that come out of his hands sometimes sometimes not for four years he was just a biker but even after the death of kayfabe there was some interest in that kayfabe nowadays doesn't matter to nobody I mean people will be like this is a cool storyline, we like this, we're seeing how this plays out. Again I'm gonna use All Elite Wrestling as an example. There's a wrestler there named Adam Hangman Page who did a like two year long arc that discussed loneliness, depression, alcoholism, how friends can pull you through these

difficult times. I'm getting choked up now, I feel it. There's a really great scene where his friends leave and he sets his beer down to go be with his friends. Like that's a cool moment. You know? This is just boy improv. Just let boys do improv. I wish.

And well, ironically, now that more boys are doing improv, wrestling is getting better. We talked as fans now about how back in the day it was all guys at the gym who used steroids. Now wrestlers are dweebs. Like Peter dorks that are in it for the story of it. Dorks can realize, oh wait, dorks can lift weights too. So nowadays I would say K-Fave doesn't matter very much.

And you have two distinct classifications of fans which go back to old carny lore. I'm not a wrestler, I'm not in the business, but I've been on the internet enough. The two classifications you'll see are MARX and SMART, which stands for SMART MARX. MARX are people who believe it. They're people who believe that John Cena's mean now and that this is all happening and that guy just got really tackled for real and he's actually getting punched. Unless you're eight years old or 80 years old, chances are you are not a mark. It's not you. It's just...

I did a big video last year about Hulk Hogan and I said, in the age of the internet, you have to avoid the internet to be a mark and think about people who don't go on the internet as much. And I mean, like, of course, kids go on their little phones and do their little thing, but they're not, like, going on to wrestling boards and Reddit. And ironically nowadays, the Smarks, which is most of the adult fan base, men, women, everybody, if you're over the age of 12, honestly, I would say most of the time you're going to be a smart, you're going to understand it. You

get that it's a story and you like it for the athleticism and the story like any other TV show. Ironically, now the fan base is viciously protective of those marks. I said, you can tell a kid, John Cena sucks if that's his favorite wrestler. You can mess with him. What you can't do is look at him and go, it's all fake. He's rooting the magic. That will get you beat up.

That will get fans turning and going, what the fuck is wrong with you? You don't get to do that. You don't get to break the illusion because they're the best of us. Wrestling fans know that's the best of us. That's the people that it's there for. The rest of us are just visitors. So I would say nowadays people tend to latch on more to the person they want to see succeed. And then the goal is to figure out how they succeed or fail. Yeah. So I would argue kayFabe nowadays means much less than it used to, almost nothing, unless you're one of those fans.

Karly Okay. And something that I had a lot of trouble wrapping my head around getting into wrestling was just how many arcs a good wrestler will have in their career. The fact that one wrestler can inhabit different personalities is something I find both very confusing and very culty. Could you please explain the lifespan of a wrestler from bottom to top of the food chain? In my research, I found at least 10 different wrestlers

that have had canonical cult leader arcs or cult leader characters. It's very popular. So a lot of modern wrestling relies on a very active suspension of disbelief. I know that this is predetermined. I know that there's a lot going on behind the scenes, and I actively do not care. I want to see where the story goes.

What you're describing is oftentimes described as a face or heel turn. For reference, faces are good guys in wrestling, or generally beloved in wrestling, people like them. Heels are supposed to be the bad guys But a turn essentially is when you change your character and it can be very sudden Oftentimes they're kind of telegraphed You'll see in promos kind of jealous looks or maybe like very famously like when Macho man turned on Hulk Hogan after the mega powers tag team fell apart

They had been what's called telegraphing that for weeks, kind of showing us that Macho Man was getting more jealous, he was getting more angry, he was getting more violent, and so when he turned, it kind of made sense. Turns do not always make sense, nor are they always good. Generally speaking, they're used to kind of revitalize a wrestler who's gotten a little stale. Okay, ERA's tour. I see where Taylor learned her stuff.

I would say, I mean, I can't say for sure. Wrestlers have varying degrees of career arc. Some people are in it for a few years. Some people are in it for decades. I mean, The Undertaker's gone back and forth probably 50 times because he's been around that long. I would say you're probably gonna wanna change character every few years just cause you get kind of stale and if

You're doing it more than like once every six months. You're going way too hard No one knows how to feel about you. Yeah, you want to have a consistent character underneath And so when you're a face you want to build upon those parts of the character and when you're a heel you want to build Upon those parts of the character and when you're a heel, you want to build upon those parts of the character. That makes a lot of sense. I feel like that's definitely the best way, like you have to balance maintaining new audience interest while also respecting the sanctity of your parasocial relationship.

Because, you know, if you aren't a likable guy or an empathetic, at least enough guy for long enough for people to want to stick around for the rest of your journey, you and your buddies aren't going to be punching the screen when you turn against your tag team buddy. That's not going to matter to anybody. I think, especially when you add the kayfabe element to it, that this is at once real and fake. The dimensions to which it multiplies the parasociality and the cultishness are tenfold. I have a quote here from AIPTComics.com. Parasocial relationships with wrestlers live at

an interesting crossroads where the fictional and the real blend together. Fans may look at wrestlers not just as a celebrity who they have a strong attachment to, but also a fictional character at the same time. Wrestlers are some of the only people wear the Venn diagram of the fictional parasocial relationship and the real parasocial relationship is almost a circle. A ring might one say? After all, it's common to say that wrestlers' characters are simply their personalities dialed up to 11. What else do you think contributes to, if you do think this is the truth, a wrestling

fan being more culty than a baseball or a football fan? The thing about wrestling is that it really strives to give you some kind of engaging ending. And I'm also a huge NFL fan. A lot of football games are boring. I watch a lot of highlights because they don't care. By the third quarter, if your team's down by 30 points, you know they're going to lose. And so there's no illusion to it. Wrestlers had to be. It was a very all-encompassing thing. You had to be good on the mic.

You had to be good in the ring. Sometimes there are wrestlers who are weak in the ring, but strong in the mic. There are wrestlers who are weak in the ring, but strong in the mic. There are wrestlers who are strong in the ring, but weak on the mic. Cult of Broadway vibes. If you can sing, dance or act really well, you can kind of be at the other two sometimes. Sometimes it's just if you have a very unique look, we'll figure it out as we go. You'll see that a lot with wrestlers who are tall, like anybody who's seven feet or above. We're going to sign the contract and hope you can wrestle later.

Or later. Versus there was a wrestler from St. Louis, actually the youngest person in the state of Missouri history to ever get a wrestling license. His name is Matt Seidel. He was not good on the microphone, but he can do flippy tricks and jump all over the place. And he's very crisp.

And he has the best shooting star press in the business. He did an interview at one point where he said that on promo day, which is when you're training to be a wrestler, oftentimes they'll take step-side time to teach you how to learn to work the mic and talk and things like that. He would hide and he would say,

I'm tired of getting yelled at. I know I'm not good at that. Can you please let me do the thing I'm good at, which is flipping off stuff. Give me a manager. It seems like nobody wants to work these days. And that's another thing. Oftentimes if a wrestler can't talk,

but you got that right look, I will just give you a manager. Short fat guy like me who can talk and he'll talk for you. Oh, and that's where we get the character, Heyman, Paul Heyman? Is that where you come to? Paul Heyman. Okay.

Paul Heyman, my idol, the man I wanna be. Beautiful, okay. Yeah, he's that type. And so I think a lot of this has cooled off now. I think wrestler, because you're seeing a lot now on Twitter of wrestler, and very reasonably, wrestlers being like, do not come up to me at four in the morning in an airport.

I'm in sweatpants. Can you please leave me alone for five? And they'll say that. And fans nowadays will be like, yeah, don't be a dick, leave him alone. Although that goes out the window if there's a child, because again, for him, you have to preserve kayfabe. So you can tell me to screw off.

But him, you gotta sign his autograph and say something nice. So I think that's a big part of it. Kayfabe is probably the answer. And ironically, even though kayfabe is almost dead, its tendrils are still very entrenched in modern dressing. Mmm, beautiful. Listen, Coltease, when summertime comes around, I start to get the itch to fill my closet with flirty, chic, little, new summer outfits. But I don't want to spend mindlessly, which is why I'm so glad that I learned about

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So head to squarespace.com for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com slash cult to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. So now we are going to move into something that has been peppering this entire conversation, the lingo, the rituals, all of the good little things that make up a beautiful cult. I don't think I would have been able to understand Raw without I've been watching it with my boyfriend and his best friend, both of whom are frat alumni. And that is really the only thing that's kept me afloat. There's a lot of different categories of lingo

because obviously there's like the wrestling moves themselves.. Those are somehow enumerable, but also the same four things. It's very Taco Bell menu vibes where it's just rearrangements of all the same ingredients. Then there's also lingo in terms of – fans of the show listening to this – when you say promo, if you've never watched wrestling before, even the terminology of what that means, the structure of WWE in itself invites so much lingo. I think because of its ritualistic nature, every Monday you come and you sit and you do this thing and it's going to go in this exact order and all of these different pieces of the puzzle are very important.

Give us like a few good beginner ones and a few of like your favorite fun ones. The beginner ones, I would say, kayfabe is the big one, the storyline. And going along with that, there's kind of a dual phrase called works and shoots. Works are things that happen in K-Fabe, shoots are things that happen outside of K-Fabe. Back in the territory days, shooting meant, this guy's pissing me off, now all of a sudden,

I'm not doing this prescripted stuff. I am punching this man. I am hitting this man. We are going to scrap. It's so scientific, like just very heavily sanctioned violence just at this man. I am hitting this man. We are going to scrap. It's so scientific. Like just very heavily sanctioned violence. Just at this point, I'm allowed to be this violent because he's going out of the script this much. It's so funny to me. Well, one of the things that I hear sometimes, potato in wrestling.

A potato is a punch that was supposed to be pulled but wasn't. So works and shoots and then what I called the love child, the worked shoot, which is what I was talking about when it's like, you cheated on my wife. If they turn that into a feud, then that's a worked shoot. We're doing it in storyline, but it is based on real stuff. Faces and heels, good guys and bad guys. There's also a third category that's gotten more popular, the anti-hero, which is a wrestler that does heelish things, but they're so cool. which is a wrestler that does heelish things, but they're so cool. They tend to kind of get a face like crowd reaction.

This actually traces pretty closely to the NWO. You saw really charismatic heels back in the day. I mean, obviously like maybe the most charismatic wrestler of all time, Roddy Roddy Piper, but he was hated. He was a heel. People are like, hi, he's a bad ass. But like nobody was trying to be like, no, he's actually a good guy.

Nowadays, the anti-heroes are kind of more popular just because they're more layered. They're more nuanced They really tap into that like best heels are always a little bit right type of thing. Yeah, and so and then there's no ironically There's no term for the other direction. I would say just bad booking is what they call Face who is not getting the response is getting a heel response the bookers the person who runs the show They set up the matches, they usually predetermine the finishes. A lot of people don't know, a lot of the stuff that goes on in a wrestling ring

is ad-libbed. Like they make that up as they go. They're just so trained. They'll have like four or five, I wanna do this move off of this ladder, I wanna do this thing to you, I wanna hit you with two of these, I wanna do this,

and then they figure out everything else as they go. WWE in particular, the referee is actually a lot of times the conductor of the match because the referee has an earpiece into the truck. And so the truck is telling the referee what to tell the wrestlers. And anytime someone is like leaning into someone or checking on someone or anything like that,

they're talking, they're planning the next thing out. Nowadays fans like to listen for it. You can hear it be like, whip me in the corner. If a guy like doesn't bring himself down and up, there's microphones everywhere. WWE famously microphones the ring so the slam sound better. A lot of people go to an indie show and they're like, why doesn't it sound as good because WWE is making the ring? The terms are good.

And I think because it is broken down to it's like you were saying, it's simplest structure of what pushes our little dopamine buttons and how people interact with each other in the simplest of ways. It's just absolutely any conflict ever. Once you start looking at it in terms of wrestling, it's impossible to kind of separate the two things. We use this too a lot. It's like Christian fundamentalists often use the phrase season of life. I'm in a difficult season of life. I have yet to find an expression that hits like that. And we still use it. We say this is a season of life, I have yet to find an expression that hits like that. And we still use it. We say this is a season of life.

I also have another favorite I'm gonna tell you because it's a little bit of an interesting one and kind of shows off the weirdness of the interaction between wrestlers and the wrestling brands and the fans. So there was a phrase back in the day, and I actually am old enough that I watched this change in real time. You'll hear it called throwing the X is what it is.

And what it is is back in the day, now usually you didn't see this on camera because it's a rule that if somebody's injured, take the camera off them. Put the camera on somebody else. But sometimes you would see a referee very particularly do something called throwing the X, which is throwing a big X with your arms.

And usually they would turn towards the ramp and start doing this. That was the somebody is legitimately hurt symbol. We have a problem, I have to stop this match. And then fans started noticing it. And then fans started looking for it. And then all of a sudden throwing the X was really interesting.

When the X was thrown, all of a sudden fans started watching more. And then it turned into a storyline thing to now where we joke like there's probably another code we don't know now that they're doing because it got, I remember very distinctly, there was a wrestler I really liked him, Eric Young. And there was an angle he was doing at one point. I can't remember if it was a doll or a mannequin or something, but he had this like inanimate object.

He was attached to it. It was like his best friend, his lover or something like that. It was weird. Okay. At one point the mannequin got its head knocked off in the middle of a match. And Eric Young turned around and threw the X and very like tears streaming down. She's hurt. She's hurt. We need help. And I was like, okay, so throwing the X is officially dead. That does not mean a damn thing anymore. Wow. Got it. Thanks, Eric Young. So that's one of my favorites is because I watched throwing the X go from something very serious to something very stupid. It's the wrestling gaslight.

Yes. It's very much like that. Now it's just nobody knows what it means. Nobody knows, nobody cares. On that note, I noticed this a lot in watching Raw, looking at all of the promos. Like you were mentioning Twitter feuds. What ways, if you want to be a good wrestling fan, are you forced to engage beyond watching your show of choice? To be fair, less than you probably think. Even people who are aware of the kayfabe element

and know about the stuff that happens on the message boards, a lot of people don't watch it. And actually that's something a lot of us say, you'll often hear it referred to as the dreaded IWC or the hated IWC. IWC stands for Internet Wrestling Community. And that is adults who talk about wrestling online. They are very opinionated.

They tend to do a lot of what's called fantasy booking where they're basically like, I think the character should go this direction. I think they should turn on this person at this pay-per-view because it recalls this event from two years ago, blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada. So it's very clear to me that as hoogie and crazy as these wrestlers are acting, it's obviously going to encourage, as we've been talking about, some wild fan behavior. What is the worst? I mean, yelling at children, I think personally is not that classy, even if it's accepted

within the culture, whatever. But what is the worst WWE fan behavior that you have witnessed in your time as a fan? My own, I feel bad now. Sorry to that kid, I was caught up in the moment. And to be fair, his dad agreed with me. No, I think the kid probably wanted it. The worst fan behavior, one thing I've noticed over the past decade or so,

and I'm sure it's always happened, but particularly for women, weird sexualization is a thing that happens a lot. You're seeing this now with Rhea Ripley, who I love! I saw her debut match. Rhea Ripley is a great wrestler. She's also a very tall goth who a lot of people found very attractive. And they leaned into the goth mommy thing. I remember a very distinct moment that really disgusted me,

and this was from a few years ago. This is probably 10 or so years ago. There's a wrestler, media personality named Saraya, just recently left Ronnie Radke, thank God. In the WWE she wrestled with Paige. So I oftentimes call her Paige. And back when Paige started, she was very popular because again, people saw the hot goth girl coming up on the website and started being like, we want to see her.

We want to see her. We want to see her. Bring her up. So what they do, they fired her out onto Maine. They gave her the title on her first night on the company. Took it off AJ Lee, who was very popular, and she was 20. She was a decent wrestler, she'd been wrestling since she was like 13, but she was green, she was very new, she was learning, and she couldn't handle a role that big. And ironically, the crowd, I feel like, ended up burning her star out very quickly

because they were attracted to her, not because they thought anything. And there was a very famous moment, I remember, at least it was famous in my circle of friends, because we all just kind of like, God, wrestling fans suck. Back in the day, WWE used to have a website where you could buy what was called like ring worn gear.

So like the T-shirt that Jey Uso wore to the ring. I don't like where this is going. Or his boots. Usually these items would sell for a few hundred dollars, maybe a thousand if it was like, you know, John Sheena's shoes from WrestleMania or something, like a big one. They put up one of Paige's like cutoff t-shirts

from the thing and they had to stop the auction. It was an auction site at $10,000. Ew. That's nasty. $10,000. That's nasty. $10,000. I don't know if it was a rumor or true, supposedly. There was talk that before that, they were gonna also put her shorts up.

And they were like, not only are we not doing that, they got rid of the entire website after that t-shirt. They just jettisoned it out of existence. Because they're like, this is a terrible idea and you can't handle it. So now nobody- This is why we can't have nice things, guys. Nobody gets ring worn gear.

So I would say, me, creepy, demanding too much wrestling. I also think that you have to remember that not every wrestler is for every person. And I think that a lot of people, particularly in that internet wrestling community, think that the product should look the way they want it to look. And I've heard jokes about that.

They're like, if internet wrestling fans got their way, everybody'd be a heel and nothing would be good. But there were people be like, I don't like this. Or it's just that I don't like it because X is involved or this person's involved. And it's like, unless you got a good reason, but like if it's just cause like, oh, the kid's like him, that, you know, or, oh, it's a unless you got a good reason but like if it's just cuz like oh the kids like him that you know or oh it's a lame character shut up yeah not everything is for you one thing I really love about it is that it's I've

told people ironically it is far and away one of the most inclusive sub cultures I've ever seen if you like wrestling wrestling fans will talk to you anybody and it's about bringing people into the fold. I also don't like the revivalist people. You're seeing that now too. People are like, I want it like it was back in the day. I want tough man. I want, I want it to look like the 80s.

Too bad. There are promotions that do that. NWA Modern Times is much more influenced by 80s wrestling. It's very simple. They have some cool throwback stuff. Evaluate the product you're watching for what it is. Great. I love what you touched on about how female wrestlers are treated by the fandom.

I have a worst case scenario here. In 2020, wrestler Sonya Deville found a stalker with a knife and pepper spray in her backyard. He had previously written all kinds of disgusting messages to her like, you are the only person I will ever love dating back like a year before that. So obviously objectification, sexualization of the female wrestlers is like a huge issue. And I am wondering how you think as you talk about the inclusivity of the fandom, how that translates to female wrestling fans? Is there, is there space for us? Are we welcome? What survives? Find a good group is what I would say. That is a good... For the most part, yes. What I would not tell a lot of women to do is,

like don't talk to somebody on a message board and then be like, I'll go over to their house to watch wrestling. That's how it... Yeah. It's like getting a D&D group off the internet. I mean, if you're a woman at a wrestling show, I would argue you're pretty safe.

I mean, wrestlers might, you know, screw with you. Like any other fan. But number one, you have a very diverse audience at a lot of wrestling crowds now anyway. But beyond that, the wrestling fans I've met, the crowds I've met, the wrestlers I've met, if you were being a creep to a woman, I wouldn't be surprised if some wrestlers

would stop the match. That's good. And be like, I'm not fighting until he gets the fuck out of here. Like, out of the building, one and gone. And that's one of the nice things you can do with the death of kayfabe. We can stop this match and then start it right the fuck out of here. Like out of the building, one and gone. And that's one of the nice things you can do with the death of K-Fabe. We can stop this match

and then start it right the fuck back up. But with you in the parking lot. So I would say at a live, and I encourage every human being on earth, go check out some live wrestling. Go like look in your area. There is always a promotion. There's always some guys who built a ring

out of tires at a bar. And they're gonna gonna for 10 bucks You are gonna get the show your life You are gonna get the show of your life And there's a very good chance without wrestling works that you're gonna see someone that you saw at that bar show Five years later on WWE in turn the only place I would say that women are treated like shit in the wrestling fandom is either By the bookers and that's usually if it's just Vince McMahon and on the internet You'll see a lot of that sexism,

like we've seen in a lot of other subcultures, the sexist assholes still thrive on the internet. But at a live wrestling show, I mean, if you're talking to normal fans, I think now is the time for women, get in. And if a guy's being a shithead about it, let other fans know because he's in the minority. They will box his ass out.

Good to know. Okay, moving right along from the culty side of the fandom, we are going to move into the culty side of the industry. Obviously, as it's also interwoven, we have touched on it a lot at this point. But my first question to you at this junction is how much WWE content is broadcast each week and how much of it is the average fan consuming? Right now? Oh my God. If you use the internet, there is more programming made in a week than hours in a week because every wrestler has a podcast, every wrestler has a Twitch stream, every wrestler is a Twitch streamer. I said they're all bleeds now. Most fans don't watch

none of that crap. I'll say right now. WWE, Raw those are the shows that's what 90% that's what the kids are watching That's what people with families watch because it comes on on every time same time each week all that if they're big fans Maybe they're watching the pay-per-views or what they call premium live events now back in the day It was an actual pay-per-view. They were $50 a month. You had to pay for these things watching raw and SmackDown is watching wrestling. That is, if you tell me, hey, watch Raw and SmackDown, I consider you a wrestling man. This other stuff is tertiary, it's extra.

At the end of the day, I love these wrestlers. I love this art. I love this sport. I want anybody watching it because that's eyes. That's promotion. That keeps shit going into the future. Beautiful. watching it because that that's eyes that's promotion that keeps shit going into the future beautiful with that it's time to dive in to the mcmahonosphere

it's the moment that we've been waiting for maybe dreading i don't know i mean i'm fascinated by him if nothing else right for those of you who are a little bit out of the loop vince mcmahon has been surrounded by controversy for decades from sexual assault and trafficking allegations and multimillion dollar hush money payments to a federal steroid trial in the 90s. He's been accused of exploiting talent

by classifying wrestlers as independent contractors without benefits, blocking unionization and pushing storylines that a lot of people found just really racist or sexist or outright disturbing, as James mentioned at the beginning of this episode. In addition to that, his handling of objective tragedies like the Chris Benoit case in 2007 in which WWE wrestler Chris Benoit tragically killed his wife and son before taking his own life in a double murder-suicide, an act believed to have been driven by severe CTE-related brain damage, prolonged steroid and drug use, psychological

decline and overwhelming personal grief. WWE's continued partnership with Saudi Arabia, despite human rights concerns, have also drawn a lot of backlash. There's just, you name a slimy thing a guy in power can have done. And allegedly, allegedly, allegedly, allegedly, it's likely someone out there has seen Vince do it. Even after resigning from WWE in 2022, amid all of these investigations,

he forced his way back in in 2023 to oversee WWE's sale. And obviously his influence over WWE and our world is still quite prominent, seeing as Linda McMahon is our current Secretary of Education. So yeah, little disclaimer before we dive into the McManus. Buckle up. I would like to give you the time to explore that fascination.

Would you briefly illustrate Vince McMahon's rise to his current status? Vince McMahon rose to where he is by taking all of the old, respected, traditional ways of doing wrestling and shooting them into the sun. He did not care. It was him. I think arguably you could argue modern wrestling is in no small part built on his own selfishness, his own desire to be the biggest, most important thing in that space. Vince McMahon, and when we say the McMahons, I mean, obviously his kids wrestle, Stephanie's kind of being groomed to take the company over, Linda is Linda.

And then Shane McMahon shows up like once a year to do a really cool match and then leave and make us all sad. The thing about WWE that made it special for better and worse a lot of times, especially worse towards the end, like over the past two decades. Like he was really at his peak in the 90s.

Once it moved to like 2002, Vince started to lose his luster real fast. But the big difference with that was Vince was notoriously a control freak of the highest order and Vince had to approve every single thing that took place on the show. Not only that, Vince could change every single thing that happened on the show at will. And I mean, 10 minutes beforehand he would say, hey I decided I want the other guy to win. You're not gonna get the title, you're gonna lose it.

I'm gonna go get a coffee. And they would just have to figure that out. Like it would just be like, Vince said it, so do it. There's a story I remember. There was a wrestler a few years ago. It's funny because her real name is Barbie Blank, which I was like, that's way better of a wrestling name than you could come up with, just do that.

And then she likes to trademark names so that you can't use them when you leave. It's a whole thing. They called her Kelly, because for a long time also, they only gave the women one name. Most of the men would have two names, the women would have one name. But Vince decided Kelly sounded boring.

He's like, I don't like that. I wanna change that. So right before she was set to debut, his grand solution to that was he called her Kelly Kelly. That was her name. That's what Vince came up with. Everyone thought it- Who let men be up with. Everyone thought it was stupid. She didn't like it.

Nobody liked it. Vince liked it so it went. That's kind of the situation. Likewise, Vince also will ruin careers. Like he'll make you, but he's probably ruined 10 times more careers than he's made. For every Hulk Hogan,

there are 10 beloved wrestlers that just didn't make it in he's made. For every Hulk Hogan, there are 10 beloved wrestlers that just didn't make it in Vince's eyes. And then also Vince is very known for getting really latched onto certain pet projects. His biggest one was a few years ago, the attempt to make Roman Reigns the new John Cena. Fans didn't like it, critics didn't like it, nobody liked it, Vince liked it.

And so every week, Roman Reigns would be sent out there to get booed viciously. He had to go out there, he got booed for eight straight minutes. Eight straight minutes. Can you imagine having 30,000 people tell you they hate you and they don't like your work and they don't like what you're doing

for eight minutes straight? And he held it. He did it. Bless his heart. Oh, that's brutal. Vince's ego was professional wrestling for the longest time. And then he couldn't handle that.

So he would get more aggressive. He would book things worse. He would hire less capable, big beefy man wrestlers and make them do more things. And things started getting better as a wrestling fan the farther out he got. The farther away Vince gets from it, the better things are is how it feels

at least for me as a fan. He had his heyday. I mean, he's a disgusting human being by all accounts. I will give him his credit that there was a period in wrestling that I really loved as a child that he was primarily responsible. But that was 1999, that was 2000. That's not 2025, he can't do it anymore.

And not only that, he's just a terrible person, like down to his bones, like it seems like. And so it's hard to separate wrestling from him. Even though wrestling is much bigger than him, I mean, he wasn't running indie promotions and that's where a lot of people fell in love. He wasn't running TNA and that's what mattered to a lot of people.

But Vince determined the cultural zeitgeist. If Vince started pushing this wrestler, other promotions would try to get their version of that wrestler. And in turn, I think that ego trip kind of created a 20 to 30 year feedback loop where why would Vince ever think he's wrong? You know? And then on top of that, he's using, abusing, exploiting everybody who comes in range, anybody in his company.

And it just, you end up with this thing that's very beloved, but because of this one particular individual, and it's not just him, but it's predominantly Vince, it has this very dark history. And so as a wrestling fan, especially as an older wrestling fan, you're kind of always rectifying with Vince's legacy, or grappling with it, no pun intended. Yeah, I think that's a brilliant way to put it. Quickly before we get into our game,

what is your perception of the overlap between right-wing politics and the WWE, as it exists in our current world, and how that reality came to be? Obviously, feel free to use Hulk Hogan to explain this. Well, actually, ironically, I was going to, and I have to use two more wrestling terms, Pops and Heat. Pops are good reactions from the crowd,

like face reactions, woo, we love you, that's a pop. Heat is boo, we hate you, but it can also be like, I hate this wrestler, I wish he wasn't on TV. Heat is a little more complicated than Pops. And then there's a thing called Cheap Pops, which are like, Mick Foley used to do this very famously and he called them cheap, like they were known cheap pops. And he would come out and he'd be like,

I'm really glad to be here, glad to be back right here in St. Louis, Missouri. And then the people would cheer, you know, or you reference a sports team or a local food item. Man, that's Cincinnati chili really sucks, you know? Like boo, we hate you. You know, it's very, it's cheap cheap It's very easy to get the crowd involved Patriotism is the cheapest pop of all USA whole careers have been built on the USA chain and I'll be perfectly honest

This is something I've seen a lot But at the same time their audiences conservative audiences very particularly respond to this shit They like this and so and I think that I, ironically, why, I think the cheap pop is a reason that right-wing politics have invaded wrestling. Now, obviously it's much deeper than that. Vince McMahon is a billionaire. He wants to stay a billionaire.

Republicans write policies that benefit billionaires. And so he does what the Republicans want. At the same time, for a long time, wrestling was seen as a man's thing. So it was, you know, tough man doing tough stuff. It just lined up really well with the conservative worldview. Modern wrestling doesn't look like that at all. Very famously, there's a wrestler, Anthony Bowens in AEW.

He's openly gay. He's been out for several years. He was one of the first wrestlers to come out while he was still performing. He came out when he was at WWE. They celebrated him and then promptly fired him. AEW picked him up and they started working it into his angles.

Like the fact that he was gay. Recently, there was this very famous moment where this lady who's managing this heel tag team is like pursuing him. She thinks he's got a crush on her. And she's like, no guys, I can work this angle. And so they go out there and she's talking to, she's like, we know Anthony, we all know that you want me.

We all know you have the hots for me. And he starts laughing at his tag team partner, who is not his real life partner. That's a straight man that works with him. They laugh and he goes, lady, I'm gay. And she's, what? The crowd starts chanting, he's gay, he's gay, he's gay. Oh, love that.

I told Jen five years ago, that wouldn't have happened. 10 years ago, that would have ended his career and 20 years ago, his life would have been in jeopardy. And now the crowds into it. They love it. They're like, he's gay, he's our gay wrestler and you're an idiot because he's gay and you thought that he liked you, you stupid.

It's changing, but I think You know, it's changing. But I think a lot of it ties up in conservatism is seen as masculine and wrestling was seen as masculine. And they blended those things and then combined that with conservatives, Christians, Republicans. They tend to respond very well to those cheap jingoistic kind of, you know, things. So that's where I think it comes from, a combination of Vince's greed and a convenient lining up of things anyway. And the fact that they all I think it comes from, a combination of Vince's greed and a convenient

lining up of things anyway. And the fact that they all, for many, many years, we were all just conveniently able to ignore the rampant homoeroticism of 80s wrestling. But I'm not going to get into that. That'll take us two more hours. Karly No, yeah. It's really, it's just an outlet for those in the cult of American nationalism and the cult of the patriarchy

to get all of their sillies out. But whatever, I'm not your psychoanalyst, you didn't come here for that. And it's changing. You were saying that as our current climate is becoming a little bit more progressive as is WWE, in what other ways or in what ways further does WWE reflect or contribute to our political climate? And do you feel WWE is more inherently political than it once was? Okay, the second question, no, I don't think it is.

Well, it wasn't for the longest time. I am convinced and a lot of fans are convinced that they're now trying to make it more conservative and trying to bring it back to. They noted very famously just recently released like almost every queer woman on the roster after they were doing so good and hired so many. I don't know if there are any queer men on the WWE roster right now. And I think with Trump, I mean, you keep seeing they keep trotting out. Hogan, I joked recently that WWE is determined to make itself into image

rehab for shitty conservative celebrities. That Tony Hinchcliffe guy, they hired him to do some like roast of WrestleMania that was apparently so offensive, they couldn't even play it. But it's not quite as like, I would argue that its political heyday was 2008. That's when I think it was at its most political. That was when SmackDown Your Vote,

that was their get out the vote campaign they had done for a long time, which again is most likely tied to Linda McMahon's political aspirations. But they were at the same time, like there was a moment in 2008 where John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama not only did pre-taped promos for a show,

but they came up with catchphrases. They made them sound like wrestlers. Like I still remember it very famously, do you smell what Barack is cooking? Like that's a line people still do. What? That's crazy. Yeah, do you smell what Barack is cooking? And he came up and it was great, you know?

That was when I would argue they were at their political peak. You also saw a lot of this in the eighties because back in the day, the easiest way to make someone heel was to say they were from a foreign country. Like you saw the Iron Sheik, he was Iranian. And that was right in the 80s because back in the day the easiest way to make someone heal was to say they were from a foreign country like you saw the iron sheik he was iranian and that was right in the middle of a lot of the political turmoil that the u.s had with iran and so they would play that up a lot and very famously they took sergeant slaughter who was a patriotic military character for many

years turned him heel by turning him into an iraqi iranian sympathizer and saying yeah, the Gulf War actually isn't justified, maybe we shouldn't be doing this. But I mean, he was obviously rest-lizing it, but that type of thing. Nowadays, I think it's more complicated. Likewise, though, it's also not, because you're seeing a lot of progressive fans migrate to other companies. Most notably, AEW is doing a really good job with pushing different storylines and different people, as we heard with Bowens. And then likewise, they're also just exploring things in a more complicated way.

The alcoholism storyline, like I said, that touched on like why being a man is isolating. Why sometimes men do that. And how you can break out of it. Find good supportive friends who have your best interest at heart and believe in you and know you can do better. And you know, because he was trying to do it himself. He was trying, he was playing out the masculine folly, the stereotype of you have to be by yourself. So AEW is kind of taking up the mantle of if you're a progressive

wrestling fan, you know, and they've done a lot of cool things as a company. They're very famously autism friendly. That's something that AEW does. Because wrestling has a very big autistic fan base, but wrestling shows are not always very autistic friendly. They're very loud. They're very overwhelming. And so they partnered with some sort of autism charity. I can't remember who it was,

but like the charity would give them sensory bags and AEW like headphones, little toys, things like that. And AEW would set quiet rooms aside at all of their shows. And they were basically like, hey, if you're autistic and you want to watch wrestling, but you can't handle it, you can try, you can come to the show. And if you have too much trouble, we'll take you down here.

There's a TV, here's some fidget toys, here you can re-regulate yourself. You know, it was great. They were really trying and it felt like. And so wrestling, like everything is political. There are always political elements. And of course, wrestling has been tied and still is in many ways tied to politics

more than a lot of other things. But all the same, I'm worried it's going back that direction. It faded for a long time, but the next few years I think are gonna tell us a lot. Alrighty. And that foreboding diagnosis as it is, I think, you know, I'm certainly going to keep watching. That's all I can say is I'm certainly tuning in now.

I'm rubbernecking. It's equal parts like fascination and horror, but I think that's kind of the fun of it, yeah? Yeah, I think so. And I think, and also here's the other thing, you're gonna quit at some point and you're gonna come back to it. quit at some point and you're gonna come back to it Because at some point you're gonna realize nothing quite feels like a good wrestling show Yeah, by the end of it. I'm like, no, I want Lyra Valkyria to like beat her ass like I'm here for

I think it's game time. So this is a game that we call culty quotes I'm going to read you a quote that is either from a famous figurehead in wrestling or a cult leader within our zeitgeist and you just simply have to guess who the quote is from. I see how I do. I'm excited. Alrighty. This first one we get a little subject. This is a quote on retirees. I have no sympathy for people like that, so go die. That sounds like something MJF might say from AEW. I could see Vince McMahon saying that too. Vince McMahon is very famous for like working 20 hours a week sleeping in his office that type of thing. I'm gonna say it's Vince McMahon. I

think it's Vince McMahon because I mean he hates the idea of retirement. Ding ding ding. Vince McMahon it is. Next quote. You have to think anyway, so why not think big? That sounds a little more culty. I don't know who that is. I'm gonna take a shot in the dark because I already mentioned Waco and I'm gonna say Koresh maybe.

Koresh or Applewhite would be the ones that I would think of. Maybe Marshall, I'm gonna, actually, I'm gonna take it back. I'm gonna say Marshall Applewhite. Okay, that's good. It does feel kind of like tech startup be like very new. That is Donald Trump. Ah okay. He doesn't like to think very much so it's surprising. Quote number three you can rise above it this country gives you opportunity if you want to take it so don't blame your environment. I look down on people who use their environment as a crutch. Rise above it? I'm going to say that's John Cena because he's for a long time he's done

the rise above hate. Rise above is a phrase he's used a lot. I'm going to say it's John Cena. Well, that's fitting you say that because this is actually a Vince quote. Maybe he learned it from his daddy. All righty. People don't change their mind. They just die. I'm going to say Koresh on this one. It's Elon! Elon! Okay. Yeah, that sounds edgelordy. Okay. Edgelordy.

I can see that. Alrighty, and one last quote. Do you know what it's like going through life better than everyone else? It's hard. That could be a thousand different wrestlers. I know. I'm once again going to say MJF from AEW because his whole thing, his catchphrase is, I'm better than you and you know it.

So I can imagine him saying that. As admirably simple as that catchphrase is. That is CM Punk. Yeah, best in the world. I'm the best in the world at what I do. That makes sense. We have reached the end of our journey. Thank you so much for duking it out in the ring with me. And now I only have one more question left for you. And that is out of a live your life, a watch your back or get the fuck out level cult. Which of these cult categories do you think the cult of WWE falls into?

Watch your back. This is firmly a watch your back situation. And I say that because I will never tell anyone to run from wrestling. At its heart, at its very core is something beautiful and pure. And two people pretending to have a fight because fundamentally as a species, we have not evolved out of our love of watching fights. We like it. Our brains have not gotten that far yet.

Wrestling is amazing. It's been responsible for some of the best, most life-affirming things that have happened to me. I've met my best friends through it. I've had my best memories. It's just, it's always there after a tough day. Watch your back because it is still a very tricky space in many regards, especially as an adult. As a kid, chase it. I mean, I can't even say that because nowadays, I don't know what kind of messages they're putting in on kids.

But like as an adult, you have to be careful because Jen and I, one thing we talk a lot about on our channel is pipelines. The algorithms and the pipelines they put you on. And wrestling is very emotional and it can throw you into a pipeline before you even realized it. Young men, that's not what bodies look like. When you start going to the gym, that's not what you're going to look like. Young women, make sure to hold on to the progress wrestling has made for dear life. Do not let them take us back and don't ever think that it has to be what it was in the 90s when it was bra and panty matches and Eric Bischoff's hot lesbian action that was a whole segment they did for several months. I was a child watching that. That's not what it is.

Don't let them change your politics. Don't buy Hulk Hogan's stupid beer. Don't let them make this conservative again. It's not, it wasn't ever supposed to be. At the end of the day, going back to the 40s and 50s, this was people who said, I remember I was at an independent show. There was a wrestler named Trevor Murdoch who was, I was in line to get Ric Flair's autograph.

It was very hot and the line was long. So Trevor Murdoch was walking through the aisles, entertaining people, signing autographs, all that. And somebody said, hey man, what you doing tonight? And Trevor looked at him and said, same thing I do every night, beating people up in my underpants. And to me, people who pick beating people up

in my underpants as a career? You're not conservative. You're a theater kid. You are a dweeb, you are a dork, you are a... And embrace it! Be who you are! Keep having wrestlers play video games. Keep having wrestlers show me their cats. Keep having wrestlers talk about the shows that meant something to them as a kid. Keep showing me when a brand new 20-something wrestler sees their hero backstage at the first time for the first time and realizes holy shit I made it you know? Mm-hmm. That's what wrestling is and that is beautiful and it will always be beautiful. Again I

get emotional because this this has been here for me. I mentioned something oh I cried in the video and I'm gonna cry now. As a kid, even, I mean, I have a weird relationship now to Dwayne The Rock Johnson. He is also participating in this weird political stuff. He's also doing bad things to wrestling right now. He's egotistical, he doesn't realize his time has passed. Dwayne needs to step aside.

But fundamentally speaking, when I was a fourth grade child, scared, anxious, didn't have a lot of friends, sometimes didn't wanna go to school, some days the only thing that would get me through those halls was closing my right hand so I could pretend I was Dwayne with that title belt. It will always be real to me.

Yeah. And I see now there's an indie wrestler, or not an indie wrestler, he's on WWE. Penta, you probably saw Penta with the mask. Yeah, I've been watching him. Saro Miedo, right? That move, I have seen three TikToks of they look like little Latino boys very particularly,

doing like a kid in a baseball tournament, he hit a home run, Saro Miedo. Aw. Kid sees his dad at like picture day. He sees, hey dad, Sarah Omiato. You know, that's timeless, that's pure. And we can't let him take it away from us. Uh, all of that for a watch your back.

I was more, I would love to see you speak passionately about a live your life. Oh, I mean, it's, live your life in terms of wrestling. Go in head first, dive in, go watch wrestling. Go to a live show. I don't care if you've never been to a live wrestling show. Live wrestling near me, find the closest one. Take it'll probably be 10 bucks.

You'll get the cheapest hot dog you've had in a long time. You will shake a wrestler's hand and buy their t-shirt and they will sign it for you. And they'll act like you're doing them a favor. Dive in feet first but also remember WWE is the biggest thing in this space. It's not the only thing in this space. It doesn't own this space and it never will. I think that's a beautiful thing to leave the listeners with. James, where can the listeners keep up with you and Jen? YouTube is 90% of what we do. Jen has a TikTok.

It's all at Fundy Fridays. We have a patron Discord that I always encourage. Start with Jen, work your way over to me. I think Jen is very good at keeping a conversational tone in a way where I tend to feel more like a lecturer, I think. That's what I would say is go check us out on YouTube at Fundy Fridays. That's F-U-N-D-I-E Fridays.

Exactly like you think it's spelled. Beautiful. That is our show. Thank you so much for listening. Stick around for a new cult next week, but in the meantime, stay culty. But not too culty. Sounds like a cult was created by Amanda Montell and edited by Jordan Moore of The Podcast. This episode was produced and hosted by Reese Oliver. Our managing producer is Katie Epperson. Our theme music is by Casey Cole. If you enjoyed the show, we'd really appreciate it if you could leave it a five stars on Spotify

or other podcasts. And if you like this podcast, five stars on Spotify or other podcasts. And if you like this podcast, feel free to check out Amanda's book, Cultish, the Language of Fanaticism, which inspired the show. You might also enjoy her other books, The Age of Magical Overthinking, Notes on Modern Irrationality, and Wordslet, a Feminist Guide to Taking Back the English Language. Thanks as well to our network, Studio71, and be sure to follow the Sounds Like a Cult team on Instagram for all the discourse at Sounds Like a Cult Pod or support us

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