WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The Social Mediators: The World of Professional Fighting

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

This week we discuss WWE, MMA, UFC, and all the other non-acronymed forms of professional fighting. Tune in to hear about how much is theater, the degree of popularity these gladiatorial contests have in our culture, and some of the actors who got their start in the ring. 

This is the social mediators on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM where we examine the truth disparity between what's in social media and what's actually true. I'm Jeline Parks. And I'm Garrett Gouldsby. And today we're talking about fighting. Yeah. Fighting and men fighting. And women fighting too. Women fight also.

Actually, everybody kind of likes to fight and people really like to watch other people fight. Yeah, I actually don't. Oh. I can tell you that. Have you done it before? Fighting? No. But I have...

Have you watched other people fight? Yeah. I went to... one of the like staged wrestling matches that they have in Hillsdale. Oh excellent. That come through like those traveling groups. I went to one at that was at like the fairgrounds and like this really cold barn. And it was bizarre.

And I, I'm aware at this point in my life that it's, that there's a theatrical aspect to it. But even like a year ago when I was going to this thing, I was like, how much of this is for serious and how much of this is not real? Okay, we'll talk about that. I'm just, I don't know, I was confused.

I feel like I have a somewhat better understanding now, but you'll have to probably help me out a little bit with a couple things that I'm like, is this real? We're talking about more specifically, WWE versus MMA versus the other fighting that happens. And the impetus of this was I saw a lot of stuff a couple weeks ago about the Jake Paul fight where he was fighting Mike Tyson.

Which you know was neither WWE or MMA. I did find out that that was just what they're calling a professional boxing match. It's just a boxing match, yeah. So I did see that, but I did, when people were talking about Mike Tyson, they're like, he's an MMA fighter. And I'm like, I don't know. No, he's not. He's a boxer. Oh, so it's just a lie?

Yeah, he's a boxer. Oh, okay. His professional career was in boxing. Does that not fit into MMA? Boxing is an aspect of MMA, but you would never, like, a boxing match is not an MMA match. But you would need to be more well-versed in other things to just- If you are an MMA fighter, usually M&A fighter, usually M&A. M.M.A fighters can box, but they can also do jujitsu and Sambo and Muay Thai and all kinds of other

martial arts. Like Connor McGregor is famous for being an MMA athlete who's also a very good boxer. Okay, so you can do both. You can do both, yes. They are technically different. Mike Tyson was a boxer. He didn't compete in M.M.A. As far as I know, maybe he did like a little Michael Jordan, let me switch sports. Oh, I have no idea. I'm just going based off what's on Twitter. And what was on Twitter was Mike Tyson. And then it didn't say MMA fighter or just said MMA next to it. But I was like, I don't really know what the MMA is, to be honest with you.

If that's even a thing that you can call it. I don't know what WWE is. I actually don't know anything. So that's why we're doing this episode is for me and for anybody out there who is interested in learning about what the heck is going on in the world of men and women fighting each other. First, I will say, is that it seems that the distinction between like WWE and MMA, whatever, is what seems like pure theater.

and MMA seems a little bit more real to me. I do not know if it's completely real. You'll have to come in and help me with that in a second. But I know that WWE, they're playing characters. I think those are their real names because these names that I have in front of me are not particularly strange, except for one of them is kind of weird,

but we'll get to that in a second. It seems like they are playing characters and a lot of the posts I was seeing from these fighters in the WWE use language like it was an honor to perform. Like people, they talk about it like it's a performance And it's not meant to be like this silly Well, maybe it is supposed to be silly, but it's not meant to be this like kind of

It's not meant to be a trick where you're watching it and you're like Oh, this could be real like it is all these people who love sports Standing around and watching theater but no act with no like singing dancing Situation most of them do change their name some of them keep their real name But it's like taking a stage name okay so like when I was looking up kind of like Okay so who are the big WWE fighters right now I found a lot of names. I found one that was Roman Rains,

which that can't be real. It is. That's not his real name. That's his W.W.E. That just can't be his real name though, right? Roman Rains. And if it is, that's cool. And then there's like,

I'm just going to list off some of the ones that were the most popular when I was looking. There was Drew McIntyre, Cody Rhodes, Randy Orton, Seth Rollins, Jacob Thattu,

Brian Danielson. Those were the ones that I, I saw over and over and over again, just scrolling through my feed for a long time. And all of these people have anywhere from like one to two to three to like up to 10 million followers on Instagram. Twitter is a couple million, which that's a lot.

And it seems like it might be a bigger thing than I thought it was. I'm not sure how niche this interest is. Not at all. But the budget for these things has to be absurd. It is. Because there's so much going on. There's like pyrotechnics constantly. There's lots of people there in the audiences,

but I don't really know. If it's on TV, I don't know how many of those people are like genuinely there to see it like it's a concert or not. The two names that I saw that I did know, which this is probably going to make people laugh, but were just The Rock and John Cena.

Obviously, those are the only two I've ever heard of in my life. I did not know that The Rock was a part of WWV. Really? Yes, that's how they got famous. I thought acting was the thing. But no, I guess they, what is kind of acting? That's the thing is there's like a very transferable skill happening here. We'll run through a list of current famous actors who got their start in the WWE. The list might surprise you. I'm excited. If there's a large muscular man in a movie, he probably

was in the WWE first. Okay, that's good to know because I had no idea. My questions for you to answer once you take over from here about WWE specifically is, is the blood real? Like when they're being like attacked and they're covered, like it looks like they got blood poured on them. Is, are these like, is it staged or is this real blood or these real injuries, etc? And then, because I know there are aspects of it that there are, there's clearly staged aspects with like smacking people with chairs and like storming out of the fight because you're mad.

And like there's lots of weird trolling that happens in wrestling from what I can tell. And then my other question would just be like, how many people actually like this? Like what is the, are people engaging with this regularly? The flip side of that is then, which I'm not sure if the MMA is a thing or if MMA is just mixed martial arts as like a big broad thing

so you'll have to help me out with that. I know within the like whatever category MMA is there's UFC, right? Is that part of that? UFC is a promotion that MMA is a fighting style. It's a sport. So it's like football is the sport. The NFL is the organization

that the sport is played in. UFC is the NFL of MMA. So is UFC the big. one? It's the biggest. And then is there PFL? It sounds familiar, yes.

There's a bunch of other smaller promotions. I kind of figured UFC kind of rules the roost. I did see the word promotions a lot. I'm not really sure what that means. Okay, so you know like old timey circuses

how you have the circus promoter? It's the same idea, but way bigger and what, no, I'm serious, I'm serious. But way bigger and way more dressed up. Awesome. We could do a whole history episode on the WWE,

and that's kind of how it started. It was a bunch of these little, okay, kind of regional wrestling. I see. Yeah, guys. usually run by one promoter. It was a guy that, yeah, he paid the money, he set up the show and made it happen.

That's so interesting. But now it's under one guy. Really? WWE is. Okay. Which is basically, it's, I mean, there are smaller organizations, but it's the dominant one. Is WWE considered a part of MMA? No, no, no.

Okay. It's completely different because it's fake. Okay, great. I will say social media-wise, you can tell which one is like trying to do something real and which one is trying to do something very. sensational. Like I said, there's a lot of pyrotechnics, big budget happening with WWB. With the social media accounts of under just like MMA in general, it's a lot of like way-ins. It's a lot of like announcing fights between two people who I've like there's not a ton of buzz about

the individual fighters in, at least in the like general broad umbrella of MMA. There's not a ton of people latching on to specific characters as much. I mean, I'm sure there's Obviously, people who love specific athletes within the sport. But it's not as tribal or communal at all in terms of this is the best of all time. People are less interested in ranking like the best of all time as they are for WWE. I found lots of top 10, top five lists with WWE and I didn't with MMA. MMA fighters, there was ESPN put out like the top, I think it was 10 of the 21st century. A bunch of people I never heard of, but I did find it interesting.

I found a screenshot on Twitter, which is so awesome, of the ESPN's top 100 professional athletes since 2000 list. There's two MMA fighters on there, and they are spots 66 and 76 of the entire top 100 professional athletes list, which I thought was pretty interesting. And then, of course, like I said, there's, like we actually said in the beginning of the episode, there's non-UFC, non-WWE that just matches that are just boxing matches, where they're just a little bit more, I don't really know, they're not low budget, but it's like influencers are getting into that realm a little bit more.

What's like, Jake Paul and Mike Tyson? I've been just doing a lot of matches with what seem to be either MMA fighters or just professional boxers, people that actually have probably some credentials. Absolutely. Mike Tyson was the best boxer in the world for a time. Now he's an old man. So they have these credentials behind them, but the influencers have an audience behind them that is like, I think probably bigger.

Definitely Jake Paul. But like in general, there seems to be this weird meshing happening between influencers in the boxing world and MMA fighting. I found a lot of stuff on Twitter that says that Jake Paul is interested in 2025 in starting his MMA career. So do what you will with that information.

And if you think that's any good. For those of you who are just tuning in, Welcome to the social mediators on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Julian Parks. And I'm Garrett Gouldsby. And we're talking about WWE, MMA, the world of professional fighting. People fighting people. People fighting people.

Okay, so let's talk about the WBE first. And we'll talk about the scope, how much these guys get paid, what's real, what's not. Millions of people watch the WWE. On a weekly basis, I think they pull in between 1.5 and 2 million viewers. Oh, wow. Weekly. Weekly. Wow.

There are tens of millions of viewers. worldwide. And as far as whether the blood is real blood, that actually has changed over the course of WWE. So before 2008, wrestlers did what was called getting color, which is they would essentially hide a razor blade somewhere in their clothing. And when the attention was directed away from them, they would give themselves a cut maybe on the forehead or somewhere on their body. And it was real human blood, just spewing everywhere. Wait, horrible. Nowadays, the blood is still real. They do You're not used fake blood, but the blood is not intentional. So when blood happens, it's just because they are actually hitting each other.

Injuries are being caused. And it turns out when you hit someone in the head and their head starts bleeding, it bleeds a lot. Ew. So they actually have an incentive now to try not to have people bleed a lot because there's TV ratings. Okay. Yeah. It used to be like good for the show because people are like, oh, wow, like it just looks so real, you know, for somebody to really be bleeding. But they want to keep a TV PG rating.

So now they actually try to mitigate the amount. of profuse bleeding that's shown when it's shown on TV. You can find footage of them bleeding more because they actually are bleeding more. There's just more, when it's live on TV, the camera pans way. They do different kind of tricks of videography

to make it not quite so gruesome so they can keep their rating a little bit more user-friendly for the small children. So yeah, but people used to actually cut themselves and bleed everywhere all over the stage. That's actually so horrible. We figure that out and they were like,

oh, maybe not. Maybe that's a bad idea. So let's talk about how much is real, how much is fake. It is completely a staged performance. Are they actually getting hit? Yes. Are the injuries real? Yes.

They have very, very real injuries. Sometimes injuries are planned. Very rarely does this happen? But there's a few examples of they perform a move intentionally and an athlete, you know, break something knowing that they get the next six months off or something like that. to heal. And it's part of the story. You know, they come back and it's like, oh, you know, they're healed, all these different

things. So it's part of the story. And it is just that. It's a storyline there, playing characters. The referee actually has a earpiece in and is giving cues to the wrestlers about what they're supposed to do and how much time they have. Wow. Think about if you are an actor, right?

You have certain cues about when you do certain things and you have to do it in a set amount of time. The referee is linked to somebody back. stage that's calling out you have this much time make sure they get this done and you know by this uh in this many seconds and so yeah it's totally a stage production there's a whole storyline behind it um it's very elaborate but as far as are they actually like fighting each other are they throwing each other around are they causing each other real pain yes they are do they have rehearsals uh you know what i found from as far as that goes is that yes they practiced uh but in kind of their quote unquote

in season it's very difficult because they are traveling a lot So yes, they do practice, they do have rehearsals, but it's once they are, they have a pretty high tempo of shows. Not all of them are televised. They do in-house shows where they just play to a live audience. And then they do televised shows, which are the same thing. So those audience members, they're real. They're there watching it. It's not staged.

You know, they're part of the experience. That's so gladiatorial. I can't believe this is actually happening. Yes. It kind of is gladiatorial. But you have to remember that for the most part, they are not. like they're not trying to kill each other. Contrast that with MMA.

Those guys are trying to kill each other. It looks like they are. It's completely real. Those MMA athletes are some of the fittest people in the world. They are incredibly strong, incredibly fast, incredibly fit, and they are trying to actually, so there are three ways to win in an MMA match, and they're trying to accomplish all three of these.

Oh, my gosh. So there's total knockout, right? You knock them out cold. There is technical knockout, which is just that either the referee or the corner of that person decides they cannot continue, they can't defend themselves. Those are kind of under one category. So then the second way you can win is by submission. So if you put somebody in an arm bar and you're threatening to break their arm, all right, like you're about to do it. They can tap out. And if they tap,

matches over. So it's, you know, basically you concede. You're like, you know you've been had. So you tap matches over. And then the third way is by points. So there are judges watching this. And they judge based on who seems to be kind of. Yeah, they judge based on who seems to be kind of controlling the match. You know, who's been more aggressive, who is instigating more actions. Like, let's say, you know, there are two guys squaring off and one guy does a throw. You know, he takes the other guy down and throws him. That's a point in his favor, right?

So the judges will score it to make sure that if the match doesn't end by submission or knockout, they have a way to decide who the winner is. So, yes, totally real. MMA athletes are crazy people, very fit. even if they don't always look what, like, they don't look like the W.W.E. athletes. If you put them next to each other, you notice, okay, like these WWE guys,

they look way bigger, way stronger, way more, you know, way more ripped than the MMA guys. And a lot of that is because a lot of them are on steroids. 100%. Has anybody ever died? In MMA? In like a televised fight? That's an excellent question. I actually don't know the answer to that.

Yeah, I hope not. There have been some pretty tragic injuries that have resulted in, like, kind of downstream effects that have caused, cause death. CTE is a big one in wrestlers, just head trauma, basically. Yeah. And that can lead to all kinds of nasty effects. But yes, steroid use is pretty rampant in the WWE.

I found an interview with a former pro wrestler who basically said, you know, they do drug tests. There is a policy. They're not supposed to be on steroids, but he got quote unquote busted for steroids. They tested him. Oh, wow. And he got caught. And they were just like, don't do it again. And that was it. Got it. So, but if you look at most of these guys, and if you know anything about how performance-enhancing drugs work, you can tell you don't look like that without taking performance-enhancing drugs.

I can't help but realize or notice that I did not see any female MMA fighters. I'm sure they exist. I did not see. They're the most terrifying people in the world. I did not see, I did see a lot of women in the WWE fighting. Like they're just, they play different characters and they happen to be women.

Two questions. Do women only fight women in these fights? and then are, I have to assume the women are also taking steroids because they look kind of like men. Yes, the women are taking steroids. It is impossible for a woman to achieve as, well, not impossible. It's highly unlikely that a woman could naturally achieve as low body fat as typically seen on a pro wrestler that is a female. As far as, do they ever fight males? I've actually never seen an instance of that. It might happen, but I'm not a regular watcher of pro wrestling. So let's talk about pay scale really quick because I think that's very interesting. Wait, I want to know.

W.W.E fighters. So the top contract. they make between $3 and $10 million a year. Their salaries are, they pull a salary. So that's, they, it's like being an actor, right? They negotiate a salary for a certain number of shows. Yeah, exactly. So they make tons, that's, 10 million is a rare number. Most of them make between one and three million.

The big stars do. There's also all these kind of lesser people, like lesser characters that still make really good money. But other professional athletes like in other sports make more money than that. Well, pro football would, pro basketball, pro baseball. But MMA, one of the lowest paying professors. fighting jobs. Okay.

Low-level fighters, they are not making enough to live off of. They actually often have multiple jobs. The best fighters, what they will do is they will sign a contract

with the UFC for a certain number of fights in a year. Usually it's between two and four fights. So they don't fight very often because they take, they're so physically demanding

and you could have injuries that take many months to recover. So they only fight two to four times a year. And two to four? Yeah, two to four times a year. And so that's part of why you don't have

these big fan bases behind one fighter because you only see him a couple times a year. That's what made Connor McGregor so special is he fought more fights that he you know, four is a lot. And he would fight that many fights in a year and he would dominate. And he also just had this big personality that, you know, some people

love, some people hated. That actually makes a lot of sense to me. I didn't realize that they were only doing a couple fights a year. Yeah, the biggest stars will make about three million bucks a fight, which is great, but that is way more than most make. Most are you know, 10,000, 20,000 a fight. which sounds like a lot, but when you only do two a year, that's not enough enough, yeah.

Wow. Okay, cool. Who are the actors? Tell me. Yeah, here we, okay, let me just find my list. Okay, The Rock, John Cena, Dave Batista, Jesse Ventura, Andre the Giant. And there was like 15 others probably that you probably all would have heard of it. Wow.

Yeah, Andre the Giant was a pro wrestler for obvious reasons. He's seven foot four? I did not know that he was a wrestler. Yes. I would not have even guessed, though. That's the thing. Just a fun fact. Andre the Giant was five.

520 pounds during his pro wrestling career. No, he wasn't. Yes, he has a disorder of the pituitary gland that causes his body to continuously produce growth hormone. And that's why he's enormous. Did he win every fight? I actually don't know what his scripted fight record was. I can't imagine that he ever lost. Oh, I guess, yeah.

Winners and there's losers and there's... But who's going to beat the giant guy? How do you even script that? Well, he doesn't move very fast, so you could trip him. Okay, maybe. Lots of things I didn't consider through my social media scroll. Are we ready to give it a grade here? I think we are.

Okay, I feel, I know what I'm going to do. Three, two, one. C minus. V. I felt like I felt like I learned more than I knew. Yeah, hey, that's good. Which is what I needed. And I felt like I was able to distinguish, like, between the purposes of MMA and WWE.

I did not. There's a little bit of, like, blurring of what's real and what's fake, just because I think that's my fault though. I don't think that's social media's fault. You know what I mean? Just because I have zero background on it. But I know a lot. I just regurgitated a lot more than I ever knew

before I did a little scroll. So that's why I'm giving it a B. You now understand what many, many people in this world enjoy. And I think that was part of what maybe surprised me is that social media didn't seem to have communicated how this is really popular. Yeah, but I think that's my fault maybe. I think I am, I think you should see 10 million followers and go, wow, this must be pretty popular.

But I see 10 million followers all the time because there's so many influencers and like celebrities and musicians who have like hundreds of millions of followers. So I'm thinking, well, is this like just not a social media phenomenon? Like does this take place in the real world maybe more so than on the internet? It seems like maybe that could be the case. But yeah, it is interesting the way that numbers on social media are. inflated and deflated according to like very strange metrics. Okay, well, hopefully everybody who tuned in learned as much as I did about professional fighting

on the social mediators on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Jelaine Parks. And I'm beautiful. And we will talk to you next week.