“You made wrestling a dirty word, Vince. A dirty word.” - Paul Heyman, throwing his hat at Vince McMahon, late 2001.
There was a bit of an uproar today, as wrestling fans were greeted with an interesting story from TV Week. In it, writer Chuck Ross explains a correspondence between himself and a representative from WWE, who had a problem with his wording in an article about Drew Carey entering a “wrestling” hall of fame. The problem is thus:
What had drawn her ire was the headline. Baldyga wrote in her email, “We are no longer a wrestling company but rather a global entertainment company with a movie studio, international licensing deals, publisher of three magazines, consumer good distributor and more.”
Is it a tad ridiculous that WWE contact Ross about his wording, calling World Wrestling Entertainment a wrestling company? Of course it is. But let’s talk about this, because there’s a larger issue at hand here, as well as some fascinating nomenclature. Can one entirely re-brand a concept?
The question raises a much larger issue: can you sell baby cows under a different name and have everyone accept it? “Sports entertainment” has always been WWE’s version of veal, dressing up a supossedly dirty concept into something marketable. The problem, of course, is that no other wrestling company agreed to the renaming. Over the years, WCW, ROH, TNA, ECW, and many other competitors lambasted wwe for not calling a spade a spade. It’s one thing if everyone accepts the new branding, and there are many instances in history where wide-reaching rebrands have been successful (though not many come to mind). But for some reason WWE still wrestles with the idea of being a wrestling company. It is a point of concern for them.
Sports Entertainment is just one of WWE’s language rules. We all know the others. Superstars instead of wrestlers. Divas instead of women. Broadcast journalists instead of commentators. Championships instead of titles or belts. These language rules exist for branding purposes, but also to shake off old images of wrestling WWE is still running from. But the rules aren’t instinctive, and even Vince McMahon has been known to lower the language back down to “wrestling” from time to time.
This also opens up a conversation about the language around WWE. Fans like to use insider language, even if that language doesn’t really exist in the product (and performers get in trouble for using them). Fans know about faces, heels, referee signs (the “x” for an injured performer, for instance), and other things you would never learn just by watching WWE programming. This is one reason the whole sports entertainment thing is a sticking point; fans of wrestling like to be fans of wrestling and everything that goes with it. They don’t appreciate Vince McMahon changing it on them in order to appeal to uninitiated fans, much in the same way dedicated video game fans have issues with Nintendo catering to more casual gamers by making their once-core experiences far easier.
At the end of the day, I don’t think you’re ever going to stop the fans from calling wrestling whatever they want to all it. Also, wrestling is two syllables. Sports entertainment is four. Wrestling is just easier and faster to say, and far more quickly communicates the body of work. If WWE wanted to rebrand their product in totality, they should have come up with a superior phrase to “wrestling.” Sports entertainment, nearly 30 years later, still doesn’t make any sense.
But do they, as a company, have the right to make everyone call them what they want to be called? I’d say that’s up for debate. WWE isn’t just World Wrestling Entertainment, apparently. It’s WWE. It’s an entertainment company that presents “entertainments” (ed. note: face palm). And they have a right to be called what they want to be called. The problem, of course, is that there is absolutely no precedent for calling a wrestling show something other than a wrestling show. Maybe if one other company did it, we might not have this problem.
Speaking of one other company, I can’t help but think that WWE doesn’t want to be referred as a wrestling company primarily because there are no other respectable wrestling companies in their minds. To the people who work at WWE, the wrestling landscape has yet to catch up to them. Every single other company pales in comparison. To WWE, they are sports entertainment because they are above every other wrestling company. The problem with that is that fans literally don’t care. Unfortunately for WWE, there are no sports entertainment fans. There are only wrestling fans.
K Sawyer Paul is an author and publisher living in Toronto. He tweets and tumbls. In the wrestling world he is known for This is Sports Entertainment and The Footnotes of Wrestling.
Edited by Razor.
