What Night One of WrestleMania Showed Us About Representation

As a straight white male, I have seen stories involving people like me consistently throughout my life.  I know I have previously written about the importance of representation and being inclusive, but last night, with night one of WrestleMania 37 there were several instances that were clear indications of the importance of representation.  This may be one of the most public admissions, certainly business related of mine, related to my enjoyment of watching professional wrestling, so I will give a quick backstory related to it.  I grew up in the early to mid 80’s when wrestling was first becoming well known under the “WWF” branding.  There were big actions figures I had of my favorite wrestlers, there was a cartoon, and I even had a stuffed wrestler that I could do moves on, designed to not break under the strain of that sort of use.  This was my introduction to wrestling.  At some point, I drifted away from it, only to rediscover it in the late 90’s when the “WWF” and “WCW” were having a fight for brand superiority.  I stuck around until around 2001, then left it behind again.  I briefly flirted with wrestling fandom again in 2011 preparing to go see WrestleMania in Atlanta.  That event is regarded as one of the worst WrestleManias in history, so it is likely understandable why that interaction was brief.  During all of those events and all of those flirtations, the main attractions were men who although taller and more muscular, looked a lot like me.  In fact, it was pretty rare to see anyone who looked different.  In the late 90’s there were more women being included, but they were being showcased less for their wrestling abilities and more for how they looked in certain attire.       

I came back around again early in the pandemic, checking out how WrestleMania would look without fans and spread over two days.  I was intrigued and thought with the free offer through the WWE network, it was not going to cost me more than time and attention.  It was bizarre to say the least.  No crowd, almost nobody who I recognized and trying to learn about the events.  I decided to stick around and in doing so found a love for “the business” again.  In my dive back into the world of professional wrestling, I discovered a number of wrestlers who I found supremely enjoyable.  There was a group called “The New Day” that had great in-ring abilities, but also made me smile and laugh. I found out that I had just missed by less than a year, Kofi-mania, one of the members of that group (Kofi Kingston) having a “WrestleMania” moment.  Going back and watching that, and some of the build to it, were a hell of a lot of fun.  I was struck though by seeing another wrestler known as MVP in some what I believe were social media clips, shown with tears in his eyes when he saw Kofi win the title at WrestleMania.  I am a sucker for men who show emotion, so I fell down the rabbit hole and realized Kofi was only the fourth black man to hold the big title for the WWE.  The Rock, Mark Henry, and Booker T preceded him.  But that was it.  In that moment I realized, how impactful that moment must be for every black wrestling fan.  If a black man who was my age had followed my back-and-forth pattern with wrestling, they likely would have only known about The Rock, as I had.  I could rattle off probably 15 names of guys who look more like me in under a minute and that just be a fraction of those who have held that title.

Fast forward now to last night, and the first match following a weather delay is Bobby Lashley, the fifth black man to have held one of the major titles against Drew McIntyre. McIntyre (who won his first title at last year’s crowd-less WrestleMania) was the “face” or good guy whereas Lashley was being made to be the “heel” or bad guy.  Online speculation was the WWE wanted Drew to win a title in front of fans, and that seemed to be supported by the fact that the faction Bobby had led, “The Hurt Business” was broken up mere weeks before he was set to defend this title.  As the match played on, they interspersed crowd reactions.  Most fans were seemingly cheering for McIntyre but every now and then you would see a black person in the crowd who seemed to be hanging on edge willing Bobby Lashley to victory.  In that moment I became supremely torn, because I really like Drew McIntyre, his in-ring work along with his promo work is great.  However, Lashley had only just recently won the title and the idea of him losing it already seemed like it would be painful.  MVP accompanies him to the ring, which has always made me smile, and last night seeing MVP serve up the distraction that cost McIntyre the match was a great thing to witness.  Lashley retained the title and the ending to the match left the door open for an ongoing feud between two great wrestlers and left neither of them looking weak or at a deficit.  I look forward to seeing their continued work together but also am really happy that the creative team kept representation at a high level.

The headline match for night one was the most moving experience of the night.Bianca Belair has become one of my favorite wrestlers to watch lately.She is incredibly strong and seems to always have fun when she works.She was up against Sasha Banks, and this was the first black woman headlined WrestleMania.That moment was not lost on either of these women, as they both showed a great deal of emotion at the start of the match.Belair was noticeably moved to tears which I found a very engaging and moving experience.Between just the simple fact of headlining WrestleMania, but also making history, I cannot imagine how moving that must have been for both women.I found myself moved to tears alongside them.If a middle-aged white guy had that experience, I can only imagine the impact that had on kids who finally are seeing people who look like them doing the thing they love.I am grateful to have gotten to see that, but think it is important that I share my perspective because maybe one other person will read this and finally will have the importance of representation click for them.It is not taking away from white people.It is not hurting white people to have representation for those who look different than us on a major stage like this one.This is equality, this is what we claim to be in favor of and this is a major step forward.Does it fix centuries of hurt and abuse?Certainly not.But it’s a tiny step in the right direction.And it is cause for celebration.