Episode 5 Wrestling: The cultural influence of WWF/WWE

This conversation explores wrestling not as a spectacle to dismiss, but as a cultural force shaped by history, television, and deeply committed fan communities. From Olympic roots and physical sacrifice to larger-than-life characters and carefully constructed rivalries, wrestling emerges as a unique blend of sport and theater.

The discussion follows the rise of major wrestling organizations, the pivotal WCW–WWF rivalry, and the creative decisions that reshaped the industry during the cable television era. It also reflects on the global reach of wrestling, the emotional investment it inspires, and the real human cost behind the performances. Along the way, parallels emerge between wrestling promos, modern media, and the growing role of controversy and narrative in public life.

Episode Shownotes:
Wrestling as sports entertainment versus competitive wrestling
Cultural differences in how wrestling is experienced and understood
The role of cable television in popularizing wrestling
The rise and fall of WCW and its rivalry with WWF/WWE
Iconic wrestlers and character transformations
Storytelling, heroes, villains, and long-term narrative arcs
Physical toll, injuries, and life behind the scenes
Wrestlers transitioning into film and mainstream entertainment
Influence of wrestling on modern media and public discourse

Episode Timestamps
00:00 – Introductions and topic setup
01:00 – Wrestling as sport and entertainment
03:00 – Discovering wrestling through cable television
05:30 – WCW, WWF, and the rise of televised wrestling
09:00 – Vince McMahon and industry consolidation
12:00 – Fan culture and emotional investment
15:00 – Eric Bischoff and WCW’s transformation
18:00 – Hulk Hogan, NWO, and long-form storytelling
23:00 – Character arcs and audience engagement
27:00 – Life of wrestlers beyond television
30:00 – Injuries, addiction, and tragic stories
33:00 – Wrestling and crossover into Hollywood
36:00 – Transferable skills and performance
41:00 – Wrestling’s influence on media and politics
44:00 – Closing thoughts

About the Podcast:
Hosted by Kevin Carney and Emanuel Petrescu, two curious minds exploring ideas, culture, and everything in between. Curious Pundits is a conversational podcast where each episode starts with a topic that caught our attention and unfolds into thoughtful, unscripted discussion. We follow curiosity wherever it leads, across disciplines, opinions, and perspectives, without pretending to have all the answers.

Entities
People (Real)
Kevin Carney
Emanuel Petrescu
John Cena
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson
Hulk Hogan
Andre the Giant
The Iron Sheik
Ted Turner
Vince McMahon
Eric Bischoff
Macho Man Randy Savage
Scott Hall
Kevin Nash
Sting
Lex Luger
Brock Lesnar
Kurt Angle
Chris Benoit
Owen Hart
Bret Hart
Darren Aronofsky
Mickey Rourke
Mr. T
Batista (Dave Bautista)
Donald Trump
Catherine Janeway (character reference via Star Trek context)
Jerry Ryan
Organizations / Promotions / Media Companies
Curious Pundits
WCW (World Championship Wrestling)
WWF (World Wrestling Federation)
WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment)
NWO (New World Order)
TNA (Total Nonstop Action Wrestling)
UFC
CNN
TNT
Cartoon Network
Netflix
Facebook
Movies / TV Shows
The Wrestler
WrestleMania
SmackDown
Raw
Star Trek: Voyager
Captain Planet
Sports / Concepts / Titles
Wrestling
Sports Entertainment
Greek-Roman Wrestling
Olympic Wrestling
Babyface
Heel
Places / Countries
Romania
United States
North America
Europe
Canada
Montreal
Books
Controversy Creates Cash

Episode Trancript

[00:00:00] Kevin: Hello. We are Curious pundits.
I’m Kevin.
[00:00:04] Emanuel: And I’m Emanuel.
[00:00:06] Kevin: And I’m going to open with, if you like these discussions, these rants, please like the video, subscribe to the channel, and find us wherever you listen to podcasts.
[00:00:17] Emanuel: And the best way to do so is go to curiouspundits.com, and over there you’ll find links to all the platforms that you probably are using.
[00:00:25] Kevin: Oh yeah, I forgot to say that. Thank you for stepping in.
Okay. Today’s topic is something that I personally know very little about, so I am going to enjoy this one.
Today’s topic is wrestling.
So Emanuel, I’m guessing, since you proposed this topic that you’re a wrestling fan?
[00:00:49] Emanuel: Yes, I am. Would you like to know more?
[00:00:52] Kevin: And what is it about wrestling that appeals to you?
[00:00:56] Emanuel: Well, I do have a couple of notes here because I don’t want to [00:01:00] forget some of the important facts that I want to share with our audience today.
First, I’ll start off with saying that it’s quite funny how somebody from North America is not so accustomed to wrestling, whereas somebody from the East Europe is.
When I say wrestling, I’m referring to sports entertainment.
What we see on television right now, John Cena, The Rock, Hulk Hogan, and all these other guys.
Wrestling in itself is a sport, is an Olympic sport as well. It comes from ancient times. We know that there’s actually a category, Greek Roman wrestling. That’s how the sport is called. It’s probably one of the most versatile styles of fighting, of combat.
So if you are to master any style, probably jujutsu wrestling and muay thai would be the ones that will ensure you have a chance against anyone else. It’s also practiced a lot in North American colleges and high [00:02:00] schools, and I used to see them in the movies.
They were doing the wrestling that I knew, but they also use protective headgear, especially for the ears because you might have seen all the wrestlers have the cauliflower ear, right? All of all these things essentially turn your ear inside out. So they use that.
I was curious… what were those things when I saw them when I was a kid?
But the topic of today is wrestling as in sports entertainment. And I believe that sports entertainment actually describes, is the word that describes best what this is. It’s sports and it’s also entertainment.
And we have seen for the past several years how all the other sports have adopted elements from wrestling, from sports entertainment.
We’ve seen it in UFC, the pre fights, the challenges, the comments that they make one to another. But also recently we’ve seen it in football as [00:03:00] in what Americans call soccer and so forth… commentary before, during, and after… prolonging for hours and so on, and I do think wrestling had a big influence on that.
Now, my journey with wrestling goes back probably 30 something years ago, if not more, but recent years ago. And it has something to do with a character that will probably make a episode on at one point soon… Ted Turner.
We, after communism fell… capitalistic society came into… transitioned to Romania transition to a capitalist society and one of the most important things in capitalism is access to information and network television cable. So we had cable, [00:04:00] we had Cartoon Network, which was almost nonstop cartoons all day, there was something unimaginable.
But what I found… I discovered by chance is that on Friday evenings after Cartoon Network was shutting off and was replaced by TNT with movies… they had on Friday evenings for one hour a segment of this sport called wrestling.
It was WCW. That’s a division that… essentially a division that I would say changed sports entertainment for sure, but also changed television and how they handle sports.
And I want to talk a little bit about the story of this WCW… the WWE… what we are seeing today with SmackDown and all the other events, [00:05:00] WrestleMania and all the big characters, the fighters that we know right now… I think John Cena is the biggest one. We had the Rock, we had Hulk Hogan, who this year has passed away.
One of my favorite wrestlers as well, and throughout the history, and we know that in pop culture, Andre the Giant or The Iron Sheik, are popular figures… but people maybe in the North America can relate to them, but in the rest of the world, not so much.
But here I was somewhere around 95, 96, 97, 98, back in Romania watching TNT for WCW.
That’s how I learned, that’s how I was introduced to this sport.
It is a sport at the end of the day. What we see on television… and right now I think they have a deal on with Netflix, so their product is accessible to everyone, essentially.
Again, what we see are the [00:06:00] top athletes of the world and of the wrestlers.
Let me just put it out there, I don’t think I’m going to… spoiler anyone, it’s not like I’m telling Santa doesn’t exist, that these matches are fake.
[00:06:19] Kevin: Can I actually comment on that?
[00:06:20] Emanuel: Please.
[00:06:21] Kevin: Because the word that I have always used is choreographed, and the reason I say choreographed is… the injuries are real.
Like they actually get hurt.
[00:06:32] Emanuel: There’s nothing fake about jumping from a ladder or stuff like that. They’re also very good athletes. They’re probably one of the best athletes in the world.
I don’t think most UFC fighters, most football players, most basketball players, most tennis players can do what they do with their bodies, how they take it to that extreme and how they perform.
Most of [00:07:00] the time… constantly. Because a wrestler’s life is different… it’s not just one hour or two hours we see on television once a week.
Now the top performers these days probably have it a little bit better, but it’s not uncommon for wrestlers to have even two or three matches every day and only on Friday evening or on Saturday evening to be recorded and be broadcast.
[00:07:27] Kevin: Two or three a day?
[00:07:28] Emanuel: Two or three matches, pre matches… not so much right now, but back in the day yeah, they used to have, especially when you are out of province and you would come in a bigger city that has multiple divisions, you would essentially grab whatever you could take, right?
Because you get paid based on the matches that you join.
There’s a excellent movie, Darren Aronofsky, I don’t remember his name… The Wrestler with Mikey Rourke, [00:08:00] excellent movie. I recommend to everyone. It’s a masterpiece, not just because of wrestling, but obviously it paints the picture of how a wrestler lives, essentially.
I like to believe that in 2025 things have changed and they’re a little bit better off, but for the most part that was the life of our wrestlers, essentially.
But what I like to share with the audience is the fascinating story of WCW, the division that I talked about earlier.
Before going to WCW let’s give some context about this sports entertainment and its history. Essentially, there were different separate divisions back in the fifties, sixties, seventies and so forth.
Each region has its own division with each state having multiple divisions, and they all had their own world champions… confederation champion… federation… all these [00:09:00] titles, but they were, there were like 200 world champions across the United States and so forth.
Obviously there were limitations… geographically and logistically.
One owner of such a federation was Vince McMahon’s dad. I forgot his name right now, but I think everybody knows at least the face of Vince McMahon and who is him and the McMahon family, who has changed, who owns essentially the wrestling industry more or less.
[00:09:30] Kevin: Just to confirm, like I don’t pay much attention to the world of wrestling, and I do know who Vince McMahon is.
[00:09:37] Emanuel: He’s a good friend of Donald Trump also, right? He invited Donald Trump… Vince McMahon is the guy that Donald Trump’s shaved his hair in the ring when he was… I forgot, I think it was 2008, 2012, some around that time, I believe, or even earlier, before presidency and so forth.[00:10:00]
But yeah, the McMahon family has been running wrestling.
And there were… his dad was running a smaller… federation. And what happened is cable, again, cable playing a significant role in me watching… learning about wrestling, but also in wrestling becoming more popular in America.
So through cable he managed to cut a deal and was broadcasting essentially nationwide, all of his fights. That obviously attracted more sponsors, but also attracted other players, other wrestlers from different divisions from all over the country.
Obviously this didn’t sit right with many many people that had their own thing going on, and essentially they were taking their top talent and broadcast them live across the nation.
[00:10:54] Kevin: I want to clarify one point, you were a child in Romania, but right now when you [00:11:00] say the nation, you mean the United States, right?
[00:11:02] Emanuel: Back in the day, I’m telling the story of how wrestling the WWF, the current WWE came into existence, essentially.
[00:11:09] Kevin: Understood.
[00:11:10] Emanuel: So obviously Vince McMahon attracted some bad karma.
There are some people who are not happy about it, but nevertheless, he became the major dominant force and brought wrestling into the people’s houses, essentially in their living rooms through cable television. People were paying a lot of money.
I’m going to make another note here about wrestling and the passion fans have for wrestlers.
I’ve seen the same kind of passion… the closest thing North Americans have similar to what Europeans might have for football, for soccer teams, for players.
[00:11:52] Kevin: Mm-hmm.
[00:11:53] Emanuel: That’s something that’s hard to explain. It’s an ethos, it’s an experience altogether. [00:12:00] So I believe that wrestling fans are the closest to what Europeans, in my case, I’m Romanian, but you can see Italy, you can see Spain, you can see France, you can see England, and the passion they have for their teams.
That’s something that you won’t find across North America for probably any sport because it’s different. They call it franchises, even hockey, right? You can buy a team and move it and rename it and do all these things. So it’s a different concept altogether.
Coming back to McMahon, he made the most… popular division was called WWF back then, World Wrestling Federation. They got sued by the environmental charity and they had to change the name to WWE later on.
But what happened is they were dominant essentially.
Now, late eighties, early nineties Ted Turner, an [00:13:00] interesting character who may or may not have some… at least questionable opinions about how humanity should act. He’s a billionaire from the United States and I said…
[00:13:15] Kevin: Oh yeah, I know who Ted Turner is.
[00:13:18] Emanuel: We probably should make an episode because he’s definitely an interesting character. He started promoting this environmental consciousness.
He was one of the first who started pumping up… inserting through his… through his networks because CNN… he used to own CNN if I’m correct… amongst others, like TNT, Cartoon Network… and he created characters such as Captain Planet, his environmental superhero that came into existence by the power of… power of [00:14:00] nature and so forth.
It kind of like implanted… planted the seed of being more conscious about pollution and all those things. And he also own this… division WCW. I think he bought it from one of the independent… he bought one of the independent divisions as well.
He was fairly just existing up to a point. You had the WWF… it’s like the Google, right? And then you have Bing.
It was like… Okay yeah, we all heard about Bing… one out of a hundred million people use Bing. And that’s just because it’s default with Edge.
[00:14:44] Kevin: Right.
[00:14:46] Emanuel: But what happened is he brought this guy called Eric Bischoff. It’s funny because one of the best books on business, entrepreneurship and mindset that I read is his book [00:15:00] Controversy Creates Cash.
When my brother-in-law came to Canada first before I came, a few years before me, I asked him to bring me three things.
All of them was were wrestling related, because in Europe, in Romania, we didn’t have access to this information. It was just what you saw on television. Maybe sometime just a couple of seconds, a commercial or a new release or something like that. So I heard about that book and I heard about Sting, one of my favorite wrestlers, releasing a DVD and a book about his career as well.
So I asked him to give me that, and that’s where I learned the story and all the details and the impact and how actually big this story is because you had a small player, WCW, which is the perfect example of the successful underdog that overcome the giant, the Goliath, that WWF was at that time.
What this guy Eric  Bischoff did, he took that small division and in a [00:16:00] couple of years he transformed it into something so big that overpass, surpassed WWF. So that’s exactly what he did. Obviously, when you are the big player in a market, you control the narrative and you do whatever you want.
And especially in the late eighties, early nineties, people would get away with many things.
[00:16:24] Kevin: Can I interrupt and ask a question?
[00:16:26] Emanuel: Please.
[00:16:27] Kevin: Do you know when that book Controversy Creates Cash was published?
[00:16:33] Emanuel: I think early 2000s.
[00:16:38] Kevin: The reason I’m asking is because that phrase seems to describe, and again we’ll get back on topic in a minute, but seems to describe the world of what we today call independent media.
It’s as if they all internalized that phrase.
[00:16:55] Emanuel: Probably has something to do… Eric  Bischoff worked with Ted Turner. Ted [00:17:00] Turner had his own media channels and probably everybody starts off… from a good place. They want to change the world, but when they look at the statistics and you so see 10 hits with a normal headline and then 200 hits with a click bait title.
[00:17:20] Kevin: Yeah.
[00:17:21] Emanuel: You go for the clicks, you go for the… you look at the data and that kind of… dictates where you are going.
Now, back to Eric  Bischoff and WWF and WCW. WWF… Vince McMahon was making… was doing whatever he want essentially. And obviously some people, some talent were not happy with him.
Eric  Bischoff managed to persuade some wrestlers to join WCW from WWF. It started off with… the biggest one was Macho Man [00:18:00] Randy Savage, and then a couple others followed through. One… the pinnacle I would say, and one of the most iconic moments in television was when Hulk Hogan joined that division. And Hulk Hogan was… he’s still one of the most well known wrestlers in the world.
We knew him all over Europe, he played in some movies. He was a character that we know… he’s from America. Everybody knew a character from America. Maybe people didn’t know exactly what he was doing, but they knew about him.
So that was big essentially, and also how he transitioned and how he came into that division.
The story is what fascinates me till today because it’s one of the best stories ever put in place on television at least, and it was built up throughout a couple of months, a year, [00:19:00] and so forth. It didn’t exactly happen overnight.
And that’s why we didn’t understand this back then. We heard about other wrestlers, but we didn’t see them on TV because they weren’t on WCW.
They were fighting in WWF, and then all of a sudden they came to WCW. I learned about Scott Hall and Kevin Nash, which were Diesel and Razor Ramon. Now, they were fighting under those character names in WWF.
When they transitioned, they didn’t own the copyright for the name, so the names stayed with WWF and Vince McMahon simply replaced them with different people, which was not as same.
It was like very kind of thing…
[00:19:41] Kevin: Is it like in a soap opera where they say, and the character of so-and-so is now played by this person?
[00:19:47] Emanuel: Exactly like that. Exactly like that. And Vince McMahon, he is… obviously when you are at that level, you don’t understand the paradigm sometimes that the world is right now.
[00:20:00] I remember reading somewhere that when Facebook became popular, he learned… somebody told him that WWE should be on Facebook because there’s so many people and there’s an opportunity to expand there and all those things. And he said, okay, so he sent someone to Facebook to ask Facebook for a million dollar for WWE to open a page on Facebook.
We’re talking 20 something years ago, right? One story.
But coming back to WCW, we had… The Outsiders were called, essentially Kevin Nash and Scott Hall, which… Kevin Nash is a Hollywood actor. He plays in some movies every now and then. He’s a big fellow.
And he was… they were the perfect characters people love to hate, so you really, really love to hate them. And they were like not fighting. They simply [00:21:00] came in, interrupting matches, throwing of the chairs, playing, messing around with the commentary. They were like really really messing up, but they weren’t doing anything, and that buildup was maybe through a couple of months, so it didn’t happen overnight.
That was also exciting, especially for me. I was waiting for one hour each week to see what was going on. What do these guys do anymore? And at one point they were pissing everyone off and they got into a fight with Sting, Lex Luger, and Macho Man.
So they challenged them to a three man match. They were just two. And they said they’re going to have a third man, who was the third man? Everybody was asking who was the  third man. It turned out to be Hulk Hogan.
That moment also Hulk Hogan turned heel. So in wrestling you have two types of characters, essentially. Babyface, which is the good guy, and heel the bad guy.
Hulk Hogan was the [00:22:00] babyface and has been. He was at the crossroad of his career. He was well known, but he wasn’t doing that well with WWF. He made some… I think he made some movies that flopped, so he was “meh” in his career.
So coming to a smaller division and choosing to become heal could have been a… it’s a career breaker move essentially.
That turned out amazing. So that’s when he turned to Hollywood Hogan. That’s the gimmick. When he was dressed in black, he formed NWO, which was the New World Order. It was just the three guys. But soon they started getting more and more people joining them and they were like the bad guys, and the bad guys that you love to hate.
And that spawned into Sting one of the most loved wrestlers in the entire world, changed his character a little bit as well. He was the only [00:23:00] one that used to stand for… against NWO, just by himself. He turned into Crow Sting. He was playing…
[00:23:06] Kevin: Stand against NWO?
[00:23:08] Emanuel: Yeah, just one man. Imagine…
[00:23:11] Kevin: Who was NWO?
[00:23:12] Emanuel: New World Order.
The group formed by Hulk Hogan and these guys, The Outsiders.
[00:23:19] Kevin: Oh, okay, okay.
[00:23:21] Emanuel: They formed their own group. They call themselves NWO.
So you can you imagine a 10-year-old, an 11-year-old watching these on television right now, it’s like amazing. And you some… some were pay-per-view. So you didn’t actually see them live and they didn’t even display some footage.
They were just video footage. They were just displaying stills… photos from the event. And, everything was going on in your in your head, essentially. But I even remember now the commentary, the passion and the excitement that they had, so that adds [00:24:00] up.
Remember, maybe people grew up with that. I didn’t. So it was something extra for me, something that I learned from a lot. And that book, Controversy Creates Cash was very instrumental in me realizing how actually things are in North America.
I remember at one point, Eric Bischoff, this guy was telling about his life and he had a job, good job, and then he lost it. He didn’t had any money, so he went and did construction and in two years he made half a million dollars or something like that. And I was thinking like, how can you do so much money from construction?
Whereas my report was what I knew about constructions back home, not what things are… how things are in North America right now, where you could make some good money in one or two years in construction if you work hard and find the right team and the right deals, [00:25:00] but that’s something that I learned on a personal level.
So this thing, the WCW story, their gimmicks, taking the heel, Hulk Hogan, essentially conquering, the most bluff position of your enemy, which was WWF. Bringing him to your division, turning him heel, the bad guy and make run of it, is an amazing story.
So that’s what still fascinates me today. That story, the buildup. It went on to… and in a… the most North American capitalistic way at one point in WCW was purchased by WWE.
So Vince McMahon actually bought that division because the story faded, they didn’t put much interest into it. At [00:26:00] one point NWO was bigger than the rest of the division, and even that split into two.
They were fighting each other and it kind of turned into that soap opera. Not the one that spark the interest. And what happened is, they purchased it. Most fight… most wrestlers went and performed in WWE.
They had so many talent that they split Monday… Raw, and SmackDown, and a few other shows.
I’m not exactly sure how that was structured and how it is today because things change. But that’s essentially the story that attracted me.
Sting, my favorite wrestler actually didn’t went with WWE. He only played in 2018 or 2019. I think he did a couple of matches in WWE just because.
He went on to [00:27:00] fight in a few separate, in the more independent divisions. TNA – Total Nonstop Action was the… natural… they inherited… most wrestlers that didn’t went to WWE from WCW and they had their own… success… for a while.
Nothing can beat the thrill of a 10-year-old European kid who discovered wrestling by himself and was waiting each Monday… or each Friday evening to see what was going on in the world of sports entertainment.
And I learned a lot, and I still watch every now and then because… it’s entertainment. At the end of the day, we know that Superman doesn’t exist but we like to watch the movies where he flies around the [00:28:00] world, needs the sun to recharge, and fight bad guys from different parts of the galaxy.
I approach wrestling sports entertainment the same way. I love when they do those gimmicks, when they… I love the story, I love… they’re very good actors as well, right? You’ve seen their interpretation. So they’re amazing in what they can… how they can perform, and especially excellent athletes, excellent athletes.
And there’s some top… professional fighters as well. We all heard of Brock Lesnar. He’s actually one of the guys that can… take everyone on the planet essentially in any style of fighting. And he’s a world wrestling champion. He chose that.
We also… one of… Kurt Angle was… he still is one of the most popular wrestlers, and he had a… he was an Olympic medalist in 1992 [00:29:00] representing the United States at…
[00:29:02] Kevin: In what sport?
[00:29:03] Emanuel: Greek or Roman wrestling.
[00:29:05] Kevin: Oh, so he went from…
[00:29:07] Emanuel: Yeah.
[00:29:08] Kevin: Competitive wrestling to performative wrestling.
[00:29:11] Emanuel: Yes yes yes, Kurt Angle. And he, Kurt Angle, I think he had a couple of matches. I don’t remember if in the Olympics or in performance wrestling with his spine, fractured or something like that.
So, some amazing stories that… as well… coming back to the movie, The Wrestler tells a sad story. We also know about some sad… events and some sad stories within the wrestling community.
I can only think about Chris Benoit right now, which is a wrestler that I admired. Turns out he was from Canada, from Montreal. And he committed suicide after killing his family. Some others have died. Bret or [00:30:00] Owen Hart, I forgot which one fell from the ceiling… in the nineties or the eighties, something like that.
[00:30:13] Kevin: During a performance?
[00:30:14] Emanuel: Yeah, during live. So he fell and…
[00:30:16] Kevin: Wow.
[00:30:16] Emanuel: … he reputured his spine, I think, and he died.
And there’s some sad stories that are more or less well known. Scott Hall, I just mentioned his name earlier. Razor Ramon in WWF. And then he fight under, he fought under his real name, Scott Hall when he came to WCW. He was also… coming back and forth, he was struggling with mental health, with the injuries and with the addiction.
The addiction from painkillers. Everything started from painkillers, right? Because to perform those…
[00:30:49] Kevin: Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard about wrestlers is that they become somewhat experts in pharmaceuticals.
[00:30:56] Emanuel: If I move myself, if I move this chair here, from here [00:31:00] to there, my spine’s going to… my back is going to hurt. Can you imagine like fighting nonstop for a couple of days, weeks, even years?
And then you say always start small. Let me take a pill to help with my back pain. And then, oh, my arm is sore. Or I’ve twisted my ankle. Let me get some more, some more, some more. And at one point to become addicted essentially, and went back and forth.
There’s some cool documentaries for whoever’s interested in learning more. It’s a sad story. He passed away during COVID time. He had a good… comeback. As well received in the Hall of Fame.
But for me, those are characters that I grew up with… or without… there’s nothing that would tell you… hey, somebody from East Europe knows about Scott Hall and he’s one of his heroes, or at least one of the characters that he used to follow, he used to love to hate because, was one [00:32:00] of those love hate relationship.
They were the bad guys, but man do you know when there’s a bad guy that you really like? And he had the attitude… the macho… probably toxic, macho attitude… with a toothpick always like… “let me tell something”. He was a big guy, nobody could say anything to him, and you love to hate these kind of people.
So it’s about the characters. It’s about the story always. It’s always about the story.
I sense you had a question or a comment that you wanted to make. Probably many.
[00:32:40] Kevin: You were talking about the performative aspects of wrestling and the thought I had is that there’s a number of wrestlers who made the wrestling to Hollywood transition.
And my question is… the idea of them being good actors in the world of wrestling, like is [00:33:00] that a part of the transition?
[00:33:03] Emanuel: Probably it helps. So when you’re in the entertainment world… that’s why it’s called sports entertainment because it’s…
[00:33:12] Kevin: It is entertainment. I mean, just straight up. And I’m not saying that in a derogatory way, it’s entertainment.
[00:33:18] Emanuel: Of course.
No, no. Yeah. That’s why they do that. And that’s why people join and that’s why some people are passionate. That’s why I think because I saw those kids and how they act when a wrestler comes, even somebody that they hate, I haven’t seen that in American football or in basketball or in baseball.
It’s just something… I didn’t relate. Whereas, compared to me, when I grew up idolizing football players, when I was a kid, I love my favorite player when I was a kid was Ronaldo Nazario, the Brazilian Ronaldo… and then I grew up with Roberto Baggio. I grew up with van Basten, the Dutch player… that era… Savicevic, Hagi… Romanian guy… [00:34:00] many… athletes that I idolize even today, I got goosebumps when I think about them and how they were like magicians on the field.
I sense that’s the same thing with sports.
Now coming back to your question, you are in the entertainment world. You can, when you are at the top, you can easily transition to movies, to music, to sports, to everything that’s entertaining related because you have set… they call it transferable skills.
When you know how to perform in front of a camera, then you can easily go and do this, this, and that as well, because 80% you already have what it takes to be successful in there.
And then you have the hard work. You need to find the… you need to be at the right time as well. You need to have, find the right people. Of course, but they tend to the best ones, they tend to go. There’s many wrestlers that tried and didn’t do well. Sting, for example, he [00:35:00] played in one or two movies, but he was mediocre, although he said at one point that he really wanted to be in Hollywood.
Whereas his buddy, Hulk Hogan was world famous.
[00:35:12] Kevin: I think that phenomenon is across pretty much every industry. No matter what the industry is, professional sports, podcasting, wrestling, acting. There’s a very small number of people who are the A team players, if you will, and there’s a whole bunch of people who are the B team players.
And that’s just the… it almost seems like a natural phenomenon that things organize themselves that way because they do it everywhere. So yeah, the guys who were the A team players in the world of wrestling were able to make the transition into Hollywood. And I can remember an interview with The Rock where he was describing… he was in an episode of Star Trek Voyager many many years ago, early in his acting career.
And he is talking about what it took to get that role. [00:36:00]
[00:36:01] Emanuel: I don’t know what he took. I’m not familiar with that interview.
[00:36:05] Kevin: He played a character who was a prisoner gladiator. Are you familiar with Star Trek Voyager?
[00:36:14] Emanuel: Which one’s Voyager? I tend to…
[00:36:17] Kevin: That’s the Catherine Janeway one… Seven of Nine…
[00:36:21] Emanuel: I see. Yeah.
[00:36:22] Kevin: So in the particular episode, these people had captured the character of Seven of Nine played by Jerry Ryan, and she was being turned into a prisoner gladiator, and she had to fight a match against this other prisoner gladiator who was played by The Rock. That was the storyline.
And in his description, he went to a lot of auditions. He finally got callback after callback. He finally got the part, but they still… he and Jerry still had to choreograph their fight scene multiple times so that it looked fluid for the camera. Like it was still work. Like he made it in the door, but there was [00:37:00] still a lot of work to do.
[00:37:02] Emanuel: And, what got him through the door was the skills that he already had as a professional athlete. He got a role as a gladiator.
There’s a different… another wrestler… very successful… Batista. I forgot his first name right now. He played in James Bond movies in a couple of good ones.
And right now he lost a lot of weight. Just because he wanted to get some roles, not based on his looks because he was a big, massive guy, the one with tattoos all over. I forgot what the other movies he played right now. I can only remember essentially two.
But he was in more, several good ones, and they go through a lot of effort actually. We forget right now. We think that it’s easy for them. No, it’s not easy. You can’t do whatever those guys that you see on [00:38:00] television, you may think you can do.
You have the capacity to do it if you put your mind and body and work to it. But no, at this stage it’s fair to say that none, you and I, Kevin can’t do anything that… let’s say Brad Pitt or any of what Leonardo DiCaprio does.
Although we are more or less the same age. And I would say that both of us are better… are more good looking, better good looking than…
[00:38:26] Kevin: I appreciate the…
[00:38:27] Emanuel: Brad and Leo.
[00:38:29] Kevin: Not only do I recognize that I can’t do that, I have no interest in even trying. That’s just not the world I live in.
[00:38:40] Emanuel: Neither did I. I like to… I like to play sports. I don’t play them as much as I would like, and I think it’s good to play sports.
[00:38:54] Kevin: Yeah. I completely agree. Now, as a child, I was not very athletic. I [00:39:00] was not a very fast runner. So the sports that I gravitated to tended to be individual sports.
There was a time when I was in my early twenties when I was actually… a very good quote unquote recreational skier, to the point where I actually considered entering a couple competitions. I didn’t do it, but I thought about it. But those were the kind of sports that I gravitated towards.
[00:39:23] Emanuel: What is recreational skiing?
[00:39:26] Kevin: Recreational skiing is where you just buy a lift ticket, go up on the hill and ski. There’s no competitive aspect to it.
[00:39:34] Emanuel: I see.
[00:39:34] Kevin: You’re just… You’ve got a trail map and you know the… but I mean that was a time where… are you familiar with the world of skiing?
I’ve actually forgotten exactly what the shapes are, but there’s like green circle, orange I think is, no, not orange, blue is a square, and then the black diamond, and these are various levels of difficulty for the various trails. And that was a time when a black diamond [00:40:00] was not any level of intimidation.
Like I had gotten good to the point where black diamond runs were interesting and exciting. But the whole point of that is for whatever reason, I personally never gravitated to team sports. I gravitated towards things that I did as an individual. And I got into the… I guess I would call it the physical aspect of it.
But I never really got into doing the physical aspect of it on a team with other people. I guess I didn’t play well with others. I don’t know.
[00:40:36] Emanuel: Depends on many, many aspects. So recreational skiing… I didn’t, my brain was off for a second. Now I realize what… kind of question I asked.
I think we’re at time and I don’t think I…
[00:40:53] Kevin: Well, I do have one kind of overarching question that’s nagging at me and it’s the comment I made [00:41:00] earlier about how some of the people in what we call independent media seem to have read that book.
And I can’t help but wondering if the world of performative wrestling is actually shaping the way we do politics and news.
I mean, I just see so many similarities. I don’t know where to go with this train of thought, but like, damn, what are your thoughts?
[00:41:25] Emanuel: I just checked, so that book was published in 2006. I’m not sure that they read the book, but they definitely have seen wrestling… and not just passing by, but at one point I think a hundred percent everybody who sees wrestling at on television stops and just watch by themself for a couple of minutes to understand, okay, what’s going on here? What do these guys do exactly?
[00:41:54] Kevin: Yeah, that’s, yeah, I can see that. That’s probably very true.
[00:41:56] Emanuel: Do they actually hit? That guy is taking so many [00:42:00] punches that can’t be real. Right?
[00:42:02] Kevin: Right.
[00:42:02] Emanuel: He’s throwing himself out the ladder. That can’t be real. And then he saw also the gimmicks and how they turn their faces. Mostly if you watch my promos on for all my other businesses, my YouTube, they all seem like I do a wrestling promo, of WrestleMania, you know, all the thumbnails, all the seals are like different faces that I make like that.
So probably that had an influence… how they were promoting their events, very loud, very… articulate, and they were gesticulating and using their hands a lot.
So probably anybody has seen a little bit of wrestling and ask themself, okay, what’s going on here? I believe that’s most media people kind of like got slowly started implementing some of the things that they’ve seen on television, including wrestling as well.
I believe that has an influence. That book, not necessarily, but overall, [00:43:00] Controversy Creates Cash is something that I heard before, knowing and reading that book. So…
[00:43:06] Kevin: Yeah, that makes sense.
[00:43:09] Emanuel: I don’t think I did probably the best description of what wrestling is, but I did an excellent description of what wrestling is for me, how it impacted me, how I learned about it, and that’s something I wanted to share with our audience.
Any final thoughts or ideas on this topic, Kevin? And why? Why aren’t you more familiar with wrestling?
[00:43:37] Kevin: Um…
[00:43:40] Emanuel: Who’s your favorite wrestler?
[00:43:43] Kevin: Well, the only wrestlers that I really know are the ones who made the transition to Hollywood. Even going back… I know Mr. T, I know Hulk Hogan, I know The Rock.
I don’t know the ones who didn’t make that [00:44:00] transition.
I just didn’t pay attention.
[00:44:03] Emanuel: Fair, fair.
Well, until the next episode, which we don’t know exactly what the topic is, but we can assure you it’s going to be very interesting. My name is Emanuel.
[00:44:16] Kevin: I’m Kevin.
And again, I want to remind all of the viewers and listeners, please go to curiouspundits.com, find out where you can see, and or listen to us… like, subscribe, and all that good stuff.
[00:44:30] Emanuel: Until the next episode…
[00:44:33] Kevin: Take care.