My older brother and I are three years apart. By the time he was ten and I was seven there was very little he wanted to do with me. Wrecking my stuff—absolutely. He could spare 15 minutes between riding his bike up and down the street and drinking half a liter of Mountain Dew to go into my room and trash my Barbies or “rearrange” my stuffed animals. So. Many. Furry. Butts. Playing with me was no longer option (not one he did without parental coercion). I didn’t get it then, of course. I was hilarious, obnoxious, shrill, sometimes bossy, often whiny when things didn’t go my way, and ceaselessly needy. What’s not to like? I considered myself an asset to any friend group (sure, you can make a “putting the ‘ass’ in asset joke here. I would). Anyway, I don’t blame him; it was the natural progression of growing up. And there was a point when even I couldn’t pretend to be psyched about watching he and his friend, Andy, trade baseball cards. But one common area we held onto was tuning in to watch the WWF (World Wrestling Federation) on Saturday mornings to make sure the fate of the nation was intact.
The 1980s marked the pinnacle of this odd genre of television I’d call athletainment—a mixture of sports and, in this case, cheeseball entertainment values. Not that it wasn’t glorious, because it truly was a perfect marriage of schlocky spectacle and real athletic prowess, which was the part that kept it just interesting and unpredictable enough to follow the matches and players like they were part of a deranged soap opera.
The WWF came about as an extension of an existing sports franchise, Capitol Wrestling Corporation (CWC), launched in the 1950s by Vincent J. McMahon. By the early-1980s, McMahon’s son, Vincent K. McMahon (no points for originality) bought out the CWC, along with his wife and a few other partners, They relaunched it as Titan Sports, Inc. and trademarked the moniker WWF (a shortening of the name World Wide Wrestling Federation that had previously been in circulation). McMahon embarked on a mission that would not only make the WWF the premier wrestling organization in the country, but would fundamentally change the athletainment business model.
One of McMahon’s opening salvos involved syndicating all WWF programming on networks across the country. Up until this time, wrestling matches were largely territorial with promoters getting to control revenue and bookings within their geographic domains. Syndication dissolved this model completely, which caused a lot of grumbling, but also check-chasing and so it sort of worked out. The other move McMahon made was to channel income from advertising, TV deals, and tape sales into luring talent away from rival promoters. In this fashion, McMahon built a stable of galvanizing characters that went head to head each week. On the line: ego and bragging rights; a super shiny championship belt; and the very soul of the republic.
The high holy era of professional wrestling intersected with late-twentieth century Cold War politics. President Reagan liberally seeded the distrust of Eastern block nations. If we took our eyes off the ball for even a second, those bad guys from Russia and Iran would swoop in to steal our nuclear secrets, cut off our oil supply, and outlaw Bruce Springsteen and dancing and probably apple pie, too!
Some of the WWF “villains” or “heels” as they were known in the biz included The Iron Sheik, a wrestler and actor whose real name was Hossein Khosrow Ali Vaziri. The match would have been over before any announcer could have successfully pronounced the first part of his name. The Iron Sheik brandished a classic thick, black “evil-doer” mustache. He wore boots with toes that curled up like the genie from Aladdin and a kaffiyeh, a traditional Middle Eastern headscarf that was not actually worn in Iran. In the world of the WWF there were zero points for accuracy and the public preferred it that way. Caricature, stereotype, and easily recognizable signifiers of “good/bad,” “right/wrong” won out along with punishing pile drives and flying elbow drops.
The Iron Sheik would swan into the ring to a baritone chorus of “boos” from the audience. He’d join his fellow heel, Nikolai Volkoff, his real name, Josip Hrvoje Peruzovic, who actually hailed from Croatia. Potato/tornado. Who’s to quibble? Volkoff strutted around in his red wrestling spandex shorts, a golden sickle and hammer stitched on the side, a black ushanka on his bald head. He’d grab the mic from the announcer and defiantly warble the Soviet Union’s national anthem. Honestly, he could have been singing “The Banana Boat” song in theatrical gibberish and not a single viewer would have known the difference. With the crowd’s screams of derision at a fever pitch, the Iron Sheik would get his two rials in. “Rush-AH ez NUMBER VUN! EE-ran ez NUMBER VUN!” And then he’d back off the mic to perform the act that every boy perfects by the age of seven: “USA,” says the Sheik with a sneer, before bringing the phlegmy deposit up to the top of his throat and turning his head. “Cahhhhhhhhhh-TEWWWWW!” The crowd predictably loses its damn mind. With the show started, the match could begin. By that point, the actual wrestling seemed like a bonus.
The rest of the WWF world was populated with protagonists and crooks that felt closer to the stupid cultural “stock types” from our everyday lives. Ted Dibiase, The Million Dollar Man, was a smug, conceited, handsome Richie-rich jerk who thumbed his nose at “the working stiffs” (that’s us!!). The Million Dollar Man wore sparkly tuxedos embossed with giant sequined money signs on the lapels and tossed oversized one-hundred dollar bills in the ring. If they would have let him drive a Porsche through the arena, you know he would have. Jerkity-rich-jerk! Rowdy Roddy Piper, a Canadian wrestler, played at being a hot-tempered, bullying Scotsman. I mean, sure. Why not? He took the ring dressed in a kilt and a white t-shirt with the phrase “Hot Rod!” on the front in one of those shiny, iron on plastic decals that were popular at novelty t-shirt kiosks in the malls at the time. Rowdy Roddy Piper made his entrance playing the bagpipes, which immediately made his opponent want to pummel him before he even started running his mouth.
Randy The Macho Man Savage was one of the more colorful WWF characters. He presented as a sort of flamboyant-IN A HIGHLY MASCULINE WAY, YOU GUYS!-cowboy, complete with the Stetsons and jackets sporting tons of fringe (THAT WAS SUPER MANLY, I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH!). The Macho Man spoke a lot like The Kool-Aid Man. “Ooooh yeaahhhhhh,” he’d growl into a microphone. Sometimes he’d refer to himself in the third person: “The MAHH-CHO Man is comin for you! Ooooh yeaahhhhh!” My brother and I mimicked him endlessly and everywhere—at the dinner table, in the car, once whispered in church, which was high-stakes given the location and that we were lousy at stifling our laughter. The Macho Man also enjoyed throwing down rap-smack-talk like, “I’m the tower of power, too sweet to be sour. I'm funky like a monkey. Sky's the limit and space is the place!” Why wasn’t he hired to write for Sesame Street? I have no idea.
The Macho Man moved between being a “heel” and a “face” or do-gooder. This gave him a kind of wild card edge even though it put my stomach in knots never quite knowing if he would “turn” and start making trouble with the other outlaw types. Was I the only seven-year old getting an ulcer from worrying about the moral integrity of a character on a wrestling show? Probably. Fortunately, we had a solid, reliable white hat in the mix. A guy who never let us down; a guy who stood for all the RIGHT THINGS: Freedom! The working stiff (that’s us!!!!)! More freedom, again! He was the WWF’s version of Captain America with his blond hair, blue eyes, and face-like-chiseled granite: Terry Gene Bollea, or more famously known as Hulk Hogan.
Hogan was a former American Wrestling Association athlete whom McMahon scooped up for his newly formed WWF franchise not long after Hogan’s small role in the film Rocky III. In a way, Hogan was the WWF’s Rocky-figure. A reliable hero who had no complicated backstory or fancy gimmicks. He was just a figure of classic male American manliness, so, basically the most fabricated character in the WWF. Hulk went peck to peck with every villain in the franchise without any dirty tricks or oily schemes. His was straight-up, grade-A, ass-kicking. Subtext: the American way. And if you missed that subtext, it was spelled out for you when The Hulkster marched down the aisle toward the ring to his own damn theme song, “Real American:”
I am a real American
Fight for the rights of every man
I am a real American
And fight for what's right
Fight for your life!1
There’s my brother and I in our living room, singing along, bowing our arms to flex like Hogan does, but actually looking like a couple of baby chimps who are just discovering their limbs. We are all in on Hulk Hogan and his shiny, slick biceps bulging and twitching, and his form of anti-Communist-anti-jerk-JUSTICE, and his display of manliness before the match even starts when he parades to the center of the ring and RIPS OFF HIS SHIRT! You think a few yards of material can contain the raw American energy that IS THE HULKSTER? No, ma’am. No, sir. Now, let’s see some miscreants eat turnbuckle!
In this way, I see that the WWF may have fed a bit of our adolescent desire for staged violence. If our parents had any qualms about what we were watching, they didn’t voice them. Fortunately for everyone, we were more invested in the stories and characters than trying to leap off the arm of the couch like Jimmy Super Fly Snuka. Besides, in these ongoing skirmishes there was always a winner and loser and both lived to fight another day. Besides, one of the quintessential takeaways of growing up 80s is that it’s far more satisfying to watch a bully get vanquished via humiliation than physical violence. I’m hoping that come November we’ll find that to be true once again.
Lens Zen!
Friends, if you have a pulse and something resembling a conscious, you were probably shaken by another flaming log tossed on the Mount Rushmore-sized situation known as “REALITY THESE DAYS.” I am with you. My head, heart, spirit are, shall we say, tender and there doesn’t seem to be enough balm to go around. But, I happened upon this character out on a walk the other morning—sleeping it off. What an excellent idea! Rest, breathe, hydrate, hug something huggable. Nourish your empathy. This is how we get to the other side. X!
That no one in the GOP has tried to license this song is further proof they are a bunch of “front office morons.”
Long after we were in the “everything is terrible” phase my best friend and I would meet up to watch this. And by meet up, I mean I’d bike over to his house; WWF was banned at my place.
We liked Macho Man, thought his GF was hot, and were blown away to learn that he and Leapin’ Lanny Poffo were actually brothers.
Rowdy Roddy Piper had ties to Portland, and so we (sorta) rooted for him too.
I've never watched this wrestling entertainment once. BUT you make it sound like so much fun! Thanks for all the details, Sheila! I missed out apparently