Professional Wrestling

/ 20 November 2023

Professional wrestling’s Wild West-like origins kick up a lot of dust in Jon Langmead’s history of the sport’s rough housers and con artists, Ballyhoo!

Books/Culture/Featured: Top of Home Page/Features/Television

Vince McMahon and the Damaging Impact of Failing Upward

Jon Langmead

/ 24 April 2023

WWE’s Vincent McMahon has brazenly failed upward over and over again, profoundly impacting (and damaging) American culture along the way, argues Abraham Riesman in the biography Ringmaster.

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Muhammad Ali and the Day Fans Pelted the Ring With Trash

Jon Langmead

/ 7 June 2016

In his new book, Ali vs. Inoki, Josh Gross untangles the complicated history of the 1976 meeting of two legends -- and a failed experiment.

Culture/Featured: Top of Home Page/Features/Sports

Professional Wrestling, Racism, Transracial Identity, and Why We All Need to Lighten Up

PopMatters Staff

/ 19 August 2015

In contrast to our ossified conceptions of race in other aspects of life, race in professional wrestling is a gimmick, a performance of an identity, which one can adopt or drop as part of the game.

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In Defense of Openly Enjoying Professional Wrestling

Colin McGuire

/ 12 February 2014

All it took was a trip to the Royal Rumble to see how similar the warped reality of the WWE is to The Kardashians. Or The Real World. Or Duck Dynasty. Or Honey Boo Boo.

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