For whatever reason, I love writing about wrestling. It fascinates me, even as bad as WWE is. When I last wrote about canceling my WWE Network subscription, I mentioned the Network was moving to Peacock anyway. I questioned if I could ever have a Peacock subscription if it meant supporting the McMahon family.
As Val Kilmer said in Tombstone, “It appears my hypocrisy knows no bounds.” I’m sitting pretty on a free trial of Peacock Premium, and it’s WrestleMania week – the biggest week of the year in our cherished fake sport – so I’ve consumed WWE content.
WWE’s move to Peacock has been in the news lately – even making The New York Times – because fans have noticed that racist content is being edited out of old events. The most notable removals: Roddy Piper wearing half blackface against Bad News Brown at WrestleMania VI in 1990, Triple H and D-Generation X wearing blackface while making fun of the Nation of Domination in the late-90s, and Vince McMahon saying the N-word in 2005.
All of that is awful. Even as a kid without a full grasp on societal issues, I still understood that stuff was wrong. As an adult, it’s mind blowing and infuriating to know other actual human beings thought it was cool to do that. Peacock is reviewing more than 17,000 hours of footage to clean up – and thinking of just the various moments of racist, homophobic and sexist commentary throughout WWE history, I do not envy whoever has to sift through all of this madness. [efn_note]Beyond crass commentary (Jerry Lawler), there’s a lot of racist content to work with. Pretty much every Asian aside from probably Ricky Steamboat has been a racist caricature (Funaki was renamed Kung Funaki at one point). Unclear if Jinder Mahal’s 2017 promo on Shinsuke Nakamura’s face (“You always ROOK the same!”) and referencing “GODZIRRA” will be cut out. And what about the Mexicools riding a lawn mower to the ring? Or Arab-American Muhammad Hassan in 2004 having masked men attack Undertaker and choke him with piano wire in an attack clearly meant to play on post-9/11 fears.[/efn_note]
Maybe I’m an idiot, but I don’t agree with Peacock editing out this content. In fact, I think Peacock editing out WWE’s racist content is a performative action that accomplishes nothing and is not rooted in any true desire to be productive and good. It’s corporate, performative, PR bullshit.
I’m not going to sit here and say there’s some great integrity that must be preserved by presenting WWE’s filth in its original, unaltered form. I am, however, much more into the idea of putting disclaimers on programs like Disney is doing rather than cutting scenes out completely. I think there’s more to be learned and more productive conversations to be had by leaving the content out there for folks to see and understand where we came from rather than erasing it. WWE also added a disclaimer to programs featuring Chris Benoit on the Network so it’s not without precedent.
And as it applies to WWE and the McMahon family, I straight up do not agree with allowing these trashy carnies to benefit from this type of revisionist history. If you’re giving money to WWE, a product where Vince McMahon has ultimate control over everything on the screen, then I think folks should know the full depths of his depravity. I believe it’s important to see how casualized WWE’s racism was, especially since the examples I mentioned were all supposed to be played for comedy – and DX and Roddy Piper were the good guys.[efn_note]Not entirely surprising, considering in wrestling Daniel Bryan was a bad guy just for being an environmentalist in recent years. And Bret Hart was a villain in the 1990s for criticizing American health care and gun violence.[/efn_note] The heroes in this exaggerated soap opera were doing this shit! Don’t give WWE the chance to hide from that hurtful legacy. And this is without getting into the fact foreign-born performers and people of color have long been portrayed as villains in WWE programming…because they’re foreign and people of color. Not sure how Peacock navigates that one.
I also find it odd that Hulk Hogan, a man whose racism was caught on tape (he said the N-word a bunch and that he’s “a racist, to a point”) and never addressed with a sincere apology, was advertised for this week’s Hall of Fame ceremony and is the guest host of WrestleMania – both exclusive to Peacock.
So certain moments from WWE’s past are too racist to include on the streaming service, but prominently featuring an admitted racist isn’t?
It gets more wild to me.
Peacock is operated by NBCUniversal, which is a subsidiary of Comcast. Comcast is one of the companies that suspended donations to the 147 Republicans who objected to certifying Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump, citing the terrorist attack on the United States Capitol on January 6th. As I wrote in my post on canceling my WWE Network subscription:
On January 9th, a CNBC article about the dark money groups behind the seditionist rally pointed out that it was largely organized by Women for America First. While that group’s donors are unknown, America First Policies did disclose in 2019 that it gave $25,000 to Women for America First. America First Policies is chaired by Linda McMahon, former head of the Small Business Administration under President Donald Trump.
Linda McMahon is, of course, the wife of WWE Chairman and CEO Vince McMahon, and former CEO of the professional wrestling company herself.
Two weeks after Comcast suspended donations to those Republicans who supported Trump’s big lie, it was announced that WWE Network was being rolled into Peacock on a five-year deal worth more than $1 billion. So Linda worked for Trump, helped fund the rally that gave him a platform to incite violent insurrection, and two weeks later we’re making sure her family stays very wealthy off a massive streaming rights deal?
I also wrote:
You may have seen in the news last year that America First Action, the Super PAC affiliated with America First Policies, announced $18.5 million in ad buys after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis declared WWE an essential business so they could continue TV tapings in Orlando.
So they bribed DeSantis to keep their fake sport on TV during the pandemic. But that’s okay! Comcast won’t raise a fuss with corporate scumbaggery.[efn_note]As another contributor to this site pointed out to me, “If we’re being honest, NBCUniversal is basically responsible for this whole Trump thing in the first place by giving him The Apprentice as a platform.”[/efn_note]
In fact, speaking of corporate scumbaggery, after Saudi government agents brutally murdered Jamal Khashoggi and tried to cover it up, WWE ignored pleas to cancel their upcoming show in Saudi Arabia. They held that one and three others, assisting on Saudi Arabia’s propaganda efforts and collecting that sweet, sweet blood money. But that’s okay!
And look at Hulk Hogan. He’s the guest host of WrestleMania this year alongside Titus O’Neil. Allow me to once again share my old content like I’m some brilliant scholar:
WWE dumped his ass in 2015 when it came out that he had liberally used the N-word and admitted that he was “a racist, to a point” in his leaked sex tape. He was welcomed back before the Extreme Rules PPV in 2018 and addressed the entire locker room. People can absolutely apologize and grow, but I tend to side with Titus O’Neil that if an apology includes bits about how you don’t remember saying things and didn’t know you were being recorded, it’s hard to take the apology seriously. Instead of hearing what Black performers had to say about his return and acknowledging his apology was lacking and he should do better, Hogan said that wrestlers who didn’t accept his apology don’t understand the brotherhood of the business.
Now Hogan and Titus Worldwide are working together. Titus is a pro so he hasn’t disparaged Hogan in discussing the upcoming event, but clickbait site Sportskeeda had an article about Titus liking a tweet dumping on the Hulkster.
A racist who has shown no true contrition for his conduct is plastered all over Peacock. But hey, at least we can’t see Roddy Piper in blackface 31 years ago.
And that’s not to say blackface was okay 31 years ago (it obviously wasn’t) or to act like somehow our freedom to enjoy godawful WrestleMania matches is being horribly infringed upon (in addition to being racist, that match was so bad and never seeing it again is no great loss to the universe). But come on.
WWE is a terrible company and Comcast is fine making money off of them. Comcast or NBCUniversal or whoever is fine banking that common folk don’t remember or don’t realize Hogan is a racist so they can use historic images of him to advertise classic WrestleMania events on their shitty app for nostalgia points, and prominently feature his face on the Hall of Fame cover image to rope people in.
I find it performative that content from decades ago is being edited to show that NBCUniversal is socially conscious and can get the PR that they’re righting the wrongs of the past. Meanwhile, trash ass conduct within the last few years is all ignored because they don’t actually care.
I keep coming back to Roddy Piper in blackface at WrestleMania VI. The main event from that show? Ultimate Warrior defeating Hulk Hogan for the WWE Championship. Yes, the same Ultimate Warrior who went on to mock Martin Luther King Jr. and criticize the national holiday honoring him, in addition to various other highly offensive comments over the years.
Hogan-Warrior was one of the Mania main events prominently advertised on Peacock in the weeks leading up to this year’s event. Warrior even has an award named after him given out at the Hall of Fame ceremony – exclusively on Peacock! But at least nobody wore blackface.
Unsolicited Opinion 