The white working class hero trope in pro wrestling (Part 2 of 3)

 This is part two of a three-part series about sports and the white working class, with an emphasis on professional wrestling. This part discusses the trope of the white working class hero in professional wrestling.

More than perhaps any other sport, professional wrestling embodies the virtues of the white working class by uplifting heroes with backstories rooted in the trope of the white working class hero. Stone Cold Steve Austin was one of the biggest stars of the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. He was known for wearing a black leather vest and jeans, and had proclivities for shotgunning cans of beer, giving the finger on live TV, and overall sticking it to the man.

One of Steve Austin's most infamous rivalries was against Vince McMahon, the CEO of the World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. (WWE), who constantly pressed working-class Steve Austin to clean up and go corporate. In one memorable encounter, Austin at first pretends to cede to McMahon’s demands by wearing a well-tailored suit and tie and agreeing to change his ways. To thundering boos, Stone Cold tells the crowd that he realized that “little old Steve Austin . . . a redneck from South Texas”, could never defeat Vince McMahon, “a man born with a silver spoon in his mouth, a man with a multi-million dollar company, an entrepreneur, a leader.”

However, at the last moment Austin changes his tone and rips off the layers of his suit to reveal a black t-shirt, with cut-off sleeves, featuring his signature phrase “HELL YEAH” and a skull. Stone Cold addressed the stunned McMahon, saying:

You gotta remember son, what you see is what you get with Stone Cold Steve Austin. I ain’t fancy. Am I a redneck from South Texas? You’re damn right. And I ain’t gonna change for nobody.

Although Steve Austin knows his corporate overlord wants him to sell out, he turns down all the privileges that would have come with being in the managerial class because to do so would be to abandon his working class values and instead adopt the values and respectability of the elite in the ways he speaks, dresses, and acts. Because of his working class roots in South Texas, Steve Austin may not talk right, dress right, or act right; but dammit, he is who he is and no businessman from Connecticut can take that away from him.

This is far from the first time that a white working class hero has been involved in staged class conflict under the guise of professional wrestling. Take for example this verbal takedown by the white working class hero of the 1980s, Dusty Rhodes, against his arch nemesis, the Rolex wearin’, diamong ring wearin’, limousine ridin’, and jet flyin’ Ric Flair:

You don’t know what hard times are, daddy. Hard times are when the textile workers around this country are out of work, they got four or five kids and can’t pay their wages, can’t buy their food. Hard times are when the autoworkers are out of work and they tell ‘em to go home. And hard times are when a man has worked at a job for thirty years—THIRTY YEARS—and they give him a watch, kick him in the butt and say “hey a computer took your place daddy,” that’s hard times! That’s hard times! And Ric Flair you put hard times on this country by takin’ Dusty Rhodes out, that’s hard times. And we all had hard times together, and I admit, I don’t look like the athlete of the day supposed to look. My belly’s just a lil’ big, my heinie’s a lil’ big, but brother, I am bad. And they know I’m bad.

It’s hard to avoid the allure of Rhodes’ words. Is this an impassioned speech from a Bernie Sanders-style populist with a Texas twang? Or a professional wrestler ready to chokehold his opponent in staged combat? It doesn’t really matter. The point is that Rhodes was a star at the top of his profession, but like Steve Austin he never forgot who he was or where he came from.

The lower-class virtues born from the struggles that stars like Austin and Rhodes had growing up white, rural, and working class are the same ones that gave them popularity on the wrestling circuit or give white working class politicians today a boost at the polls. There is something inherently appealing about a person who reaches the highest levels of their profession, but never forgets about the little guy along the way.

This is the total opposite of what is normally expected in the sports world. Where cultural and economic elites love a bootstraps story, they hate when a sports star acts in conformance with what the upper echelons fear from the working class: violence, outward class expression, and a lack of decorum and respectability.

To elites, becoming a sports star is supposed to improve you, because wealth is supposed to instill the values and virtues of the elite. Athletes who know “hard times” are supposed to forget those and stand for the national anthem even when they feel they were left behind and have no affinity for it.

Pro wrestling may therefore be an anomaly in the sports world because it rewards athletes who proudly reflect working-class values. The normal assignment of cultural capital is entirely reversed because it doesn’t help stars to be respectable or espouse the values of elites in their conduct. Indeed doing so may actually hurt them. While other sports stars are expected to adhere to the conventions of the elites, pro wrestlers eschew them.

Elites may continue to turn their noses up at pro wrestling, but the sport is still a place where working class whites can find affinity with certain wrestlers. Every time Steve Austin or Dusty Rhodes went to the mat, they were there to do staged violence against the elites, the enemies of the working class.

Examining these white working class heroes gives elites insight on how the white working class responds to criticism. They doesn’t like being judged by cultural and economic elites for how they look, act, or talk. They don’t like it when their “hard times” are diminished because they refuse to leave behind their rural and working class roots – spiritually or physically – even though they may know their jobs and communities will eventually be the victims of the steady onslaught of technology and globalization. Though these white working class heroes may not espouse elite respectability, they instead exude a working-class definition of respectability which means never turning your back on where you came from or changing who you are because of wealth or success.