Dramatic scripts, choreographed moves, and smackdowns! For WWE, wrestling is not just a sport – it's entertainment.
In this episode, we'll be looking at the history of World Wrestling Entertainment, the company's ownership, and the many controversies it has faced over the years.
[00:00:04] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about WWE, World Wrestling Entertainment.
[00:00:29] It might be something you know a lot about, it might be something you know nothing about, but whatever category you’d put yourself in you can’t deny that the story of WWE is intriguing.
[00:00:41] It brings together sport, entertainment, theatre, drugs, murder, controversy and lots of very muscly men wearing not very much at all.
[00:00:51] So, let’s not waste a minute, let’s get this show on the road, as a wrestling promoter might say, and get right into the story of WWE.
[00:01:03] For the ancient Greeks, wrestling was the purest form of strength.
[00:01:08] Two men, wearing only a small loincloth around their waist, lined up opposite one another in a ring.
[00:01:16] They would move towards each other, trying to throw the other to the ground, and score points by holding them there, or forcing them into submission.
[00:01:26] There was no cheating allowed - no hitting or punching, no grabbing the genitals, no biting or putting your fingers in your opponent’s eyes. It was all about strength and agility.
[00:01:39] It was the most popular sport in Ancient Greece, and it had its fair share of stars - Milo of Croton and Leontiskos of Messene being two of the best known. And in 708 B.C it was the first non-running sport to be added to the Olympics, underlining its status in the minds of the Ancient Greeks as a pure and unadulterated expression of physical ability.
[00:02:08] Now, clearly, forms of wrestling have existed in practically every civilisation, this is by no means me suggesting that it was invented by the Ancient Greeks.
[00:02:19] If we stretch the definition of wrestling, you could even argue that this kind of fighting is what we see happening in the animal kingdom, either with lion cubs play fighting or stags, male deer, locking horns to assert their dominance.
[00:02:35] But we must move forward almost 3,000 years to the 1950s to begin today’s wrestling story, which starts with a New Yorker called Vince McMahon.
[00:02:48] Vince McMahon was a wrestling promoter, and the force behind a company called Capitol Wrestling Corporation.
[00:02:56] In the post-war period, wrestling was just starting to take off in the United States, but it was still a localised operation, where promoters in different regions handled all of the events, there was no centralised organisation that managed everything.
[00:03:14] McMahon sensed the potential of wrestling - it was fun to watch, it could be done indoors in a relatively small space, and–importantly–you only needed to have two cameras to film it, so it was quite simple and cheap to produce for the growing TV market.
[00:03:33] Little did McMahon know that he would be the start of what would go on to be one of America’s best known family businesses, and a multi-billion dollar one at that.
[00:03:45] Now, if you are something of a wrestling fan, and you are thinking, hang on, I know Vince McMahon but I didn’t realise he was that old, this Vince McMahon is a different one to the one you are probably thinking of.
[00:04:00] Following the American tradition of parents naming a son after the father, Vincent James McMahon, born in 1914, decided to name his second son, a boy who was born in 1945, also Vincent McMahon. Technically he had a slightly different name, the son was Vincent Kennedy McMahon, or Vince McMahon Junior, we could call him.
[00:04:25] However, a few months after the younger Vince McMahon was born, his parents separated, and the young boy went to live with his mother and her new husband, his stepfather.
[00:04:37] It wasn’t a happy situation.
[00:04:40] McMahon would later reveal that his stepfather was abusive towards him, and say that he regrets the fact that the man died before he could kill him.
[00:04:51] He lived cut off from his biological father, the elder Vince McMahon, not meeting him until he was 12 years old.
[00:04:59] Now, you might wonder why I’m telling you all this, but if you know anything about WWE, you’ll know about the importance of backstory, of trying to understand the experiences of the characters, understand the problems they face and the struggles they have gone through.
[00:05:19] The stories in WWE might be scripted, invented for dramatic purposes, but the backstory of the McMahon family was no dramatic invention.
[00:05:31] There was Vince McMahon Junior, a young boy who grew up for the first 12 years of his life not knowing his wrestling-promoter father.
[00:05:40] When he finally met his father, the pair grew very close, and Junior would later admit to idolising his father, and wanting to follow in his footsteps and enter into the world of wrestling.
[00:05:55] His father didn’t allow him to become an actual wrestler, but in 1969, at the age of 24, Junior was allowed to become a ring announcer and commentator, essentially the person who stands on the side of the ring announcing the entrance of the stars.
[00:06:14] From his position outside the ring, he grew within the company, taking on more and more responsibilities.
[00:06:22] Vince McMahon Junior was clearly a talented businessman, but he had had very differing views to his father about the direction in which the company should go.
[00:06:33] The older McMahon was more traditional, believing that the role of the wrestling promoter was to exist behind the scenes, helping direct and promote the show.
[00:06:44] McMahon Jr’s ambitions were greater.
[00:06:47] He wanted to turn the company into a mainstream sport, something that millions of people around the world would watch on live TV, attracting the biggest stars, and of course, making lots of money in the process.
[00:07:01] And, in 1982 the younger McMahon bought the company from his father, and it’s here that the trajectory of the company, and the sport as a whole, changes.
[00:07:15] Unlike in Ancient Greece, the wrestling that the McMahon family produced was already scripted and staged - the wrestlers took turns to put each other into different positions, the match is pre-planned, it is more entertainment than competitive sport, relying on backstories, and star wrestlers.
[00:07:36] Even before the younger McMahon took over, the sport had its fair share of stars.
[00:07:42] There was Andre the Giant, the French wrestler who weighed 220 kilograms and stood 224 cm tall. And there was Bruno Sammartino, or "Bruno Sammartino", an Italian-American wrestler who was given the nickname “The Strongest Man in The World”.
[00:08:00] But it would be McMahon Junior who would really sense the star potential of individual wrestlers to grow the sport, and after he took over the company from his father one of his main focuses was to cultivate and develop wrestlers with star potential.
[00:08:19] And there is no better example of a star cultivated by McMahon than Terry Gene Bollea.
[00:08:26] Now, if you don’t recognise this name, you probably know him by his stage name, Hulk Hogan.
[00:08:34] If you can picture Hulk Hogan, you’ll know that he looks and sounds like a showman.
[00:08:40] He is huge, of course, and had trademark blonde hair with a little peroxide blonde handlebar moustache. He really was a star, and his nationwide appeal helped turn McMahon’s wrestling brand from a sport enjoyed by some hardcore fans to one that could be found on American TV several times a week.
[00:09:03] Now, the story of the growth of WWE is full of twists and turns, and rather than going through all of the chronological detail, I thought it would be more interesting to focus on three areas or themes, all of which help us understand the history and development of WWE.
[00:09:25] First, the scripted element of it, so that’s the extent to which it is entertainment vs. sport, and here I’ll introduce you to a fun and unusual English term called “kayfabe”.
[00:09:39] Secondly, we'll talk about the controversies surrounding it, which we’ll look at through the lens of one wrestler in particular, Jimmy Snuka.
[00:09:49] And finally, we’ll look to the future of WWE without its talismanic leader, Vince McMahon Junior.
[00:09:57] So, first, as to the question of the extent to which WWE is “fake”, this is obviously a popular question. If you Google “is WWE fake”, you’ll be presented with 76 million results.
[00:10:12] And there is a moment in every young wrestling fan’s life when they are told, perhaps by an older brother or friend, that wrestling is “fake”.
[00:10:22] But how fake exactly is it, and how does this tie into an understanding of the history of the sport?
[00:10:31] Well, although professional wrestlers are forbidden from commenting on it, it’s well-known that matches are choreographed in advance, they are pre-arranged.
[00:10:42] The wrestlers know what moves they are going to do next, when they supposedly punch each other in the face, the blows are deflected and softened, and the winner is decided before the match starts.
[00:10:54] Of course, this is not to minimise the athletic ability of the wrestlers. Sure, some might look like they spend their days sitting at a bar drinking beer, but being able to run around a ring, lift other huge men into the air, and throw yourself in the air, this all requires some serious physical talent.
[00:11:16] But it is all, almost without exception, staged, pre-planned.
[00:11:23] There is actually a technical term for this.
[00:11:26] It’s kayfabe, which is the presentation of staged performances as genuine or authentic. It was first used in the context of wrestling, but it’s actually used to describe some social media clips too - for example people on TikTok or Instagram making videos about their morning routine which are presented as completely authentic and genuine, taking place as the person is doing this, but are in fact completely staged.
[00:11:56] Or there are even people who take videos of themselves to make it look like they are being interviewed on a podcast, but there isn’t any podcast, it’s all Kayfabe.
[00:12:08] Now, to bring this back to WWE, Vince McMahon, unlike his father, realised that people might have come to a wrestling match to watch the acrobatics, but the reason they followed, the reason they bought all the merchandise, the reason they would pay $50 to watch a match on pay per view TV, was because they really wanted to follow the soap opera of what the characters would do.
[00:12:34] McMahon’s WWE focussed on storylines, of feuds and rivalries between characters, allowing the cameras to go behind the scenes. McMahon himself, the very boss of the entire operation, was himself a character. In fact, McMahon’s ownership of the company wasn’t well-known among fans for many years - he presented himself as a commentator, merely another character in the soap opera.
[00:13:04] Now, you might think the storylines in WWE are great, you might think they are boring and predictable. No matter what you think, it was these storylines that managed to attract a more mass market audience than had been attracted to the sport under his father’s stewardship.
[00:13:21] McMahon nurtured huge stars, and gave them all roles to play. Some were the bad guys, the wrestlers that fans loved to hate. Others were the good guys, wrestlers that fans could rely on to play clean and deliver great performances time after time.
[00:13:41] The point was that you might start watching as a child and get hooked by the story. You would have your favourite wrestler, you would watch their progress, and follow every match.
[00:13:53] So when you found out that it was scripted, it almost didn’t matter, as you had grown to follow the characters more than worry about whether or not the wrestler’s head really hit the table.
[00:14:05] Now, moving on to the controversies of WWE, if you didn’t know so already, it will probably not surprise you to find out that the sport has been plagued with controversies: sexism, drug abuse, exploitation, sexual misconduct and even murder.
[00:14:24] There are too many to mention, but I wanted to explore this angle, this side of the WWE, through the story of one man, James Reiher Snuka, who you might know by his stage name, Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka.
[00:14:42] Jimmy Snuka had joined WWE, or WWF as it was then called, in 1982, just as Vince McMahon took over from his father.
[00:14:53] He was cast as a bad character, a baddie, but he was popular with fans due to his acrobatic style. He pioneered the style of wrestling where one wrestler would climb up the ropes and jump down on his opponent.
[00:15:09] He also had a long-standing feud with another wrestler called “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, who would come into the ring wearing a kilt to the sound of bagpipe music. He was actually Canadian, but WWE wanted to make the most of his Scottish heritage, turning him into a bagpipe-playing Scotsman.
[00:15:30] And in one famous scene, Roddy Piper broke a coconut over Jimmy Snuka’s head - the relevance of this will become clear in a minute.
[00:15:41] Now, back to Jimmy Snuka. He was a popular wrestler, and a successful one at that. But beneath the veneer of success, like many WWE stars, he was fighting some serious personal demons.
[00:15:58] Like many professional wrestlers, he pumped his body full of steroids, of performance-enhancing drugs.
[00:16:05] LIke many professional wrestlers, he also turned to drink and drugs, and would later admit that he had a serious cocaine and alcohol addiction.
[00:16:16] But in 1983, remember this is the year after Vince McMahon took over from his father, something happened that would make everything else pale in comparison.
[00:16:29] Shortly after filming a WWF match, and back in his hotel room, he called 911, he called for an ambulance. His girlfriend, another professional wrestler called Nancy Argentino, had had an accident and she wasn’t breathing.
[00:16:48] The paramedics arrived to find that she had been badly beaten, and hours later she was declared dead.
[00:16:56] Jimmy Snuka was the only suspect, but miraculously, he was let off, he wasn’t charged with…anything.
[00:17:06] It would later be alleged that Vince McMahon had contacted the police to make sure that his star got off scot free. And Snuka himself would later write in his biography that Vince McMahon arrived at the police station with a briefcase, and then Snuka was allowed to walk free.
[00:17:27] Nancy Argentino’s family would eventually press charges against Snuka, and in 1985, three years after her death, Snuka was forced to pay $500,000 compensation.
[00:17:40] However there is no evidence that he paid a penny of it, saying that he simply didn’t have the money. I guess if you are feeding a serious alcohol and cocaine addiction, as well as pumping your body full of steroids, then no matter how famous you are, you probably don’t have a lot of spare cash.
[00:18:00] And, miraculously, this was not the end of Jimmy Snuka’s pro wrestling career. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s he continued wrestling professionally, not always with McMahon’s WWE, it should be said.
[00:18:15] It was almost as if nothing had happened to Nancy Argentino, when what had really happened seemed strongly to be that she had been beaten to death by Jimmy Snuka.
[00:18:27] However, justice would eventually come for Snuka. In 2015, with Snuka now in his 70s, the case was reopened. He was arrested and charged with murder, but was ultimately deemed unable to stand trial because of his mental condition.
[00:18:47] Remember that he was smashed in the head with a coconut and he made his name for launching himself from high up onto his opponent?
[00:18:56] His lawyers would contend that his constant head injuries had brought on dementia. He never stood trial, and died in 2017.
[00:19:07] Before his death, however, his wife brought a class action lawsuit against WWE, alleging that the company was responsible for her husband’s brain damage because it pushed him–and other wrestlers–to their physical limits, subjecting them to constant brain injuries in the name of entertainment.
[00:19:29] The case was dismissed, but it highlighted the pressure, both mental and physical, that their career puts on a wrestler.
[00:19:40] Clearly, this is just one example of the many scandals that have plagued WWE. You might remember Chris Benoit, a Canadian wrestler who killed his wife and son before killing himself, or Owen Hart, another wrestler who fell to his death during a wrestling match.
[00:20:00] And in recent years, the greatest scandals for WWE have revolved around its talismanic leader, Vince McMahon. He has stood accused of everything from covering up the death of Nancy Argentino through to sexual assault of employees, and in fact was forced out of the company when these allegations were at their peak, in the summer of 2022.
[00:20:24] And this takes us to the present day, and even the future. Vince McMahon had almost single-handedly turned WWE into a household name and a multi-billion dollar company.
[00:20:40] Its corporate website boasts that it creates 7 hours of original programming every week, broadcasting to 180 countries in 30 languages.
[00:20:51] Clearly, it is a big deal, but its figurehead, Vince McMahon Junior, is not so junior anymore. He was born in 1945, meaning that he’ll be 78 this year.
[00:21:07] He technically retired as CEO of WWE in 2022 after it was revealed that he had paid $12 million in hush money to cover up allegations of sexual misconduct.
[00:21:21] His daughter, Stephanie, took over as co-CEO, but her father was still the majority owner, leading many to believe that it was still him pulling the strings, he was still in control.
[00:21:35] But he can’t go on forever, so, what happens to WWE when he is out of the picture?
[00:21:42] Well, the next plot twist is that McMahon, as of the time of recording this episode, has agreed to merge with the owner of UFC, Ultimate Fighting Championship.
[00:21:53] He has agreed to sell WWE essentially, to create a huge company focussed on fighting and wrestling.
[00:22:02] McMahon has said he is going nowhere, but he is no spring chicken.
[00:22:08] Will WWE be able to survive without the force that has powered it for the past 50 years?
[00:22:14] Sure, McMahon has been accused of being old and out of touch, recycling the same old tired storylines and character tropes, so much so that WWE is already losing its allure with a younger audience.
[00:22:28] And he has been plagued with all sorts of accusations, any one of which could lead to jail time.
[00:22:36] Who knows what will happen, but much like the wrestler who seems to be lying, on the floor, out cold, only to jump up and surprise his opponent with a blow from behind, if there’s anything we know about Vince McMahon, is that there’s nothing he likes more than a plot twist.
[00:22:56] OK then, that is it for this short exploration of WWE.
[00:23:01] Whether you’re a die-hard WWE fan, or whether it’s something you only had a passing awareness about, well, I hope it was an interesting one.
[00:23:10] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:23:13] For the WWE fans, past or present, why do you think it is so popular? What is it about it that is so appealing?
[00:23:22] And if you aren’t a WWE fan, what do you think the enduring popularity of the genre tells us?
[00:23:29] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:23:32] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:23:41] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:23:46] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:04] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about WWE, World Wrestling Entertainment.
[00:00:29] It might be something you know a lot about, it might be something you know nothing about, but whatever category you’d put yourself in you can’t deny that the story of WWE is intriguing.
[00:00:41] It brings together sport, entertainment, theatre, drugs, murder, controversy and lots of very muscly men wearing not very much at all.
[00:00:51] So, let’s not waste a minute, let’s get this show on the road, as a wrestling promoter might say, and get right into the story of WWE.
[00:01:03] For the ancient Greeks, wrestling was the purest form of strength.
[00:01:08] Two men, wearing only a small loincloth around their waist, lined up opposite one another in a ring.
[00:01:16] They would move towards each other, trying to throw the other to the ground, and score points by holding them there, or forcing them into submission.
[00:01:26] There was no cheating allowed - no hitting or punching, no grabbing the genitals, no biting or putting your fingers in your opponent’s eyes. It was all about strength and agility.
[00:01:39] It was the most popular sport in Ancient Greece, and it had its fair share of stars - Milo of Croton and Leontiskos of Messene being two of the best known. And in 708 B.C it was the first non-running sport to be added to the Olympics, underlining its status in the minds of the Ancient Greeks as a pure and unadulterated expression of physical ability.
[00:02:08] Now, clearly, forms of wrestling have existed in practically every civilisation, this is by no means me suggesting that it was invented by the Ancient Greeks.
[00:02:19] If we stretch the definition of wrestling, you could even argue that this kind of fighting is what we see happening in the animal kingdom, either with lion cubs play fighting or stags, male deer, locking horns to assert their dominance.
[00:02:35] But we must move forward almost 3,000 years to the 1950s to begin today’s wrestling story, which starts with a New Yorker called Vince McMahon.
[00:02:48] Vince McMahon was a wrestling promoter, and the force behind a company called Capitol Wrestling Corporation.
[00:02:56] In the post-war period, wrestling was just starting to take off in the United States, but it was still a localised operation, where promoters in different regions handled all of the events, there was no centralised organisation that managed everything.
[00:03:14] McMahon sensed the potential of wrestling - it was fun to watch, it could be done indoors in a relatively small space, and–importantly–you only needed to have two cameras to film it, so it was quite simple and cheap to produce for the growing TV market.
[00:03:33] Little did McMahon know that he would be the start of what would go on to be one of America’s best known family businesses, and a multi-billion dollar one at that.
[00:03:45] Now, if you are something of a wrestling fan, and you are thinking, hang on, I know Vince McMahon but I didn’t realise he was that old, this Vince McMahon is a different one to the one you are probably thinking of.
[00:04:00] Following the American tradition of parents naming a son after the father, Vincent James McMahon, born in 1914, decided to name his second son, a boy who was born in 1945, also Vincent McMahon. Technically he had a slightly different name, the son was Vincent Kennedy McMahon, or Vince McMahon Junior, we could call him.
[00:04:25] However, a few months after the younger Vince McMahon was born, his parents separated, and the young boy went to live with his mother and her new husband, his stepfather.
[00:04:37] It wasn’t a happy situation.
[00:04:40] McMahon would later reveal that his stepfather was abusive towards him, and say that he regrets the fact that the man died before he could kill him.
[00:04:51] He lived cut off from his biological father, the elder Vince McMahon, not meeting him until he was 12 years old.
[00:04:59] Now, you might wonder why I’m telling you all this, but if you know anything about WWE, you’ll know about the importance of backstory, of trying to understand the experiences of the characters, understand the problems they face and the struggles they have gone through.
[00:05:19] The stories in WWE might be scripted, invented for dramatic purposes, but the backstory of the McMahon family was no dramatic invention.
[00:05:31] There was Vince McMahon Junior, a young boy who grew up for the first 12 years of his life not knowing his wrestling-promoter father.
[00:05:40] When he finally met his father, the pair grew very close, and Junior would later admit to idolising his father, and wanting to follow in his footsteps and enter into the world of wrestling.
[00:05:55] His father didn’t allow him to become an actual wrestler, but in 1969, at the age of 24, Junior was allowed to become a ring announcer and commentator, essentially the person who stands on the side of the ring announcing the entrance of the stars.
[00:06:14] From his position outside the ring, he grew within the company, taking on more and more responsibilities.
[00:06:22] Vince McMahon Junior was clearly a talented businessman, but he had had very differing views to his father about the direction in which the company should go.
[00:06:33] The older McMahon was more traditional, believing that the role of the wrestling promoter was to exist behind the scenes, helping direct and promote the show.
[00:06:44] McMahon Jr’s ambitions were greater.
[00:06:47] He wanted to turn the company into a mainstream sport, something that millions of people around the world would watch on live TV, attracting the biggest stars, and of course, making lots of money in the process.
[00:07:01] And, in 1982 the younger McMahon bought the company from his father, and it’s here that the trajectory of the company, and the sport as a whole, changes.
[00:07:15] Unlike in Ancient Greece, the wrestling that the McMahon family produced was already scripted and staged - the wrestlers took turns to put each other into different positions, the match is pre-planned, it is more entertainment than competitive sport, relying on backstories, and star wrestlers.
[00:07:36] Even before the younger McMahon took over, the sport had its fair share of stars.
[00:07:42] There was Andre the Giant, the French wrestler who weighed 220 kilograms and stood 224 cm tall. And there was Bruno Sammartino, or "Bruno Sammartino", an Italian-American wrestler who was given the nickname “The Strongest Man in The World”.
[00:08:00] But it would be McMahon Junior who would really sense the star potential of individual wrestlers to grow the sport, and after he took over the company from his father one of his main focuses was to cultivate and develop wrestlers with star potential.
[00:08:19] And there is no better example of a star cultivated by McMahon than Terry Gene Bollea.
[00:08:26] Now, if you don’t recognise this name, you probably know him by his stage name, Hulk Hogan.
[00:08:34] If you can picture Hulk Hogan, you’ll know that he looks and sounds like a showman.
[00:08:40] He is huge, of course, and had trademark blonde hair with a little peroxide blonde handlebar moustache. He really was a star, and his nationwide appeal helped turn McMahon’s wrestling brand from a sport enjoyed by some hardcore fans to one that could be found on American TV several times a week.
[00:09:03] Now, the story of the growth of WWE is full of twists and turns, and rather than going through all of the chronological detail, I thought it would be more interesting to focus on three areas or themes, all of which help us understand the history and development of WWE.
[00:09:25] First, the scripted element of it, so that’s the extent to which it is entertainment vs. sport, and here I’ll introduce you to a fun and unusual English term called “kayfabe”.
[00:09:39] Secondly, we'll talk about the controversies surrounding it, which we’ll look at through the lens of one wrestler in particular, Jimmy Snuka.
[00:09:49] And finally, we’ll look to the future of WWE without its talismanic leader, Vince McMahon Junior.
[00:09:57] So, first, as to the question of the extent to which WWE is “fake”, this is obviously a popular question. If you Google “is WWE fake”, you’ll be presented with 76 million results.
[00:10:12] And there is a moment in every young wrestling fan’s life when they are told, perhaps by an older brother or friend, that wrestling is “fake”.
[00:10:22] But how fake exactly is it, and how does this tie into an understanding of the history of the sport?
[00:10:31] Well, although professional wrestlers are forbidden from commenting on it, it’s well-known that matches are choreographed in advance, they are pre-arranged.
[00:10:42] The wrestlers know what moves they are going to do next, when they supposedly punch each other in the face, the blows are deflected and softened, and the winner is decided before the match starts.
[00:10:54] Of course, this is not to minimise the athletic ability of the wrestlers. Sure, some might look like they spend their days sitting at a bar drinking beer, but being able to run around a ring, lift other huge men into the air, and throw yourself in the air, this all requires some serious physical talent.
[00:11:16] But it is all, almost without exception, staged, pre-planned.
[00:11:23] There is actually a technical term for this.
[00:11:26] It’s kayfabe, which is the presentation of staged performances as genuine or authentic. It was first used in the context of wrestling, but it’s actually used to describe some social media clips too - for example people on TikTok or Instagram making videos about their morning routine which are presented as completely authentic and genuine, taking place as the person is doing this, but are in fact completely staged.
[00:11:56] Or there are even people who take videos of themselves to make it look like they are being interviewed on a podcast, but there isn’t any podcast, it’s all Kayfabe.
[00:12:08] Now, to bring this back to WWE, Vince McMahon, unlike his father, realised that people might have come to a wrestling match to watch the acrobatics, but the reason they followed, the reason they bought all the merchandise, the reason they would pay $50 to watch a match on pay per view TV, was because they really wanted to follow the soap opera of what the characters would do.
[00:12:34] McMahon’s WWE focussed on storylines, of feuds and rivalries between characters, allowing the cameras to go behind the scenes. McMahon himself, the very boss of the entire operation, was himself a character. In fact, McMahon’s ownership of the company wasn’t well-known among fans for many years - he presented himself as a commentator, merely another character in the soap opera.
[00:13:04] Now, you might think the storylines in WWE are great, you might think they are boring and predictable. No matter what you think, it was these storylines that managed to attract a more mass market audience than had been attracted to the sport under his father’s stewardship.
[00:13:21] McMahon nurtured huge stars, and gave them all roles to play. Some were the bad guys, the wrestlers that fans loved to hate. Others were the good guys, wrestlers that fans could rely on to play clean and deliver great performances time after time.
[00:13:41] The point was that you might start watching as a child and get hooked by the story. You would have your favourite wrestler, you would watch their progress, and follow every match.
[00:13:53] So when you found out that it was scripted, it almost didn’t matter, as you had grown to follow the characters more than worry about whether or not the wrestler’s head really hit the table.
[00:14:05] Now, moving on to the controversies of WWE, if you didn’t know so already, it will probably not surprise you to find out that the sport has been plagued with controversies: sexism, drug abuse, exploitation, sexual misconduct and even murder.
[00:14:24] There are too many to mention, but I wanted to explore this angle, this side of the WWE, through the story of one man, James Reiher Snuka, who you might know by his stage name, Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka.
[00:14:42] Jimmy Snuka had joined WWE, or WWF as it was then called, in 1982, just as Vince McMahon took over from his father.
[00:14:53] He was cast as a bad character, a baddie, but he was popular with fans due to his acrobatic style. He pioneered the style of wrestling where one wrestler would climb up the ropes and jump down on his opponent.
[00:15:09] He also had a long-standing feud with another wrestler called “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, who would come into the ring wearing a kilt to the sound of bagpipe music. He was actually Canadian, but WWE wanted to make the most of his Scottish heritage, turning him into a bagpipe-playing Scotsman.
[00:15:30] And in one famous scene, Roddy Piper broke a coconut over Jimmy Snuka’s head - the relevance of this will become clear in a minute.
[00:15:41] Now, back to Jimmy Snuka. He was a popular wrestler, and a successful one at that. But beneath the veneer of success, like many WWE stars, he was fighting some serious personal demons.
[00:15:58] Like many professional wrestlers, he pumped his body full of steroids, of performance-enhancing drugs.
[00:16:05] LIke many professional wrestlers, he also turned to drink and drugs, and would later admit that he had a serious cocaine and alcohol addiction.
[00:16:16] But in 1983, remember this is the year after Vince McMahon took over from his father, something happened that would make everything else pale in comparison.
[00:16:29] Shortly after filming a WWF match, and back in his hotel room, he called 911, he called for an ambulance. His girlfriend, another professional wrestler called Nancy Argentino, had had an accident and she wasn’t breathing.
[00:16:48] The paramedics arrived to find that she had been badly beaten, and hours later she was declared dead.
[00:16:56] Jimmy Snuka was the only suspect, but miraculously, he was let off, he wasn’t charged with…anything.
[00:17:06] It would later be alleged that Vince McMahon had contacted the police to make sure that his star got off scot free. And Snuka himself would later write in his biography that Vince McMahon arrived at the police station with a briefcase, and then Snuka was allowed to walk free.
[00:17:27] Nancy Argentino’s family would eventually press charges against Snuka, and in 1985, three years after her death, Snuka was forced to pay $500,000 compensation.
[00:17:40] However there is no evidence that he paid a penny of it, saying that he simply didn’t have the money. I guess if you are feeding a serious alcohol and cocaine addiction, as well as pumping your body full of steroids, then no matter how famous you are, you probably don’t have a lot of spare cash.
[00:18:00] And, miraculously, this was not the end of Jimmy Snuka’s pro wrestling career. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s he continued wrestling professionally, not always with McMahon’s WWE, it should be said.
[00:18:15] It was almost as if nothing had happened to Nancy Argentino, when what had really happened seemed strongly to be that she had been beaten to death by Jimmy Snuka.
[00:18:27] However, justice would eventually come for Snuka. In 2015, with Snuka now in his 70s, the case was reopened. He was arrested and charged with murder, but was ultimately deemed unable to stand trial because of his mental condition.
[00:18:47] Remember that he was smashed in the head with a coconut and he made his name for launching himself from high up onto his opponent?
[00:18:56] His lawyers would contend that his constant head injuries had brought on dementia. He never stood trial, and died in 2017.
[00:19:07] Before his death, however, his wife brought a class action lawsuit against WWE, alleging that the company was responsible for her husband’s brain damage because it pushed him–and other wrestlers–to their physical limits, subjecting them to constant brain injuries in the name of entertainment.
[00:19:29] The case was dismissed, but it highlighted the pressure, both mental and physical, that their career puts on a wrestler.
[00:19:40] Clearly, this is just one example of the many scandals that have plagued WWE. You might remember Chris Benoit, a Canadian wrestler who killed his wife and son before killing himself, or Owen Hart, another wrestler who fell to his death during a wrestling match.
[00:20:00] And in recent years, the greatest scandals for WWE have revolved around its talismanic leader, Vince McMahon. He has stood accused of everything from covering up the death of Nancy Argentino through to sexual assault of employees, and in fact was forced out of the company when these allegations were at their peak, in the summer of 2022.
[00:20:24] And this takes us to the present day, and even the future. Vince McMahon had almost single-handedly turned WWE into a household name and a multi-billion dollar company.
[00:20:40] Its corporate website boasts that it creates 7 hours of original programming every week, broadcasting to 180 countries in 30 languages.
[00:20:51] Clearly, it is a big deal, but its figurehead, Vince McMahon Junior, is not so junior anymore. He was born in 1945, meaning that he’ll be 78 this year.
[00:21:07] He technically retired as CEO of WWE in 2022 after it was revealed that he had paid $12 million in hush money to cover up allegations of sexual misconduct.
[00:21:21] His daughter, Stephanie, took over as co-CEO, but her father was still the majority owner, leading many to believe that it was still him pulling the strings, he was still in control.
[00:21:35] But he can’t go on forever, so, what happens to WWE when he is out of the picture?
[00:21:42] Well, the next plot twist is that McMahon, as of the time of recording this episode, has agreed to merge with the owner of UFC, Ultimate Fighting Championship.
[00:21:53] He has agreed to sell WWE essentially, to create a huge company focussed on fighting and wrestling.
[00:22:02] McMahon has said he is going nowhere, but he is no spring chicken.
[00:22:08] Will WWE be able to survive without the force that has powered it for the past 50 years?
[00:22:14] Sure, McMahon has been accused of being old and out of touch, recycling the same old tired storylines and character tropes, so much so that WWE is already losing its allure with a younger audience.
[00:22:28] And he has been plagued with all sorts of accusations, any one of which could lead to jail time.
[00:22:36] Who knows what will happen, but much like the wrestler who seems to be lying, on the floor, out cold, only to jump up and surprise his opponent with a blow from behind, if there’s anything we know about Vince McMahon, is that there’s nothing he likes more than a plot twist.
[00:22:56] OK then, that is it for this short exploration of WWE.
[00:23:01] Whether you’re a die-hard WWE fan, or whether it’s something you only had a passing awareness about, well, I hope it was an interesting one.
[00:23:10] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:23:13] For the WWE fans, past or present, why do you think it is so popular? What is it about it that is so appealing?
[00:23:22] And if you aren’t a WWE fan, what do you think the enduring popularity of the genre tells us?
[00:23:29] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:23:32] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:23:41] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:23:46] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
[00:00:04] Hello, hello hello, and welcome to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:00:11] The show where you can listen to fascinating stories, and learn weird and wonderful things about the world at the same time as improving your English.
[00:00:20] I'm Alastair Budge, and today we are going to be talking about WWE, World Wrestling Entertainment.
[00:00:29] It might be something you know a lot about, it might be something you know nothing about, but whatever category you’d put yourself in you can’t deny that the story of WWE is intriguing.
[00:00:41] It brings together sport, entertainment, theatre, drugs, murder, controversy and lots of very muscly men wearing not very much at all.
[00:00:51] So, let’s not waste a minute, let’s get this show on the road, as a wrestling promoter might say, and get right into the story of WWE.
[00:01:03] For the ancient Greeks, wrestling was the purest form of strength.
[00:01:08] Two men, wearing only a small loincloth around their waist, lined up opposite one another in a ring.
[00:01:16] They would move towards each other, trying to throw the other to the ground, and score points by holding them there, or forcing them into submission.
[00:01:26] There was no cheating allowed - no hitting or punching, no grabbing the genitals, no biting or putting your fingers in your opponent’s eyes. It was all about strength and agility.
[00:01:39] It was the most popular sport in Ancient Greece, and it had its fair share of stars - Milo of Croton and Leontiskos of Messene being two of the best known. And in 708 B.C it was the first non-running sport to be added to the Olympics, underlining its status in the minds of the Ancient Greeks as a pure and unadulterated expression of physical ability.
[00:02:08] Now, clearly, forms of wrestling have existed in practically every civilisation, this is by no means me suggesting that it was invented by the Ancient Greeks.
[00:02:19] If we stretch the definition of wrestling, you could even argue that this kind of fighting is what we see happening in the animal kingdom, either with lion cubs play fighting or stags, male deer, locking horns to assert their dominance.
[00:02:35] But we must move forward almost 3,000 years to the 1950s to begin today’s wrestling story, which starts with a New Yorker called Vince McMahon.
[00:02:48] Vince McMahon was a wrestling promoter, and the force behind a company called Capitol Wrestling Corporation.
[00:02:56] In the post-war period, wrestling was just starting to take off in the United States, but it was still a localised operation, where promoters in different regions handled all of the events, there was no centralised organisation that managed everything.
[00:03:14] McMahon sensed the potential of wrestling - it was fun to watch, it could be done indoors in a relatively small space, and–importantly–you only needed to have two cameras to film it, so it was quite simple and cheap to produce for the growing TV market.
[00:03:33] Little did McMahon know that he would be the start of what would go on to be one of America’s best known family businesses, and a multi-billion dollar one at that.
[00:03:45] Now, if you are something of a wrestling fan, and you are thinking, hang on, I know Vince McMahon but I didn’t realise he was that old, this Vince McMahon is a different one to the one you are probably thinking of.
[00:04:00] Following the American tradition of parents naming a son after the father, Vincent James McMahon, born in 1914, decided to name his second son, a boy who was born in 1945, also Vincent McMahon. Technically he had a slightly different name, the son was Vincent Kennedy McMahon, or Vince McMahon Junior, we could call him.
[00:04:25] However, a few months after the younger Vince McMahon was born, his parents separated, and the young boy went to live with his mother and her new husband, his stepfather.
[00:04:37] It wasn’t a happy situation.
[00:04:40] McMahon would later reveal that his stepfather was abusive towards him, and say that he regrets the fact that the man died before he could kill him.
[00:04:51] He lived cut off from his biological father, the elder Vince McMahon, not meeting him until he was 12 years old.
[00:04:59] Now, you might wonder why I’m telling you all this, but if you know anything about WWE, you’ll know about the importance of backstory, of trying to understand the experiences of the characters, understand the problems they face and the struggles they have gone through.
[00:05:19] The stories in WWE might be scripted, invented for dramatic purposes, but the backstory of the McMahon family was no dramatic invention.
[00:05:31] There was Vince McMahon Junior, a young boy who grew up for the first 12 years of his life not knowing his wrestling-promoter father.
[00:05:40] When he finally met his father, the pair grew very close, and Junior would later admit to idolising his father, and wanting to follow in his footsteps and enter into the world of wrestling.
[00:05:55] His father didn’t allow him to become an actual wrestler, but in 1969, at the age of 24, Junior was allowed to become a ring announcer and commentator, essentially the person who stands on the side of the ring announcing the entrance of the stars.
[00:06:14] From his position outside the ring, he grew within the company, taking on more and more responsibilities.
[00:06:22] Vince McMahon Junior was clearly a talented businessman, but he had had very differing views to his father about the direction in which the company should go.
[00:06:33] The older McMahon was more traditional, believing that the role of the wrestling promoter was to exist behind the scenes, helping direct and promote the show.
[00:06:44] McMahon Jr’s ambitions were greater.
[00:06:47] He wanted to turn the company into a mainstream sport, something that millions of people around the world would watch on live TV, attracting the biggest stars, and of course, making lots of money in the process.
[00:07:01] And, in 1982 the younger McMahon bought the company from his father, and it’s here that the trajectory of the company, and the sport as a whole, changes.
[00:07:15] Unlike in Ancient Greece, the wrestling that the McMahon family produced was already scripted and staged - the wrestlers took turns to put each other into different positions, the match is pre-planned, it is more entertainment than competitive sport, relying on backstories, and star wrestlers.
[00:07:36] Even before the younger McMahon took over, the sport had its fair share of stars.
[00:07:42] There was Andre the Giant, the French wrestler who weighed 220 kilograms and stood 224 cm tall. And there was Bruno Sammartino, or "Bruno Sammartino", an Italian-American wrestler who was given the nickname “The Strongest Man in The World”.
[00:08:00] But it would be McMahon Junior who would really sense the star potential of individual wrestlers to grow the sport, and after he took over the company from his father one of his main focuses was to cultivate and develop wrestlers with star potential.
[00:08:19] And there is no better example of a star cultivated by McMahon than Terry Gene Bollea.
[00:08:26] Now, if you don’t recognise this name, you probably know him by his stage name, Hulk Hogan.
[00:08:34] If you can picture Hulk Hogan, you’ll know that he looks and sounds like a showman.
[00:08:40] He is huge, of course, and had trademark blonde hair with a little peroxide blonde handlebar moustache. He really was a star, and his nationwide appeal helped turn McMahon’s wrestling brand from a sport enjoyed by some hardcore fans to one that could be found on American TV several times a week.
[00:09:03] Now, the story of the growth of WWE is full of twists and turns, and rather than going through all of the chronological detail, I thought it would be more interesting to focus on three areas or themes, all of which help us understand the history and development of WWE.
[00:09:25] First, the scripted element of it, so that’s the extent to which it is entertainment vs. sport, and here I’ll introduce you to a fun and unusual English term called “kayfabe”.
[00:09:39] Secondly, we'll talk about the controversies surrounding it, which we’ll look at through the lens of one wrestler in particular, Jimmy Snuka.
[00:09:49] And finally, we’ll look to the future of WWE without its talismanic leader, Vince McMahon Junior.
[00:09:57] So, first, as to the question of the extent to which WWE is “fake”, this is obviously a popular question. If you Google “is WWE fake”, you’ll be presented with 76 million results.
[00:10:12] And there is a moment in every young wrestling fan’s life when they are told, perhaps by an older brother or friend, that wrestling is “fake”.
[00:10:22] But how fake exactly is it, and how does this tie into an understanding of the history of the sport?
[00:10:31] Well, although professional wrestlers are forbidden from commenting on it, it’s well-known that matches are choreographed in advance, they are pre-arranged.
[00:10:42] The wrestlers know what moves they are going to do next, when they supposedly punch each other in the face, the blows are deflected and softened, and the winner is decided before the match starts.
[00:10:54] Of course, this is not to minimise the athletic ability of the wrestlers. Sure, some might look like they spend their days sitting at a bar drinking beer, but being able to run around a ring, lift other huge men into the air, and throw yourself in the air, this all requires some serious physical talent.
[00:11:16] But it is all, almost without exception, staged, pre-planned.
[00:11:23] There is actually a technical term for this.
[00:11:26] It’s kayfabe, which is the presentation of staged performances as genuine or authentic. It was first used in the context of wrestling, but it’s actually used to describe some social media clips too - for example people on TikTok or Instagram making videos about their morning routine which are presented as completely authentic and genuine, taking place as the person is doing this, but are in fact completely staged.
[00:11:56] Or there are even people who take videos of themselves to make it look like they are being interviewed on a podcast, but there isn’t any podcast, it’s all Kayfabe.
[00:12:08] Now, to bring this back to WWE, Vince McMahon, unlike his father, realised that people might have come to a wrestling match to watch the acrobatics, but the reason they followed, the reason they bought all the merchandise, the reason they would pay $50 to watch a match on pay per view TV, was because they really wanted to follow the soap opera of what the characters would do.
[00:12:34] McMahon’s WWE focussed on storylines, of feuds and rivalries between characters, allowing the cameras to go behind the scenes. McMahon himself, the very boss of the entire operation, was himself a character. In fact, McMahon’s ownership of the company wasn’t well-known among fans for many years - he presented himself as a commentator, merely another character in the soap opera.
[00:13:04] Now, you might think the storylines in WWE are great, you might think they are boring and predictable. No matter what you think, it was these storylines that managed to attract a more mass market audience than had been attracted to the sport under his father’s stewardship.
[00:13:21] McMahon nurtured huge stars, and gave them all roles to play. Some were the bad guys, the wrestlers that fans loved to hate. Others were the good guys, wrestlers that fans could rely on to play clean and deliver great performances time after time.
[00:13:41] The point was that you might start watching as a child and get hooked by the story. You would have your favourite wrestler, you would watch their progress, and follow every match.
[00:13:53] So when you found out that it was scripted, it almost didn’t matter, as you had grown to follow the characters more than worry about whether or not the wrestler’s head really hit the table.
[00:14:05] Now, moving on to the controversies of WWE, if you didn’t know so already, it will probably not surprise you to find out that the sport has been plagued with controversies: sexism, drug abuse, exploitation, sexual misconduct and even murder.
[00:14:24] There are too many to mention, but I wanted to explore this angle, this side of the WWE, through the story of one man, James Reiher Snuka, who you might know by his stage name, Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka.
[00:14:42] Jimmy Snuka had joined WWE, or WWF as it was then called, in 1982, just as Vince McMahon took over from his father.
[00:14:53] He was cast as a bad character, a baddie, but he was popular with fans due to his acrobatic style. He pioneered the style of wrestling where one wrestler would climb up the ropes and jump down on his opponent.
[00:15:09] He also had a long-standing feud with another wrestler called “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, who would come into the ring wearing a kilt to the sound of bagpipe music. He was actually Canadian, but WWE wanted to make the most of his Scottish heritage, turning him into a bagpipe-playing Scotsman.
[00:15:30] And in one famous scene, Roddy Piper broke a coconut over Jimmy Snuka’s head - the relevance of this will become clear in a minute.
[00:15:41] Now, back to Jimmy Snuka. He was a popular wrestler, and a successful one at that. But beneath the veneer of success, like many WWE stars, he was fighting some serious personal demons.
[00:15:58] Like many professional wrestlers, he pumped his body full of steroids, of performance-enhancing drugs.
[00:16:05] LIke many professional wrestlers, he also turned to drink and drugs, and would later admit that he had a serious cocaine and alcohol addiction.
[00:16:16] But in 1983, remember this is the year after Vince McMahon took over from his father, something happened that would make everything else pale in comparison.
[00:16:29] Shortly after filming a WWF match, and back in his hotel room, he called 911, he called for an ambulance. His girlfriend, another professional wrestler called Nancy Argentino, had had an accident and she wasn’t breathing.
[00:16:48] The paramedics arrived to find that she had been badly beaten, and hours later she was declared dead.
[00:16:56] Jimmy Snuka was the only suspect, but miraculously, he was let off, he wasn’t charged with…anything.
[00:17:06] It would later be alleged that Vince McMahon had contacted the police to make sure that his star got off scot free. And Snuka himself would later write in his biography that Vince McMahon arrived at the police station with a briefcase, and then Snuka was allowed to walk free.
[00:17:27] Nancy Argentino’s family would eventually press charges against Snuka, and in 1985, three years after her death, Snuka was forced to pay $500,000 compensation.
[00:17:40] However there is no evidence that he paid a penny of it, saying that he simply didn’t have the money. I guess if you are feeding a serious alcohol and cocaine addiction, as well as pumping your body full of steroids, then no matter how famous you are, you probably don’t have a lot of spare cash.
[00:18:00] And, miraculously, this was not the end of Jimmy Snuka’s pro wrestling career. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s he continued wrestling professionally, not always with McMahon’s WWE, it should be said.
[00:18:15] It was almost as if nothing had happened to Nancy Argentino, when what had really happened seemed strongly to be that she had been beaten to death by Jimmy Snuka.
[00:18:27] However, justice would eventually come for Snuka. In 2015, with Snuka now in his 70s, the case was reopened. He was arrested and charged with murder, but was ultimately deemed unable to stand trial because of his mental condition.
[00:18:47] Remember that he was smashed in the head with a coconut and he made his name for launching himself from high up onto his opponent?
[00:18:56] His lawyers would contend that his constant head injuries had brought on dementia. He never stood trial, and died in 2017.
[00:19:07] Before his death, however, his wife brought a class action lawsuit against WWE, alleging that the company was responsible for her husband’s brain damage because it pushed him–and other wrestlers–to their physical limits, subjecting them to constant brain injuries in the name of entertainment.
[00:19:29] The case was dismissed, but it highlighted the pressure, both mental and physical, that their career puts on a wrestler.
[00:19:40] Clearly, this is just one example of the many scandals that have plagued WWE. You might remember Chris Benoit, a Canadian wrestler who killed his wife and son before killing himself, or Owen Hart, another wrestler who fell to his death during a wrestling match.
[00:20:00] And in recent years, the greatest scandals for WWE have revolved around its talismanic leader, Vince McMahon. He has stood accused of everything from covering up the death of Nancy Argentino through to sexual assault of employees, and in fact was forced out of the company when these allegations were at their peak, in the summer of 2022.
[00:20:24] And this takes us to the present day, and even the future. Vince McMahon had almost single-handedly turned WWE into a household name and a multi-billion dollar company.
[00:20:40] Its corporate website boasts that it creates 7 hours of original programming every week, broadcasting to 180 countries in 30 languages.
[00:20:51] Clearly, it is a big deal, but its figurehead, Vince McMahon Junior, is not so junior anymore. He was born in 1945, meaning that he’ll be 78 this year.
[00:21:07] He technically retired as CEO of WWE in 2022 after it was revealed that he had paid $12 million in hush money to cover up allegations of sexual misconduct.
[00:21:21] His daughter, Stephanie, took over as co-CEO, but her father was still the majority owner, leading many to believe that it was still him pulling the strings, he was still in control.
[00:21:35] But he can’t go on forever, so, what happens to WWE when he is out of the picture?
[00:21:42] Well, the next plot twist is that McMahon, as of the time of recording this episode, has agreed to merge with the owner of UFC, Ultimate Fighting Championship.
[00:21:53] He has agreed to sell WWE essentially, to create a huge company focussed on fighting and wrestling.
[00:22:02] McMahon has said he is going nowhere, but he is no spring chicken.
[00:22:08] Will WWE be able to survive without the force that has powered it for the past 50 years?
[00:22:14] Sure, McMahon has been accused of being old and out of touch, recycling the same old tired storylines and character tropes, so much so that WWE is already losing its allure with a younger audience.
[00:22:28] And he has been plagued with all sorts of accusations, any one of which could lead to jail time.
[00:22:36] Who knows what will happen, but much like the wrestler who seems to be lying, on the floor, out cold, only to jump up and surprise his opponent with a blow from behind, if there’s anything we know about Vince McMahon, is that there’s nothing he likes more than a plot twist.
[00:22:56] OK then, that is it for this short exploration of WWE.
[00:23:01] Whether you’re a die-hard WWE fan, or whether it’s something you only had a passing awareness about, well, I hope it was an interesting one.
[00:23:10] As always, I would love to know what you thought about this episode.
[00:23:13] For the WWE fans, past or present, why do you think it is so popular? What is it about it that is so appealing?
[00:23:22] And if you aren’t a WWE fan, what do you think the enduring popularity of the genre tells us?
[00:23:29] I would love to know, so let’s get this discussion started.
[00:23:32] You can head right into our community forum, which is at community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
[00:23:41] You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
[00:23:46] I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
[END OF EPISODE]
