We belong to the fortunate generation that got to experience the best eras of wrestling at exactly the right ages.
In the mid-eighties, we were pre-teens and no one was cooler than Hulk Hogan. No one was friendlier than Andre The Giant. And no one was more dastardly than Rowdy Roddy Piper. And the story lines were simple with easy-to-recognize good guys (faces) and bad guys (heels). That’s really all ten-year-olds need.
Then, in the late ’90s, we were in our early ’20s, questioning authority and looking for anti-heroes — people who stuck it to the man like we all wanted to. People like Stone Cold Steve Austin, The Rock and The Undertaker.
And the savvy marketers they are, the WWE creative team gave us disorder in spades. The line between heel and face was blurred. Stone Cold was a good guy, but he was an asshole. Triple H was a heel, but he was so over-the-top charismatic that we loved hating him and found ourselves cheering for him, even though he represented everything we hated. And The Undertaker was just so goddamn cool.
So who cares? We do because the scriptwriters and story editors made it all happen. The catch-phrases. The story arcs. The interviews. The build-ups to big matches. No one does it better than the WWE on a more consistent basis. They know their characters. They know their performers and they write to the strengths of both.
Now, of course, it all rests on the mic skill of the wrestler because no amount of good writing can save a crappy performance. But when you get a natural like The Rock (you might know him better as Dwayne Johnson — today’s highest-grossing action movie actor) and give him a few well-crafted lines to throw down, well…
Side note: The WWE is a dream client of ours. We’ll work with them one day.