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Professional Wrestling: Sport and Spectacle
Professional wrestling is often seen as a suspect sport and marginal entertainment. It is also one of the most popular performance practices in the United States and around the world, drawing millions of spectators to live events and televised broadcasts. That its display of violence is at once simulated and actual is part of the appeal for the fans who debate performance choices with as much energy as they argue about their favorite wrestlers. Its ongoing scenarios and presentations of manly and not-so-manly characters―from the flamboyantly feminine to the hypermasculine―simultaneously celebrate and critique, parody and affirm the American dream and the masculine ideal.
This book looks at the world of professional wrestling both from the fan’s-eye-view high in the stands and from the ringside in the wrestlers’ gym. It begins with a look at the way in which performances are constructed and sold to spectators, both on a local level and in the “big leagues” of the WWF and the WCW. A close-up view of a group of wrestlers as they work out, get their faces pushed to the mat as part of their initiation into the fraternity of the ring, and the dream of stardom follows. The second half of the book explores professional wrestling’s carnivalesque presentation of masculinities ranging from the cute to the brute, as well as the way in which the performances of women wrestlers almost inevitably enter into the realm of pornographic. Finally, it explores the question of the “real” and the “fake” as the fans themselves confront it.
The game of wrestling may indeed be fixed, but no more so than the game of life. The real power may rest with the invisible money men, but at least in the arena, fans know the rules by which this particular game is played and are free to insist that the action meet their expectations.
This book looks at the world of professional wrestling both from the fan’s-eye-view high in the stands and from the ringside in the wrestlers’ gym. It begins with a look at the way in which performances are constructed and sold to spectators, both on a local level and in the “big leagues” of the WWF and the WCW. A close-up view of a group of wrestlers as they work out, get their faces pushed to the mat as part of their initiation into the fraternity of the ring, and the dream of stardom follows. The second half of the book explores professional wrestling’s carnivalesque presentation of masculinities ranging from the cute to the brute, as well as the way in which the performances of women wrestlers almost inevitably enter into the realm of pornographic. Finally, it explores the question of the “real” and the “fake” as the fans themselves confront it.
The game of wrestling may indeed be fixed, but no more so than the game of life. The real power may rest with the invisible money men, but at least in the arena, fans know the rules by which this particular game is played and are free to insist that the action meet their expectations.
- GenresNonfiction
208 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1998
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 20, 2025
Secret’s out that I would quite fancy some PhD funding in the new year. If anybody wants to sponsor ‘the reception histories of professional wrestling’… or something along those lines. I won’t bother you with every article, but I will use GoodReads to log some bigger reads.
This is the major text in pro wrestling scholarship. Mazer is a theoretical scholar of theatre, allowing her to approach wrestling in a much more (inter)textual way than most. This is so nicely paired with her ethnographic research collated from Gleason’s Gym. She resists fitting wrestling into unsuited pre-established models while nonetheless appreciating it as a metaphorical and macrocosmic performance. She astutely understands the symbolic universe of wrestling — the rules of the game and the transgressions against it; the dynamics of the working fiction and how this operates existentially. She appreciates how gym communities cultivate a kinetic and performative fluency between wrestlers, and how gimmicks exist at once both abstract and hyper-visible (making moves appear fluid and dramatic while at once disguising their cooperative aspects). Mazer’s readings of masculinity and femininity in wrestling are especially impressive. Despite Sport and Spectacle being first published nearly 3 decades ago, there is still a real irony in how wrestling performs a denial of its homoerotic intimacy to stage a contest where it is the ideal of masculinity itself (and the threat of emasculation) on the line, celebrating the essential man within by apparently ‘dropping the drag’ yet precisely by keeping the drag on. Naturally much has changed for women’s wrestling in recent years, nonetheless Mazer’s central proposition remains historically true for the structures of wrestling: that women are at once both eroticised and used to legitimise the male performance — female characters as pornographic and parodic affirmations of male heterosexual cultural dominance, women defined by being ‘not men’.
For an outsider writing in, Mazer’s observations of wrestling’s fan culture are extremely intelligent and generous. I could not fathom entering a fandom with little prior knowledge and so quickly understanding its logic and cracking its codes. Beyond analysing wrestling as a morality play with its own set of dramaturgical conventions, Mazer also understands how fans use their self-empowered status of ‘being in on the fix’ to flex their expertise in reading the performance. Rather than only seeking the ‘real’ or the ‘fake’, fans represent an unofficial educational elite who display and prove their hard-won knowledge of the game, their capacity to use its vocabulary and reveal its stagedness, and their own position within these exchanges.
Yet while Mazer recognises the active powers of wrestling fans, there’s a further creative dimension that I feel she overlooks by not returning to the keyword ‘Kayfabe’. By using kayfabe as a theoretical lens itself, rather than analysing it as a part of the text/performance, I think pro wrestling fans can be conceptualised beyond self-liberated imaginers revelling in their own deception and moreover as real co-constructors wielding a unique creative control over the performance and its ability to tell stories. You’ll need to wait approx 3-4 years for me to elaborate on this if we’re lucky, but I think this methodology can better inform us on how wrestling constructs the past and thus how the present uses wrestling to construct itself (looking at you, United States of America).
This is the major text in pro wrestling scholarship. Mazer is a theoretical scholar of theatre, allowing her to approach wrestling in a much more (inter)textual way than most. This is so nicely paired with her ethnographic research collated from Gleason’s Gym. She resists fitting wrestling into unsuited pre-established models while nonetheless appreciating it as a metaphorical and macrocosmic performance. She astutely understands the symbolic universe of wrestling — the rules of the game and the transgressions against it; the dynamics of the working fiction and how this operates existentially. She appreciates how gym communities cultivate a kinetic and performative fluency between wrestlers, and how gimmicks exist at once both abstract and hyper-visible (making moves appear fluid and dramatic while at once disguising their cooperative aspects). Mazer’s readings of masculinity and femininity in wrestling are especially impressive. Despite Sport and Spectacle being first published nearly 3 decades ago, there is still a real irony in how wrestling performs a denial of its homoerotic intimacy to stage a contest where it is the ideal of masculinity itself (and the threat of emasculation) on the line, celebrating the essential man within by apparently ‘dropping the drag’ yet precisely by keeping the drag on. Naturally much has changed for women’s wrestling in recent years, nonetheless Mazer’s central proposition remains historically true for the structures of wrestling: that women are at once both eroticised and used to legitimise the male performance — female characters as pornographic and parodic affirmations of male heterosexual cultural dominance, women defined by being ‘not men’.
For an outsider writing in, Mazer’s observations of wrestling’s fan culture are extremely intelligent and generous. I could not fathom entering a fandom with little prior knowledge and so quickly understanding its logic and cracking its codes. Beyond analysing wrestling as a morality play with its own set of dramaturgical conventions, Mazer also understands how fans use their self-empowered status of ‘being in on the fix’ to flex their expertise in reading the performance. Rather than only seeking the ‘real’ or the ‘fake’, fans represent an unofficial educational elite who display and prove their hard-won knowledge of the game, their capacity to use its vocabulary and reveal its stagedness, and their own position within these exchanges.
Yet while Mazer recognises the active powers of wrestling fans, there’s a further creative dimension that I feel she overlooks by not returning to the keyword ‘Kayfabe’. By using kayfabe as a theoretical lens itself, rather than analysing it as a part of the text/performance, I think pro wrestling fans can be conceptualised beyond self-liberated imaginers revelling in their own deception and moreover as real co-constructors wielding a unique creative control over the performance and its ability to tell stories. You’ll need to wait approx 3-4 years for me to elaborate on this if we’re lucky, but I think this methodology can better inform us on how wrestling constructs the past and thus how the present uses wrestling to construct itself (looking at you, United States of America).
May 13, 2025
Well researched exploration of Pro Wrestling by an academic scholar. In a few parts, readability succumbs to academic expression. Pressing through those occasional spots, there is Mazer's interesting insight into the world of Pro Wrestling, which is informative and charming. Her look at a small pro wrestling school in Brooklyn, NY, provides a perspective on the industry which, even by fans, is little considered.
May 29, 2018
This is one of the better books with a more academic treatment to it.
December 17, 2013
Mazer makes a lot of interesting connections and juxtapositions. Her reflections on 'phone wrestling' is something novel in the research as it focuses on female body builders who make extra money by participating in 'phone wrestling' and 'apartment house wrestling'. Phone wrestling is a variant of phone sexting, except advertising reflects toned and sexy women who are able to discuss 'muscle stores' or fantasize alongside the caller, them embroiled in a wrestling match. The difference is that sexualization is focused entirely on the female body dominating and being in control, the agency is focused on embodied capital as it links muscles alongside control. It translates a particular performance of the male body into a type of effeminate 'hegemonic' (Connell 1995) discourse. Mazer falls into the sociological trap of viewing wrestling's 'masculine discourse' as a problem. This is too simple and ultimately when analyzing the affective qualities of the squared circle it's impossible to retain this type of analysis. 'Apartment wrestling' is also interesting as women will go and wrestle men (or other women) in their homes, with all their clothes on, for a fee. Again the analysis is problematic as the idea that it legitimates the man's wrestling performance because women play the role of 'not-man' is again trivializing and simplifying the complexities of this phenomenon.
Instead of viewing the ring as a frame in which society is distilled through the ropes, the analysis centers the frame outside the ring with wrestling being constrained by the culture. Wrestling takes the culture and parodies, manipulates and reorients it in ways that often challenge the taken for granted mores in society. Mazer's analysis therefore is focusing on the wrong side of the frame. However this approach often yeilds fantastic analysis and discussion. She is also self aware of the opposite approach, but it seems to pail. The insistence that women are often seen in pornographic ways is focusing on only a subset of the whole picture for example. Even within mainstream territories, female wrestlers have had a dualistic presence within the wrestling frame. It's a type of physicality, athleticism and power that is expressed in a sexualized way. There is less passivity. Mazer herself says earlier in the book that wrestling is basically athleticism with drag. Gender therefore is constantly being looked at but it's analysis is inevitably constrained alongside a certain market focus. The WWE focuses and orients its marketing energy on attracting young boys to the product and so archetypes tend to reflect superhero gimmicks and spoiled princesses. When these roles are analyzed in the context of a storyline, it's often the case that they are subverted and at times completely destroyed by counteracting values and norms. Wrestling is a tabula rasa spectacle that will use culture as a frame to critically develop characters.
The brilliance of the book is the way Mazer attaches her own experiences and understanding of wrestling alongside the theoretical context. Reflections and photographs of her observing training sessions and speaking to wrestlers is great and something that hasn't been done since. It's therefore a critical text to read for anyone wanting to expand the pre-existing literature.
Instead of viewing the ring as a frame in which society is distilled through the ropes, the analysis centers the frame outside the ring with wrestling being constrained by the culture. Wrestling takes the culture and parodies, manipulates and reorients it in ways that often challenge the taken for granted mores in society. Mazer's analysis therefore is focusing on the wrong side of the frame. However this approach often yeilds fantastic analysis and discussion. She is also self aware of the opposite approach, but it seems to pail. The insistence that women are often seen in pornographic ways is focusing on only a subset of the whole picture for example. Even within mainstream territories, female wrestlers have had a dualistic presence within the wrestling frame. It's a type of physicality, athleticism and power that is expressed in a sexualized way. There is less passivity. Mazer herself says earlier in the book that wrestling is basically athleticism with drag. Gender therefore is constantly being looked at but it's analysis is inevitably constrained alongside a certain market focus. The WWE focuses and orients its marketing energy on attracting young boys to the product and so archetypes tend to reflect superhero gimmicks and spoiled princesses. When these roles are analyzed in the context of a storyline, it's often the case that they are subverted and at times completely destroyed by counteracting values and norms. Wrestling is a tabula rasa spectacle that will use culture as a frame to critically develop characters.
The brilliance of the book is the way Mazer attaches her own experiences and understanding of wrestling alongside the theoretical context. Reflections and photographs of her observing training sessions and speaking to wrestlers is great and something that hasn't been done since. It's therefore a critical text to read for anyone wanting to expand the pre-existing literature.
October 31, 2013
Likely the best theoretical treatment of the sport we'll ever see, but Mazer's sense of history is lacking (which is understandable, given her training and background). Shoemaker's new book, which I've just started, seems likely to be the best "pop theoretical/pop historical" work. So just what does that leave for ol' Ollie B? Everything else, I suppose. I mean, Mazer watched the game, but she didn't actually do it...so I've got her there, as in many other areas. Let's see what happens with these grant requests.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews