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CASE 1.1

The Wrestling Boards

Crystle Martin

The wrestlers wait with bated breath for the unveiling of the match card, which tells players whom they will be wrestling that week.1 As soon as the match card is released by the booker, who manages the fantasy wrestling federation, the wrestlers gleefully spring into action—creating feuds with the wrestler or wrestlers they are paired with that week. Throughout the course of the week, the wrestlers build and perfect their feuds—creating written, audio, or video promos about how they are going to win their match against the opposing wrestler (see figure C.1.1.). At the end of a given week, the booker calls a halt to the feuding, and the anticipation grows as three writers launch into a frenzied weekend of activity, in which they churn out up to 85 pages of text. These stories are released to the wrestlers, who devour every moment—from the time the first wrestler hits the ramp to the last move of the last match with a winner being declared—and every scrap of text between. The wrestlers enjoy every moment of the narrative of the match that grew out of their carefully crafted and raucous feuds. The wrestlers discuss the match and share praise and criticism with the writers, and then the whole process begins again with a new match card and new feuds.

Professional wrestling traces its roots to the nineteenth century (Scientific American 1895) and has thrived as a major pastime in North America for the past four decades. World Wrestling Entertainment (or WWE) is now the largest professional wrestling promotion group in the world. Professional wrestling, with its focus on dramatic performance, differs markedly from the ancient Greek–influenced sport of amateur wrestling seen in the Olympics and in collegiate settings. Despite professional wrestling’s popularity, being a fan continues to carry a cultural stigma and is seen as decidedly lowbrow, much like video games (Sammond 2005). Outsiders often object to the vulgar nature of both and see them as educational wastelands devoid of cultural value. But just like the varied genres of video game entertainment, professional wrestling offers participants a variety of educational and culturally relevant experiences. The WWE alone has more than 220 million members on its social media network, with local-language websites in 23 countries (WWE, n.d.).

Figure C.1.1. A wrestling card created by a fantasy wrestling federation participant and the booker.

Image courtesy of Rhashan.

Founded in 2011 by administrator Crayo, a 19-year-old white male from the United Kingdom, the Wrestling Boards is an online professional wrestling community where wrestling fans come together in a supportive space to share and explore their interest. On the Wrestling Boards, participants discuss many aspects of the sport and their surrounding interests, and participate in the community’s fantasy wrestling federation (FWF) Over the Ropes, which is essentially a text-based role-playing game. This is a space where the love of professional wrestling intermingles with an enjoyment of role-playing and writing.

Participants on the site range in age from 15 to older than 60, with the majority falling in the 16 to 25 range. A majority of participants are male, although the community has several very active female members in its core community. The Wrestling Boards forum has more than 4,300 members, but only about 100 participate in the FWF, with about 20 characters participating in a season of matches at a time. Despite its smaller number of participants, the FWF is a vibrant and active part of the forums.

The Wrestling Boards forums are very user friendly, allowing participants to add elaborate signature images or .gifs, mashups of their favorite wrestler(s), or in one participant’s case, a mashup of his favorite wrestler and his favorite My Little Pony character from the newest version of the television show. Community members frequently include links to outside resources, videos, and audio files so that they can share news, opinions, best-of videos, and a host of other information with others on the forum about the complex story lines surrounding professional wrestling. They also participate in a variety of shared activities within the fantasy wrestling federation, such as feuding in character and writing reviews of each week’s show.

Participants in the community describe again and again the importance of help and feedback to the community, and supporting each other is a shared expectation among members. In the professional wrestling fandom, educating newcomers about “the product” of wrestling is a shared goal of the community. Some new fans believe that wrestling is a real sport, and wrestling fans work hard to educate these “marks” into what Crayo calls “smarks,” helping them to understand that professional wrestling is scripted and choreographed and is actually a genre of television writing. Participants on the Wrestling Boards answer each other’s questions about wrestling story lines, wrestlers, wrestling history, community norms, and participating in the fantasy wrestling federation. They use help and feedback as a support system and as a way to create social bonds with other participants. Jonathan, a 16-year-old white male from the United Kingdom, describes why help and feedback are so prominent in the community: “At the end of the day, we’re all alike and we’re like a family on Wrestling Boards.”

The site was just a year old when I first started observing it, so at the time the core group of original members was still very prominent in participation and visibility. These members have earned special status because of their history with the community. The site allows members of the community to have titles under their chosen image or avatar, which are given by specific groups or for actions on the forum. They can also display the trophies they earn for things such as “member of the month.” Participants use a variety of strategies to determine who has status on the forum, including activity, quality of postings, trophies earned, and so on. Only rarely do they use the reputation system that is built into the forums; instead they use a system similar to the way people evaluate “likes” on a Facebook post.

Learner Story

The story of one Wrestling Boards participant illustrates how a lifelong interest can evolve into an avenue for expertise development and to a potential career path. Rhashan, a 19-year-old African American male from New Jersey, has been watching wrestling nearly his entire life. “I started watching when I was three or two years old because my mother had introduced it to me and I was automatically entertained.” His initial introduction to wrestling was during the Attitude Era, a period of wrestling for the WWE—then the WWF—from the latter half of the 1990s to the early 2000s that was marked by a shift to more adult content. Rhashan has attended an extraordinary number of wrestling shows live: “3 house shows, 8 Raws, 4 Smackdowns, 2 Pay Per Views, and 4 Wrestlemanias.” Despite his family’s support of his interest, Rhashan has no local community to discuss wrestling with. “In my hometown there are scattered wrestling fans here and there, nothing intense for people my age. However, children seem to be all watching it.” Because of this, Rhashan has become guarded about sharing his interest outside the Wrestling Boards. “Some of my friends have an interest in WWE and I’ve made friends on this site, but I don’t know these guys in real life. I haven’t introduced my friends to WWE. WWE is not something that’s like amazing to show around, it’s just something I like.”

Through Rhashan’s long history with wrestling, he has developed a detailed method that he uses to choose which wrestlers to support.

Daniel Bryan is my favorite wrestler at the moment. I choose wrestlers to support based on who’s not in the top tier, like Cena & CM Punk. I like to go for fresher guys and people who haven’t gotten that shot yet. However that’s the least important aspect. I think that a wrestler must, of course, be able to wrestle a good match, and I’ve seen some that can’t. The last aspect is mic skills, which is the ability to captivate an audience just by using a mic. It seems worthless, but it’s the mic that builds up the hype for every match.

His interest in the total package, including the theatricality of a wrestler’s performance on the microphone, stems from his long history with wrestling, as well as from his interest in the creative pursuit of filmmaking and his understanding that it takes many elements to create a great dramatic scene.

Rhashan is an expert in his interest, with a long memory of its history, story lines, and wrestlers. If you ask him about his favorite wrestlers, you get answers that span a decade. He is also a heavy technology user when it comes to participating in his interest, using social media, YouTube, wrestling news sites, and forums. Rhashan has developed a web series on YouTube in which he creates analysis videos of the weekly show RAW and the annual pay-per-view event WrestleMania. He displays technical skill in video and audio editing, splicing together segments of the television broadcasts with shots of himself talking, and the audio runs seamlessly throughout each video. He enjoys the Wrestling Boards because it offers varied perspectives on wrestling through its diverse international community, and because it gives him access to a steady stream of people who are interested in his filmmaking. Rhashan uses his digital skills in video and audio editing to enhance his participation in Over the Ropes. “No one else really does Over the Ropes like I do, to the extent of shooting real promos.” With feedback from the community, he improves his video scripts as well as his video and audio production. He thinks that the videography skills he is developing in the Over the Ropes role-playing community are helping him to hone his career in filmmaking. Rhashan is interested in building a larger following and connections to future opportunity, using the Wrestling Boards as a site to develop and launch his future career as a filmmaker.