AW's Firing Shows Hypocrisy Ripe in the Ranks at WWE

Recently WWE performer AW was fired after making a joke on RAW relating to NBA superstar Kobe Bryant‘s sexual assault case from years ago. AW’s joke was wildly inappropriate and deliberately insensitive to many, and that deserved appropriate consequences like Chris Jericho‘s month-long suspension for unintentionally breaking the law in Brazil. It was also years out of date and not very funny. Yet AW had a couple valid points in his recent Tweets on the matter.

This was very far from being the first, or the worst, profoundly tasteless joke on WWE TV, PG or otherwise. I could write pages about how embarrassing Jerry Lawler so often is to listen to. AW’s wasn’t WWE’s first reference to sexual assault either. And let’s take this moment to remind ourselves that Charlie Sheen, whose history with the ladies in real life is more offensive than the joke made by the AW character that got actual person Brian Jossie fired, served as “Social Media Ambassador,” whatever the hell that is, on RAW #1000 the previous week.

Yet it’s not shocking that AW provided WWE management pounced on an easy opportunity to make an example of a misbehaving performer. Though there’s a long way to go before you could call WWE’s portrayal of women anything close to progressive, the company has taken a few high-profile steps to improve that public perception. Gone are bra and panties matches and mud wrestling in favor of the occasional, relatively family-friendly bikini contest. Physical contact between men and women performers are limited to the occasional slap to the face, with very, very rare exceptions, even when Beth Phoenix could believably beat the snot out of much of the male roster…or at least Heath Slater.

Even now, though, the portrayal of women remains inconsistent at best. While AJ Lee has emerged as a complex, motivated central TV figure this year, very recent examples of major “WTF” moments with regard to women in WWE have included the awful public slut-shaming of Eve Torres a few months ago, not to mention that over the last couple of months we’ve had about eight milliseconds of women’s matches despite RAW’s expansion to three hours. John Cena not only wasn’t fired or punished for calling Torres a whore on national TV, he was actually scripted to do so.

We may never really know for certain whether his firing was motivated by Linda McMahon‘s U.S. Senate campaign attempting to distance itself from criticism over WWE’s less tasteful moments, but given the suddenness with which WWE has embraced more family-friendly content basically makes that kind of speculation inevitable. But it’s confusing to look at what content they seem to deem objectionable and which they make no effort to distance themselves from. Whichever campaign adviser who theoretically may have suggested AW’s joke required some ass-covering didn’t bother to prevent the candidate’s husband Vince McMahon from appearing in his megalomaniacal, bullying character throughout this summer.

So AW is just a surface example of much deeper problems that WWE and the McMahon for Senate campaign have to deal with with regard to women. But AW’s implication that he’s a victim of the PG era is lacking, too. When we look back at the Attitude Era as a model for good wrestling TV, we have a habit of ignoring that there was a lot more of Mae Young going full frontal, Val Venis manhood getting severed and the late Test dry-humping dudes than there were cool, rebellious Steve Austin and DX moments. (And, sorry fanboys, there were at least as many tedious, unfunny DX segments as there were genuinely subversive ones. Remember having to listen to everyone refer to a grown man as “Mr. Ass”?) Austin and The Rock and Mankind were unique, compelling characters who were charismatic enough to have succeeded even if they had stayed away from crude material, even if they decidedly did not. AW doesn’t lack for charisma himself. Arguing that he’s restricted by the PG rating is both a crappy excuse and a disservice to his own skills.

Hit at @FightersMMA or @4JonComas if you’ve got any thoughts on the matter…

PHOTO CREDIT – WWE

Source: http://www.fighters.com/08/12/aws-firing-shows-hypocrisy-ripe-in-the-ranks-at-wwe

Clay Guida Jason Guida Melvin Guillard Cody Guinn