So this is something I've been talking about for a while, but never made a thread on it. JTG made some comments that enforced this so now I feel the need to. Now, before I start, know that I fully expect Dead and Vlad to come in here foaming at the mouth in a rage as there's no possible way people could be racist, because racism doesn't exist! Anyone who's smart enough to realize that's bs, read with an open mind and maybe you'll understand.


To start, once again, this is something I've been talking about for a long time. I've noticed this goes back to whenever. First off, let's talk about people who would be much better off had they been white, and compare them to people who are exactly like them but white:



Ok, so first off, imagine there's an extremely talented in-ring wrestler who has the look, is super athletic, and is just all-around talented. BUT, that person also sucks monkey dong on the mic. Would you want this person pushed or not? Because that description fits three people: Shelton Benjamin, Alberto Del Rio, and Brock Lesnar. Care to guess which is by FAR the most popular of the three? Now yeah, Del Rio won some world titles, but throughout his reigns, no one ever gave a crap about him. The fans either didn't respond to him, or only certain crowds gave some sort of response, etc. With Benjamin, people were always saying "Super talented but he sucks on the mic, fire him. Don't push him. Ew, fire him. " whereas with Lesnar people simply opted to like the whole "Lesnar can get a mouthpiece, like Heyman!" with Benjamin, they didn't even go to the extents to say "maybe he can get a manager and he can be a world champ!" - nope. Yet both him and Lesnar had the look, the talent, the in-ring athleticism, and the awful mic skills. So why do people love Lesnar so much but not Benjamin, when both of them are pretty much piece for piece, the same guy?

Next. Imagine a guy who has been stuck in mid-card hell since 2009. He doesn't really have the look, as he's a "small guy." He's super talented in the ring and can put on great matches. He's charismatic and talented, but his biggest problem is that WWE doesn't see him as a headliner, so he will be stuck in the mid card forever. Sound familiar? Because this description applies to two people. Kofi Kingston and Dolph Ziggler. Wanna take a guess as to which one of these is coveted by the WWE fans, which one people would KILL for him to be world champ, which person's name they chant at every show, which one sells tons of merch and pretty much worshipped... and which one of these has people saying "He should get fired." "He should stay in the mid card forever." "He should just disappear into obscurity, it's obvious WWE doesn't want him as world champ"? So why is is that Kofi, a guy who's super talented in the ring, charismatic on the mic, and has been in WWE for around 6 years now, has to be 'buried' and why does no one ever cheer for him or support him at all, whereas Ziggler, a guy who's super talented in the ring, charismatic on the mic, and has been in WWE for around 6 years now, has to be "pushed to the moon." has to be "the face of the company!" etc. etc.

There are more examples, but I'd like to look more to my next point. Let's look at right now, who the most popular guys in WWE right now are. Not just in terms of WWE pushing him, but in terms of how much they are loved by the fans (primarily the IWC):

Dean Ambrose, Seth Rollins, Daniel Bryan, Dolph Ziggler, Sami Zayn, Kevin Owens, Seth Rollins, Finn Balor, Hideo Itami, Cesaro, Wade Barrett, Tyson Kidd, Tyler Breeze, etc.

The only ones of those who aren't (fully) white are Hideo (asian) and Rollins (half Hispanic), but even so, not a single black guy in there. I don't believe this popularity thing extends to NXT, however. As in NXT, people like Big E were widely popular, whereas in WWE they tend to be booed and crapped on.

Even when you look at history, The Rock is one of the two biggest wrestlers of all time... but he will always be behind Austin in the minds of many people.

What about all-time greats? Yes you have The Rock, Mark Henry, and Booker T (Two of which were never WWE champions).... but in comparison, you also have Stone Cold, Bret Hart, The Undertaker, John Cena, Brock Lesnar, Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, Randy Savage, etc. etc. etc. The ratio is extremely/overwhelmingly on the side of white people, by a HUGE margin.

Now, I'm not saying that this means the WWE fans are out lynching people or dragging people in the back of their truck. I'm not saying they're 100% completely racist and hate every person who's black. But you can't deny that there is some sort of underlying racism within the WWE (and most wrestling in general) universe - most notably in the IWC.

JTG says that "black competitors have to work  5x more than anyone else" and if "Daniel Bryan were black, he would have never made it." - I completely agree. Now yes, it doesn't help that WWE stereotypes most black wrestlers (for example, Xavier Woods could have taken the Rollins route. Despite not being white, Rollins acts very 'white', Woods could do the same - seeing as him and Rollins are very similar in attitude in real life - but WWE chooses to have him play a stereotypical role), but that doesn't change the fact that there are a lot of talented black wrestlers who get buried under despite them having white counterparts that are beloved and coveted.

EDIT - on another side note. Another slight example of racism that kills me inside every time I hear it is when people mock Reigns by saying "Balee dat!" - I swear to god, it's so fucking stupid. Roman doesn't say anything REMOTELY sounding like "Balee" when he says "BELIEVE" or "dat" when he says "THAT." That is such underlying racism to think that just because he's 'colored' he says "balee dat' even though it doesn't sound ANYTHING like it at ALL.

tl;dr Black people have it bad in WWE. Hispanics have it slightly better, but White people have it easiest.

EDIT - on another side note. Another slight example of racism that kills me inside every time I hear it is when people mock Reigns by saying "Balee dat!" - I swear to god, it's so fucking stupid. Roman doesn't say anything REMOTELY sounding like "Balee" when he says "BELIEVE" or "dat" when he says "THAT." That is such underlying racism to think that just because he's 'colored' he says "balee dat' even though it doesn't sound ANYTHING like it at ALL.

I always say "Baleed Dat'!" because the first few times he said it, to me anyway, that's what it sounded like he said. Since then, he says it far more clear...but even then, it was nothing to do with him being black or whatever; to me it was because it was he has a deepish voice and it sounded awesome to me. I honestly thought that's what everyone else believed too, not because of his skin colour. I also said it off my own back, rather than hearing others say it and then copying.

Plus I love Reigns, so it wouldn't make any sense for me to be racist against him when I was one of the few on this site that actually wanted him to be WWE Champion xD

Note, I only replied to that because I don't want to read the other part. I don't have the energy lol.

I wasn't thinking of you haha. I know you like Reigns, I was thinking of the people in the BR comments or FB comments (which is where I see a lot of this stuff in general). YT comments too, but YT people are always dumb.

I know you didn't me directly

ChollyD32 wrote:

I know you didn't me directly

I always do you directly.

So because of how certain wrestlers are booked, the color of their skin is why they never connect with the crowd. Never mind the fact Booker T is loved, people loved Kofi Kingston when he was a face. People love the Primetime Players. The people didn't connect with Del Rio because his accent got in the way. People are always looking for a reason to blame it on race.

Just two things I want to really address: I have almost only heard good things about Shelton during his time in WWE. I don't think anyone ever wanted him to be WWE Champion, but I didn't hear people saying he should get fired. Most people loved him, but just didn't think he should be a main eventer. I, personally, could've seen him as a legit main eventer if he was given a mouth piece, like Lesnar, but I think more people got behind Lesnar because of his size, rather than because he was white. When you're that big, doing some of the things Lesnar can do, you're gonna get over. Especially if you have a mouthpiece to cover your only real weakness.

Second thing: Ziggler has been in WWE for, like, 10 years. Although, if you meant only as the character Dolph Ziggler, then yeah, that's been about 7 years.

Now, I'm not sure if there's racism in the audience or not. Sure, there's not as many minorities that got cover as much as the whites, by a large margin, but there's also been a lot more white people in WWE, in general, than minorities. Especially ones that got pushed right. It's very hard to get behind someone who gets pushed horribly, sometimes, unless they've got ridiculous talent.

I'm not saying there isn't racism in the audience at all. There very well may be. I'm just saying there are other factors in why it may seem like the audience is racist. Like, take the New Day for example. As faces, they were hated, but I don't think that's because they're black. I think it's because WWE portrayed them as stereotypical black people, shucking and jiving, and the fans hated that. Not because of race, but because it was stupid. Now that they're heels, while the audience still boos them (because they're heels), a lot of people online say they're awesome.

Saying there's no Racism in the WWE is the same as saying you can go on living without oxygen.

- When was the last time you had an African-American WWE Champion (Not World Heavyweight Champion, not WCW World Champion. A WWE TITLE Holder)?
- When was the last time you saw an African American get a push towards the Company's main title? (and a decent push, not one of those "pushes" where they just go for it 'till they're pinned on a PPV and then they're held back to the mid or low-card status.);
- Alberto Del Rio's departure from the WWE. Racism victim is sanctioned, but the offender isn't.
- Asian superstars on the main roster? Aside fucking with Yoshi Tatsu (who was quite a nice performer), Jimmy Wang Yang was another one. I can already see them screwing up with Hideo Itami as well.
- Alberto Del Rio was the last foreign superstar (by foreign I mean non-USA, non-Canadian) to hold the WWE Title, which he held twice, for 84 days combined (a 35 and a 49 day reign).
- Before Del Rio, was Sheamus. And Before Sheamus, you'd have to go back to 1993, when Yokozuna got it from Hogan and held it for 280 days. (And no, Eddie Guerrero doesn't count as "foreign", because he was born in the USA);

And I'm just too tired to type any more.
These may be not "signs" of racism, but the tendencies are there.


EDIT: as for Racism within the audience, fans are natural idiots regardless of the what we're talking about. (be it wrestling, soccer, wtv.)

I stopped reading after you had to take a shot at The IWC

People don't care about Kofi and Big E because WWE gives them shit like The New Day. How is anyone going to get over doing that on TV in 2015? Dolph Zigger was able to bounce back from being a male cheerleader because he got to go away and come back repackaged. Kofi never got there. There was never a transition between his character changes.

Kofi had characters changes?

Scratch that.

Kofi had a character to change?!

Yeah he started out as a Jamaican, then he started talking normal all of the sudden. Then he started clapping his way towards victory.

How did it ever go wrong?!?!

<_<

MooseNugget wrote:

Yeah he started out as a Jamaican, then he started talking normal all of the sudden. Then he started clapping his way towards victory.

That's racist

The biggest problem is language. The top non-white stars generally have a hard time dealing with the language barrier. Sin Cara could have been huge but a mute babyface doesn't work. Sting only worked because it was an angle where he "went silent."

Even really strong accents are bad. It messes with relatability in the casual fans.

So yeah, whites have it the easiest, because whites from Canada, England, and the USA are the most likely to be wrestling prospects in the first place. Blacks are heavy majorities in most sports so the top black athletes rarely turn to wrestling. Jon Jones would be a main eventer in the WWE (If not for his drug issue) but he got into MMA instead.

The thing for me is, I don't know who I'm supposed to be upset the WWE missed the boat on? The Pope, who was dangerous in the ring? I just don't know who these black super prospects are that didn't get their fair shake. They certainly could have done more with MVP, but he wasn't a real top prospect either. There are a lot of "They could have made somethings" like a high midcard spot similar to Sheamus' role. but I don't know who the main eventers were. I don't see them.

Let's see what they do with Uhaa Nation. He's definitely got all the skills to be a top NXT star and a high midcard babyface.

Minkaro wrote:

MooseNugget wrote:

Yeah he started out as a Jamaican, then he started talking normal all of the sudden. Then he started clapping his way towards victory.

That's racist