Where’s The Sex, Danger and Rock & Roll In Pro Wrestling?

For as much as pro wrestling has evolved, the song (still) remains the same.

For as much as pro wrestling (especially what we do at Capitol) is all about quality family entertainment, there’s something — the same something that allowed proto rocker Ray Charles to blend elements of the religious and the profane in his ascension to musical stardom — that either visibly or invisibly at the core of the industry, is everything.

Pro wrestling, sex, danger, and rock and roll are synonymous. How so? Well, wrestling, sex, danger, and rock and roll all involve “muscular spasms in multiple areas of the body, a general euphoric sensation, body movements and vocalizations followed by “a relaxing experience, attributed to the release of the neurohormones oxytocin and prolactin, plus endorphins.” Sadly, there’s a seductively orgasmic nature that most of current pro wrestling lacks at-present. Without bearing the influence of a pure, uninhibited, and sometimes ribald connection to sex, danger, and rock and roll, well, it’s easy to argue that there isn’t any pro wrestling happening in pro wrestling right now.

In short, it’s time to make pro wrestling orgasm again.

In order to reintroduce this sensual triumvirate to pro wrestling, we need to begin at the beginning. There’s arguably no better place to begin than with Led Zeppelin, Ric Flair, and The Undertaker.

The overt blend of sex and danger in Led Zeppelin’s rock and roll allowed for the band to create a body of music that sold 200 to 300 million units worldwide, with nine studio albums place in the top 10 of the Billboard album chart. Rolling Stone magazine described Zeppelin as “the heaviest band of all time”, “the biggest band of the Seventies”, and “unquestionably one of the most enduring bands in rock history.” Comparatively, between rock-star level performers like Ric Flair and The Undertaker have, in Flair’s case, won 31 championships and in ‘taker’s case, headlined 69 pay-per-view events.

Noted rock and roll groupie Pamela des Barres describes Led Zeppelin playing rock and roll as “[an] orgasm,” while Playboy playmate and fellow groupie Bebe Buell described Jimmy Page’s habit of “spewing saliva into her mouth during sex” as “his way of putting some of himself in me.”

Even further, there’s the fact that Robert Page’s creativity was very much inspired by his interest in burgeoning curiosity with English occultist and magician Aleister Crowley, and Robert Plant’s interest in the work of J.R.R. Tolkien, whose Middle Earth is represented in Led Zeppelin’s via Mordor, the Misty Mountains, Gollum and Ringwraiths. Even deeper, Plant appeared to belive that Celtic mysticism was the vital source for the spirit of Led Zeppelin.

However, for all of that, sometimes the perception of sex, danger, rock and roll and reality failed to connect. The New York Times noted that, regarding Led Zeppelin’s 1973 live performance film The Song Remains The Same that “[The film lacks] immediacy, the sense of physical presence and even, to an extent, physical peril. The power of a mass audience to communicate excitement is absent…Mr. Plant sashays around the stage, posturing, pouting and conducting a meaningful relationship with the microphone. It looks like a sheep trying to seduce a telephone pole.”

Similarly, there’s times when, in watching pro wrestling at-present, that we’re getting that same cheapened facsimile of the real thing, that the Times believed was apparent in The Song Remains The Same. Ultimately, because of our the pristine, very corporate, and almost puritanical nature of the top end of the industry, there’s a fear that what once was amazing is likely never to return.

As the UK’s Daily Mail notes regarding Zeppelin (with the same likely being true for both Ric Flair and The Undertaker), “[i]f only half the tales of sex, drugs and destruction are true, few would dispute that they are the kings of excess. After all, when you come offstage after three-and-a-half hours of intensity, it was not really on the cards that you would go home, put your slippers on and have a cup of cocoa.”

In the 1970s and 1980s, sex in pro wrestling was an act that with main event superstars like Ric Flair famously noted was akin to riding Space Mountain. This is of course, a Disneyland ride that yes, was “the oldest ride in the park,” but it also “[had] the longest line.” In the modern era, sex in pro wrestling is what main event wrestlers who become married do in order to begin the process of having families. To make the circle complete, Ric Flair is also a man who is a 16-time world champion that had four wives, with four children split between two of them, and four divorces in 43 years. “I tell everyone in the world that I have always been the best father I could be and that I was the worst husband. Wooo!” That’s Flair in a nutshell.

By comparison, modern era star Daniel Bryan main evented Wrestlemania and he and his acknowledged on-screen wife (and fellow one-time in-ring competitor) Brie Bella, are very much not-so aggressively and publicly sexualized couple who just had their first child. Clearly, when it comes to sex, we’re at a different place than we’ve EVER been with it in the industry.

We’re in a weird place with danger, too. The Undertaker, aka Big Evil, The Red Devil, aka The Lord of Darkness, literally left his boots in the ring at Wrestlemania. Amazingly, Bray Wyatt, the performer who many perceive to be his evil surrogate, wasn’t the one who “retired” The Undertaker. No, that honor went to Roman Reigns, a brawny tattooed Samoan brawler who isn’t “the new face of evil” like Wyatt, but moreso the “not-quite Stone Cold” and “not-quite The Rock” of all of our not-quite dreams. When that guy beats The Undertaker and Bray Wyatt’s just kind of hanging out promising doom but not delivering it in main event situations, we’ve hit a nadir.

As far as danger, pro wrestling was once an industry where, for instance, in 1985 alone, the National Wrestling Alliance featured angles in which the Four Horsemen broke Dusty Rhodes’ ankle and hand, with Rhodes wrestling while injured, sporting massive casts. Even further, the NWA’s Starrcade ’85 card had blood-letting in two-thirds of its matches, including an infamous “I Quit” match between Tully Blanchard and Magnum T.A. wherein T.A. attempted to stab out Blanchard’s eye with the leg of a shattered wooden chair. Now, WWE has a network special about to air entitled Extreme Rules wherein kendo sticks and steel cages will be involved as they were 32 years earlier, but any bloodletting or true appearance of danger will be purely accidental.

Wrestling isn’t “wrestling” anymore. The industry has been fully exposed to “reality,” and in doing so, access to the magic that comes from the combination of sex, danger, and rock and roll could’ve been compromised.

Intriguingly enough though, pro wrestling as an industry, namely between WWE, Capitol, and more is fast to the attack. At the same time that this article is being published, Capitol showcases its #1 contenders for their tag team championships of Smiley and “The Rock and Roll Model” Matt “Sex” Sells, Lords of the Ring lead vocalist Ronnie Burton, plus yes, the soon debuting Timmy Danger. Even further, WWE’s NXT brand features Dutch journeyman Tommy End repackaged as Aleister Black, a nod to the aforementioned Mr. Crowley.

Pro wrestling, sex, danger, and rock and roll are synonymous, and it’s clear that the industry itself — while knocking on the door of miluetoast asexual obsolescence — is in the process of righting itself.

It’s time to make pro wrestling orgasm again.

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