Toxic Fandom: When Wrestling Becomes Real

 

There is no argument that the world of sports can be a dangerous place for many reasons. Sports are all about entertainment and fans not only enjoy themselves but interact with the athletes regardless of sport. Wrestling is by far one of the most toxic sports environments in the sporting world and has been for decades. You go to a wrestling event and you will hear the derogatory language, threats, and racial slurs. You could also see or hear sexual harassment, sexual assault, and other forms of violence. That being said, what needs to be addressed is what toxic fandom is and why is the world of sports becoming so dangerous when it used to be an enjoyable experience.

Toxic Fandom by its definition is behavior that is negative regarding how someone acts or feels about a significant or even small change in their favorite sport or movie or television show. Two people that said it best were Corey Taylor from the band Slipknot and Matt Jackson, a world-traveled and world famously professional wrestler currently signed to AEW who along with his brother Nick is known as "The Young Bucks". Matt and Corey have both gone on record to say that professional wrestling has the most toxic fandom in the world. Corey also stated that Star Wars fans are equally as harmful, which I also agree with. 

While sitting down with actress Melissa Joan Hart for her What Women Binge podcast, Matt along with his wife Dana talked about both the positive and negative sides of wrestling and the wrestling fandom. Matt brought up how his brother Nick lost his bag recently which included expensive items including shoes. What does this tell you about the toxic side of fandom? The Young Bucks have many fans and a lot of power being two of the EVPs(executive vice presidents) of AEW but they also have some people who may be wrestling fans as a whole but not of the Young Bucks. Those fans thought it was ok to steal one of Nick's personal belongings out of spite and honestly, that doesn't label them as being a wrestling fan, it labels them as being a jerk and a piece of trash. 

Corey Taylor's issue is with the WWE specifically and the idea of kayfabe. For wrestling but also non-wrestling fans, kayfabe is the idea of presenting ideas or staged performances in wrestling as being genuine or authentic. He brings up Brock Lesnar vs Bill Goldberg at Wrestlemania as a good example. For reference, at Wrestlemania 20, Brock Lesnar fought Bill Goldberg in a match, that in my opinion was one of the worst Wrestlemania matches ever but also one of the worst matches ever involving these two. Brock and Bill were both leaving the company and WWE thought that it was a good idea to put on a huge match featuring the two biggest stars in the company at the time. That was great but what was not great was how fans reacted. The fans who knew about both men soon leaving WWE were booing the men like crazy and ruining the match for those fans who may have also known they were leaving but still wanted to enjoy the match. That is the problem with fandom as a whole. You find something in entertainment that you do not agree with and decide to ruin it for everyone else just because it doesn't line up with what you feel or believe.