Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: The WWE

April 15, 2019 8:23 PM - Season 6, Episode 6

Main subject: The unwillingness of the WWE to support its wrestlers even as a lifetime of performances leaves them broken and often to an early death. On YouTube. (23m) Other topics included the submission of the Mueller Report and Barr's summary of it.
posted by JHarris (5 comments total)

From the wrestling fan standpoint, this was a good but not great survey of the issue. WrestleNomics Radio has, of course, been covering this for a while, and recently went through a step-by-step reading of the steps to determine whether someone is an independent contractor or an employee, and unsurprisingly, it's obvious that WWE wrestlers are employees. Wrestling Twitter briefly pretended to be offended by Oliver's description of Roman Reigns as looking like a pedophile with wet hair, but by and large, this was received well. I just wish Oliver had been more specific with his call to action -- chants of "Health In-Sur-Ance!" have been heard on at least a couple of occasions in the last couple of weeks, but a more precise exhortation of a hashtag or chant would have been better.
posted by Etrigan at 7:52 AM on April 16, 2019 [1 favorite]

I despise wrestling, but I was so not prepared to see Jake the Snake cry. That just broke me inside. I’m tearing up just thinking about it.
posted by Ruki at 10:58 AM on April 16, 2019

Also, my husband and I happened to be in Hollywood one day as someone was getting a star. I asked a security guard who, and upon hearing Vince McMahon, my husband and I both said "Oh," in that chilly New England way, then promptly left the area. McMahon really is a villain of a man.
posted by Ruki at 11:10 AM on April 16, 2019 [2 favorites]

This one fell flat for me.

It seems like he was trying to talk specifically to wrestling fans and try to drum up activism around the contractor issue.

But while the WWE is clearly nasty, I'm not sold that wrestling needs to exist in any form. It seems inherently unsafe the same way the NFL is inherently unsafe, so I don't really see what's worth protecting.
posted by tjgrathwell at 12:11 PM on April 16, 2019 [2 favorites]

Some people seem to have an inherent need to see other people getting the shit kicked out of them.
posted by bleep at 6:44 PM on April 16, 2019