I thought I had outgrown watching professional wrestling. Like many people, I left it behind in my late teens, convinced that film and television offered richer, more sophisticated storytelling.
Returning to it years later, I realised I had misunderstood what wrestling was actually trying to do.
What I had mistaken for simplicity was something else entirely. At its best, professional wrestling is long-form storytelling performed live, through physicality as much as dialogue, unfolding in front of an audience whose response ultimately determines what works and what fails.
For most people, “professional wrestling” means WWE. That assumption is fair. The company elevated the form into a global spectacle and produced some of the most recognisable figures in modern pop culture, from Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock to John Cena and The Underta
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