I just finished the latest WWE A&E biography on Booker T, one of the most respected wrestlers and champions in professional wrestling. Despite losing both his parents early in his life and spending time in jail, Booker T rose up from such a tragic life situation to become a multi time champion and a two time WWE Hall of Famer.
During his incredible run, Booker T and his brother Stevie Ray faced literal racism early on in their careers from a wrestling audience that at the time rarely if ever seen African American wrestlers before. Harlem Heat had to fight through ingrained prejudice in order to mainstream the notion of African American performers being on television.
Even just a few years ago, the idea of someone like Kofi Kingston becoming WWE Champion was a bit far fetched. WWE did a great service by pursuing a storyline whereby the main focus was on Kofi’s decade long tenure before finally earning a world title shot. I would argue there is a similar vein with Bobby Lashley’s current WWE title run.
In the past, I never felt that WWE was blatantly promoting the increased representation of African American talent, and it came off more on social media and an unspoken implication when it repeats “history has been made” or lines of a similar nature. But lately, it’s getting more noticeable that the company is obviously pushing talent from certain backgrounds.
For example, is WWE trying to cater to an incredibly small Nigerian audience with on screen time for Omos and Apollo Crews? According to the 2016 American Community Survey, a demographic survey conducted by the U.S Census Bureau, there are just approximately over 380,000 residents of Nigerian ancestry in the United States. While on paper that doesn’t seem to be a substantial amount, on a personal level I’ve noticed that Nigerians have a strong presence in North America, particularly through online dating apps.
Given that the Nigerian born Omos is being partnered with a veteran like AJ Styles as part of the RAW tag team champions and Apollo Crews and his accomplice, the former Dabba Kato now repackaged as “Commander Azeez”, are both doing a heavily Nigerian gimmick, that assessment isn’t that farfetched.
A side note about Crews for those of you finding his current character somewhat ridiculous. If you’re willing to suspend disbelief for a moment, consider that for the past six years Apollo has been in WWE, he has been pretending to be a normal sounding African American who grew up in the Atlanta suburbs. The transformation to some wannabe Nigerian prince is the REAL Apollo Crews. Remember how Apollo had some kind of backstage sit down with the Head of the Table Roman Reigns, a man who has gone back to stressing his familial ties. Apollo’s current story-line is in a similar vein.
When it comes to diverse representation in their on screen product, it’s almost like a double edge sword. While there is a resurgence in representation by African American performers, you would think that a country where Spanish is the second most spoken language and that Hispanic Americans have such a presence would be represented better given the rich history of Mexican professional wrestling.
But in an interview with Sean Ross Sapp from Fightful.com, the former Sincara lamented how at this year’s Wrestlemania, the WWE couldn’t find one Hispanic wrestler to have a match on either night of the show, not even the legendary Rey Mysterio. Ironically the only one who wrestled that had Latino roots was recording artist Bad Bunny, who is not a full time wrestler.
Given that Humberto Carillo has been booked in several segments on RAW lately with Sheamus, as well as Angel Garza, maybe WWE is finally trying to address that critique. But they have to do something better than just slapping on the “Lucha” label on Latino wrestlers and expecting a payoff, like this Lucha Lit stuff they’re doing with Gran Metalik and Lince Dorado. At least over on NXT, Santos Escobar and Legado del Fantasma are killing it on the black and yellow brand.
Finally, let’s look at the latest demographic group being given attention to be WWE: the 1.3 billion inhabitants of India. WWE has been looking to break into the Indian market for years, since the only major Indian wrestler they had was the Great Khali…until Jinder Mahal came along. The recent “Superstar Spectacle” show featured a number of up and coming wrestlers from India, some who were Khali’s students.
Recently, Mahal returned to RAW with two guys from that show, Veer and Shanky. Veer, who competed as part of Indus Sher as Rinku, had a brief run on NXT before being on the Superstar Spectacle main event teaming with Drew McIntyre vs. Jinder and the Bollywood Boyz, while Shanky was teaming with Giant Zanjeer on the same show.
WWE made a big deal out of having that show take place on India’s national holiday, Republic Day, so obviously this was a huge attempt to win over an Indian audience, with ever y match including at least one of those Indian talent that could be on a future main WWE show. Veer and Shanky’s debut on RAW is the first step, and only time will tell if they build a credible enough character to merit more Indian representation on WWE programming.
An average professional doing the 9-5 grind who really loves wrestling across all platforms. Here's hoping wrestlers finally get some basic workers rights in 2021.
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