In high school, we were required to do a Senior Mastery Project that explored the human condition. I did mine on professional wrestling tying into archetypal character types. I’ve since learned that it isn’t the characters that connect to the human condition, but the storytelling itself.

Wrestling is never about what has happened; the action always hinges on the suspense of what’s going to happen next. Appreciating this fact is essential to understanding why today, Wrestlemania Sunday, is the greatest entertainment day of the year. Nobody does predictive gaming better than the WWE.

The WWE knows that ambition is the most compelling emotion to watch in another person, no matter how that hankering is applied. They pepper their storylines with conflicts of ambition not only between wrestlers, but between management, promoters, and the fans.

Professional wrestling matches aren’t about winning or losing; like a New York Met, a wrestler’s career is often made through their losses. Ambitions are presented through a unique mix of athletic competition, business interests, and natural talent all competing to ride the wave of a crowd’s reaction all the way to the table selling merchandise inside the arena.

Because wrestling fans can differentiate between each of these realities, they’re some of the deepest thinkers and greatest conversationalists I’ve known with an appreciation for nuance (and chair shots) seldom seen in politics, religion or sports.

The conversations aren’t about what should or shouldn’t happen, or who has the superior abilities. Rather, the conversations are about what’s likely to happen and how the repercussions of that outcome will resonate. We know that it is a business balancing future profitability against competing interests.

I love predicting what decisions people will or will not make. With wrestling, those decisions have many variables from crowd reaction to performer contracts and building a sustainable platform for the future.

The rush I get from correctly predicting a major storyline turn is similar to what I imagine a psychic medium feels when a member of their audience has, in fact, recently lost a loved one named Jim… or, Tim.

The WWE has perfected the imaginative engineering of forward-thinking strategy aligned towards putting the platform first, riding the crowd’s energy and moving merch.

And I have no tolerance for complaints about how wrestling is stupid or fake. It is live entertainment that captivates people in every culture of the world without needing Jedi glow stick swords or CGI special effects. Monday Night RAW holds the record as the longest-running episodic program in history at over 25 years and counting, and SmackDown is the second-longest running program.

The WWE taps into a universal language by mining the rhythms of action, expectation, payoff, and surprise. It is as pure of an art as theater, stand up comedy, or singing but with the intensity of a hurricane and an annual revenue higher than the GDP of several of the world’s poorest countries.

They do it by simultaneously building tension on several levels: within the match, feud, storyline, each character’s personal narrative, and overall wrestling season.

On top of that, they constrain time and space with gimmicky rules like a ten-second count out, steel cage match, or qualifying tournament. And all of it leads to one night: Wrestlemania.

One of the biggest storylines right now centers on how John Cena doesn’t have a road to Wrestlemania. We’re left wondering, will the Undertaker show up to accept Cena’s challenge, or will he sit things out since he’s had “final Wrestlemania moments” for several years in a row? For those who don’t follow wrestling, The Undertaker serves as a defacto village elder in the locker room; he’s a motorcycle enthusiast who is simultaneously both dead and undead, like Matt Lauer’s career.

John Cena is a global superstar transitioning to a Hollywood blockbuster career. Since he’s starring in the number one movie premiering this weekend, perhaps it’s better to show him goofing off in the stands with a cartoonishly large tub of popcorn and soda than risk his health and next feature film role for anything less than a main event. After all, Daddy’s Home 3 isn’t going to film itself.

I suspect we’ll have fifteen minutes of entrances followed by five minutes of action. Or maybe he’ll have a surprise showdown with The Rock, whose anticipated blockbuster action movie conveniently comes out next weekend.

Two years ago The Rock surprised us all by coming onstage with a flamethrower and setting his own name on fire. It made no sense, but the 100,000 people packed into the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium loved it. That will be hard to top.

Creating anything entertaining is a challenge. But I know with certainty that tonight, watching Wrestlemania 34, I will join the millions (and millions) of captivated fans who will be at times rolling our eyes or trying to fast forward live TV, and at other times sitting on the edge of our seats.

We’ll boo and cheer and text our friends that after jumping off that ladder, Shane McMahon is probably dead.

At some point, we may collectively forget to breathe. At other points, we’ll laugh out loud. We’ll experience nostalgia – the highlights from the WWE Hall of Fame ceremony alone assure that.

From time to time we’ll get anxious and many times be surprised. And always, constantly and forever, we’ll be primed to lose our minds if we hear Stone Cold’s breaking glass.

Wrestlemania Sunday is inarguably one of my most emotional days of every year; it’s New Year’s Eve without the follow-up holiday we all deserve just to process where we’ve been and where we’re going next. Like everything in the WWE, that too is by design.

Ask any wrestling fan what episode of Monday Night RAW will be the best for the year and they’ll tell you it isn’t the one before Wrestlemania, when all the chips are stacked; the best episode is the night after Wrestlemania, when the world has come undone and needs to be built anew.

May I never lose sight of how fortunate I am to be able to predict and rely on something as remarkable as that.

 

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