How Wrestling Explains The World

With the Great YouTube Purge of 2014 making most of the work we do with Wrestlers of the Week somewhere between “impossible” and “totally and completely impossible”, we’ve decided to officially (quasi) retire the feature. In its place will be something we are calling Is Wrestling _____?, where we will attempt to make a connection between professional wrestling and something from the world outside of Kayfabe. We will try to post at least one thing per day, though we obviously can’t promise anything because we’re not so secretly the worst. And to start everything off, we’ll look at where it all — meaning, all of literature as we currently understand it — with the Epic of Gilgamesh.

It’s Harley Race’s reluctantly agreeing to give up being “the man” and make way for Ric Flair. It’s also what Hogan tried to do with the Ultimate Warrior, and would refuse to do for Bret Hart, Lex Luger and even the Undertaker. It’s passing the torch, and if you want to see it done right, you should watch this match between Sabu and Rob Van Dam from Hardcore Heaven ’96.