The advantage of having fights scripted in advance in wrestling is that absolutely anything can happen. After two and a half decades commenting on the discipline, Christophe Agius, one of the most famous French voices in the field, has seen things. Fights with demons, the living dead, a wrestler buried alive, a sex scene in the middle of the ring, and so on. It’s hard to be surprised after all that, and yet. And yet, on this first weekend in May, Word Wrestling Entertainment – WWE by its nickname, and the number 1 company on the market – is moving to Lyon for one of the biggest shows of the year. 16,000 people expected at the LDLC Arena, sorry. And that was totally unthinkable for me. Even two years ago, you would have told me that it could happen, I wouldn’t have believed it,” enthuses the commentator, ready to experience his own France-Brazil 98.
If the event sounds like a miracle, it owes nothing to chance. WWE has always wanted to capitalize internationally, and has noted a renewed interest in France for its product. Christophe Agius abandons his classic quips for apothecary accounts for a moment: “French-speaking audiences are very satisfactory at the moment and continue to increase. Internationally, WWE continues to present record figures, whether in terms of revenue or audience.” On French social networks, wrestling is often a top trend, while a whole generation of videographers covers the subject on Youtube or Twitch.
“The stories told are much better”
“Wrestling is experiencing a golden age in France,” says one of them, MrOkkin, a YouTuber with 90,000 subscribers. This kind of content explains, in part, the revival. Gone are the days when you had to wait until Friday evening at 10 p.m. to watch your wrestling episode on NT1, and again, two weeks after its US broadcast. Today, “wrestling is very easy to follow on the internet, whether on Twitter, Youtube, stream… You can access any extract and any show, sometimes translated the next day”, in addition of a more official broadcast on AB1.
Being able to see everything is great, you might as well want it. And that’s good, because according to most followers, the shows have never been so good. “The stories presented are much better than in the past, the characters much more in-depth and complex, and the intrigues more advanced,” praises Christophe Agius. During the previous golden era of wrestling in France, its broadcast on NT1 between 2007 and 2014, “the success came from the fact that it was new in France and spectacular, but the stories told were much less strong”, recognizes the commentator.
Like a tune from Game of Thrones
“Today, the emphasis is much more on stories and dialogue than on fights,” notes Sturry, French wrestler and videographer for the “C’est ça le wrestling” channel with 95,000 subscribers. “There has been a drastic change in creative heads, increased competition that pushes one another, and WWE has moved beyond the divide of good guy versus bad guy rivalry. The plots are more like Game of Thrones, with ambiguous protagonists and without one side necessarily seeming better than the other.”
Far from the bland and one-dimensional superhero John Cena, previous big star, the current main character, Roman Reigns, world champion for more than three years and number 1 in the company since 2020, is a ruthless tribal chief who mistreats his family as much as he loves her, with a bloated ego and damn paranoid since the betrayal of his best friend ten years ago.
Netflix more than MMA
“We are living in the golden age of series in pop culture, and wrestling is consumed like Netflix, more than like MMA or boxing,” says MrOkkin. Which also allows us to break down one of the most annoying remarks to hear for any wrestling fan. Yes, we know that the fights are fake and scripted, thank you (we repeat, there are living dead fighting, we understood that it was fake). “But the more WWE emphasizes the series side, the less sense this remark makes,” subscribes the Youtuber.
His sidekick Sturry also finds that it has never been easier to be a wrestling fan. “It of course remains niche entertainment, but we are in a geek-culture society, where many dominant cultures, like video games or manga, were criticized a few years ago, so there are more ‘openness, of curiosities, for everyone’s passions’.
Meme and tweet
Since we’re talking about geek culture, the name Roman Reigns mentioned above may not mean anything to you, but you’ve probably already come across his characteristic face in a gif on Twitter or Instagram. “Today, Roman Reigns is a meme. The facial expressions of the wrestlers are necessarily very exaggerated, to accentuate the emotions but also to be visible to the spectators furthest from the arena. Which necessarily makes them very good gifs,” says Christophe Agius.
“At the slightest football or basketball match, fans will use memes to comment on reactions,” continues the commentator, “and Roman Reigns, the RKO of Randy Orton or others often come up. Over time, this creates curiosity about the product. »
A great demonstration of relentless American soft-power, continues MrOkkin: “The United States is increasingly able to import its entertainment internationally, like the NBA or wrestling. Today, the French basketball fan will use Roman Reigns memes to comment on a dunk, in a mix of entertainment that pushes both. » Just like the presence of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, in the cinema and in the wrestling rings. Not sure that the latter will make the trip to Lyon, but whatever, after seeing this, Christophe Agius and French wrestling fans will be able to die peacefully. Well, as late as possible anyway.