Two weeks ago, I was in Orlando covering WrestleMania weekend with Comicbook.com’s Over The Ropes podcast, and one of the coolest features of the WWE Axxess event that WWE puts on during the days leading up to ‘Mania was the opportunity for members of the WWE Universe to mimic their favorite WWE Superstar’s entrances.
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As I stood there watching person after person coming through the curtain, I couldn’t help but notice that most everyone who was Black was coming out to The New Day‘s entrance. While this spoke to the unbelievable popularity of the WrestleMania 33 hosts (New Day Rocks), it also stirred up a bigger question.
How many other Black superstar options did these kids have to emulate? I mean, would a kid really want to come out to Titus O’Neil’s theme song? Apollo Crews?
Does Apollo Crews even have a theme song?
By my count, there are currently only fifteen Black superstars on WWE’s roster. At WrestleMania 33, only one of those stars had a match on the main card.
The lack of top Black superstars in 2017, if nothing else, feels odd considering the diversity of the current pop culture landscape and the WWE audience.
Considering wrestling’s sorted history with African American stars saddled with such stereotypical gimmicks as rappers, criminals, pimps or even wild aborigines, maybe this shouldn’t be all that surprising.
Since 1963, there have been 131 WWE Championship reigns. The Rock is responsible for eight of those and he is the only Black wrestler to hold the company’s top prize. Yes, Booker T and Mark Henry have held the World Championship and ECW championship, but the prestigious WWE Championship has been elusive to all but The Rock.
In the past three years, the WWE has made what feel like positive strides in race representation. The New Day became the longest reigning WWE Tag Team Champions, Sasha Banks a three time Women’s Champion, Naomi a two time Women’s Champion and Rich Swann was one of the inaugural Cruiserweight Champions.
Still, no WWE (or even Universal) Champion.
The WWE Championship has long been a symbolic representation of the WWE’s faith in a superstar to be the company’s top draw. Currently, you’ll be hard pressed to find a singles, male Black superstar who is booked on the same level as Brock Lesnar, Roman Reigns, John Cena, Seth Rollins, Dean Ambrose or Randy Orton … and that doesn’t make sense to me.
But since I can only see things from the lens of my own perspective and am just a white dude who spent a few hours watching New Day impersonations, I asked Bleacher Report Snapchat Managing Editor, Kazeem Famuyide, aka Kaz, to give me his thoughts on how close we are to having a Black superstar as the face of the WWE.
Not only is Kaz a lifelong wrestling fan, but he’s also close friends with many of the WWE’s current Black stars and the founder of The Stashed and co-host of the WrassleRap podcast.
To properly start the conversation I had to first get an answer to a crucial question that was brought up by former WWE Cryme Tyme star, JTG.
Does The Rock count as a Black WWE Champion?
Kaz, thanks for joining me. JTG once said that we’ve never had a Black WWE Champion. His exact quote was that, “All the superstars that have been identified as African Americans, have been identified as black – I’ve never seen them been the face of the company or be the WWE champion. I’ve seen it in other companies like TNA and WCW, but in WWF still there hasn’t been a Black face or a champion.
I don’t want to take anything away from the Rock, he’s African-American, he is Black but he is not identified as black. There is a big difference. You have to be identified as Black.
Rock is more ambiguous, he’s exotic. Mainstream Hollywood society doesn’t identify him as black. Once you played Hercules and you have long flowing brunette hair, you’re not identified as Black.”
So, in your opinion, have we had a black WWE Champion?
Yes, The Rock is Black. He’s as Black as they come. You know there’s this weird thing when someone gets so successful, and you see this with people like Michael Jackson, Michael Jordan, always with these like uber-successful Black superstars, it always gets to this point where they say “he transcends race” – what does transcending race mean? Everyone has a race. Obviously, a lot of black people are more than one thing, but if you go up and ask The Rock, he’ll tell you, yes, I’m a Black man. But I do think what people don’t take into account is that even though Booker T, Hall of Famer, was a 5 time World Champion, he was never really seen as THE Champion, and I think that was what JT was getting at. Even when The Rock was on top, he always had Austin or Triple H as the guy.
For some reason we still haven’t had a guy to truly be the top performer and hold the top prize. Even when Booker T was champion, he was on Smackdown, he never held the top prize.
Ok, The Rock is the only Black WWE Champion. Why is that?
I wish I knew. There’s been so many super talented Black wrestlers in the past 10-15 years who could have gotten a shot, an opportunity to at least, you know try. It’s not like there’s been a lack of exception black superstars who couldve carried the torch. You got a guy like Shelton Benjamin who got all the credentials in the world like Brock, he didn’t win the national championship, but he was Brock’s captain, and he was as legit a wrestler as you could get. And he was entertaining and he went toe to toe with Shawn Michaels and Triple H and he couldn’t get a run? Not even a shot with it? You got guys like MVP at one point, you know he was red hot as a heel. I think he could have been a great heel champion. It’s weird. I can never really point to a reason why that’s happened, but it is kind of disturbing to someone who supports it as an African American. Its like well, they’re never really the top guy. You’re a good guy, but you’re never really THE GUY.
WWE for all they’ve accomplished, still seem to stay in the past, a lot of their storylines are very stereotypical. If you look at other moments in pop culture, when there’s more diversity, it’s paid off. Look at Get Out. Look at every top TV show right now and they feature a minority cast. And its not like they have to beat you over the head with their blackness. Its just when the diversity is legitimized and doesn’t come off contrived, people are going to support it. A black guy could carry the company. An Asian guy could carry the company. A Latino guy could carry the company. It doesn’t have to be the same cookie cutter white superstar every single year. You watch WWE for entertainment and not for any kind of political agenda, but after a while it’s like what’s really going on here?
Even though the New Day are the top Black act in wrestling and they didn’t have a match at Wrestlemania, they’re still positioned well. They were still a big part of the show, but they’re never THE show.
The New Day were the longest reigning tag Champions, but do you feel like the championships were almost a sidebar to their characters?
Yeah, but that speaks to their ability to entertain. I think they’ll be remembered more as an act than as champions. I love The New Day, but I can really only remember maybe three matches that they had during their run … like where they had the match of the night. It’s give and take with them. Because they’re so entertaining. They’re so on the pulse of what’s happening with youth culture, not just Black culture, and sometimes they’ll say stuff that only a certain segment of people will get and that’s totally ok, but that’s what I’m going to remember their run for more than any championships that they’ve won.
When you think about when they first got together, all the rumors were that they were going to be booked as a new Nation Of Domination. So, to see where they’ve been able to go, does that feel like progress?
You have to credit those guys for taking whatever was giving to them and making it work. Because initially that’s not what the WWE wanted to do. When they were told they were going to be Black preachers they were like um, ok whatever … as long as we’re all together we’re going to make it work. That’s more of a credit to them than to any progress the WWE has made for having compelling characters of color to this point. And to the point, they’ve been so successful is the only reason they’ve been able to do what they want over the past two or three years.
Do you think there’s a sense in the locker room with black superstars that there’s only so far they can go in the company?
I am friends with a lot of, well, probably almost all the Black wrestlers in the WWE and without mentioning names, I think yeah, in the back of their head they think there’s only so far they can go. But that’s just how wrestlers think. And it doesn’t just have to do with the WWE Championship, it could just do with just being on TV, it’s like wow, I’ve made it.
When I ask some of the Black wrestlers backstage, maybe it’s your turn to get that championship run, they’ll only say “don’t hold your breath.” They’re super happy with what they’re doing but at the same time they think of wrestling in a much different scope than we do. They think of it as a movie where they’re there to play a role and if you won’t do it, someone else will. While the Championship does mean a lot to some people, it doesn’t mean that to everyone.
Being the Champion means you get top billing, you make more money, you get to do more appearances, you get more merch, you’re popular, but The New Day have that already. They have the popularity, they get the top billing, they do the appearances, they sell a ton of merch, so I don’t know how much more money they could even be making by being the WWE or Universal Champion. So it’s all about perception for them. I think in the last year they’ve far surpassed their expectations, so now I don’t think a WWE title run is so out of the picture anymore because they’ve already done things they never thought they could, so why not?
The New Day have said they’d like to see Kofi be the one to get that shot. It really felt like he was on the cusp back in 09 when he dropped the Jamaican accent and got into a really heated feud with Randy Orton, but then all of a sudden it regressed.
Yeah, to this day I still don’t know what happened with that. That was a red hot story at one point and I thought Kofi was the guy. I think if they would have pulled the trigger with him it would have paid off.
I feel like right now, Big E has John Cena level charisma and potential to carry the company ..
Yeah, if you watch some of his early NXT stuff when he was the NXT Champion … the only black NXT champion … he’s a guy that can carry himself on his own or maybe with Woods as a mouthpiece. There’s nothing he can’t do. In the ring, outside the ring. He can work, he can talk, he can work fast, he can work strong, he can work heel, he can work baby. He’s the total package. And it’s not like he’s not a proven commodity. He’s sold a ton of merch and I think he’s the perfect guy to be the next black World Champion.
Does WWE currently know how to write for Black superstars?
There’s a lot of people in that writers room that aren’t Black and young. There’s black people in it, but they aren’t young. They don’t know how to connect with that audience. That’s why The New Day have to do their own work. I guarantee you they don’t have anyone writing their stuff.
There’s a million things you can do with a guy like Apollo Crews that doesn’t have to be a stereotypical Black athlete gimmick. For some reason, if they’re not singing and dancing and smiling, there’s nothing you can do for them. I just think the WWE as a whole need more young Black people working for them to show them what’s popular and what’s cool. What works. What’s going to speak to that audience they’re not touching immediately.
Just please, no more rapper gimmicks.
Michael Jordan was by far my favorite basketball player, but I also had a John Stockton poster on my wall because he looked like me and as a short white kid, I could identify with him. You’ve been a wrestling fan all your life, how much did the booking of Black wrestlers affect you as a kid?
It definitely affects you. Representation definitely matters. If you don’t see someone that looks like you, it’s hard to make that happen. I played basketball most of my life, but I’ve watched way more wrestling than I’ve watched basketball. I remember my first pay per view, 1989 Survivor Series, I can’t tell you the first basketball game that I ever watched. But I gravitated towards basketball because I looked at them and I looked at me and said Oh, I could do that. I didn’t have that watching wrestling. While it was entertaining, I never thought it was something feasible.
That brings me to the #Black Excellence photo Big E posted with Rich Swann, Sasha and The New Day. I was like man, we’re pretty close. I don’t think there’s ever been this many people of color holding a championship belt for this company. There’s some kid out there that’s going to see that picture and be like, man I could do this. We’ve never had that. I never had that. I’ve been watching wrestling for damn near my entire life and I’ve never seen that picture where its like you can be Black, you can be yourself and you don’t need to be a caricature of a Black person to succeed.
You can follow Kaz on Twitter and make sure to subscribe to the WrassleRap podcast here.
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