ABSTRACT
Nicholas Sammond describes the “squared circle” as an innately visceral space: it is “brutal and it is carnal. It is awash in blood, sweat and spit.”1 The history of professional wrestling confirms the validity of Sammond’s statement; the most iconic moments (from Stone Cold Steve Austin’s bloodied grimace to camera at WrestleMania XIII, or Shawn Michaels leaping on to Razor Ramon from the top of a ladder at WrestleMania X, ad infinitum) are generally the most somatically arresting. Initially, then, it might appear that such a physicalized space, akin to the ancient gladiatorial coliseum, offers little room for articulate speech. Certainly Roland Barthes’s seminal description of professional wrestling as a “spectacle of excess” partly substantiates this claim, the spectacle dependent on dazzling visual imagery. Indeed, to the non-wrestling fan, it is the simulated pain (engendering the wearisome “Isn’t it all fake?” question) or the seemingly unrestrained violence (causing mothers everywhere to worry about their children performing Tombstones in concrete playgrounds) that puts them off.
