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Is the violence shown in Wrestling and MMA an influence on the current generation?
The question being asked here isn’t really one that can be given a clear cut answer. What influences some may not influence others and today with the current generation having so many options for entertainment, with what they listen to, read, and watch, there is bound to be situations where what they take in influences them. Most young people though are very impressionable; they tend to look up to the “superstars” of their favorite entertainment genres. When looking at MMA and Wrestling there are some fundamental differences between the two, which affect how and if they have an influence on the current generation.
The days of kayfabe in pro wrestling our gone, it has been a long time since it has tried to be passed off as a legitimate sport and has now moved into the realm of sports entertainment. It is pretty obvious to most that the storylines and violence that they portray are scripted. I’m not going to go into details of every wrestling promotion, but instead will look briefly into the biggest wrestling promotion, the WWE, and look at how the product they produce influences the current generation.
The WWE is the biggest wrestling promotion in the world, selling out arenas worldwide and having roughly 7 million viewers tuning into their programming on a weekly basis, in the US alone. With all the exposure they have, you really have to look at who they market to. With the recent move to PG programming it would seem that although they are still trying to keep the 18-34 demographic, that they are also going after the current generation of younger fans in hopes that they will become the future 18-34 demo. They market their characters as larger than life superheroes, which can overcome all odds and do the impossible. The kids that watch these shows look to these wrestlers as there heroes, wishing to be able to be like John Cena, and finding everything a comedy character like Hornswoggle does hilarious. What a kid sees when watching any WWE programming, can have a lot of difference influences on them, both positive and negative. A pretty simple influence would be that a fan of a certain wrestler would want to buy pretty much any sort merchandise associated with that star. Really nothing wrong with that, with anything you like you’re going to be inclined to purchase products and services associated with it. On the little more serious side of things, a fan of the WWE may be influenced by the way a certain character acts, and emulate his or her actions. Any character that may be a rebel who constantly goes against authority comes off as cool to most kids and they take that characters attitude and use it in there every day lives, which would most likely cause conflict in social situations. The most serious case of the influence wrestling has on society would be where the person tries to duplicate the staged violence that they see in wrestling. There have been countless backyard wrestling videos and stories of a wrestling fan taking it a little too far. A child sees a favorite star hit someone with a chair or jumping off a ladder and since they look up to that person they try to emulate it themselves, not realizing that they can be seriously hurt. The bottom line is that wrestling is marketed towards an age group that is very easily influenced, and although there are some harmless affects, there are some critical situations where what they see and emulate has a serious consequences in the real world. It really is though up to the parents of these kids to either choose not to let watch or explain to them what they are seeing.
MMA is similar to wrestling only in the fact that it portrays violence as a form of entertainment; the obvious difference is that the violence in MMA is very much real. MMA has no kid friendly characters, or scripted storylines to draw people it, it is a legitimate sport where two guys that are trained in various martial arts square off and fight. MMA is really marketed towards an older crowd, they aren’t trying to draw in kids in and it shows from watching their product. Still though kids are going to be intrigued by what MMA promotions have to offer. The violence is really what would draw them in, and what they do with what they see can go in a positive or negative direction. A younger person may get in to MMA and realize they want to do some sort of martial arts training. I consider that to be a pretty positive thing, it’s something that keeps that person active and also teaches them commitment and hard work. Just like wrestling though someone could also try to emulate what they saw and actually try to hurt someone, which just like wrestling is something a parent has to monitor in order to prevent. Really MMA does have an influence on the current generation, but it really doesn’t have nearly they have the effect that wrestling does mainly based on the fact that it’s not marketed towards an impressionable age group.
To close this out the violence in MMA and Wrestling both have an affect on today’s generation, some negative and some positive. But in all honesty the violence in both areas is much more tame than most of the things that are currently on TV, in video games and in the movie theaters. The bottom line is that that there is always a opportunity to be influenced by what you see and hear, but it’s up to the individual person or the parent to make the smart choices and realize the things you see in the entertainment world don’t translate to the real world.