Orange Cassidy: The wrestler that rescues Romanticism from Irony
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Any essay ventured on the subject of professional wrestling is immediately conceived in the shadow of the opening essay in Roland Barthes’ Mythologies. In “The World of Wrestling”, the French philosopher and semiotician focuses on the spectacle, as witnessed in Parisian halls at the time. In one part of the essay, he describes a particular submission manoeuvre where:
... there is another ancient posture which appears in the coupling of the two wrestlers, that of the suppliant who, at the mercy of his opponent, on bended knees, his arms raised above his head, is slowly brought down by the vertical pressure of the victor. In wrestling, unlike Judo, Defeat is not a conventional sign, abandoned as soon as it is understood; it is not an outcome, but quite the contrary, its is a duration, a display, it takes up the ancient myths of public Suffering and Humiliation: the cross and the pillory.
At the heart of the wrestling matches that Barthes witnessed was :
... the great spectacle of Suffering, Defeat and Justice. Wrestling presents man's suffering with all the amplification of tragic masks. The wrestler who suffers in a hold which is reputedly cruel [...] offers an excessive portrayal of Suffering ...
One can imagine how those working class audiences that made up the main demographic of the wrestling crowd could see their own struggles mirrored in the wrestler's "excessive portrayal of suffering" – the statue-like excess and exertion of the two enemies caught in a grapple where one mirrors the cruel, weighty crush of reality and the other represents the spirit that rises to meet it.
Fast forward half a century and two men are performing a wrestling match in front of a smaller audience. Both men are visibly more slight in stature than the bulky brutes who pitted strength and spirit in front of working class audiences during the previous century. One of these men sports a golden luchador mask and the other is topless in jeans and trainers. The wrestler in trainers and jeans has exuded an air of nonchalance throughout the match, to the degree that the masked wrestler is able to catch him mid-leap and, rather than subject him to a punishing submission move, he gently rocks him to sleep. He then places the sleeping wrestler onto the canvas with great care and attempts to pin his shoulders to the ground. The referee also takes great care not to hit the canvas too loudly with his palm as he makes the count and the audience whispers en masse as they count along with him. Just before the count of three, the sleeping wrestler turns over and inadvertently reverses the pin for a two count. Realising that that he needs to render his opponent into a deeper sleep, the masked wrestler reaches under the ring and produces a pillow and blanket. He returns to his dozing opponent, places the pillow under his head, tucks him in, gives him a goodnight kiss and places his palms onto his shoulders. This time his three count is foiled by a sudden sneeze from the ref and the wrestler in jeans and trainers leaps back into action.
How would Barthes view such a performance? Perhaps the wrestlers are dramatising a different kind of struggle? A struggle within a struggle? But instead of being pitted against a subjugating force, the hero, like Dorothy and her friends in a poppy field on their journey to the witch's castle, is being pitted against the torpor of distraction? The narcoleptic effects of the internet age?
The wrestler without the mask is known as Orange Cassidy and his whole gimmick is built around nonchalance and sloth (the wrestler in the gold mask is Gentleman Jervis). Before he signed with the second biggest wrestling company in the world, AEW, Cassidy was known as a comedy gimmick wrestler whose shtick is to wrestle with his hands in his pockets. Normally, in the opening or mid point of a match, not only would Cassidy place his hands in his pockets, he would also perform a series of deliberately soft kicks to his opponent's shins with the audience playing along, reacting with cheers as if he was delivering devastating, bone-splitting punts.
I love him. My kids love him. It's easy to tell if you love a wrestler or not – just observe that sudden jolt of excitement when their entrance music plays. Cassidy's gimmick is front and centre as soon as his music hits and the screen behind him displays a plain white background with hand scrawled notes such as "place a cool move here" suggesting he didn't get round to finishing it. While other big wrestlers have a massive pyrotechnic blast to accompany the announcement of their name, Orange Cassidy's name is heralded by a single rocket. During his long, gruelling run as the AEW International Champion, he didn't march in with the gold belt round his waist or draped over his shoulder, he instead chose the more practical option of strolling to the ring with his belt safely stowed away in his backpack.
So, what story, or mythology, is being exemplified by Orange Cassidy in the same way that those French wrestlers embodied the struggle of the 20th Centurt working class? I think that Cassidy embodies the way in which a defeated populace in late capitalism descends into the numbness of irony. The power of Cassidy's popularity comes from his ability to tell a story, both within matches as well as ongoing story lines, in which he slowly escapes from the torpor of irony and begins to care for something that is worth fighting for. But before I focus on that, I want to explore the more traditional techniques of storytelling within the standard wrestling match across the ages.
A lot of the wrestling that was broadcast on English TV in the 70s and 80s was probably similar to the wrestling that Barthes wrote about with plenty of mat grappling and submission manouvres. That said, there wasn’t much technical prowess on display when the biggest star of World of Sport Wrestling, Big Daddy, entered the ring. A large, aging and not very athletic man in a bulging Union Jack leotard, Big Daddy would subject his opponents to a few “belly butts” before tossing them out of the ring or covering them for a pinfall. Big Daddy was a perfect image of post-Suez Britain, a former superpower that still thought that it ruled the world and was entitled to win everything.
Across the pond, one of the two remaining superpowers of the time told a different story. In the World Wrestling Federation, Hulk Hogan represented American might, a champion who would defend his crown against Iraq sympathisers, Russians or wrestlers who paraded presented themselves as kings. The story would follow a similar pattern in the ring, the match would begin with Hogan dominating his dastardly opponent before they would take advantage of a distracted referee to land a low blow or eye poke. This would lead to Hogan losing momentum for a few minutes before powering his way out of a sleeper hold, becoming impervious to his opponent’s blows before hitting the big boot and leg drop then making the pin. Then the strains of his theme tune, Real American, would blast from the tannoy signalling that the might and honour of the US of A had prevailed once again.
Intriguingly, NWA and WCW, rival companies to WWF that were the same company for a few years, pursued a different strategy where the bad guy, or heel, would hold the title and the good guy, or face, would pursue them. This was perhaps best examplified by the NWA era where the "Common Man", Dusty Rhodes would chase the limo-riding, jet-flying Ric Flair. A blue collar hero chasing the arrogant, extravagant heel.
I could go through all of the subsequent eras because I foster an awkward love for professional wrestling and don't find many avenues for talking about it without things getting very awkward very quickly. Instead, I will speak about the epochal shift that shaped the culture of professional wrestling since the end of the 1990s onwards: the death of kayfabe.
We all know that professional wrestling matches have a pre-determined outcome (as opposed to the real sport of amateur wrestling). We know that the match is still a dangerous and physically demanding spectacle, that the touring schedule that professional wrestlers engage in is physically punishing and mentally draining. We can look to the long list of professional wrestlers that died an early death and see that it dwarfs similar statistics from the practitioners of "real" contact sports. But up til the end of the 20th Century, nobody involved in wrestling would publicly admit that it was scripted or that the people in the ring played a character or role that didn't necessarily accord with their real life personas.
It's not that most people didn't know this big secret, despite all those moments when wrestlers would slap down reporters that would have the temerity to ask them if wrestling was fake. It was more that nobody had publicly acknowledged it. Then, with Vince MacMahon's announcement of the Attitude Era or the behind the scenes documentaries about Mick Foley and Brett Hart, the secret was out. Wrestling fans could now footage of story line enemies being friends backstage or of story line enemies carrying their mutual real-world hatred beyond the mat.
The late 80s/early 90s wrestling audience had grown into the late 90s/early 00s audience. Part of this shift reflected the edgy style of content that was familiar from Jerry Springer, Jackass and South Park. But an interest was also fostered in what was happening behind the scenes, the little rumours of feuds and clashing egos that leaked out through fanzines and websites, collectively known as the "dirt sheets". Sometimes, wrestlers would begin to allude to these backstage happenings within their storylines. In terms of presentation, the make-believe storyline elements are known as a "work" and the more off script moments were known as a "shoot". The dichotomy that rose from the dynamics of works and shoots was an ontology that consisted of two realities, the "real" world behind the scenes and the storyline reality known as "kayfabe".
However, through the first decades of the twenty first century, it became harder to invest in what was happening from bell to bell because the cat was out of the bag and everybody knew that the storylines were kayfabe. The results of matches didn't seem to matter as much now that everybody knew that they were pre-determined. The death of kayfabe wasn't just a case of everybody knowing that wrestling was scripted, it was also the phenomenon of people not being as invested in the storyline as a consequence. When two wrestlers locked up at the beginning of the match, clasping hands together in an initial test of strength, it didn't feel as momentous as it did when Hulk Hogan and The Ultimate Warrior locked up at beginning of their match at Wrestlemania VI.
After the death of kayfabe, this kind of exchange wouldn't muster a fraction of the same passion. More often than not, the crowd are more invested in the first big 'spot' of a match, the first high risk manuevre, the first real display of performative athleticism, the first opportunity to chant "Holy Shit!" in unison.
As for the crowd, they were no longer the spectators but a chorus of commentators in their own right. As the match progresses, a chant of "fight forever" or "You can't wrestle" might ring out. This mentality reached its nadir when the regular Full Sail University crowd for NXT, the WWE’s developmental brand, became so involved in their chants and rituals, some could be seen turning their backs on the match in order to check each other out while they were chanting.
There was no way kayfabe could have carried on throughout the 20th Century. Though the Undertaker made a valiant effort of always remaining in character and avoiding interviews and conventions while he was an active wrestler, even this was keeping kayfabe in more of an undead state, as befitted his gimmick. Kayfabe would briefly flicker back to life when the bell tolled at the beginning of his entrance but it would crawl back into its sepuchre shortly afterwards he disappeared backstage. If you want to see a great example of this, look up the moment when Undertaker’s Wrestlemania winning streak was broken by a loss to Brock Lesnar and the genuine shock registered among the tens of thousands of spectators.
Some of the usual talking heads, such as the reliably irate manager Jim Cornette, would rail against comedy wrestling acts such as Orange Cassidy, speaking about how wrestling could only remain believable when it was “simulated combat”. This might have been a good strategy in the 70s, when kayfabe was at its zenith and the only real alternative to boxing for the spectacle of combat. But what good is simulated combat nowadays when UFC provides the spectacle of real combat? Wrestlng had only so many places to go.
One place was the death match, a grim spectacle featuring broken glass, thumb tacs, barbed wire and kendo sticks enabling a degree of bloodletting that no legit combat sport would allow. Another strategy was to use legit combat athletes like Brock Lesnar, Kurt Angle, Ronda Rousey and even Tyson Fury to bring a sense of legitimacy to the staged spectacle. Other promotions, such as Lucha Underground, made the storylines more cinematic and leaned into the acrobatic athleticism of lucha libre for the in ring action. This led to the infamous moment of a wrestler who used a dragon gimmick sprouting wings and flying away at the end of one episode. And of course, there was also the option of using wrestlers like Bryan Danielson, who were simply so good in the ring that you couldn’t help but believe in what was happening from bell to bell.
But the option that many promoters, both independent and corporate, went for was irony. Luigi Primo, the wrestler with a pizzeria owner gimmick, would spin a pizza dough while simultaneously evading his opponent’s offense. Or Danhausen, a silver screen style horror icon who would appear from beneath the ring to curse his opponents. And of course, Orange Cassidy, the slacker who wrestles with his hands in his pockets.
So how did this particular examplar of post-kayfabe irony become the wrestler who resurrected the romanticism of the ring? How did he make audiences truly care again? It's time for another diversion.
There's an essay that I keep showing to my students as part of a class on stand up comedy on my Writer's Craft module at London Met, “The Funny Side of Nature: Whitman, Ginsberg and America’s ‘Dark Poet’” In this essay, Paul McDonald argues for how difficult it is to speak about Romantic values within our current epoch because of the reduced currency for the concept of truth within postmodernity. Or, to put it another way, the seeming non-existence of absolute truth has led to a Western cultural millieu whose default register is one of irony. According to McDonald, comedy, particularly the violently acerbic comedy of Bill Hicks, is able to exorcise and exhaust this state of irony. Once this state of irony is exorcised, romantic values can be reintroduced without being immediately batted away or dismissed by the audience. In Hicks’s case, this re-introduction of the romantic mindset comes in the form of his iconic closing “it’s just a ride” monologue that closes out his Revelations special.
Which brings us back to professional wrestling — for when we speak about the state of crisis for absolute truth is there any cultural form that illustrates it better than wrestling and the death of kayfabe? Most of the best minds in wrestling will tell you that the prime directive of a wrestling match is to tell a story, with all the theatrics and athleticism playing a supporting role to this prime directive. But how do you get an audience involved in a story when the whole idea of truth that the story is tainted by doubt and irony? You can devote your life to the gimmick, paint the canvas with claret or you can make that shift from irony to full hearted belief a feature of the story itself.
When All Elite Wrestling launched in direct competition with the WWE, Orange Cassidy was one of the earliest signings. This led to a collective groan from some corners as Cassidy was thought of as a typical comedy indie act, the wrestler who wrestled with his hands in his pockets, something for the snarky hipster indie circuit rather than a marquee talent for a major wrestling promotion. But Cassidy was also a very capable high flying performer and his matches in AEW would indulge both aspects of his character. While his matches would kick off with him playing up to his indie slacker gimmick, he would become more competitive as the match progressed, pulling off an array of high-velocity, high-risk and high-impact manoeuvres. Despite him being more slim and slight in stature when compared to your typical meathead wrestler, his skill allowed him to make his offensive moves believable.
However, I would not be writing all of these fancy words on the art of wrestling if this was the extent of Cassidy’s range, the joke wrestler who pulls his hands out of his jean pockets to fight like a real competitor when the going gets tough. For there was another aspect that played out in Cassidy’s matches in the years that followed and this aspect was the portrayal of a slacker who starts to believe, in himself and the “sport” that he is a part of.
For an earlier example of this, see this clip from a match where Cassidy’s friend and ally, Kris Statlander, is about to be counted out after being tossed out of the ring. As the countdown reaches its final beats, Cassidy whips off his shades and yells at his comrade, “STAT!!! GET UP!!!” to the delight of the watching crowd. Wrestling matches in general have no shortage of tag team partners and managers yelling with great passion and conviction for their fallen allies to get up and fight, it’s all par for the course and doesn’t usually ratchet up the intensity and belief of the spectators. However, when a comedy slacker like Cassidy does it, the place erupts.
This ability to perfectly portray an indifferent soul awakening to a sincere and convicted belief in what he is doing is perhaps best demonstrated in his first run with the AEW International title. At the beginning of the reign, the championship went under a different name, the AEW All Atlantic championship. Nobody really knew what this All Atlantic designator was referring to. Was he the champion of an entire Ocean, or maybe just a coastal region of the North American continent? The title itself seemed to be as aimless and lacking in conviction as the slacker that Cassidy was portraying. This was Cassidy's first title and he brought it to the ring in typical Orange Cassidy style. While your garden variety wrestling champion makes their way to the ring with the gold strapped round their waist or draped over their shoulder, Cassidy would opt for the more practical option of carrying it in a backpack (over one shoulder, obviously) before taking it out and presenting it to the audience once he'd rolled into the ring.
It was during this unlikely reign that Cassidy became a working champion, defending the belt week after week. The championship in turn came to be known as a workhorse title, something that was constantly defended round the clock. Many of these bouts were instant classics, due to Cassidy's work rate and talent combined with some top tier competition such as Katsuyori Shibata, Bandido and Jon Moxley.
The physical toll of these matches also became apparent, with Cassidy showing signs of being "banged up", his body marked up by long strips of kenesio tape. For the duration of all these trials and labours, Cassidy demonstrated a love and belief in a title that few had loved and believed in, causing his audience to believe in it too. And while Cassidy would still go through many of the the tried and tested foibles of his gimmick, the hands in pockets and the deliberately soft kicks to his opponents shins, these seemed to be believable methods of getting into his opponents' heads.
And so, while Parisian wrestlers in Barthes's essay were dramatising the crushing pressure that society exerted on a proud working class, it is Orange Cassidy's performances that dramatise the hope of powering out of the stultifying grip of post-modern irony, to find something worth caring about in an era where the concept of truth itself has been eroded epistemological and ontological doubt.
The great ontological crisis of professional wrestling, the death of kayfabe, has ultimately become the greatest opportunity for the sport/entertainment hybrid. Every wrestling event takes place within this atmosphere of great doubt, the collective non-belief in what is happening within the squared circle. It is the job of the wrestler to make this collective of Doubting Thomases believe again, despite the seemingly fatal knowledge of pre-determined outcomes. Some like to incorporate "real life" rumours and grudges into their storylines, while others like the Undertaker devote their working life to maintaining the gimmick.
But for me, it is Orange Cassidy who has truly risen to the challenge of making the shift from ironic indiference to sincere belief a part of the narrative for both the match itself and the overlying storyline that ties the matches together. In his hands, and the hands of a select few others, wrestling transforms from a fake sport into something that is more real than life itself.
Thanks for reading this
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