WWE And The Religion

We all know that wrestling is not exactly, shall we say, the most savoury of businesses. The trappings of professional wrestling are no secret. There have been countless wrestlers who have fallen by the wayside, lured by the highs of drugs, drink and women.

Wrestling is a business that promotes violence and sex. The morals of the wrestling industry are skewed, far removed from real life and what ‘normal people’ would consider right and wrong. How then, could something like religion coexist in the wrestling world?

But there is a distinct connection between the two. After encountering the dreaded personal problems, many WWE superstars turn to their Bibles for comfort and advice on how to live. For some, being involved in the wrestling business is such a corrupting factor that they believe that only God can save them.

While Vince McMahon might like to think that he’s God (as evidenced by his strange feud with the supreme being in 2006), for a lot of wrestlers there is a force even more powerful than him. He may have the capability to hire, fire, humiliate, suspend and black ball, but only God has the power to decided whether they live or whether they die.

For wrestlers who have stared death in the face due to their reckless behaviour, that is a comforting thought.

Superstar Billy Graham has been one of the most outspoken critics of the WWE in recent years. Graham, a devout Christian, has been unhappy with their content and programming for ages. Graham was so unhappy with the WWE that in 2011 he demanded that they remove him from their Hall Of Fame (they didn’t).

Graham was a huge star in the 1970s and his influence can be seen in everyone from Ric Flair to Dusty Rhodes and Scott Steiner. Superstar reinvented what a wrestler could be, with his Muhammad-Ali inspired promos, tie-dye ring gear and huge physique. Of course that physique wasn’t natural and Graham was a heavy user of anabolic steroids.

The steroid and other drug abuse helped to deteriorate his body and he has suffered from the side-effects for years. Graham, who took his name from a famed evangelical Christian evangelist, was a preacher in early adulthood but really stepped up his religious efforts following his retirement.

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