‘Enter the Brocktagon’: authenticity, artifice & the creation of the hybridised combat sports star

ABSTRACT

Professional wrestling, and WWE in particular, has consistently utilised stars with mainstream crossover appeal as totems, not only to draw new audiences to the product, but also to signify new directions or innovations in brand identity. In recent times, with a growing fan appetite for behind-the-scenes information increasingly closing the ‘knowledge gap’ between producer and consumers, WWE has continually renegotiated its relationship with discourses of the ‘real’ and ‘authentic’. It has done this both through a heightened engagement with reality-based ‘new’ media forms, and by calling back to the traditions of wrestling’s past with a renewed emphasis on promoting legitimate combat athletes as featured stars. In this article, I explore the promotional branding of two such athletes, Brock Lesnar and Ronda Rousey, examining how their star personas have evolved and adapted across highly successful careers in both WWE and UFC, with a focus on the centrality of discourses of performance and authenticity to the marketing of both stars.

KEYWORDS:

• Celebrity
• social media
• combat sports
• wrestling
• Ronda Rousey

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dan Ward

Dan Ward is a lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Sunderland, where he teaches modules on popular culture, contemporary cinema and television. His PhD looked at the relationship between hegemonic masculinity and violence in the contemporary American crime drama, and he has previously published on contemporary film stardom in the digital age, sports documentaries, and representations of masculinity in popular film and television.