WWE: Is the Land of Giants Coming to an End?

Has WWE finally gotten over its love affair for big men and bodybuilders?

The past ten years in sports have seen a surprising shift in the landscape in regards to the public eye’s favorite athletes and popular stars in a variety of sports. Gone are the days of Ali, Shaq, Bonds, and a bevy of heavyweight, larger than life, mammoth men in different sports that have come to define what a marketable and iconic athlete in the age of pop culture has been. Instead, it is now a wave of smaller, unorthodox stars that have taken over the world of sports and changed people’s perceptions.

Despite his recent loss in the NBA Finals, Stephen Curry is still widely considered to be the new face of the NBA; Curry, when stacked up against the likes of LeBron, Kobe, and Jordan, looks out of place and relatively diminutive and unimposing. Speaking of diminutive, Lionel Messi is oft regarded to be the greatest soccer player in the world today. In UFC, the two biggest draws of the last three or so years weren’t even heavyweights, rather a featherweight in Conor McGregor; and a woman, a bantamweight, in Ronda Rousey. Finally, the two best boxers in the last decade have been Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao: two welterweights.

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the last decade has seen a remarkable shift from big, hulking, muscular men up and down the card to what we see on the current product today: smaller, leaner, highly athletic and acrobatic wrestlers

WWE is no different; the last decade has seen a remarkable shift from big, hulking, muscular men up and down the card to what we see on the current product today: smaller, leaner, highly athletic and acrobatic wrestlers, with many of them not fitting WWE’s prototype of what a wrestler should look like. Smaller guys dominating a particular era are nothing new to WWE. Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels catapulted smaller guys to mainstream popularity in the early-to-mid 1990s New Generation, and in the process, inspiring an entire generation of wrestlers to come. Eddie Guerrero and Kurt Angle revisited and redefined the quality of work for smaller guys during the early 2000s Ruthless Aggression era. However, both of these eras of small guys and high quality wrestling would often be followed by either a dip in quality of the matches (such as it was during the Attitude Era) or a return to preference for the bigger, cosmetically pleasing guys (Cena, Batista, and Orton of the PG era). Only until recently has the smaller guys had a real stranglehold on the industry with prolonged success for a period of time.

Outside of WWE, the independent circuit is essentially a jungle filled with packs of smaller Velociraptors, with WWE being designated as probably the last bastion for big men, giants, and the mighty Tyrannosauruses of the wrestling world. This has been most evidenced in the much-debated Ricochet vs Ospreay match, with Ospreay, a small “flippy” guy in defense of the size and style popularized by Shawn Michaels and Rey Mysterio against the time-tested gigantic “real” wrestlers in the quintessential, albeit unorthodox himself, big man in Vader. Most fans enjoyed the amazing feats of athleticism and acrobatics that Ricochet and Ospreay unleashed onto the world in that ring in Japan, with really the only vocal dissenters being the old-school, gatekeeper, big men wrestlers.

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However, this would begin to change in 2006 when WWE brought CM Punk to the main roster. Punk’s signing would be the first of many from Ring of Honor, whom WWE has since, essentially plundered many of its stars, which is not uncommon for WWE (Vince gobbled up stars from a plethora of territories to build his empire, perhaps most notably, signing Hulk Hogan from AWA). Punk struggled to find any long term success initially between 2006 and 2009, however, by the time he was embroiled in a high-profile feud with Jeff Hardy, and subsequently became the hottest heel in the WWE at the time with the Straight Edge Society, WWE signed another ROH stalwart in Daniel Bryan.

Because of Punk and Bryan, both of whom did not fit what WWE traditionally looked for in their top stars, the door has been effectively kicked down

Punk and Bryan’s success in WWE from 2011 to 2014, while short-lived, has had arguably the biggest impact for smaller wrestlers in WWE since Bret and Shawn’s heyday. Because of Punk and Bryan, both of whom did not fit what WWE traditionally looked for in their top stars, the door has been effectively kicked down, giving way to the likes of Sami Zayn, Seth Rollins, Dean Ambrose, Kevin Owens, Cesaro, Luke Harper, Neville, Finn Balor, Samoa Joe, Hideo Itami, Shinsuke Nakamura, Austin Aries, Apollo Crews, Doc Gallows, Karl Anderson, and AJ Styles. This advent and influx of “indie darlings” has reached a fever pitch to where the smaller and/or unorthodox wrestlers are effectively, to quote Seth Rollins, “running the joint”.

What does this mean for the big men? Is the so-called “land of giants” coming to an end in WWE, and subsequently in professional wrestling? When Kane, Mark Henry, and Big Show retire, and all signs point that they will retire from in-ring competition rather sooner than later, who is left? The Undertaker only wrestles once a year, and even then, many wonder how many more Wrestlemania matches the Deadman has left in him. It would be surprising if all four were still on the active roster by Wrestlemania 35. What about Braun Strowman? Braun, at this point, doesn’t have a calendar year’s worth of matches under his belt; he’s still very much green. Looking outside of WWE, both the Great Khali and Matt Morgan have retired from wrestling.

Today’s definition of “big men” in wrestling has changed. Even the big guys have gotten smaller

Today’s definition of “big men” in wrestling has changed. Even the big guys have gotten smaller. Instead of the Big John Studds and Andre the Giants of the world that we have come to know, today it’s the Brock Lesnars, the Kevin Owens, the Samoa Joes, the Luke Harpers, the Baron Corbins, and depending on his WWE status, the Rybacks (Ryback’s brief feud against Kalisto for the United States Title was just as much of a tried-and-true David vs Goliath story in WWE as perhaps the most famous David vs Goliath story in all of professional wrestling: Hogan vs Andre). All those big guys: Brock, Owens, Joe, Harper, Corbin, and Ryback have varying degrees of athleticism who could put on a complete and competitive match with a beginning, middle, and end, as opposed to the slow, paced, lumbering matches from days gone by.

Perhaps the last line of defense for the land of giants is its caretaker, Vince McMahon himself. With Vince’s time as the boss also dwindling down (if he were to still be running the company by Wrestlemania 40, it would be a most impressive feat) and Triple H’s rise to the top of the corporate ladder continuing with his success in NXT, the land of giants may disappear altogether when Vince inevitably steps down.

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While Triple H has been known to still to double down on bodybuilders from time to time (because he prides himself as being one), unlike Vince, Triple H sees the star potential and can relate to the hard work that the smaller guys have put in because of his tenure as a WWE superstar. Triple H is the one who most facilitated Sami Zayn’s storybook push in NXT, branding him as the heart and soul of the developmental program, and would later become an advocate for Kevin Owens; both men whom Vince would probably not have even given a second look in any other era because of their look and their size.

If NXT is any indication of what a Triple H-ran WWE would look like, the once dominant land of giants would certainly go extinct. This dichotomy is most clearly displayed in Seth Rollins and Roman Reigns. Roman Reigns was handpicked to be the chosen one by Vince McMahon because he had the look, the size, and the physique that Vince has preferred time and time again, following the outline of John Cena, arguably Vince’s greatest, longest tenured, homegrown talent. Seth Rollins, on the other hand, is Triple H’s guy; a smaller wrestler, evoking more Shawn Michaels and Daniel Bryan than Hulk Hogan or John Cena. Given Seth Rollins’ impressive first run as champion, coupled with the fans’ nightly reaction and hostility towards Roman Reigns, it would appear as if the land of giants has reached its death knell.