Reading Wrestling
25 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 2 years ago - ★★★★★ - 6 ratingsFor decades, professional wrestling has elicited the full range of emotions from arenas full of fans and home viewers. Drawing from Chris’s background as a university professor of poetry, Dave’s encyclopedic knowledge of more than 40 years of wrestling, and Noell’s extensive work with dance production and choreography, each episode will focus on how wrestling moves us through performance. Whether you’re swaddled in the nostalgia of old-school rasslin’ or an avid fan of contemporary performances, you’ll enjoy our conversations on topics like entrance music, doppelgangers, and the role of the commentators. Our show is an encyclopedia of the art of wrestling.
Homepage Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Episodes
High Spots
January 18, 2022 03:00 - 54 minutes - 37.7 MBWelcome back to Reading Wrestling, your encyclopedia on the art of pro wrestling. Today we talk about high spots, the set-piece spectacles where wrestlers leap from great heights to inflict pain on their opponents and dazzle the crowd. What’s more iconic of wrestling than the Macho Man’s elbow drop off of the top rope? Using the ring as a platform from which to dive onto a supine opponent is a hallmark of the show, connecting it with mass entertainment like circus acrobats, tightrope walke...
Lumberjack Matches
January 12, 2022 02:00 - 45 minutes - 31.1 MBWelcome back to Reading Wrestling, your encyclopedia on the art of pro wrestling. Today’s entry takes us to a classic match format, the Lumberjack Match. When a feud comes to fever pitch and needs a resolution devoid of scurrilous escape attempts, there are a couple of options. One is the technology of the steel cage, which we spoke about in a previous episode. The other, more manual option, is the good ol’ Lumberjack Match. For these special matches, the ring is surrounded by a dozen or so...
Bonus Episode: A Conversation on Dusty Rhodes ft. Dan from Douglasville and Uncle Vinnie
January 02, 2022 15:00 - 28 minutes - 19.5 MBAs we promised you in our 12 Days of Wrestling Christmas episode, here is our gift to you to close out 2021: a special bonus episode featuring a conversation on Dusty Rhodes and Jimmy Valiant--with Dan from Douglasville and Uncle Vinnie! This was recorded at our launch party at Five Saints Distilling in Norristown, PA, on November 6, 2021. We hope you enjoy it!
12 Days of Wrestling Christmas
January 02, 2022 14:00 - 57 minutes - 39.4 MBWelcome back to Reading Wrestling, your encyclopedia on the art of pro wrestling. This week we’re foregoing our usual style in order to bring you some light holiday listening. Instead of working through a theme, as is our usual format, we’re going to do a 12 Days of Christmas gift exchange with our favorite wrestlers! We’ll go around and take turns giving our gifts. We don’t like to constrain the groups we can give gifts to around here, so we don’t have stodgy rules like “oh, the wrestler ne...
Submissions
December 30, 2021 23:00 - 1 hour - 42.7 MBWelcome back to Reading Wrestling, your encyclopedia on the art of pro wrestling. Today’s entry takes us to one of the primary ways to win or lose a match: submissions. In a standard wrestling match, there are two ways to win cleanly: by pinning your opponent or forcing them to submit. But these potential outcomes have completely different meanings in the world of wrestling. While a pinfall is considered the most definitive way to win, a submission carries with it a certain stigma. As it goe...
Provocateurs
December 20, 2021 00:00 - 52 minutes - 36.1 MBWelcome back to Reading Wrestling, your encyclopedia on the art of pro wrestling. Today’s entry takes us to a special role in wrestling, the impish, the sly, the mischievous provocateurs. Contemporary wrestling narratives often build to a flammable situation and just require someone to bring a match to set it all off. Enter these masters of disaster. Whether the instigator of conflict is a ruthless heel, a wronged fan-favorite looking to dole out comeuppance, or just a troll in it for the fu...
Feuds
December 05, 2021 13:00 - 53 minutes - 36.9 MBWelcome back to Reading Wrestling, your encyclopedia on the art of pro wrestling. Today’s entry takes us to the long-simmering story arcs of wrestling, the feud. Feuds may seem related to rivalries in sports, but they are altogether different. The best wrestling feuds, which can begin by a perceived wrongdoing or just as a desire for retribution for a loss, are slow-burning and finite. We know this dispute will come to resolution, but we don’t know how, when, or what the cost will be. Ta...
Around Town - Live Recording
November 30, 2021 13:00 - 59 minutes - 41.2 MBIt's a special episode of the Reading Wrestling podcast--our first live podcast, recorded at our launch party at Five Saints Distilling in Norristown, PA, on 11/6/2021! Our topic, Around Town, takes you on a tour of Wrestletown, the wild and zany array of extra-arena spaces where interviews happen, stories advance, and characters are forged. Perhaps we’ll take a stroll down Main St to see the Flower Shop, the Funeral Parlor, a luxe high-rise condo with a penthouse that hosts A Flair for the...
Dances, Poses, and Pre-TikTok Shimmies
November 22, 2021 02:00 - 50 minutes - 35 MBWelcome back to Reading Wrestling, your encyclopedia on the art of wrestling. Today’s entry takes us to another hallmark of character building, the dances, poses, and, well, what we might term pre-TikTok shimmies wrestlers have crafted as part of their characters. Wrestling is, of course, famous for its taglines and sonic memes, as when the Rock bellows, “The Rock came out to surprise the MILLIONS,” and the crowd answers “AND MILLIONS” of the Rock’s fans. But another dimension of a character...
Masks
November 15, 2021 02:00 - 51 minutes - 35.5 MBWelcome back to Reading Wrestling, your encyclopedia on the art of pro wrestling. Today’s entry takes us to an icon of pro wrestling storytelling--the mask. Whether the mask is used to create a temporary mystery by withholding the identity of a wrestler or it’s an integral part of their character, masks are unique to pro wrestling. You don’t see mysterious baseball players, listed on the team’s roster as only a question mark, glide to the plate for their at-bat while gesticulating mysterious...
Championships
November 07, 2021 14:00 - 59 minutes - 40.8 MBWelcome back to Reading Wrestling, your encyclopedia on the art of pro wrestling. Today’s entry takes us to the pinnacle of the roster, the championship. The premise of wrestling as a competitive sport means that there must be an ultimate goal, a way to consummate the struggle for domination. But, unlike traditional competitions, wrestling champions are intentionally developed, curated, and finally presented as the face of the company. That doesn’t make the process any less competitive. Wres...
The Supernatural & Occult
October 31, 2021 13:00 - 51 minutes - 35.2 MBHappy Halloween, Reading Wrestling fans! We thought it would be fun to do a seasonally appropriate episode, so today your favorite wrestling readers will be discussing instances of the supernatural and occult in professional wrestling. Amid the motley and colorful cast of characters in the show, a relatively small number, at least in the U.S., transcend the professional athlete archetype and invoke the supernatural and occult. Characters like the Undertaker, hailing from Death Valley and e...
The Supernatural & Occult
October 31, 2021 13:00 - 51 minutes - 35.2 MBHappy Halloween, Reading Wrestling fans! We thought it would be fun to do a seasonally appropriate episode, so today your favorite wrestling readers will be discussing instances of the supernatural and occult in professional wrestling. Amid the motley and colorful cast of characters in the show, a relatively small number, at least in the U.S., transcend the professional athlete archetype and invoke the supernatural and occult. Characters like the Undertaker, hailing from Death Valley and e...
Promos
October 24, 2021 13:00 - 52 minutes - 36 MBWelcome back to Reading Wrestling, your encyclopedia on the art of pro wrestling. Today’s entry is on one of the narrative linchpins of wrestling, the promo. Somewhere between a Shakespearean soliloquy where a character exposes their inner thoughts and a homily of public address lies this very particular monologue. As always, we start out with a definition, trying to agree on what a promo is and does. Noell talks about the role of the promo in getting the crowd hyped, providing for interact...
Change of Character
October 17, 2021 14:00 - 55 minutes - 38.5 MBWelcome back to Reading Wrestling, your encyclopedia on the art of pro wrestling. Today’s entry is a complicated topic related to identity. And identity theft is not a joke, listener. Much like actors play disparate and dissimilar roles, a wrestler’s character or gimmick can change. Today, on Reading Wrestling, we’ll talk about the many faces of a single performer. We start off talking about abrupt changes of character, the first time we saw a wrestler we knew adopt an altogether different ...
Cage Matches
October 10, 2021 13:00 - 1 hour - 45.9 MBThe wrestling readers are back for the 10th episode of the show--you can now pick your top 10 favorite episodes! We welcome back friend of the show Tom for a lively discussion on the topic of cage matches. Of all of the numerous types of match formats, perhaps the most iconic is the cage match. A towering structure, with or without a top, the cage promises to allow a bitter feud to culminate in an uninterruptible settlement. The cage can fence a trepidatious competitor in or it can fence ...
Managers
October 03, 2021 11:00 - 53 minutes - 36.8 MBYour lovable group of misfit wrestling readers is back again, this time to talk about one of the most beloved and reviled figures in professional wrestling--managers. Existing somewhere in the hinterlands between a sports agent, a boxing trainer, and a hip-hop hypeman, the manager is an extension of a wrestler’s character. The manager eloquently speaks for his or her client, instigates feuds, illegally intervenes when the ref is not looking, and generally serves as a catalyst for chaos. ...
Heels
September 26, 2021 13:00 - 49 minutes - 34.2 MBWe've been looking forward to this topic, and it's finally here. Our wrestle-talkers take on the topic of heels in pro wrestling. AND we brought friends! We have our first ever guest, Tom, who, as those of you who follow the podcast know, is responsible for Noell's wrestling birthday on July 5, 2019. You can’t have wrestling without a good heel. Heels are the original internet trolls, dating back decades before there even was an internet. They are the blueprint for knowingly saying and doi...
Tag Teams
September 18, 2021 04:00 - 1 hour - 42.6 MBYour friendly group of wrestle-talkers is back for episode lucky-number 7. There’s nothing like tag team wrestling. In many ways, it’s the most iconic of formats, even more so than singles wrestling. In no other arena will you see two partners, dressed in similar clothes, complementary in temperament and demeanor, just as likely to aid the other as to unexpectedly turn on him. At its best, tag team wrestling is greater than the sum of its parts. It hits more than twice as hard as singles wre...
Foreign Objects
September 07, 2021 02:00 - 44 minutes - 30.9 MBOur group of wrestlin' readin' yahoos are back again, continuing to create your encyclopedia on the art of professional wrestling. Today's entry is at the core of wrestling: foreign objects. There is perhaps no object more evocative of professional wrestling than the ubiquitous and humble folding chair, which evolved into the most common prop in the show. And beyond the chair there is an infinite list of objects that found their ways into the ring, legally or illegally, to be weaponized. T...
Finishing Moves
September 04, 2021 18:00 - 47 minutes - 32.7 MBThe wrestling readers are back again, here on episode 5, discussing a favorite topic for wrestling fans: finishing moves. Much like every comic book character or superhero comes equipped with her or his special power, so too does every wrestler have a finishing move. Meant as a punctuation to the long sentence of a match, the finisher is intended to be climactic, the essence of a wrestler’s persona distilled into a single act of aggression. Finishers can be brute power moves, they can be l...
The Crowd
August 29, 2021 03:00 - 55 minutes - 38.2 MBIn this week's episode, our ragtag(-team) group of podcasters discusses the biggest, the most powerful, the longest-standing champion in professional wrestling history: the crowd. Far from being passive spectators, the crowd actively makes the event through its participation. When you're at a show, you're temporarily more than yourself as an individual, you become a part of the Crowd. As Chris puts it, "It's sort of like when you're struck in traffic: you simultaneously are in traffic, but...
Commentators - Will You Stop It!
August 20, 2021 02:00 - 46 minutes - 32.2 MBFollowing on our episode on entrance music, we move on to the voices of wrestling, and for some, the voices of our childhoods. Commentators like Tony Schiavone, Gorilla Monsoon, and early Vince McMahon are the omniscient narrators of wrestling. Their job is both to guide the viewer through a story and also to describe the action in all of its lush detail. As we say in the episode, "It's the grain of these voices that shapes wrestling, just as much as any feat of athleticism done in the ring....
Entrance Music, Part I
August 16, 2021 02:00 - 42 minutes - 29.5 MBNow that you know us, it's...surprising that you're still here. But we thank you for not having had enough already! Our first thematic episode is on a topic near and dear to the hearts of wrestling fans: entrance music. Chris, Noell, and Dave take on the showtunes of Ring Pan Alley. The episode opens with Chris' dramatic reading of "Real American," and you won't want to miss the...poignancy of Dave's reading to close out the show. In between, we talk about our favorite entrance music--music...
Introductions, Wrestling with Affect
August 15, 2021 19:00 - 41 minutes - 28.3 MBOur first episode introduces you to our ragtag group of wrestling nerds. Chris, Noell, and Dave talk about how they first got into wrestling. We each pick a singular moment in wrestling history that we found to be the most memorable and moving. You'll hear the amazing story of how Noell, a lifelong dancer and choreographer, who never watched a minute of wrestling before July 5, 2019, got swept up into a whirlwind fascination with it. She'll tell us how that all happened and set the scene ...