Columnist Dean Juipe: Sponsors reconsider wrestling

Dean Juipe

Wednesday, Dec. 15, 1999 | 10:04 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@vegas.com or 259-4084.

The resident authority on professional wrestling in the building says he hasn't kept up with the "sport" in recent weeks and probably won't for a little while longer.

Is his disinterest a protest of sorts, perhaps as a show of support to mainstream advertisers such as Coca Cola, AT&T, Wendy's, the U.S. Army and the U.S. Air Force that have withdrawn as corporate sponsors because of wrestling's increasingly risque and vulgar nature?

Well, not really. "It's because The Undertaker is hurt," he said, leaving the matter of social reform to others.

As we have all come to realize, for better or worse pro wrestling has become big, big business. Once a niche industry, today it saturates the cable networks and is a staple of its programming.

Its ratings are routinely impressive and TNT's three-hour Monday Night Nitro reaches the largest audience in the cable universe.

In addition, pro wrestling is available on pay-per-view on what seems to be a weekly basis.

This past Sunday's pay-per-view offering -- entitled "Armageddon" -- not only had its usual crowd lending its rapt attention, it had an abnormal number of advertising executives tuning in. They wanted to see just how far the sanctioning World Wrestling Federation would go in terms of distasteful material.

Confronted with big-ticket sponsors like Coke and Wendy's bailing out in spite of the sport's fabulous market-penetration percentages, the WWF bulled its back and proclaimed it would not tone down its content. Considering the money involved, the WWF was extremely defiant.

Sunday's primary spectacle was a free-for-all involving four women wrestlers in evening gowns in which the expressed goal was to avoid being stripped. It was a match that had less to do with wrestling than it did voyeurism.

While the WWF has implied that anything goes, it still drew a line and didn't show "everything" as the women worked their way down to the bare necessities.

Parents who care about such things were grateful.

If you watch any pro wrestling at all, you already know sexual titillation has maneuvered its way to the forefront of the TV shows. The women wrestlers are busty and blooming, and there have been times women in the live audience have been surprisingly provocative as well.

Also, both male and female wrestlers speak more freely than ever and swear words are not automatically bleeped or deleted. Plus, many of the men are big on sexually suggestive gestures and not so subtly work them into their skits.

This package of innuendo and glitz is a hot commodity, particularly within the pre-teen and young-adult markets. As a result, corporate sponsors are anxious to become affiliated with wrestling because of its attractive demographics.

Yet -- as proven by the sponsorship withdrawals from AT&T, the armed forces and others -- there's an increasing reluctance to stay aboard a wrestling bandwagon that many see careening into areas that are considered offensive.

Thus, a fine line exists between what is and what isn't acceptable, and pro wrestling is pushing the limits of public decency.

It has put many parents in a figurative toehold, torn between the sport's innocent fun and its increasingly vile permissiveness.