Kelley, you make it sound as if LBO-talk were the W.W.F.!
***** New York Times 29 September 2000
The Big City: A Conqueror In and Out of the Ring
By JOHN TIERNEY
THE Olympic television ratings may be low, but there was clear evidence yesterday that Americans still appreciate the glories of classic athletic competition. They stood in line for six hours in Times Square just to get Chyna's autograph.
Chyna, in the tradition of the ancient Greek Olympians, is a wrestler who is comfortable with nudity, as illustrated in the copies of the current Playboy magazine that she was signing. But to the men and women in line, she was obviously much more than a pinup. She represented the Olympic spirit that NBC executives have been trying to market.
She embodies what might be called the Gender Blender Strategy of sports marketing: a woman with a complicated love life who speaks four languages and enjoys stomping guys in the head; a performer with the biceps of a linebacker and the bust of a porn star; a victim of hostile social forces who has triumphed over adversity.
"Chyna was ridiculed all her life for being too big and muscular," said one of her fans, Scott Avery, sounding not unlike the voice-over for a background piece at the Olympics. Mr. Avery came from Haverhill, N.H., with his wife, Rebekah, arriving at 5:30 in the morning to be first in line.
"People called her ugly," Mr. Avery said. "But she showed them. She wrestled with men and won the Intercontinental Championship. Now she's a crowd favorite, and she's in Playboy. I think she's gorgeous."
Mr. Avery and his wife sneered at the mention of Sable, the former World Wrestling Federation star who set sales records for Playboy last year. To them, Sable was a traditional sex kitten who wrestled with women. Chyna, 186 pounds of muscle, had broken the gender barrier.
"Chyna doesn't flaunt her body in the ring the way Sable did," Mrs. Avery said.
"Chyna means business," Mr. Avery added.
Inside the W.W.F. restaurant, Chyna was signing autographs, accepting flowers and ruminating on the meaning of her appearance in the magazine. "This fights everything society tells a woman she should be," Chyna said. "It says that you can be big and muscular and sexy and smart at the same time."
Her fans in line kept calling her a wonderful role model for girls, which was maybe a stretch, but she could certainly be a role model for marketing future Olympics to both sexes.
There are plenty of women who enjoy watching sports, but on average women prefer continuing narratives about life and love. There are plenty of men who like novels and soap operas, but on average they prefer watching games, especially when the players are pummeling each other.
NBC executives have tried mixing the games with soap-opera techniques, but they generally don't have the characters or the air time to develop satisfying narratives for women, and even the competitions are often too arcane for men.
W.W.F. executives know that the Gender Blender Strategy requires primal confrontations, extended narratives and special characters like Chyna, who can drop-kick a man one moment and then burst into tears during a fight with her fiancé, Eddie Guerrero.
CHYNA and Eddie have some relationship issues to work out," said Marissa McMahon, the wrestling federation's director of public relations. "Eddie tried to stop her pictorial from appearing in Playboy because he was over-protective. My girlfriends watch the W.W.F. for the soap-opera qualities. Men watch it because they like to see guys getting beat up."
By contrast, the Olympics seemed to hold little appeal yesterday for Chyna fans like Meghan Hagerty, a college student from Staten Island who arrived with two young men. "The Olympics is a monumental event," she said, "but it only comes every four years, so you don't get caught up in any of the stories. With the W.W.F., you can't miss a night because you've known the characters so long and you don't want to miss a chapter of the story."
One of her friends, Douglas Paquette, who had just finished telling Chyna she was the greatest and he loved her, said that he had tried watching Olympic wrestling but had given up.
"It just went on and on," he said. "The Russian guy spent five minutes trying to lift the U.S. guy off the mat, but he couldn't even do it. It was boring. With the W.W.F., there's so much more drama."
The other young Staten Islander, Daniel Podlubny, had a suggestion for the Olympic Committee. "Now as an alternative," he said, "if the guy from Russia would hit the other guy over the head with a brick, that would be more interesting." *****
Yoshie