Masculinity in Wrestling: Has It Really Disappeared?

The chant hits before the first lock-up.

“Let’s go, Cody. “Cody sucks!”

Two sides of the arena fire back and forth, not over who’s the toughest, but over who tells the better story, who sells the emotion, who connects. A decade or two ago, that same crowd might have roared for blood, violence, and “real men” beating each other senseless. Today, the conversation sounds different: more about feelings, identity, and representation; less about who looks like a heavyweight boxer in trunks.

If you listen to certain corners of social media, you’d think masculinity has completely vanished from wrestling, that the days of the grizzled tough guy are gone, replaced by cosplay, flips, and “soft” fans who care more about star ratings than street fights. But has masculinity actually disappeared from wrestling and wrestling fandom, or has it simply changed its costume?

The answer says as much about us as it does about what happens in the ring.

From Blood-and-Guts to Brand-Friendly: Redefining Toughness

For much of the 20th century, mainstream wrestling sold one dominant model of masculinity: large, stoic, hyper-physical men who solved problems with violence and rarely showed vulnerability. The NWA and territorial days revolved around hard-traveling workers who looked like they could plausibly work a shift at the steel mill between title defenses. Smoky arenas, cigarette haze, and ring rats weren’t just scenery; they were part of a working-class masculinity the product relied on.

Even during WWF’s 1980s cartoon boom, the muscles were still the point. Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior, Road Warriors over the top, yes, but still representing a very traditional, muscle-bound image of manhood: strength, dominance, victory at all costs.

The 1990s “Attitude Era” doubled down on a different flavor of masculinity: rebellious, vulgar, anti-authority. “Stone Cold” Steve Austin drank beer on the job, flipped off his boss, and solved every conflict with a Stunner. The locker room looked like a hard rock album cover: leather, denim, weapons under the ring, and a code that glorified no-selling injuries and “working hurt.”

But as wrestling entered the 2000s and 2010s, the entire media landscape shifted. WWE moved from TV-14 to a PG rating in 2008 to court sponsors and families. Blood and chair shots to the head disappeared under concussion protocols. The product leaned more into corporate partnerships, charity campaigns, and global branding. AEW emerged later with a looser edge, but it still had to navigate a world more attuned to player safety and media scrutiny than the territories ever faced.

To some fans, these changes feel like a betrayal: they see a sanitized, brand-safe product as the death of “real” masculinity. But if we look more closely, the performance of masculinity didn’t vanish; it evolved. Wrestlers still present toughness, but they package it alongside emotional range, self-awareness, and even vulnerability.

Emotional Men in Spandex: Vulnerability as a New Power Move

Watch a major wrestling storyline today and count how often a male wrestler cries.

Not once in a decade, but repeatedly.

Cody Rhodes tears up while talking about finishing his father’s story. Jon Moxley discusses his struggles with addiction, pressure, and the toll of the business, both in promos and real-life interviews. Sami Zayn visibly shakes and hesitates before hitting his best friend Kevin Owens with a chair, then crumbles under the emotional fallout of The Bloodline angle. Fans didn’t boo these men for “being soft.” They leaned in. They bought the T-shirts. They flooded social media with personal testimonies about how these stories resonated with their own mental health journeys.

This is not an absence of masculinity; it’s masculinity making room for vulnerability.

In earlier eras, wrestlers showed emotion primarily as rage or triumph. Now, male performers cry, apologize, express fear, and talk about their insecurities, and audiences reward them with louder cheers, not derision. The archetype shifts from the invincible tough guy to the resilient, wounded hero who keeps getting back up, physically and emotionally.

That’s a massive cultural shift. Wrestling used to tell young men: “Don’t sell pain. Don’t show weakness. Man up.” Now, major promotions put men in main events precisely because they can sell emotional turmoil as convincingly as a piledriver.

Has masculinity disappeared? Or has the business finally realized that courage can look like admitting you’re scared and still stepping into the ring?

Changing Bodies, Changing Expectations

One complaint you hear from nostalgic fans runs something like: “These guys don’t even look like wrestlers anymore.”

Part of that is selective memory; there have always been smaller, technical, or unconventional-looking wrestlers. But part of it reflects a fundamental shift in what companies value and what fans accept.

Today’s top male stars don’t all look like Hogan or Batista. Many come from independent scenes where success depended less on bodybuilder aesthetics and more on cardio, creativity, and crowd connection. The result: rosters full of high-flyers, hybrid athletes, and leaner performers whose masculinity isn’t defined by sheer mass.

Fans still chant “You still got it!” for veterans who can go, but they also chant “Fight forever!” for smaller wrestlers chaining together complex sequences that would have baffled a 1980s locker room. Strength now includes agility and speed. “Looking like a wrestler” includes guys in kick pads and hoodies, not just trunks and baby oil.

For some, that’s emasculation. For others, it’s freedom.

We now accept that masculinity can be expressed in a 5’8” workhorse throwing brutal kicks just as much as in a 6’6” giant tossing people around. The bar for what makes a “real man” in wrestling has broadened: you can be chiseled or compact, tattooed or clean-cut, goth or corporate. The common thread is not just how much you can bench, but whether you can make people care.

Fans in the Mirror: From Bar Fights to Twitter Threads

To understand whether masculinity has disappeared from wrestling, you can’t stop at the ring apron. You have to look at the crowd.

Once upon a time, the stereotypical wrestling fan was male, working-class, and aggressively rowdy. Fights in parking lots, beer-soaked chants, and performative toughness in the stands mirrored the performance in the ring. Plenty of fans still match that stereotype, but they now share space with families, women’s groups, LGBTQ+ fans, and online communities where masculinity isn’t the only or even primary currency.

Look at a modern wrestling event: you’ll see dads with daughters in Sasha Banks or Bayley shirts, couples cosplaying as tag teams, young men in soft graphic tees and glasses debating long-term storytelling on their phones between matches. The energy of fandom has shifted from “prove you’re tough” to “prove you’re knowledgeable, passionate, and plugged in.”

In digital spaces, masculinity performs differently. Instead of throwing punches in the crowd, fans trade threads, memes, and long-form analysis. Wrestling masculinity once flexed through physical intimidation; now it flexes through encyclopedic memory, booking fantasies, and emotional investment. A “real fan” might be defined by how many obscure Japanese promotions they’ve seen, not how loud they can yell at a heel.

Of course, toxic masculinity hasn’t vanished. You still see gatekeeping (“You only watch WWE, you’re not a real fan”), misogyny (“Women’s wrestling is just bathroom break material”), and homophobic jokes in comment sections and live crowds. But those attitudes now face pushback from other male fans, no less. The fan who once had to laugh off a sexist remark to fit in might now feel empowered to challenge it, or at least find a different corner of the fandom where those values aren’t welcome.

Masculinity among wrestling fans hasn’t disappeared; it’s fractured, diversified, and often contested in real time.

When “Soft” Storytelling Hits Harder Than Chair Shots

Another critique you’ll hear is that wrestling has become “soft” because it emphasizes stories and feelings over violence.

But storytelling has always driven wrestling. The difference is in which stories get highlighted.

Instead of endless “I’m the toughest, you’re the weakest” promos, we get arcs about betrayal, family, addiction, self-worth, and legacy. The Bloodline saga, for example, frames masculinity around loyalty, obedience, emotional abuse, and the courage to walk away from a toxic patriarch. That’s not a soft story. That’s about power, gender, and family politics issues at the heart of how many men experience masculinity in real life.

Even hardcore promotions now present a more complex masculinity. You see wrestlers hugging after brutal matches, acknowledging each other’s sacrifice. You see men in deathmatches tweeting about their kids or their mental health hours after smashing light tubes over each other’s heads. The old idea that tough men don’t process trauma crumbles under the weight of real bodies and real consequences.

When a wrestler sells concussion symptoms, addiction struggles, or depression, it doesn’t weaken masculinity. It humanizes it and, in doing so, invites male fans to recognize their own vulnerabilities rather than hide them.

The Economics of a New Masculinity

We also need to be honest: wrestling doesn’t change out of pure ideology. It changes because money, regulation, and risk demand it.

Sponsors don’t want to attach their brands to unrestrained violence and overt misogyny. Networks don’t want blood all over their primetime slots. Lawsuits over concussions and workplace safety have real financial consequences. Wrestlers themselves have more platforms to tell their stories, push back against abusive practices, and demand better health and pay.

These pressures shape how masculinity appears onscreen.

You can frame that as “corporate woke culture ruining wrestling,” or you can see it as a long-overdue correction of a system that once treated wrestlers as disposable gladiators. The new masculinity in wrestling has to fit into a world where workers’ bodies matter, where fans have broader expectations, and where promotions survive by appealing to multiple demographics rather than a single, angry male base.

Is it a coincidence that as wrestling has diversified its audience, more women, more queer fans, more global viewers, its version of masculinity has become less one-dimensional? Probably not.

Has Masculinity Disappeared—or Just Been Unmasked?

So, has masculinity disappeared from wrestling and wrestling fans?

Not even close.

We still see aggression, strength, pride, competition, and the urge to prove yourself, all hallmarks of traditional masculinity. But those traits now share space with tears, therapy language, community-building, and self-reflection. Wrestlers and fans alike perform masculinity in ways that would have been unthinkable, or at least unacceptable, in the territory days.

If anything, the mask has slipped.

The old product often hid insecurity behind bravado, injury behind no-selling, and fear behind locker-room silence. Today’s wrestling exposes those layers. Masculinity still climbs through the ropes every night, but it walks out with more nuance and less armor.

The real question isn’t whether masculinity has disappeared. It’s whether we’re ready to accept a version of masculinity that doesn’t require men wrestlers or fans to choose between being tough and being human.

In that sense, wrestling may be doing something quietly radical: teaching a generation of fans that crying in front of 15,000 people can be just as “masculine” as no-selling a chair shot. And that might be the most powerful move the business has ever booked.