Pro-Wrestling Slash

When I first got into professional wrestling — way back in 2014! — my first favorite wrestler was The Miz. I was watching WWE Main Event, which aired Wednesday nights on our Ion TV channel. This was before the WWE Network was launched, and before I had any access to higher level cable channels like the USA Network, so Main Event become my entry into professional wrestling and the WWE. Then we got the Network and cable, bringing to use NXT, Lucha Underground, and more. And I started going to the live events put on by AAW here in Chicagoland. So since in the years since, I have had other favorites to add to my own fangirl roster, with Sami Zayn earning perhaps the biggest place in my heart — for his wrestling and his political activism.

Sami, unfortunately, keeps getting injured, and I no longer have cable, so I cannot follow him on the WWE main roster (which underutilized him anyway). And while I also no longer subscribe to the Network for political reasons (seriously, Crown Jewel was just an idiotic event to do), I still watch NXT through next-day airings on Hulu. And I need to keep doing that, because I need by Ciampa/Gargano fix.

I remember first seeing Tommaso Ciampa and Johnny Gargano in the Dusty Rhodes tournament and wondering who they were. Needing to know who they were, I found a video of them wrestling in AAW. And at that time, they were not signed to NXT, so they were still wrestling in AAW. In fact, the first AAW show I went to had Ciampa there, busting open his nose right in front of me.

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Ciampa at AAW Windy City Classic XI in 2015.

Unlike Sami, here I had the opportunity to meet Ciampa and Gargano — and I did! The fangirl in me was so excited to be able to buy their t-shirts directly from them! I got to meet each of the them, and nervously (remember, I’m like a grown adult woman) gush about how much I like their work. Their last match at AAW after being signed to NXT was something I wrote about for a chapter in a book I co-edited. Unlike with Sami, I had actual interactions with them in a physical setting that could help fuel my interest in them. I wasn’t just watching them through television or following them through Twitter. I had met them. I knew how much taller I was than them. I breathed the same air as them. I touched them!

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Gargano at AAW United We Stand in 2016.

I am such a huge fangirl for them. I have been since their beginning in NXT. So I have followed their storyline with intense interest. I have had actual tears in my eyes watching their Cruiserweight match, or when they finally won the tag-team belts as DIY. I have felt actual shock and fear when Ciampa turned on Gargano. I was shaken by their TakeOver: New Orleans match for how brutal and emotional it was. I was there at TakeOver: Chicago, cheering for Ciampa, when he tore Gargano’s wedding ring off the hand of the man whose wedding he attended. I know every twist and turn of their story, and am legit concerned about the darkness consuming Gargano while also hoping it means he may soon get back with Ciampa.

Gargano Jump
Gargano’s jump on Ciampa, my vantage point at NXT TakeOver: Chicago in 2018.

I have even been writing a slash story in my head to bring them back together.

If you don’t know what slash is, here is a quick primer: it is a fan activity involving taking two characters who in canon (i.e. the original television show, book, movie, etc.) may be friends or enemies and putting them into a homosexual relationship. The classic examples include Kirk/Spock, Harry/Draco, and Sherlock/Watson. Fans may create such slash for a variety of reasons, and the relationships can be anything from angsty and emotional to brutal and hardcore.

When Ciampa came back after his injury as Blackheart and began torturing Gargano’s mind, body, and soul, my mind started to slash them. For me, it was a way to handle how two friends who seemed so close suddenly became such bitter enemies. I wanted them to reconcile and become friends again. I wanted them to kiss and make up.

Up to that point, I didn’t think anyone else was creating slash for these wrestlers (characters? real people?). Slash tends to be created by fangirls, and professional wrestling still tends to be dominated by fanboys. So I didn’t think to go look to see if there was a community out there engaging in this practices for this canon.

I was wrong. I found Ciampa/Gargano slash. Such as at a large fanfiction online site, Archive of Our Own. And then I found more at my old stomping grounds, FanFiction.net.

I found fans using slash and alternate universe (AU) stories to resolve the tensions between the characters/people of Ciampa and Gargano — tensions constructed through the kayfabe transmedia storytelling of their DIY rise and fallout. One author even called their fanfic “therapy” to help them cope with Ciampa’s heel turn.

Here are the ones I have found so far:

  • For example, there is the AU story involving the duo being werewolves where, although they hate each other, they are soulmates, and their interactions bristle with sexual tension.
  • And another where they are sexually active werewolves.
  • And another like that. And another. And another. One author in particular likes this angle. Could the werewolf angle be because of how they change identities between being real people and being performers?
  • This compilation of vignettes includes the suggestion of a polyamorous relationship between Ciampa, Gargano, and LeRae.
  • And the AU story of Ciampa experiencing a brush with death and reliving the night he and Gargano broke up, and using that heartbreak to explain Ciampa’s turning on Gargano.
  • Or this AU story that presents the entire arc of Ciampa/Gargano in NXT, up until Ciampa’s heel turn, as Ciampa struggles with his feelings for Gargano.
  • And this AU, where in a collection of stories, Ciampa recalls a romantic New Years with Gargano. Same with this one.
  • Then there is this AU story, presenting Gargano’s experience being haunted by Ciampa after the heel turn.
  • Although not updated, this planned AU definitely gets down to the kissing.
  • And this AU story finds them attempting a Glorious Bomb, only to have their first kiss.
  • In this AU story, Gargano is once again the tender one taking care of the rough Ciampa.
  • In this AU story, the heel turn never takes breaks up the partnership, which is definitely more than just professional.
  • In this AU, Gargano tracks down Ciampa after the heel turn to confess his love.
  • And another AU reference to Chuck Taylor claiming Ciampa/Gargano were a couple. Did he actually make such a comment?
  • Here Ciampa helps Gargano deal with a trauma from his past.
  • This time Gargano helps Ciampa reveal his true feelings.
  • Then in this AU story, their D&D characters have to fall in love for them to realize their true feelings for each other. And here as well.
  • For this story, their tenderness for each other comes through after a loss for the tag-team titles.
  • And in this story, even before the heel turn, their relationship was more personal than professional.
  • Then in this AU, they are X-Men, and teenagers find their first loves.
  • For this one, another angsty one for Ciampa needing to realize his feelings for Gargano.
  • In these connected stories, multiple wrestlers come together, but again, Ciampa is rough with Gargano: part 1 and part 2.
  • While this one starts out rough, Gargano manages to bring out Ciampa’s tender side (which he does in other stories as well).
  • Like in this one, the younger Gargano manages to save Ciampa from a life of crime.

In total so far, 25 stories that in some way put these two into a romantic relationship. Stories that come from early in DIY to after the break-up to the current era of the darkness between them. And all of them fantastic in some way because of how they are either directly relating to an event from the story told by these wrestlers or are referencing the overall arc and angst of the story.

Another aspect of these stories that is fascinating is how many are from Ciampa’s perspective, as if he is tortured with these longings for Gargano and that perhaps those longings, unfulfilled, can explain his heel turn. And there are the stories were Gargano is taking care of Ciampa, putting him in a more feminine position to the gruff Ciampa. So a lot of interesting character interpretation and supposition happening to fill in the gaps created in the story about who these people are and why they have done what they have done to each other.

Finding these stories can help me conduct an analysis of the transformative fandom among pro-wrestling fans not commonly studied: women. And such an analysis could show the overlaps with different fandoms through the common practices of fanfiction, in general, and slash, in particular. Overall, the works show fans seeking for the two men to make up, to become friends again. The emotional work done by the wrestlers to tell their transmedia story is being reflected in how fans use their fics to transform the negative relationship back to a positive one.

I hope to use this example to do more research on my encoding-decoding-recoding model. I think I can argue that the transmedia storytelling serves as encoding kayfabe, that the fans’ decoding consists of emotional reactions to the kayfabe, and their fanfic acts as recoding to deal with those emotional reactions. The fact that so many of the stories directly reference events as depicted in NXT helps to show the relationships between the storytelling (encoding) and how fans reacted to the storytelling (decoding and recoding). Even the timecode stamps on the fanfics can help show what the fans reacted to. Plus there are the comments to the fanfics, which could further help show the decoding through the fan discourses embedded in these fanfics.

So right now, this idea represents a work-in-progress here, but one I am very excited about — and not just because I get to read Ciampa/Gargano fanfic.

5 thoughts on “Pro-Wrestling Slash”

  1. Reblogged this on It's Playing, Just With Research and commented:

    I’m so excited to start some work on the transmedia storytelling being done by Tommaso Ciampa and Johnny Gargano and how fans have been reacting to the story through their creation of Ciampa/Gargano slash. Here are some of my first thoughts on that work, and how it all relates to the encoding-decoding-recoding model I’ve written about.

    Reply

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