Wrestling fans are in for an embarrassment of riches this week. Ring of Honor Wrestling pulls into the Fairgrounds on Friday, in the midst of its Road to Final Battle Tour, while World Wrestling Entertainment again takes over Bridgestone Arena for a live taping of its flagship television program Raw on Monday night.
It has been a few years since two of the largest wrestling promotions in the country performed within days of each other inside Nashville city limits.
But having the sport's ranking champ at the moment atop one of the bills? That may be unprecedented.
Jay Lethal is the reigning World Champion for Ring of Honor Wrestling. The 30-year-old high-flier is on his second stint with the company, having formerly wrestled around the country for various indies, including Nashville-based Total Nonstop Action Wrestling.
Lethal finds himself in a unique position this week, as he is currently the only World Champion among the three major promotions in the United States. Both the WWE and TNA world titles are currently vacated, with tournaments being held in both promotions to crown a new champion. For this weekend, at least, Lethal can consider himself somewhat of an undisputed World Champ.
"It's amazing," the wrestler says with a laugh. "I feel like I've won the lottery. Timing is everything, not just in the wrestling business but in life, and I'm just now beginning to realize that. It's pretty cool that in the United States that I am the last world champion standing."
But in recent weeks media attention has been diverted from Lethal's triumph — ironically enough, by concerns over the depiction of race inside the squared circle.
It began with a segment on the Nov. 9 episode of Comedy Central's The Nightly Show. Host Larry Wilmore argued that wrestling has always had a troubling history of racism, one largely unchecked by the mainstream media. As correspondent Ricky Velez pointed out during the episode, this was a sport that featured a black slave (the "manservant" Virgil) among its characters as recently as the 1990s.
For the segment, Velez enlisted Virgil — the longtime persona of Nashville-born grappler Michael Jones, aka Soul Train Jones — for tips on becoming the most racist wrestler in the game. It got laughs, but the media follow-ups it prompted were serious. In the coverage that followed, thanks in part to the racial caricatures it has created for its talent, the WWE took a folding chair to the skull.
Yet Lethal, who is black, takes care to say that hasn't been his experience, on a career path that started at age 16 when he won a contest sponsored by the Jersey All Pro Wrestling promotion. He's been hailed as one of the best interviews (or "promos") in the business; that media savvy may have kept him from getting saddled with an embarrassing gimmick thus far in his career. While almost every current African-American wrestler in the WWE has to do some variation on a racial stereotype during his matches, Lethal performs in Ring of Honor as himself, if in suitably exaggerated form.
The Scene asked the Jersey native if he has ever had to fight for respect on the independent wrestling circuit, or deal with blatant racism from promoters.
"No, not me," Lethal says. "Luckily I have yet to face anything of that nature that would make me question inside if this is something I would really want to continue doing or not. I think I've been pretty lucky in that regard."
Offensive stereotypes or not, the pull of the WWE beckons. The brawler understands he has a good position where he is. Nevertheless, the WWE is recognized throughout the world as the major league of pro wrestling. At 30, Lethal hasn't aged out of being a prospect for the company — but this is a business where retirement can come quickly. All it takes is one bad bump to end a career. If Ring of Honor is as far up the promotional ladder that Lethal ever ascends, is that OK?
"I'm going to say that, for most professional wrestlers around my age and from my generation, the reason we got into wrestling was due to a love that was created in part by being fans of the WWE as kids," Lethal explains. "To say that I wouldn't want to work there would be a misstatement, because it is the company that started my love for professional wrestling, so I do have to say that it would be cool to wrestle for the WWE. But on the other side of that token, I wouldn't feel like, 'Man, I really missed out on something big.' "
