John Oliver Took On The WWE Last Night In A Truly Phenomenal Segment
Listen, I know it’s twenty minutes, and we’ve all got the attention spans of ants in 2019, but if you’re interested in professional wrestling in even the most minor degree, or were, at any point in your life, I’d truly urge you to watch the full clip above.
John Oliver took to his HBO show, ‘Last Week Tonight’, one week ahead of WrestleMania, to address some issues that professional wrestlers have been BEGGING somebody on a mainstream level for decades. Issues like Vince McMahon’s mistreatment of his employees, or, “independent contractors”, as he classifies them. Issues like their lack of paid-for health insurance, workman’s comp, and retirement funds. Finally, most unfortunate of all, Oliver brings up the issue of wrestlers’ tremendously high early death rate, which makes the NFL’s look phenomenal, like the average across the human race. These are issues fans have known about for years, but we couldn’t really do anything about them…until now.
I saw some on wrestling twitter last night calling for Oliver’s head over the joke he made about Roman Reigns’ wet hair making him look like a “pedophile”, and to that, I’d say you missed the entire point of the segment and his show as a whole. Jokes are gonna be made. He’s not serious. He doesn’t think Roman Reigns is a pedophile, and didn’t even say he looked like one. He mentioned that the fact that his hair is wet 24/7 makes him look like one. John Oliver is legitimately attempting to make the business a better place with this piece, and even brings up that he’s a fan multiple times throughout the segment.
In just twelve hours, the video is up to 1.2 million views on YouTube and climbing. So please, wrestling fans, don’t let this die. Bring it up, make signs at shows, as Oliver said, and I guess somehow chant for workman’s comp at shows (lol). Lives are quite literally at risk! This could be the spark that’ll light the fire that changes the business forever, and I’m not being dramatic or using hyperbole at all when I say that. Don’t let it die.