Mr Miller also spoke on his admiration for the wrestler Maxwell Jacob Friedman, known to wrestling fans as MJF, who is signed to the promotion All Elite Wrestling (AEW), the largest wrestling promotion in the United States after WWE. More dangerous, I think, than people realise.” “So, all of a sudden, you try and make a caricature out of it, all that’s going to do is tell the little kid watching wrestling that maybe their religion is a bit silly, which is just not true, and it’s not fair, and it’s dangerous.
“It’s representation, right? It makes you go ‘Well that’s a badass thing! Maybe one day I can grow up and do that too.’ It’s just how people think. “Let’s say on commentary, every now and then you just mentioned that he was of Jewish faith, as somebody may do with sports commentary just to add a little bit of flavour to proceedings, as a little Jewish kid that would have been the coolest thing ever,” he said. Speaking on the World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and WWE star Bill Goldberg, a wrestler whose Jewish identity had never been acknowledged on-screen, Mr Miller said that had it been acknowledged positively, it could have served as necessary representation for Jewish fans. “To an audience that may be a little bit ignorant towards or maybe a little bit uneducated, that may just back up certain ideas or it may actually enforce ideas they never thought they would have had before,” he said. Mr Miller warned that presenting Jewish wrestlers in a demeaning manner could have serious, real-world consequences. The WhatCulture Wrestling presenter went on to say that it was “disappointing, because there’s more to it than that,” adding: “I’m not saying that you couldn’t come up with an interesting Jewish storyline if everything is treated with respect, but that’s the point…it’s not, is it? It makes you want to stop watching.” It almost undermines everything else that he’s done.”
You’re in WWE…and then the one thing they lean on you for is ‘He’s Jewish so we’ll make him a Jewish guy’. It must have put him in such an awkward position, because you’ve made it to the top. “And to add all the effects in afterwards…I always thought about it from a Colt Cabana point of view. ‘Scotty Goldman’, the name alone…you’re like, ‘What did you do? Did you just type in “common Jewish names”?’ Mr Miller said: “You see that headline and you’re like ‘What?!’ I mean, it’s really even hard to come up with the words for it. To date, WWE has never commented on or disputed the wrestler’s allegations, but neither have they been confirmed.
The wrestler also alleged that one of the WWE trainers would refer to him not as “Colt Cabana”, but as “Kike Cabana”. Mr Cabana would appear in scripted segments where, in post-edit and reportedly without his knowing, klezmer music and stereotyping sound effects were added in. Mr Miller also gave his thoughts about the way the Jewish identity of the wrestler Colt Cabana was infamously handled, during which, in the mid-2000s, the wrestler had signed with WWE under the character of ‘Scotty Goldman’. Remarking on the fact that he read from multiple sources that a “Nazi character” was once pitched as a wrestler, Mr Miller said that he was not entirely surprised, given that this was reported to have occurred at a time “when wrestling was super-duper about stereotypes.” However, Mr Miller also touched upon the various reported instances in which Judaism and antisemitism were handled poorly. Mr Miller discussed how the Jewish identity of the wrestling manager and on-screen character Paul Heyman, who currently works in the global wrestling promotion World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and, in a documentary on the WWE Network, revealed that his mother was a Holocaust survivor, has been presented in a positive manner that allows Mr Heyman to playfully draw upon his Judaism.
#SIMON MILLER WRESTLER PROFESSIONAL#
Simon Miller, a Jewish professional wrestler and one of the presenters of the WhatCulture Wrestling YouTube channel, which regularly posts wrestling-related content to over 2 million subscribers, appeared on the most recent episode of Podcast Against Antisemitism where he spoke on how issues of Jewish identity and antisemitism have been dealt with in the wrestling industry, both on and off-screen.
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