Garner has several interesting hypostheses to explain wrestling s popularity. One explanation is that we live in a highly technological world, closed off from one another in out autos, offices, homes, and computers, and that people hunger for touches with old-fashioned humanity. Wrestling involves real-live people, both on the mats and in the audiences. A more compelling argument that Garner makes is that, for most of us, the world is a battleground between Good and Evil, between Ups and Downs, between Optimists and Pessimists, and that wrestling is a low-cost way of translating the cosmological struggle into human symbols. There is, Garner seems to see, a natural human inclination to want to see the world in such dualistic terms.
Mankind has to have someone to adulate, and also has to have someone to hate.
Wrestling provides both. Further, there is a sort of Homeric Odyssey and Horatio Alger success story theme in wrestling, as week after week some hunky hero moves like Hercules another step further in a personal quest to find and to assert himself, to become a super-hero. And finally, Garner shows us, wrestling is a participatory sport. True wrestling fans get into with a vengeance, chanting for and emulating their favorites, buying all that assortment of memorabilia, viewing the shows religiously and sharing vicariously in their favorites fates. The wrestling web sites number in the thousands.