See the thing about pro wrestling is that it hardly ever goes far enough with its themes. If there was a big storyline about the importance of family and love, I think maybe you should pull some power of friendship stuff or you’re not going far enough.
I’ve been thinking more about this. The current big storyline in WWE is Roman Reigns and his abusive position as “Head of the Table”. It’s both a “I am the top of the ladder of WWE” thing and also a “I am the leader of my in-fiction and irl wrestling family” thing. The main event of SummerSlam 2023 this weekend was Jey Uso, one of Roman Reign’s family members, finally getting the one-on-one match against Roman Reigns. It was a match for both the Universal Title and title of Tribal Chief of their family. Reigns stands for abuse of power and fear in ruling a family, while Jey Uso stands for mercy and showing compassion.
The problem is that almost every wrestling character is inherently selfish. Positive relationships really don’t exist outside of tag teams. No good guy cares about the wrestling world past their own nose. A Superman-like character, someone who does good deeds simply protect and help others, does not exist because to be a wrestler you have to care about wins and losses and titles. John Cena, the closest thing WWE has ever had to a Superman character, was a completely selfish good guy who simply did not care about other people, or even defeating the bad guys, unless it provided some upside to him.
So, you have this storyline all about family and connections, and how the good guy stands against abuse of power and all that, but like… the good guy has no one in his corner. He is doing this alone because he has no real positive connections with others. And it’s such a huge missed opportunity!
Genuinely, it would be so interesting to have a wrestler who didn’t actually care about titles or winning or losing but simply cared about fighting for what’s right. This storyline would be the perfect time to bring that type of character out! Instead we get this weird thing where the bad guys are the only ones who can have a family, and the good guys have to be individualists who can never ask for or accept help.