Rasslin’ with Sherlockian Scholarship

Sherlockian scholarship.

Professional wrestling.

One, the pursuit of an active mind; the other, a challege for a rugged body. One, favored by a rare breed of literati; the other, followed by thundering masses of “the common man.” To claim a kinship between Sherlockian scholarship and professional wrestling would appear as impossible as calling Vincent Starrett and Andre the Giant fraternal twins. Yet similarities between Sherlockiana and wrestling do exist, if one can keep from flinching long enough to give them a steely hard stare.

Both disciplines have critics who would dismiss them with a wave of the hand and the words: “They’re fake!” Yet the participants of both know better: wrestlers sustain some very real injuries in their dangerous feats of battling showmanship, and Sherlockian scholars spend some long hard hours at research and study to produce their best work. Insiders know exactly what each discipline is truly about, whatever the outsiders say, and the best of both worlds have a deep love of their art in common.

In recent years, professional wrestling has come to embrace the fictitious side of its art with the words “sports entertainment,” letting the world know what perceptive folk have always known about wrestling: it’s as much about entertainment as it is sport. Holding championship matches that are contrived for maximum dramatic effect rather than being allowed to stumble into mediocrity, as many a Super Bowl or World Series has done, is not necessarily a bad thing, and the new “sports entertainment” classification gleefully celebrates that fact. Sports purists still have a couple of ESPNs full of sporting events to sate their appetites, but now, those who favor the unlikely endings of baseball movies over real baseball, or the wacky coaching of movie hero John Goldfarb over the real trials of gridiron great Mike Ditka, have their own “sport” as well.

And Sherlockian scholarship? Well, the term “scholarship entertainment” doesn’t seem to have caught on yet in the Sherlockian world, to further define the Game that was once the standard Sherlockian fare. And maybe we don’t need such a definition. We have “the Game” — a phrase that acknowledges the playful aspect of our hobby (and the nickname of the current World Wrestling Federation heavyweight champion as well, curiously enough). Loyal fans of Sherlockian scholarship still know that one can contrive an investigation into the lives of Sherlock Holmes or Dr. Watson for maximum effect on occasion, veering ever-so-slightly from the “facts,” despite the many venues of true, serious scholarship that are available to a Holmes aficionado these days.

And we do have a lot of opportunities for scholarship in its regular academic form these days. Those who’d rather not take the more whimsical paths of old can now choose from a wide assortment of more respectable approaches. Sherlock himself has now been around long enough that serious scholarly work can even be done on his spin-offs in literature, film, or theater . . . nice respectable work, without the danger of “But he’s not a real person!” catcalls. Now I don’t want to say there’s not fun to be had in the more serious stuff, but does it have the red-blooded gusto of the Game? The manly vigor of a hobby based around a man who choke-slammed his hated rival off a cliff? (Yes, Holmes did report it more modestly, but you know the man who often took the law into his own hands didn’t let the local lord of darkness just accidentally slip into that waterfall.) Or even the elbow-in-the-ribs camaraderie of a bar story, told to a close acquaintance under the influence of some pleasant beverage?

Straight scholarship has a certain safety factor. If you get your facts straight, you’ve at least got that going for you, even if the execution of the piece is less than lovely to behold. But tackling the “scholarship entertainment” side of Sherlockiana is another story. Like pro wrestling, Sherlockian scholarship has “high-risk” moves, wild extrapolations that can go bad oh-so-easily. And while a crazed theory gone wrong is a lot easier to recover from than a fall from the top of one of wrestling’s steel cages, it still takes a certain amount of intestinal fortitude (which often looks a whole lot like sheer insanity) to go for the really big move.

This issue, we take a few of those high-risk moves (as if comparing Sherlockian scholarship and pro wrestling wasn’t risky enough). Scandals, Internet flashbacks, and the ever-popular Mr. Spock await you within these pages, so let me hold you up no further. Have fun!

— The Publisher, Editor-in-Chief, and CEO of the H.W.W.F.
(That’s Holmes & Watson Wrestling Federation, for you non-rasslin’ Sherlockians)