#1295 Neal Hebert: A Philosophical Analysis of Wrestling | WWE SummerSlam 2026

Hello, everyone, welcome to a new episode of The Decenter. I'm your host, as always, Ricardo Lopes, and today I'm joined for a second time by Dr. Neil Herbert. We're going to talk about SummerSlam twenty twenty six today. And we're going to refer now and then to His book with Dr. John Cogburn, who unfortunately today cannot join us. K fave nation professional wrestling, Donald Trump and the new cynicism, so Doctor Hubert, welcome back to the show. It's uh very big pleasure to have you back.

I'm very happy to be here. You know, for love of the dissenter, I broke my seven year boycott of WWE to watch Swar Slam. Um Honestly, it's not it's I I mean the the thoughty money did make it feel kind of icky to watch, but honestly, I just stopped having time to keep up with WWE once there was a secondary promotion that was more my taste. So I kind of came into SummerSlam. familiar with most of the wrestlers, uh most of the older wrestlers, um, because they were all new when I was still watching. So I I know some of the lore, but also I'm coming in it a little bit blind. So don't be surprised if if I complain about not knowing who the good guy and the bad guy are in certain matches, just because it was not always clear. Yeah.

Yeah, uh by the way, a and and we have to do also I I mean to respect your own preferences. And I also follow AEW, by the way, but we also have to do an episode on the upcoming all in because uh it's probably going to be a very good show as always. I went to the last all in and uh because I live in Louisiana. So it was just a short drive to Texas. My wife took me for a present. It was the best show I'd ever been to in my life. Um, so I'm very excited. I'm gonna watch AEW All in anyway, as as I mentioned uh before we were recording. So I'd be happy to talk about it, but hopefully, John. Will be able to join us too. I do know John's pet peeve with wrestlers. Are good guys who chew gum.

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (112 minutes, 20,257 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

10 free credits is 10 episodes like this one a month. Episodes nobody has transcribed yet cost their length in hours, because we have to actually transcribe them.