WWE wrestler Alberto Del Rio was terminated late last night after an altercation with an office worker where Del Rio allegedly struck the man. Now I am not here to argue that violence in the workplace is ever justifiable but I am here to Del Rio’s actions were justifiable when faced with a seemingly smug office worker who showed him no respect as an in-ring performer or as a man.

Dave Meltzer of The Wrestling Observer Newsletter reported this:

“Details are still sketchy regarding Thursday’s firing of Al Rodriguez (Alberto Del Rio) by WWE.The story going around is that he slapped a Social Media manager, at this week’s television, but there are a variety of different stories going around regarding what led to this.
Based on sketchy stories and what wrestlers have been talking about, at catering, somebody asked the person to clean off his plate. The person joked something along the lines of how that’s Del Rio’s job.  Del Rio found out and confronted him.  As the story goes, he  didn’t apologize and then smiled at him, and Del Rio slapped him.”

Now while “details are still sketchy”, I am going to assume that Del Rio does not go slapping around office workers for fun so he must have felt that there was a good reason to confront this man.

Now whether the remarks were meant as an ethnic slur, a comment about Del Rio’s current place on the performer pecking order, or something else entirely the only thing that is 100% sure is that they were disrespectful. Even more disrespectful was that when given the opportunity to apologize he not only refused to but smugly smiled at him. Del Rio then did the one thing he likely felt he had to do after his pride was wounded. Whether he regrets it at all now is something only he knows.

In my opinion before becoming the physical aggressor Del Rio was the victim of what I see as a growing sentiment in our society; that being “White Collar Supremacy”.

The office worker showed no respect for someone who is the physical backbone of the company he Tweets for. He seems like one of these guys with a degree and a fancy new age title who thinks that because he gets to make his living without breaking a sweat that it makes him better than those that do. The company is called World Wrestling Entertainment. Without the wrestlers who provide the entertainment there’s no need for a social media department that is in charge of social media accounts with likes and followers that count into the millions. It’s that simple. For a social media worker to make a remark like that, whether it was ethnically motivated or not, and then not immediately apologize when confronted about it shows a  self-entitlement and self-importance that is just amazing to me.

I wanted to write this article so that we can scratch beneath the surface and learn something deeper. Taken on the surface the lesson would be “don’t hit people at work” which is pretty obvious. But by scratching beneath the surface we discover the root cause of the action  which was an act of blatant disrespect. So the greater lesson is for those entering a workplace straight into the office: You are better than no one. Everyone from the shop workers to the janitors deserves your respect. If you treat them with respect, then hopefully they will treat you with respect. And no one will be slapped. -Chris