Waterholes have been filled with heavier splashes than usual this week as herds of elephants took to practising wrestling after hearing that people from WWF were coming to visit.
The elephants have even called in Zebra to referee the contests, as they wear the black and white stripes of WWF judges, stamping their hooves three times to indicate the winner of each match.
Edward, a young calf whose signature move ‘the tree dive’ has gone viral on social media, told us, “It’s so exciting the WWF people are coming, we want to show them what we can do. We hope they’ll be so impressed they’ll launch a new wrestling organisation, world wide elephantainment, or WWE.”
Wrestling has proved popular among many animals, who have taken to peering at the big screen TVs in safari lodges to follow their favourite stars. The most popular wrestler remains The Rock, and many animals were sorry to see him retire, but still greatly enjoy watching his films on the same TV sets.
“It would be so great to become the elephant equivalent of The Rock,” Edward told us, “Can you imagine being that cool? I’ve already thought what my catchphase would be, it’s ‘can you smeeeeeeeeelllllllll, what Ed-ward is trunking?’”
The change of name for wrestling away from WWF had not yet reached the elephants until we raised it, as we were fearful it would lead to disappointment when conservationists, not wrestlers, turned up,.
But Edward was not to be phased, “If it does turn out to be conservationists, we can still have lots of fun. If we wrestle really well, maybe they’ll change their logo to be an elephant not a panda? It’s not as good as becoming the Rock, but it would still be pretty cool!”