I don’t know how many believe it’s competitive (nobody who I’ve met, for sure), but I wanted to stealthbrag that I was in the audience at the PPV where Kurt Angle first wrestled the late Chris Benoit. Benoit went out badly, but he was a heck of a wrestler, as was Angle - altogether it was one of the finest exhibitions I have ever seen.
IME, kids think the matches are real, but nobody over the age of 10 does.
(But, I grew up in the 80s…do kids even watch it any more?)
Yes. Our little local promotion is popular with kids–so much so, that the promotion has hosted a few birthday parties. Before the audience enters and the show begins, the party kids get to play in the ring a bit (under supervision, they get to try bouncing off the ropes, for example), they get to meet the wrestlers for autographs and photos, and then when it’s time for the show, they get front-row seats. They have a great time.
I thought the same thing… “Somewhat real” doesn’t really mean a lot. In fact, I’m surprised they didn’t get a much higher hit rate- it could be determined the athleticism described above (lifting human bodies, getting hit by chairs and bleeding real blood, etc) even though scripted, with an agreed upon winner, is still “somewhat real” due to the real blood and athleticism involved.
I don’t believe it. I really can’t see how you could be a fan of wrestling and ignore it’s scripted. Maybe someone who never saw or had any interest in wrestling could believe it the first time he watches a match, but someone who regularly attends? Completely implausible.
I assume like the others that they were pretending and playing along and having fun. And their comments about who really won the match is presumably a way to convey their admiration for the wrestler in question and/or let him know that they appreciate him more than his “opponent”.
I was a pretty big wrestling fan from 1967/1968 to around 2000 or so. The early years were of local wrestling here in San Antonio, which, at the time, was a pretty big promotion and had some of the top people of the time and future stars.
Now, I knew even back then that the matches weren’t REALLY authentic, but thought they were at little more competition than show than they probably were. Things were different back then – matches were often a best-of three with a one-hour time limit, so there was more grappling and wearing down than fancy moves and high flying.
But every so often, there would be a match that seemed odd from the get go.
The wrestlers involved would have a match, usually just one pin. They wouldn’t be jobbers, but they also weren’t the top performers working the area at the time. The match wasn’t promoted ahead of time like the rest of the card, and the announcement at the beginning wasn’t a big deal.
In the match, the wrestlers were a lot less “showy” than they were in other matches, and they often seemed to be more interested in beating the crap out of each other than putting on a show. I think a lot of the punches and moves were a lot “harder” than usual. I don’t know if the winner was pre-determined or not, but after a time there was a fall and the match ended.
I truly got the impression that there was some kind of aggravation being worked out between the two wrestlers, and though they weren’t trying to cripple each other (which they easily could have done), they were interested in proving a point and putting some hurt on the other. The matches didn’t happen often, but I saw enough of them to think it wasn’t too rare.
I still think those matches were more like what wrestling fans imagined what all the regular matches purported to be.
This is what I was going to ask. Granted the outcomes are ordained. How much of it is choreographed versus improvised? Do wrestlers rehearse with one another backstage? Who determines who’s going to win a match–is there a central authority who fixes every match, or is it decided between managers, or by the site promoter, or who?
It’s changed a lot over the years. To hear the wrestlers tell the story, in the “good ol’ days” they would be told who was going to win and how and that’s about it. Usually the senior person (of name talent, as senior jobber - person who’s paid to always lose - didn’t have any real say) would ‘call’ the match in the ring. Savage vs. Steamboat was a notable exception (as were many Savage matches) in that it was laid out well ahead of time. That had more to do with Savage’s personality
Today, for all but the very tippy-top stars, the matches are choreographed in much finer detail. The talent doesn’t ever get the chance to get the training on how to read a crowd and ring psychology like in days past. Instead, HHH and VinnieMac have a direct line to the ref and they call the momentum shifts.
There is some rehearsal and practice, because a lot of moves take both people cooperating and knowing what to do and where to be.
Cool, thanks! Very helpful. Although I’m very much an ignoramus. When you say the senior person would call the match, do you mean the senior of the two wrestlers? Who are HHH and VinnieMac?
That’s my experience, too. By the 7th and 8th grade, nobody I knew seriously thought it was a real fight. My dad, a big boxing fan, totally didn’t understand it and would yell at the TV that it was a bunch of bullshit. Of course it was! Duh. You don’t really have to pay that much attention to see the theatre in it, and I wasn’t a particularly perceptive and sophisticated child. But it was fun to watch, and I probably would even today answer that wrestling is “somewhat real” in the fact that there is athleticism, strength, and some risk involved in doing it, so that 21% answered it was “somewhat real” means zero to me.
VinnieMac is Vince McMahon, owner of WWE. He can make the final determination about anything that goes on there, but much of the storyline work and who wins or loses will be the responsibility of others. Some wrestling promotions have had less hands on owners who left that kind of planning up to others altogether. HHH is Vince’s son-in-law, his character is the COO of WWE but that’s fiction. Although he is very influential there, and more so in the WWE’s secondary product NXT, he doesn’t actually have ownership type authority.
Cool, thank you!
He is, however, Executive Vice President of Creative in real life, which means he’s pretty much second only to the boss himself in terms of who picks the winners.
To go into perhaps a bit more detail (and, as mentioned, a micro-managing CEO like Vince can get involved at any level, similar to a CEO walking into a sales group meeting and spelling out how they make their sales pitch)
You start with the booker/writer. Often a group of people in a larger company. They come up with the overall plot. Who faces who, who wins, how they win, and any particularly notable points that need to happen in the match. They will also write they promos the wrestlers give (wrestlers used to just be given a set of bullet points to hit, nowadays it’s more likely anything they say is fully scripted).
Next are the agents–these are usually retired wrestlers that work with the wrestlers to put together the match within the parameters the bookers give them. Exactly how detailed will depend on the wrestlers and agents involved. Even back in the “old days” there was some variance–“MAcho Man” Randy Savage was known for wanting to have every detail of the match–every move–mapped out well beforehand. I believe what you’ll typically get now is something like “The good guy goes up to the top rope, but the bad guy recovers and knocks him off, and the bad guy takes control and dominates for the next several minutes.”
I knew a guy who once wrestled Ric Flair. He wrestled with the local Kansas city promotion as “Big Daddy Cool”.
He said that it wasnt scripted but they did talk some before the match. Basically Ric called the shots and gave my friend instructions like when to kick him or when to fall down and such.
Also a slap on the back was the signal to get ready for Ric to put his figure 4 leglock on him and to sell it big.
He said it was his biggest payout in wrestling.
Back then, when I was an adolescent wrestling fan, I must have fired off an angry letter at least once a week to various wrestling organizations (WWF, NWA, etc.) protesting what I then thought to be incompetence or bias on the part of referees. I could never understand why professional wrestling couldn’t simply utilize instant replay the way their “fellow” athletic organizations such as the NFL did.
That’s adorable!
I actually saw a match on TV (Los Angeles NWA, 1978 or so) where the losing wrestler asked to see the replay; they aired it, and the referee reversed the decision. Also, the San Francisco NWA promotion would have an “NWA observer at ringside” which would “fly back to St. Louis and report to the NWA Board of Directors;” what usually happened was, (a) at a house show where a heel champion was defending his title, he would try to cheat with some foreign object, but the face would grab it, hit the heel with it behind the referee’s back, and win the match, then (b) on the next TV show, they would announce that “the NWA observer at ringside” told the Board of Directors about the weapon, and they reversed the decision and the heel would keep the title.
And, apparently, you were not alone in asking about instant replay; I remember somebody on one of the “big” shows (either Nitro or WCW Saturday Night in the pre-Nitro days) explaining why they did not use it.