I have often wondered as I see the screaming fans at the wrestling match. If it is most of them, then I am deeply worried
Sorry, a cursory search of the 'Net did not reveal any stats listing percentage of audience belief that pro wrestling is unscripted.
I have no such illusions, as I have a female friend who once worked as a feature entertainer at a place called “Floyd’s Oil Wrestling” in Louisiana. She assured me that the winners of each match were predetermined.
Well, she got paid, so it’s pro wrestling, innit?
Probably the same percentage that think other soap operas are real, less then 0.01%
It all depends on how you define “real”. Is all the drama and hooplah and storylines and the promos real? Was it real when Stone Cold wrested control of half the WWF away from Vince McMahon? Was it real when Mae Young (shudder) gave birth to a… umm… hand?
Nope. None of that crap is real.
But is it real when you see a wrestler jump off the turnbuckle onto another? Yup, that’s real. Was it real when Stone Cold got hit with a bad piledriver and seriously screwed up his back? Yup, that was real. Injuries, pain, exhaustion… all of that’s real. It takes real strength and real endurance and real skill to do what (most) wrestlers do (with the exception of Hulk Hogan, who has no skill to speak of).
But the matches themselves are predetermined, and most of the moves done in the match are planned out ahead of time. Storylines can be written months in advance.
SPOOFE nailed it.
For those who don’t believe the action is real, I offer these matches :
The match where Rob Van Dam broke his ankle.
The PPV match where Sid Vicious broke his leg.
And the Big Daddy of them all…
Hell in the Cell, Taker vs Mankind. See Mick Foley get chucked off the top of the cell onto the announcer’s table. See him fall through the cell onto the mat, come up with a tooth lodged in his nose and tell me it’s all pretend fighting.
But in the WWF(E), they haven’t been for months. And it’s probably real that Stone Cold has walked out permanently and will not be further employed by McMahon and Co., which will end his career. (The new NWA:TNA promotion will not be hiring him, because of the fact that Jeff Jarrett, co-owner, has a bad history with Austin.) Kinda sad that he is just going to leave, but hey, he wasn’t really contributing that much anyway.
Sorry about the hijack.
-brianjedi
When you see people crying at a movie, does that worry you as well? Just because entertainment provokes emotion doesn’t have anything to do with it’s reality or lack of.
To answer the question, it’s a much lower percentage than people who aren’t fans believe it is.
Its more real than say Friends. In most matches the moves are more ad libbed than anything you will see on Who’s Line is it Anyway. Its harder on the body than any of the major pro sports. Yes, winners, losers and run-ins are predetermined. Same as heavy weight boxing. Its as real as any other kind of entertainment.
dead0man
The action is real? Depends on what you mean by action. The laws of gravity are not canceled in the ring, there are no camera tricks, and those guys really are as big and strong as they look. However, they’re not trying to kill each other; they’re not even trying to hurt each other. Like a good stunt man, the professional wrestler will concentrate on making it look good, and he will take advantage of the strength and training of his opponent. The pile-driver? That would kill or cripple almost everyone you do it to, if done with that purpose, so you cheat a little: you take a little of the guy’s weight on your thighs, a little on your arms, a little on your shoulders. He’s still taking a hell of a pounding on his neck, but hell, he’s trained. Same with the turnbuckle jumps: the should-be-inevitable broken ribs only happen by accident; the jumper takes a little of the impact on his elbows and knees, the target falls a little more easily than he might, and the whole thing looks more dangerous than it really is, because they’re trained and they’re cooperating.
Of course, it all hurts like hell, and the guys get huge bruises, and sprains, and muscle pulls, and occasional broken bones, but so do stunt men, football players–hell, even soccer players. It’s part of a physical occupation–firemen, ironworkers, oil riggers–they all get hurt. But wrestlers and stuntmen make a living out of convincing the uninitiated that it’s more dangerous than it is.
So it’s kind of like stage magic. The guy may say that he’s Communing with the Ancient Forces of the Universe, but actually he’s just displaying a great deal of skill and quite a bit of showmanship. Which is also cool.
I’m finding it harder and harder to distinguish between the WWF and ‘real’ sports.
Take baseball, fer example;
[ul]
[li]beanballs.[/li][li]empty the benches.[/li][li]intentional walk.[/li][li]endless stats.[/li][li]2-1 win, 11 innings.[/li][li]snotty, bigoted players.[/li][li]hostile fans.[/li][li]blind officials.[/li][/ul]
Ok, I’ll quit.
Yes, pro wrestling is real entertainment, and very few believe all the hype. So’s NASCAR.
Peace,
mangeorge
I take the point. I was just wondering if the fans couldn’t tell it was rehearsed?
It’s fiction. Nobody mentions that a show like ER or Boston Public is fake; why would anyone emphasize that pro wrestling is fake?
What? No mention of Owen Hart?
Owen hart died in a freak accident, not in a wrestling match.
Using that to say wrestling is real, would be like using brandon lee’s death to say ‘The Crow’ was real.
While working at Darlington Nuclear Generating Station, I had to share a cubicle with a fellow who believed that professional wrestling was real in every respect, including who won or lost.
I now live a thousand miles from there.
Nope, but I almost forgot about Droz.
Darren Drozdov, who wrestled as Droz, is now a paraplegic after a botched move in the ring.
Half that action is dummied down for safety reasons. They are not hitting each other full force, not breaking real chairs over the back of somebodies head, and certainly not bringing a 200+ male person down on the top of the head. These moves would seriously injure a person, cause blood to fly, or kill/main contestants. Since they are dummied down, they are not real. Is a break-away chair real? No, its a fake chair.
The chairs aren’t the hard steel most are - they’re aluminium, or something similar. The announcers’ tables they throw each other through are hollow, and are designed to cushion the landing. The ring is padded (it’s not like a big high jump mat though - if any untrained person jumped onto their back on it, they’d undoubtedly wind themselves), and everything is preplanned. 99.5% of wrestling fans know that. Heck, no one even claims it’s a ‘real’ sport: hence the name “sports-entertainment”.
However, a suplex (bar the fact that the ring is padded) is as real as it could be anywhere. The blood is real, which most people don’t believe - these guys actually put their face into the mat and cut their faces with small razor blades to get the blood most people assume is from a bottle. Take a look at any of Triple H’s big matches - you literally cannot see any skin on his face for all the blood, and it’s all real.
And as people have mentioned, the wrestlers take real hits. Mick Foley, in that Hell in the Cell '96 match already mentioned, dislocated a shoulder, badly bruised his kidney, pulled his fingers badly, causing them to numb for the next few weeks, knocked out two front teeth, was unconscious for several minutes, broke his nose, was thrown onto real thumbtacks - twice - and carried on the match. Then walked out on his feet afterwards. Imagine a professional football player dislocating a shoulder, knocking out two teeth and breaking his nose about a fifth of the way into a match, then carrying on.
It’s definitely real in some senses of the word.
Very few people now actually think it is real. The WWF(E) has been honest about this since the mid 80’s. So have most independent promoters since federal and state govt’s started talking regulation.
I still hear people talk about the “old days.” People who are over 30 and remember the pre-WWF days. Back then they never admitted it, and many people thought that much of it was not scripted. The people who talk about the “old days” often refer to a time when pro wrestling was real. “Ivan Putski. Jose Lothario. Johnny Valentine. Wahoo MacDaniel. They weren’t faking it!”
Yeah right you old fart.