In defense of professional wrestling - long

I’m not a fan, but don’t understand the hate some people have for it. It’s like Don Imus- you don’t like it, don’t watch. And I don’t see how any film or comic book or TV or theatre fan can knock wrestling, when spending two hours watching a “fake” movie is no different than watching “fake” wrestling. Bruce Willis really doesn’t get hurt in Die Hard, same as with wrestling.

And when you see how much enjoyment it gives many people, is that a bad thing?

My dad took me and one of my best friends (and his Dad, too) to Wrestlemania 2 back when I was in elementary school. One of the coolest live events I’ve ever been to - and one of my fondest memories of hanging out with my Dad and the of sacrifices he made to do stuff with me.

Eventually, I outgrew the enjoyment of professional wrestling, although I will stop channel-surfing for a couple minutes if I glimpse a match in my cable TV travels, just to check it out. Call it nostalgia.

I think pro wrestling lost its innocence with the revelation that it was creating a culture in which drug abuse was widespread. If you look at the number of pro wrestlers who have died in recent years, you find a lot of heart attacks and such, clearly brought about by abuse of either steroids or prescription painkillers or worse.

You might shrug and say something to the effect of “Well, shit, how is that different from baseball?” It’s not, really, in my mind. I think baseball lost its innocence in pretty much the same way. The difference, to me, is that baseball is an unfaked competitive sport. Still, we see athletes in both wrestling and baseball juicing for pretty much the same reasons. With wrestling, though, it seems to me to be even more pointless to use performance enhancers for something that’s scripted.

To me, it’s symptomatic of the sickness within pro wrestling - it has to constantly top itself. Kids probably would think the stuff that I watched when I was a kid was boring - I doubt Ivan Putski delivering a Polish Hammer or Hulk Hogan delivering his finishing leg drop would elicit anything but a yawn. Now we’ve got people yawning at matches where people dive from 10’ ladders or fall from the top of steel cages through the floor of the ring. How do you continually top that?

You don’t. Eventually, you come to the conclusion that the guys can’t get bigger without performance enhancers, the matches aren’t going to get more violent without bringing in firearms and the pyrotechnics can’t get more intense without incinerating the audience. And you reinvent your business in a different way. Or you keep doing what you’re doing and you end up with guys like Davey Boy Smith, Eddie Guerrero and Rick Rude dying in their 30s and 40s from drug-related health problems.

Putting aside the notion of wrestling being fake for a bit, is it not evident that wrestling of the WWE variety has jumped the shark?

If you can watch wrestling, and be entertained by it, then good for you. To me it is horrible, cheesy, campy, ridiculous, embarrassing, fallacious, and otherwise extremely boring.

And since this is the Pit: I question the IQ of anyone who can find it remotely entertaining. I mean really, people. The fucking Teletubbies have more to offer.

And there you have it: “I don’t find it entertaining, so anyone who does is stupid.”

Fucking snobs.

Anyone who wants to make the argument that wrestlers are not athletes, I invite you to tell that to Kurt Angle.

Fine, don’t fucking watch it, and us idiots will continue to enjoy it. You’re so much better than us. Feel better now?

That argument was never made. In my OP back in CS I admitted that it takes a certain amount of athleticism to be a “pro” wrestler.

It’s really simple and I don’t even see the debate here.
Professional wrestling is a live scripted drama that mixes theatrical acting (good or bad acting is subjective but it’s the reaction of the audience that counts right?) and choreographed physical stuntwork.
If that’s your cup o tea or not well more power to ya. Sure the fans get carried away sometimes but they know it’s not real. And it’s absurd to question their IQ because they like it.
It’s as if you’d go to see The Godfather in a packed theatre and when the audience is stunned when Sonny kills Fredo you’d stand up and declare “You stupid fools, it’s fake, he’s not really dead, if you believe that I question your IQs.”

I don’t look down on people who enjoy wrestling, but I don’t really understand them.

I think the reason that people come back to “It’s fake” is because fakery is central to what it is, and most people – okay, a lot of people – don’t like things that are inherently inauthentic. Which is why “We know it’s fake” is an unsatisfactory answer, because then the question is “So why do you watch it? It’s fake.” Meaning, how is it you are not bothered by the fakery?

Theater does not pretend to be real. Sport does not pretend to be theater. People who engage in those endeavors are being themselves before and after. Even during the endeavor, the athlete (in sport) does not pretend to be someone other than who she is. Even during a performance, the actor is acknowledged to be playing a roll for a limited time and in a limited context, but after The Importance of Being Earnest is over, the lead does not assert that he is really Algernon.

Professional wrestling is like make-believe, it’s like pretend. You, Mr. Wrestler, you pretend that you’re this character with this odd name wearing this odd costume, and we’ll both allow the management to put you in a tough situation where you must be seen to rise above and triumph, and I will pretend I believe all that and, as your fan, I will willfully subsume myself in your story (even though we both know it’s just a story) so that I can join in the emotion of your triumph when you win, or the pathos of your defeat if you lose.

AFAIAC this is fine so far as it goes, but a lot of adults are no longer entertained by make-believe because we are brought up short by the fact that it is not real, it’s fake. Maybe that’s a shortcoming on our parts, to have lost the ability to participate in a benign and intentional group illusion, but we can’t get over the fakery to appreciate it it despite the fakery. And the ability to appreciate – indeed, even the desire to appreciate – the inauthentic does seem to me both a little immature and, yes, a little unintelligent, though honestly I wouldn’t dream of being judgy about it. Not everything I like is wholesome and uplifting either.

Good op, I agree. In fact I will come out of the closet today and tell my fellow cube dwellers, “I watch RAW, and I like it.”

Wrestlers are the best ‘One Take’ performers alive.

Clap, clap, clap, clap…

I honestly don’t see how this is all that different from people getting really into their favorite TV shows or movies.

The only difference I do see is the fact that the ‘act’, as it were, is sort of spread out. The actual wrestling, the interviews, the backstory stuff - it’s all part of the same story.

Of course, I used to play Dungeons & Dragons, which is way more like make-believe than wrestling.

I don’t understand all of this outcry over the fact that pro wrestling is fake. Is the problem that it’s violent? Is the problem that people take it too seriously by discussing it?

The Sopranos was fake. It was violent. People discussed the characters and plots after the shows. No outcry.

Lost is fake. It is violent. People discuss the characters and plots after the show. No outcty.

Pro wrestling is fake. It is violent. People discuss the characters and plots after the show…outcry?

I mean, it’s pretty simple - pro wrestling is a show people watch. It’s got characters with histories and plot lines and scripts - just like every other show on TV. Perhaps the biggest difference between wrestling and any other primetime soap opera is that it is filmed in front of a live “studio” audience. Part of the show is the audience interaction (going to events, actors meeting fans in character, buying merchandise from the show, etc). That sets it apart, but it doesn’t make it any worse. Makes it more interesting.

I have always maintained that professional wrestling is the ultimate entertainment medium. Mind you I only ever watched it with my sons when they were into it because I think it is crap. But nonetheless everyone involved gives over their entire lives to the furtherance of the product. Even the participants private lives become part of the rich tapestry of wrestling.

Imagine if other branchs of entertainment were as dedicated:

“Springsteen Vows To Kill Jagger After Mick Seduces Scialfa.”

“Jakob Dylan Crosses Dad - It’s All Acoustic For Me.”

Where do you get the impression that wrestling pretends to be real whereas theatre does not?
Outside of their own mock interviews (which are part of the performance) wrestlers don’t always stay in character. There are plenty I’ve seen do interviews on Leno or Letterman turn off their character persona and just talk like an actor does.
I know that in large cities after performances opposing wrestlers often go out to diner in public with eachother.

Do you think there should be a big disclaimer before the shows?

Don’t clap, sir. Unlike Ms.** Jodi**, you are, in fact, being judgy about it.

I can guaran-damn-tee I don’t like all of your entertainments of choice, but I’m not the one standing here calling other people stupid for their choice of entertainment.

I enjoy professional wrestling for much the same reason I still enjoy cartoons at the advanced age of 32. I am able, and in fact more than willing, to rise above and beyond the fact that they’re manifestly not real that I may appreciate the artistry involved in each.

Just because you’re not able or willing to do so does not make you a better, or smarter person than me. In my eyes, it makes you a sadder and more limited one, though.

I think it depends on what you mean by “really into” it, and I think D&D is a good example of a context where some fans do seem to willfully subsume themselves in an “alternate reality” (i.e, not reality, i.e., fake) while others just can’t see the entertainment value in it. Other examples IMO include SCA, Star Trek, and Civil War re-enactors. And I’m not saying every single participant in these endeavors go all the way over to the “it’s real!” end of the spectrum, but the uber-fans in each area do, and frankly they are pretty incomprensible to me, for a lot of the same reasons. The difference is that in pro wrestling every fan (so far as I, a non-watcher, can tell) buys into that illusion. That’s part of the fun, I gather.

I think the difference is where you place the frame of reality: where you draw the line between a performance and a real event. Pro wrestling is not like The Sopranos or Lost or any other acted drama that draws a clear frame around the action “on stage” and the action “off stage.” Every actor participating in those dramas does so as an actor and does not assert or even pretend that the character he or she plays exists in any way off stage.

Pro wrestling does not have a clear frame of reality; it is not clear when the participants are participating in a drama (acting) and when they are not, because their characters interact and ostensibly exist outside the stage – back stage, in the green room, out in the parking lot. They burst the fourth wall to appear to do what they do in reality. It is when they purport that their performance is a part of reality – that it is authentic – that the inherent inauthenticity of it jumps out at the non-fan.

Ask John Stossel whether wrestling is fake. :smiley:

I’d be stunned if I watched The Godfather and Sonny killed Fredo…

Maybe it’s the “mock interviews.” Maybe it’s the arguments in the locker rooms or out on the streets. Maybe it’s the inclusion of Vince Whatsisname as . . . what? A character? Or not? I’m hard-pressed to come up with a laundry list of concrete examples, because I don’t watch wrestling.

But obviously the history of pro wresling is one of “pretend.” For years they asserted it was real, and even after it became completely obvious it was not real, more time went by before they admitted, yeah, it’s fake. But it’s an entertaining fake! (An opinion I take no position on; people are entertained by different things.)

So I don’t think the best argument is that it isn’t fake. It’s pretty clearly fake. Even the fans don’t respond to the argument “It’s fake!” with “No it isn’t!” but with “We know; we don’t care.” The argument IMO is “It’s fake; so what?”

No. At this point, I don’t think anyone with a functioning brainstem, fan or anti-fan, is unaware that it’s fake.