Is wrestling faked?

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
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Oh PUHLEASE! Run one of those boys around on a soccer field (won’t even discuss Aussie Rules football) for 90 minutes full tilt and let’s see how they do.

I’d like to see some quote from some NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL etc. players saying how ‘in shape’ wrestlers are. Are they able to lift weight and jump and such. Yes, but that isn’t shape.

As for the stunts, if you watch closely, especially on digitalized recordings, and slow it way down, you can see that, most of the time, it’s all ‘fake’, that is, controlled to a degree that almost no one can get hurt. This is NOT to say it is without risk - YOU try falling out of a ring into an audience and not injure yourself. :wink:

22

From Nevada Athletic Commission:

According the to NAC, in professional wrestling there is nothing up for grabs. It is not a contest.

23

Glitch:
What do you think of the wrestlers with the martial arts background? Ah, that falls under the category of the just playing their part and doing what they are told. I know the marital art wrestler is different than what you are into. I am not trying to insult what you do.

You think because Flair knows how to fall that it doesn’t hurt him at all?

Was it fake when Saturn in WCW jumped from the balcony and landed on the guy stretched out across the table? I don’t think the table did much to help after he fell 20 feet down.

DSYoung:
I don’t believe I put down the Australian Rules football, Rugby, and soccer players ability as athletes. Does any one soccer player play the complete 90 minutes non stop? Then put a soccer player in the ring and see how he does. Of course the soccer player would rule in his sport against any wreslter.
You cannot say wrestlers are not athletes. They all come from various backgrounds, many of them played in the NFL, many were top collegiate wrestlers, some were in Major League Baseball. Would you believe that even some of the guys are college professors?

Glitch, do you believe that there is anything in wrestling that is not fake? As a fan of wrestling i realize you may not like it and you can point out the obvious and that’s fine. Look, I don’t have a problem with you and your point of view. I do think we will be here forever arguing every little detail of wreslting. You believe it is fake, and if you ask anyone who does not like wrestling what they think of it, their first statement will be that it is fake. If you ask a fan or a wrestler if it is all fake, then, of course, you get a different answer. I realize they don’t always actually hit each other to hurt each other, some moves are choreographed to look good in the show, it is entertainment value they are after and they cannot be there to do major damage to each other.

24

[QUOTE]
Originally posted by Glitch:
**Sas:

You want to prove me wrong, they demonstrate YOUR knowledge rather than questioning mine. Do you want me to go and scan my rank certificates and post them? Good grief. If you have some knowledge post it, and the people who read it can decide who sounds like they know what they are talking about. I have been teaching martial arts for the past 17 years. I rely on the fact that whay I know comes through in my posts, because on matters such as this it all comes down to who sounds like they actually know what they talking about (i.e. there aren’t any books you can go to for a compartitive study of breakfalls vs. no breakfalls). I can, and have on many occasions, provided detailed technical information on various technique. Prove me wrong with facts not mere suggestions that “everybody is an expert” and hence I don’t know what I am talking about.
[\QUOTE]

My point on everyone being a expert on the internet was just that. I could claim to be whatever, and if I’m smooth enough, may even convince folks. Not until I went back and re-read posts did I see most of 'em were from you.

I said what I did because of your presentation. Correcting/informing someone is fine, but some ways are better than others. “bzzt. wrong!!” isn’t one of my top choices for showing superior knowledge of the subject material. Among friends, sure. On an internet message board, probably not. It takes away from ones credibility.

Anyway, I’m disappointed no-one knows how they do the chair trick. Maybe it’s simpler than I think. Any Hollywood stuntmen in the audience ? (gdr)

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I am not sure what you mean. I have seen some of the martial arts moves down by wrestlers. Various crescent kicks mainly. They flat out do them wrong. Well, do them wrong, if you intent was to cause even the slightest damage to your opponent. My dojo and I did a demo in 1993 that looked very real (at least according to compliments we got). We practiced and carefully cheorographed (sp) our technique. To be even safer we made sure that if somebody did the wrong technique at the wrong time we wouldn’t get got off-guard so we practiced just individuals techniques as well. Now, Crescent kicks, front kicks, jumping side kicks, etc. Again, it all looked very real and we only practiced for two weeks! Its no surprise that people who do this day in and day out can make it look good, but if you know what to look for (crescent kicks that don’t drive through for example) you can pick out the intentional flaws. A couple of us did get hit, but because the technique used was intentionally flawed it just plain didn’t hurt that much.

I had the pleasure once of meeting a wrestler called “The Cuban Assassin” way back in 1983 or so. He wrestled in Canada in “Atlantic Grand Prix Wrestling”. He told me the worst thing is when two wrestlers don’t like each other in real life! He says then you can be sure a couple of the shots are going to be a little bit rougher. He said he got a pretty good elbow once to the face that was supposed to be a fake punch.

No, I think he does, but I his statement would be true IF he doesn’t. Unfortunately, I doubt if I could safely teach you to breakfall online. I definitely couldn’t teach you advanced (non-slapping, non-rolling) breakfalls.

I cannot say for certain. I didn’t see that. However, I do know that for falling techniques what they do often (again, I did NOT see this event) is land with another part of their body first. When you get good at this you can blend it all together to make it look like you are hitting your opponent hard, but in reality you aren’t. Just like stunt men can make truly dangerous stunts look absolutely deadly.

The athleticism (sp) and skill of stunt work that pro wrestlers possess is very impressive.

Keep in mind, I may not be a fan of wrestling, but I am not an anti-fan either. I watched that episode (WWF) and was entertained. However, it isn’t my cup of tea. I understand why it would be very enjoyable to watch. It is a male soap opera, in essence. Melodramatic storylines with larger than life characters … I see the attraction, it just goes a bit too coo-coo for for my tastes.

Nonsense. I know at least two colleagues who love wrestling. They suspend their disbelief when they watch it, just like I do when I go to a movie. Maybe I am too much of a martial artist to suspend my disbelief when watching any type of unarmed combat (NEVER watch a martial arts movie with me, I just plain and simple will not shut up, in fact, I never rent martial arts movies unless I feel like roasting something).

Replace some with almost all and I agree 100%.

26

Fair enough, but if you are on the board long enough you will see that I use that line all the time (I love the “Family Feud”). It is a kind of catch phrase for me. Granted I can see how it could be misinterpreted by somebody new, and I apologize for any perceived insult to blackwrangler.

I think the answer is :

  1. It is a break away chair. Clearly, this doesn’t apply to aluminum chairs. I have been heat with a “sugar” glass bottle. It is amazing, it really hardly hurts at all! I imagine a break away chair is similar.

  2. They don’t hit each other nearly as hard as it looks like they are hitting each other. I.e. it is a pulled punch … ummm … chair. If you get good enough with a pulled punch you can really make it look like you are hitting somebody. I imagine with practice you could do the same with a chair.

  3. Possibly, the chair isn’t as hard as it looks? I don’t know how you would do this.

27

From what I’ve read on the Internet, there is no real trick. The chairs are real, but there are ways to take them to make it hurt less.

first off, the chairs aren’t that hard. If you smack it against someone hard enough, the chair will bend and that would minimize the impact somewhat. Otherwise it’s usually the seat of the chair that hits people, and it will bend back a little. And the seat of the chair is rather thin.

Wrestlers usually either take the chair on the back, or they take it to the head with their hands shielding the brunt of the impact.

Of course, the real nutty wrestlers will take chairshots to the head straight up. Mick Foley made an art form out of chairshots to the head (among other things). Other less artistic wrestlers usually lower their head a bit so the impact will hit the top of their head instead of their face. Paul “Big Show” Wight comes to mind here.

kpl

28

I really have to start proofreading more, either that or I need to invent Glitch English.

“heat” should be “hit”.

29

Well if everything I say is going to get turned and twisted around, then i have nothing more to say on this. I mean, you disagree with me what i said about a non fan giving his reply and the fan & wreslters having a different reply.

“I doubt if I could safely teach you to breakfall online. I definitely couldn’t teach you advanced (non-slapping, non-rolling) breakfalls.” Like I said earlier in the thread. I have been undercut playing basketball. I have taken a few spills and managed to break my fall safely everytime. Did it hurt me? No.

You doubt you could teach me your breakfalls online to me? They way you worded that, it sounds like you are implying i haven’t the ability. Besides, you can’t see me do it nor would I do it to entertain you. Could i sue if i do try and get hurt??? heehee

Is there some sophisticated technique used for your breakfalls? I only try to get a hand down, or if I am falling onto my backside i try to get my elbows down and be sure to tuck my chin. If I running down a loose ball and I get tripped, I can do a falling roll move so i don’t jam any joints up. (I realize you said ‘non rolling’ but your martial arts doesn’t apply to me.) I think anyone who has played almost any sport from childhood growing up has learned some way to lessen the risk in falling.

Well for having nothing else to say, i sure managed to clutter the screen again. Later.

30

How did I twist that? My reply was I know fans of wrestling who know it is fake amongst my personal friends. Not only that but …
http://icdweb.cc.purdue.edu/~bcfuller/wrestling.html

See a fan of wrestling who knows its fake. The two are not mutually exclusive.

So, there you go, disproof by counter-example.

I am glad to hear it. That doesn’t mean you did a proper breakfall (see below). It means do date you have been lucky enough to not suffer any injury from falling.

Boy, talk about twisting. I said I couldn’t safely teach you. The best you could infer is my own confidence in my teaching ability. The only other thing you can infer is that I would be, rightfully so, concerned about safety. I would be a good instructor if the safety of anybody I teach wasn’t on my mind. I would be highly irresponsible of me to try to teach breakfalls online.

The prime reason I doubt I could teach it online is with any martial arts technique, you need to SEE what the student is doing. Imagine this case, I explain how to breakfall, you go try it, you return and say “It hurts when I do that”. Then what do I do? Ask what you did wrong? You’ll reply “No, I followed your instructions perfectly.” A completely natural answer. You cannot expect the student to immediately know what they did wrong, if they did they wouldn’t need to come back to the teacher and ask what they did wrong.

Both of which are better than falling directly on your face or back, but are not proper breakfalls. If you want to see how to breakfall (simple slapping and rolling breakfalls are not that complicated) go get a book on Judo and Jujutsu. I am not inviting you to LEARN how to breakfall (although feel free if you want), simply to SEE what I am talking about. I don’t know any books that have advanced breakfalls in them other than maybe to describe them as the next stages of learning, but if you can find one all the better.

I said non-rolling as an advanced breakfall. Rolling is one of the simple breakfalls, usually the first breakfall anybody learns, and also the most common.

31

I am sure that the bit about how you can’t be taught breakfalls online doesn’t mean you-the-individual, it means you-anyone. There are some things that just can’t be taught without physical presence – ballet, bikeriding, etc. So relax, it wasn’t an insult.

Yes, of course, everyone knows how to “break” a fall by bouncing on your arms, etc. But those are EVIDENT to anyone watching. You watch a basketball player fall and support himself with his arms, you know he’s not hurt. If the wrestlers or stunt men fell like that, it would destroy the illusion.

You want to learn how to take a pratfall, take a theatre (acting) course sometime. The idea is to fall so that the audience CAN’T see the “bounce”. The guy in the movies who falls off the cliff, lands on a great huge airbag that the audience can’t see.

Maybe a better example than falling is punching. I’m thinking of fistfights in the movies. No one gets HIT, let alone hurt. But they look very realistic – and the stunt people are paid lots of money and trained very extensively to be sure that no one gets hurt. If it LOOKED fake, no one would like the movie. Thus with wrestling, the idea is to disguise the falls so that they look different from reality.

This trick apparently works.

32

quote:
“You might think that wresting is fake, and your right. So why do I watch something that I know is not real? I like it.”

Who said that btw?

quote
“That doesn’t mean you did a proper breakfall
(see below). It means do date you have been lucky enough to not suffer any injury from falling.”

I didn’t do a proper breakfall? As in i didn’t do a martial art trained breakfall?
I don’t need to learn your style of properly falling to save myself. Don’t tell me your technique is 100% safe and you can never possibly get hurt.
MY own quote
“You doubt you could teach me your breakfalls online to me? They way you worded that, it sounds like you are implying i haven’t the ability.”

I must apologize for using my twisted sense of sarcasm. i go on to say you can’t see if i do it right but that didn’t matter to my point either.

I am not sure why you are explaining so much about your martial arts falling techniques when it does not apply to me playing basketball. I don’t need to make the fall look good, nor do i care for style points. Obviously, my concern is to be able to get up and keep going.

33

The link was provided above.

Look, this is getting real tiring. I DID NOT IMPLY AT ANY TIME THAT YOU SHOULD LEARN HOW TO BREAKFALL BECAUSE IT HAD **ANY[b/] RELEVENCE TO PLAYING BASKETBALL. NEVER. NOT ONCE. Breakfalling is totally 100% irrelevent to playing basketball. Furthermore, I never said you should learn how to breakfall for any reason.

At some point in time we were dicussing whether the following were similar:

  1. Ric Flair falling to the mat.
  2. A person at home falling to the floor with their arms folded in front of them.

They are not similar. The reason why not is because, and try to follow this, the person at home DOES NOT KNOW HOW TO BREAKFALL, Ric Flair does.

P.s. - To further the tangent. To state what I said in as specific and simply as possible:

The “breakfall” you did is not what anybody trained in breakfalling (wrestler, some martial artists, actors, stunt ment, etc) would call a breakfall.

Talk about twisting words.

34

To furhter the silly tangent some more…

whether you decide to call your “breakfall” a breakfall or not doesn’t matter. Anybody who knows better wouldn’t call it that. You can stick a feather in you cap and call it macaroni, but that doesn’t make the feather into macaroni now does it? If your “breakfalls” have been sufficient for you (and I don’t see why they wouldn’t in a game like basketball), then great… I couldn’t be happier. I certainly wouldn’t prefer that you went out and hurt yourself. However, if you were to try using breakfalls like those in a pro wrestling match, a Judo tournament, etc you would get severly injured. That is why wrestlers, for example, need to learn proper breakfalls.

35

Just clearing up a point:

I never said that I didn’t think wrestlers were not athletes (actually, I don’t think of them as athletes, I think of them as entertainers, but, then, isn’t that what the NBA and NFL are all about now, anyway? :slight_smile: ). I said that they were not the athletes in the best shape. Nothing said subsequently makes me think any differently, and I don’t notice a lot of quotes from NBA, NFL, NHL, etc. players rolling out as requested… :wink:

36

I was referring to it as a breakfall because that is what you were calling it from the start. No i don’t say, ‘Am i glad i used a breakfall technique to prevent injury’. More likely to say, ‘i am glad i broke my fall’.

Yes this is getting tiring and boring.

(Anybody who knows better wouldn’t call it that) That is what you said about breakfalls. That is how you referred to it all along. It never sounded right to me, but i was giving you the benefit of the doubt whether it is correct or not.

How is my breakfall so different then (and does it matter)? In wrestling, they try to land flat, tucking their chin, getting their arms/elbows down to help break their fall. Depending how they land.

Right, the person at home is not breaking their fall. So that impact is what it is like when flying through the air and landing, even if he knows how to fall. That is what he said to the person who called in and asked him about how fake it was.

Like i also said before, this is going to go on forever (figuratively speaking). You have your beliefs and i have mine. I get the feeling in your last 2 posts that you are talking down to me, so, i have no more desire to discuss anything more.

37

Dennis Rodman, Karl Malone, and Kevin Greene all have had stints in wrestling. Rodman/Malone only had a few matches, but you could see they were visibly wore out. (now here goes the discussion on how they haven’t had all the training for wrestling)

I can’t recall what they have had to say verbatim, but it was along the lines of how much other sports stars are impressed with what wreslters go through, thier abilities, training etc.

Kevin Greene was more into wrestling for a longer period of time. AS for NHL, i don’t remember any hockey players getting into wrestling.

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As stated above, I don’t think it is possible to teach you, in the level of detail required, over the Internet. Also, it depends on what breakfall we are talking about.

For the moment, lets stick just with wrestling. Most of the time wrestlers are landing on thier back, so I’ll ignore front and side breakfalls for the moment.

The primary keys to the simple back breakfall is:

  1. Landing primarily on your upper back. Not flat and not on the roll or lower part of the back.

  2. Keep your chin tucked in.

  3. At first slap with the full arm as your upper back comes into contact with the ground; however, it is critical to learn how to get this so that you only need your upper arm. Do not land on your hands or elbows. The slap at first is only a means of learning proper timing.

Including some pictures here would help immensly, as would showing you in person.

And that is exactly wrong. Ric Flair will do a breakfall when he lands on the mat (or he won’t but I can’t imagine why he wouldn’t ;)). The two are not nearly equivalent.

No, I don’t have my beliefs. I have 22 years of martial experience. I leanrt to breakfall during my 10th kyu (white belt) so I have been doing breakfalls for roughly 22 years. I have numerous technical facts about breakfalls, and my observation of wrestlers technique. I guess you could say I have beliefs in the same sense thay I belief in the theory of gravity, in that nothing can ever be proven to 100% accuracy. Anyway, if you want to argue the point from a level of fact, the only thing I can suggest is go to a local Judo or Jujutsu school and watch them do breakfalls. Then watch the wrestlers when they are thrown or fly through the air. I suspect you will see some similarities.

Believe what you wish. I think I might sounds that way because you keep supplying opinion without the necessary backing facts or reasoning. If you want to hold your opinion in a clenched fist, you are free to do so. But if you are interested in improving your knowledge you should go learn about breakfalls (and do some) and then come to your own conclusions. But to state that you are certain that they either:

a) Aren’t breakfalling.
b) They are but it still hurts plenty.

without learning the facts isn’t a wise choice, IMO.

OSU!

39

Some pro-wrestler, I don’t know who, is on an upcoming episode of Star Trek: Voyager. He fights Seven of Nine. I wonder if he did his own stunts. I wonder if Jeri Ryan did.

NOTE: This is obviously a shameless attempt to connect Voyager with the rasslin’ show that currently appears on UPN Thursday nights. If this is what Voyager has to do to get ratings, they’re worse off than I thought.

>< DARWIN >
__L___L

40

I thought ‘we’ were tired of this?

I said you have your beliefs, but you have to take that and twist it all around. Doesn’t all your experience, what you have been taught, what you teach, everything you have tried and learned from, create what you believe in?

“But to state that you are certain that they either:
a) Aren’t breakfalling.
b) They are but it still hurts plenty.”

I have said the wrestlers know how to fall. Even though they pretend it hurts more than it does, there is still some pain involved.
Call up Ric Flair and ask him how it feels and try to tell him he is wrong. Tell him it doesn’t hurt and it’s all fake.

I am not going to go do any research and provide links to this or that just for the sake of this argument. I have wasted enough time here. I have no desire to take Breakfall 101 or learn much about the Martial Arts world. Tell you the truth, i care less if i am right or wrong about anything in this thread. Have a good one.