this is the main reason why I find using the word “fake” so ignorant. People then assume that since I don’t think it’s “fake” you assume that I believe it’s real. (which is the opposite of fake). That’s why the word fake has the demeaning quality to people who will rebuke those that say it’s fake. Use the words pre-determined, choreographed, or whatever it is you want to portray the fakeness of the thing. Just because you have the belief that it’s not on the up and up, don’t demean the whole “sport” by saying it’s fake. Say the results are fake and I’ll be okay. Say that the matches are fixed before hand, I’ll be okay. Say that “wrestling is fake” is ignorant.
Your funny.
learn to spell.
Alex, can I buy an L ?
Alex, I’ll have a brain for $200
BMada, from my previous posts in this thread I hope you’ll understand where I’m coming from because you’ll know I’m speaking from a position of knowledge. “Fake” does indeed carry unfortunate connotations, but to most people, particularly those who don’t follow the industry, all they see is a “sport” which isn’t really a sport. You and I both know what these men and women who put themselves through to entertain us and make a living in something they love, but it’s a unique endeavor that is counter intuitive to modern sporting or entertainment culture. They haven’t seen Mick Foley getting emergency stitches after taking one too many chair shots or Paul Levesque getting arthroscopic knee surgery to repair a torn ligament suffered during a match. It’s difficult to understand why someone would put themselves through such for a sporting event that isn’t “real.” It seems disrespectful, but it truly isn’t. I’m going to invoke a cliche here, but I think most dopers can grasp this, “You can’t use logic to argue someone out of a position that was reached through ignorance,” ignorance meaning it’s most base definition of someone who simply isn’t informed of the subject at hand. (I want to make it clear that I’m not referring to billfish here, it’s more a general response.)
When someone says it’s “fake”, the best response isn’t to rebuke, but to inform them about the realities of the business. If they simply want to feel superior to someone taking an interest in something they don’t buy into, then bully for them. They might as well be pissing up a tree, because I really don’t care. But if they can understand that it’s just another form of entertainment with pros and cons like any other than I can consider that an argument won. Lord knows there are a plethora of interests here on the board that don’t get respect for whatever reason, but they don’t get the negative responses that wrestling does. But it’s a matter of taste, not disrespect, to the performers or to the fans.
On Preview: Can we stop the bullshit, please? Pro wrestling is not the sole purview of the uneducated nor the bane of the intellectual. It’s simple another industry that not everyone buys into. It seems simple to me.
It does seem that pro-wrestling is deemed “redneck” entertainment. I am by no means a redneck but the way people love to bash wrestling as fake, using it as some sort of buzz word is so ignorant to me.
If you want to understand the genesis of modern pro wrestling, much of it lies in catch wrestling.
After all these decades I saw Gorgeous George, a great heel, on YouTube. That’s his valet spraying the canvas with a Flit gun full of perfume.
It would require a viewer to be three sheets to the wind to find this jake (I can also use antique terms 
) but I remember those days and the masts of my neighborhood dads were flying four sheets, so their perception of what was a proper fight and what was a phony finish was, er, open to interpretation.
If they’re using the term “fake” to bash the industry, in the sense of claiming that the men and women haven’t sacrificed and performed to reach their level of fame or notoriety, then yeah, they’re ignorant. They don’t understand how the business works like you or I do. That doesn’t mean they can’t learn.
I’m not a “redneck” either and it bothers me that people see the business the way they do, but that’s life. Stereotypes abound and we can accept them or try to educate people. We’re not sci-fi fans, or comic book fans or Joss Whedon fans necessarily, (I’m all of those things incidentally), but maybe it’s time for an “Ask the Pro Wrestling Fan” just to prove we’re not naive or stupid. Yes it’s fake. I love it anyway. 
ETA Too Late: Regardless, Gorgeous put on a great show, 50-some years ago. And people got beat up doing it. Remember that the “ring” is raw canvas stretched over a plywood backing. I suggest you try falling on it, half-naked. The lamest moves will leave you scraped. And if some guy also smacks you with a folding chair it will hurt. I’ve been trying for years to figure out how much they could pull receiving “smacked with a folding chair” and the best scenario leave the recipient more hurt than he’d prefer.
I haven’t watched it recently, but the 80s and 90s was the pinnacle of pro-wrestling in my view. What kid back in the days didn’t love hearing “I am a real american” Hogan intro song. I’m fucking canadian, but hearing that music made me all excited. It was so rare to see Hogan vs a jobber on Saturday matches. Then watching Bret Hart, Stone Cold and DX go at it was awesome as I got older. I thought it was real when I was a kid, my brother used to tease me about it. I could care less. He didn’t think it was fake when we did the moves at home and it hurt because we didn’t know the real way to pull back the punches and such.
I loved pro-wrestling back then, I even bought the magazines to keep up with it all. It sounds sad, but I really liked it. But saying it’s fake in a broad term always bothered me. I never took too kindly when people thought I was some sort of mouth-breathing idiot for liking it so much.
“Catch Wrestling”, is a term used for “hookers”, (not a prostitute), who worked the carny circuit I mentioned previously. You can still hear the term, (“catch as catch can”), used by commentators familiar with history in the relative modern day like the late Gordon Solie or Jim Ross.
“Hookers” would place their reputation on the line against “marks”, audience members who didn’t know any better, that they could beat them in a specified amount of time. Usually a few minutes or less. Hookers would usually be amateur wrestlers or have some sort of other specified training. “Hookers” existed well into the 70’s and 80’s.
For my money “Stone Cold” Steve Austin is the greatest of all time. Hands down. His combination of work rate, charisma and promo ability is unmatched. It’s simply a shame his career was cut short by neck injuries.
Others will name Ric Flair, Hulk Hogan, Gorgeous George, or Lou Thesz, but none of them could hold a candle to Austin for pure excitement. He’ll go down as one of the greatest of all time.
Even when I started following wrestling seriously in the early 90’s , ( I loved Bret and Shawn and I still do), I knew it was “fake”. It didn’t matter to me then and it still doesn’t.
all time best is Hogan. Then a close second is Stone Cold. Hogan’s wrestling skills weren’t as good as others but damn he was like a god for children who watched wrestling.
I liked Stone Cold when he was the Ringmaster. He had good skills. but I don’t think he’ll ever match the sheer joy I had when I saw Hogan or heard Hogan’s music. Glass shattering intro was good, but Hogan’s intro was better. Stone Cold got to his status eventually, to me Hogan was always the god of wrestling since I’ve seen him from day one.
Let me just state up front that I watched my share of “Raw” and “Nitro” a few years back when I used to hang out in a bar with some friends. Good, funny, male soap opera is what it is. But it is fake.
I think you’ve done well enough yourself:
All those things, in the context of sport competition, mean fake. In your defense of the thing yourself, you can’t bring yourself to call it a sport without quotes:
It’s not a sport, which is generally understood to mean a competition between individuals or teams where the outcome is not fixed. Now, obviously, people can and will snark about steroids and otherwise enhanced athletes, but that’s beside the point at hand. Unless we’re talking about a recurrence of the Black Sox scandal, those are different issues.
Honestly, I think you’re seizing upon this one word as an emblem of what you feel is a dismissal by these people of the effort that goes into staging the “competition,” but if they’re ignorant of that fact, you can educate them without berating them for using a perfectly commonplace and correct adjective to describe it. It ain’t sport, it’s entertainment. Would you prefer a dictionary definition?
Professional wrestling, when presented as sport, is presented fraudulently as an honest competition. This is what people are referring to when they call it fake.
I quite honestly cannot see how you can blame them for thinking you believe it’s real when you insist it’s not fake. You’re taking a subjective interpretation of the word itself and reacting to what you perceive as their condescension, when it’s quite possible all they mean is what has been said in this thread - it’s fake because it’s a predetermined show, not a sport. And again, that’s being said with all due respect to the hard knocks the performers take in putting on the show. You might do better to directly address those who are being demeaning, regardless of the words they use. Fake is a perfectly good adjective to describe it, but the facts of the performance skills and pains taken in performance are a completely separate issue.
Jihi’s response is perfectly reasonable:
You can even embellish this to “Yes, of course it’s fake - but you do realize it still must be performed, right? It’s not like nobody gets hurt, y’know!”
It’s a fake wrestling competition, because it’s not wrestling (in the Olympic sense) and it’s not a competition, yet it presents itself on the surface as being a wrestling competition.
BMada, what you are saying is that it is not a fake fake wrestling competition: it’s a real fake wrestling competition. It’s not done with CGI, for example. True enough.
However, you only don’t think of it as being fake because you don’t for a moment think of it as being anything other than a fake wrestling competition. Consequently, you would only consider it to be fake if it were a fake, fake wrestling competition.
This doesn’t mean it isn’t a fake wrestling competion. Which is what outsiders mean when they say its fake.
When people generalize the fakeness of pro-wrestling they pretty much mean the whole thing. Even the bumps and bruises and fighting. It’s used in a derisive form to belittle the fan of wrestling. I’ve seen this plenty of times. I’ll agree that this is a “sport” not a real sport. I hate the word fake attributed to wrestling because the people who use that word don’t even know the real goings on of what the actual wrestlers get into. I would prefer staged, choreographed, predetermined because at least you sound more intelligent than using the simple buzzword of fake. Of course it’s fake in the most general aspect of competition but using it that way just seems ignorant to me. There are better words or ways to explain such fakeness.
The best of all time goes to Shawn Michaels. He has been wrestling since the 80’s and can still push anyone to a good match. I am a mark for Shawn Michaels, but even the magazines agree with me. Check out PWI’s list for Match of the Year:
1993 Shawn Michaels vs. Marty Jannetty WWF Intercontinental Championship
1994 Razor Ramon vs. Shawn Michaels WWF Intercontinental Championship
1995 Diesel vs. Shawn Michaels WWF Championship
1996 Bret Hart vs. Shawn Michaels WWF Championship
2004 Triple H vs. Chris Benoit vs. Shawn Michaels World Heavyweight Championship
2005 Shawn Michaels vs. Kurt Angle
2006 Shawn Michaels vs. Vince McMahon
2007 John Cena vs. Shawn Michaels
2008 Ric Flair vs. Shawn Michaels
2009 The Undertaker vs. Shawn Michaels
Match of the year against an ancient Ric Flair or Vince McMahon? It’s because Shawn Michaels busts his ass and is the hardest worker the WWF or WWE has ever seen. Watch his match with The Undertaker last year. The two oldest men in the company put all of the younger wrestlers to shame that night. The only reason there’s a gap in that list is because he suffered a back injury that supposedly ended his career.
I’d probably put Bret Hart at number two. I’m not a fan of Hogan or The Rock or anyone that can only punch and kick and then make up for it on the microphone. Steve Austin is a strange story. He was a very solid wrestler and put on a great match against Bret, but his popularity didn’t skyrocket until Owen nearly crippled him and he became a punch/kick/microphone wrestler.
The microphone fans were what pushed me to ECW in the late 90’s. Since WWF Attitude ripped off ECW, I figured I might as well watch the real thing and was blown away with how much punishment they put themselves through. When someone tells me it’s fake and the wrestlers aren’t athletes, I show them the crazy hardcore matches from ECW and some of the Hell in a Cell matches from back in the day.
I read somewhere that WWE doesn’t allow anyone to blade anymore and that RAW has to be rated “PG.”
you are discounting the fact of Hogan making wrestling cool back in the days. If Hogan the icon didn’t bring in fans in huge numbers before Bret Hart, Stone Cold and DX, those guys wouldn’t have a fan base to perform for. Stone Cold is second because he brought in the huge influx of fans in the Attitude Era. Shawn Michaels has no real impact in pop culture. He’s a good wrestler and performs well but his impact isn’t that great in terms of popularity.
addition: same with Bret Hart, he’s the Excellence of Execution, but the average Joe that doesn’t follow wrestling wouldn’t care who he is or know his name. Ask anyone to name a wrestler and I bet it’s Hulk Hogan that’ll be named. Not Ric Flair, not HBK, HHH or bret hart.