When did professional wrestling become fake?

OK I’m not stupid. I know wrestling has always been fake. But in the past they never admitted it. There were some famous incidents when wrestlers got irate when you called it fake. John Stossel got slapped around. Richard Belzer got choked out. Near as I could figure about ten years or so ago it changed. Mick Foley talked about his characters openly. Wrestlers would be out of character in interviews. There was honest talk about plots and storylines like it was any other fiction show. This recent interview with Hulk Hogan mentions the backstage workings of Wrestlelmania 3. So when did it happen? Did Vince McMahon all of a sudden say its ok? I remember that at some point for tax reasons in NJ they had to admit legally that it was entertainment not sport. They had to change there name around the same time. Was that the change? Or did something else happen?

Not all wrestling is fake, surely? I mean, there’s high school wrestling. Is there college wrestling? What about olympic wrestling (is that a thing?).

Pro wrestling used to be regulated by State Sports rules. They required doctors on scene and other sports safety requirements.

Vince McMahon had it reclassified as entertainment. I guess to save money. That pretty much was admitting the “sport” was fake. After that kayfab rules weren’t followed as closely.

Also the story lines got more and more unbelievable. They didn’t even bother pretending this stuff was real. It was a cartoon with real people.

Professional wrestling was “fake” by at least the 1950s. I was a kid, but I could tell that the chair that smashed the head of my favorite didn’t really cause him to bleed enough to die.

earl snake hips tucker is prbably the expert on these boards and will be along to enlighten you soon… I’ll email him.

Really?? Tell me more about this other wrestling.

Oh I understand that. But if you haven’t been following it they don’t even pretend it is any more. I haven’t followed it since high school but the radio show I listen to has current stars every now and then. They are always on as themselves, never their characters. I was just wondering if this was a gradual thing or an order by Vince at some time.

Waddaya mean fake? Of all de noive!

The OP is talking about professional wrestling as opposed to Greco-Roman wrestling. I’ve added that word to the thread title.

Wasn’t there a wrestler who punched a reporter in the kisser for asking if wrestling was fake? In the 80’s, I believe.

Anyway, if memory serves, it was about the mid-1990’s that it was all brought out in the open. It coincided with wrestling’s expanding popularity and DVD’s being made about the individual wrestlers with out-of-character interviews, talking about storylines, career paths, etc.

Professional wrestling (the WWF, NWO type) is no more fake than Forrest Gump. It’s not intended to be a professional sports league like the NFL or NBA, with unknown outcomes and Vegas betting lines. It’s pure entertainment. So, it’s not fake. The question you should ask is why a lot of people refer to professional wrestling as fake.

Well, thanks, samclem for acknowledgement.

Pretty much. Vince Jr. was the game changer. Well, really cable was the game changer. Vince Jr. just had the foresight to see where things were headed, and he was best positioned to take advantage of it. And when Vince went to court for whatever case it was back then, he admitted that it was all entertainment.

Vince Sr’s promotion was called the WWWF (Worldwide Wrestling Federation). Vince Jr. at some point shortened it to just WWF, which, once it was no longer under the radar, and was becoming a better known acronym, ran afoul of the World Wildlife Fund. Hence the change to WWE.

And, yeah, matches were *works pretty much all the way back to the early part of the century. You’ll see early newspaper accounts of matches lasting several hours. Riiiiiight. Watch the MMA guys and how they gassed out after 15 minutes before the organizations went to the rounds system.

Having said that, the NWA world champions for the most part were people who could tear apart just about any wreslter who wanted to get cute with them and try to make a name for themselves. Also, Verne Gagne in the AWA. Also, on a local level, promoters typically had a “policeman” in their employ. That was a “shooter” or “hooker” (term varies depending upon whom you talk to. Those were the guys who had the legitimate grappling skills, who could pretty much any time they wanted, grab some body part, and begin twisting in some really painful positions. If you tried to go off the reservation with the promoter, you might find yourself in a match with one of them to teach you a painful lesson.

And just in case some pedant steps in and wants to nitpick the nicknames Vince Sr. and Vince Jr. because the two McMahons had different middle names–I know, but if it was good enough for the insiders to use, it’s good enough for me.

*Work is a wrestling term for a match where the “combatants” work their way to the conclusion. They might have the finishing touch worked out, and some dramatic points in-between, but most of the match was ad-libbed (worked) between those points. Compared to a “shoot,” which means “this is for real.” A really rare thing, since, as noted above,you might find yourself in with a surprise opponent.

Dave Schultz. Westlers and wrestling fans generally acknowledge the 20/20 piece when John Stossel got knocked around as the point when kayfabe* was first broken.

Prior to 20/20, wrestling fans argued about whether it was fake. Prior to that time, for example, wrestlers travelled to shows in the same groups they’d appear on TV. Heels would share hotel rooms with other heels, and so on. NWA/WCW and regional promotions stuck with it up to the 90s, though WWE/F gave up on it earlier than that.

The real killer was the Vince McMahon steroid trial in 1994, when he was basically forced to testify that it was staged.

*kayfabe is the industry term for the practice of presenting wrestling as real.

ETA: Ninjaed by ESHT.

Thanks, I tried to post “I should really read the OP before replying,” but my computer didn’t want to cooperate.

To clarify, it wasn’t the knocking-around part that broke kayfabe. It was the 20/20 piece actually airing.

Ahem. Maybe an expert, but not the only one.

There was a major breach of kayfabe in the 1930s, I think. A sportswriter accidentally published the results of matches before they happened. Think this was in Chicago, but I’m not sure.

Vince pretty much drove a stake through the heart of kayfabe when he testified under oath during his steroids trial.

There have been “dirt sheets”, ie newsletters, publishing insider information since at least the 1970s. Dave Meltzer’s Wrestling Observer is perhaps the best known and most reliable one.

Another major factor in exposing the business is the internet. Since the late 1990s, it has been easy to go online and find out just about anything one really wanted to know. A number of wrestlers have websites, or participate in “shoot interviews”, or even message boards.

The Sinanju of wrestling boards is at Wrestling Classics which has a large number of well informed posters, including several that are or were involved in the business. Lou Thesz and Jack Brisco posted there before they died. Got to watch out for the mods over there, though. I hear that one guy, GreyGhost, can be a cast iron sunovabitch.

I think that talking about fake and wrestling made it self evident. And since everyone knows its entertainment and not sport and even the wrestlers freely admit it, I don’t seen the reason why this is now in the Game Room.

Was that the exact time they started talking openly about it or was that the start and it gradually went to where it is today?

Is this parody or are you just young? Of course most people thought it was fake (as in scripted) all along. The only thing I could think of when I read your post was “No shit.” But I assure you it was not put forth as being scripted. It was sold in years past as being sport. And it was worth your life to ask a wrestler if it was fake. But that changed in the recent past. You may not have been old enough to know the difference. I thought I was very clear. I never thought that wrasslin’ was once real and now fake. I was asking when the attitude of the business changed. The link I posted had Hulk talking about the backstage working of Wrestlemania 3. There is no way he would have talked about that years ago. It just wasn’t done. That is what the question is about.

John Stossel asking David Schultz if wrestling is fake.

You may be right. I thought it was more recent than that.

Fans and wrestlers get upset when professional wrestling gets called fake because it is dismissive. Wrestlers are trained athletes (for the most part). The stunts are real, and they are done live. The injuries are very real. Lots of those blows do connect. In his first book, Mick Foley complained that his idol, Jimmy Snuka, didn’t hit hard enough to get a good reaction. On the other hand, he lost an ear to the ring ropes. Just this week, The Miz got knocked silly by a misplaced or mistimed kick. Calling it fake dismisses the effort and pain a professional goes through for the specific purpose of entertaining a live crowd.

Always entertaining to watch when a wrestler goes off-script, too (Regal was supposed to lose this match in the first two minutes, but didn’t like the way Goldberg was being booked to run through everyone in two minutes.)

I did, too.

Because it could fit into either category and because I thought more people who were interested in the topic would see it if it were in The Game Room. I also felt that this was where pro wrestling threads usually go. In fact it seems like they go in Cafe half the time and here half the time, so I’ll put this back where it started.

I have a friend back in Minneapolis who was a jobber (local, small-time wrestler who the big talent got to throw around the ring), fought under the name of Gentleman Jim Diamond. He said once that he wondered, from time to time, while he was lying there “unconscious” at the end of a match, would would have happened if he just hopped back up and started the fight all over again?

But then he figured that he’d be out of a job, so he never did it.