Many years ago my father, then a Washinton State Patrol officer, pulled over the Portland Wrestling star Tough Tony Borne (some time in the 1970s). As long as there was no traffic passing by, Tony was an ordinary nice guy, trying to talk his way out of the ticket. But as soon as a car would come into sight, Tony would start jumping up and down and waving his arms, and would keep that up until the car was out of sight. Then he’d settle back down, but start up again every time another car approached. He was doing this just in case a passing motorist recognized him. My dad let him do it, because my dad was also a bit of a wrestling fan at the time, and knew who Tony was. Still gave him the ticket, though
I once had a conversation with a physical therapist who once had a retired wrestler as a patient. He asked the guy once if wrestling was fake. The guy told him, “It’s not fake - it’s rehearsed. You do get hit, you do get slammed around, and it hurts. But you rehearse how to react when you’re hit.”
More recently, I became friends with another retired wrestler. I can’t remember his real name - we all knew him as “Bear”. He wrestled in the 1960s & '70s. He got the name “Bear” after he was talked into a stunt which involved him wrestling a small bear, and he somehow killed the bear in the process. When he started, they pumped him full of steroids (this was before they understood the dangers). His body is a wreck now. But he’s huge. The guy’s hands are the size of pie plates! He strongly discouraged a friend of mine who wanted to be a pro wrestler. According to Bear, not all of the matches are faked. He said that at some point early in a wrestler’s career, if it looks like he has star potential, he’s given a test. That test involves a senior wrestler (or wrestlers), the younger guy’s opponent(s), fighting for real, without any warning to the younger guy. The object is to beat the living crap out of the junior wrestler, to see how he responds, and how he bounces back. If he responds well, he’s allowed into the “clique”. If he fails the test, he may as well retire because he’s going to be relegated to small-time matches, and obscure wrestling leagues.
A couple of years ago I remember that here in NJ the state wanted to regulate the WWF as a sport if they were going to market themselves as a sport. The WWF quickly made the legal distinction that they were “entertainment” and not a sport. After they last problem they had with their name they are even calling themselves World Wrestling Entertainment.
I remember when I was younger the wrestlers were very defensive about how real their job was. For example Hulk Hogan attacking Richard Belzer and David Schultz taking out John Stosel. Now they openly talk about story lines and their characters. Twenty years ago the WWF would not have let Mick Foley go on talk shows as himself and still wrestle as Mankind. The WWE knows its a soap opera and no longer tries to hide it. Anyone who still believes it is seriously dellusional since the wrestlers themselves are not trying to convince anyone.
As I said at the outset, the difference is that actors fake it better. At the New Jersey Renaissance Kingdom, we have just as much fake violence, but we do it with nasty long sharp pointy steel thingies and big sticks.
Of course WWF and the other PRO Wrestling is not real. I would not like to go up against one of the Titans of Wrestling because I do believe they are great athletes, who could pummel me into dirt. They are some of the more dedicated actors around. I do not like, nor do I watch their performances, but I do recognize that the vast majority of them could stuff me in a barrel and kick it down a hill and then break my neck, if it was not already broken.
I do think WWF is silly but not because of the people who are members, but because of the people who who take it seriously. If it was a real sport it would be in the Olympics.
I have nothing against the entertainers who participate in wrestling, I have no illusions that I am tougher than you. I recognize that you devote your lives to improving your body, something that I do not do, and wish I did do, but I do suspect that that there are scripts.
The incident quoted here happened a long time ago (5 years?), and my google skills are apparently not good enough to find an outcome to this case, assuming there already is one.
The wrestling promotions, at least the WWE/WWF gave up the idea that wrestling was a sport many years ago. They call it sports-entertainment for a reason. This way they don’t have to deal with the boxing commissions in most states who would regulate their business, require ambulances and doctors at ringside, etc.
I’m surprised that anyone would worry about proving in court that wrestling is real. The major players (and there’s only one left) gave up that years ago. I’m not sure if WCW made public acknowledgement, but they certainly wouldn’t contest it in court.
But then again, when I was 12, the Voltron and MacGuyver I watched was real, too. Although I suspect that they’ve held up better to age than wrestling does…
You mean professional wrestling isn’t amateur/Olympic wrestling. Pro wrestling, however, is real pro wrestling, at least today. If what we call pro wrestling was ever a legitimate competition, it was a long, long time ago. (Anybody know when the term “professional wrestling” first came into common usage?)
The way I understand it, “professional wrestling” originally started out as a legitimate competitive sport. The wrestlers were genuine Olympic-style Greco-Roman wrestlers. Promotion was handled just like boxing promotion.
What happened, though, was that the promoters quickly discovered that standard Greco-Roman wrestling didn’t draw a crowd. It wasn’t exciting. Most matches consisted of two men locked in various holds for long periods of time. Too slow-moving, especially compared to boxing.
Something had to be done, because nobody was making any money. They needed to make the sport exciting. There are several things that could have happened to start the sport moving in the direction we see today. One, some promoter somewhere may have got the bright idea to suggest “livening things up” to his wrestlers. Heck, simply adding the “3-count” to the rules would have made things more exciting (there is no 3-count in amateur wrestling - you’re pinned as soon as both shoulders touch the mat). The 3-count, all by itself, adds a touch of drama. Where before the match could be over in an instant, the 3-count introduced an opportunity for a wrestler to escape defeat when it looked like he’d lost. It is also more challenging to keep your opponent pinned for a 3-count.
Alternatively, and perhaps more likely, some individual wrestler was more flamboyant - like Muhammed Ali was in boxing - and that attracted an audience all by itself. Other wrestlers and promoters noticed this, and the copycatting started. Suddenly, wrestling was drawing a crowd.
No it wasn’t, but it all depends upon how you define “real” and “fake.” When I was in high school (in the early 1950s), I had a gym teacher who also had a night job as a wrestling referee, and he said that it was all a show. It is described (or was, since I don’t even know how it’s described now) as an “exhibition.” He also said that occasionally one of the wrestlers would deviate from the script, a naughty-naughty.
barbitu8. I forgot to add a smiley. As a typical kid, that wrestling sure lookedreal to me. “wink, wink” Beauty I think it starts in about 1920 or so as “Professional Wrestling.”
Nonetheless, for someone today to say that “professional wrestling” isn’t real “professional wrestling” is faulty. What was known as “professional wrestling” in the early 1900s does not exist anymore. (At least not officially.)
Although today we have a new competition which may resemble early 20th century* professional wrestling. Of course, it’s known by totally different names - “shoot fighting” or “mixed martial-arts”.
Now I’ve got an urge to dust off some of my pro wrestling history books…
(It’s a shame we can’t say “turn of the century” anymore. Well, we can, but we might confuse somebody. Though I suspect a lot of people might not notice.)
Mostly correct. Pro wrestling “started out” thousands of years ago. Pro wrestling as we know it today got its genesis after the Civil War in “AT shows” which were wrestling sideshows to travelling carnivals. These shows would have a guy travelling with the show offer to wrestle anyone in the crowd for a prize. The guy in the ring would be a “hooker” (although that term didn’t come into wide use until the '20s or so) someone who knew moves that your average joe didn’t. The guy would go through some matches, winning some and losing some, antagonising the crowd while his confederates would move about collecting bets. As the audience got more into it, the guy would beat the opponents, taking the cash. It was basically a scam.
Without getting into the history of pro wrestling as a spectator sport in both Europe and the US, by the 1900s, it had become a legitimate sport just like baseball or football (or rather, just as honest. There were legit matches and some famous fixes as we’ll see. As some trivia, the first sports trading cards were for wrestlers). Pro wrestling gradually worked its way into the mainstream and is debatable whether or not it was more popular than baseball.
The Gotch/Hackenschmidt matches of 1908 was the high point of professional wrestling in America, despite the fact that, as far as we can determine, Gotch cheated. Popular interest in the sport remained high until their 1911 match, when people got word that the match was, if not “fixed” in the traditional sense, then certainly not on-the-level.
From there, it was a tough sell for marketing wrestling to the mainstream, but competition from vaudeville provoked a reaction among wrestling promoters to start many of the practices we are familiar with today (colorful characters, blatant cheating, storylines, specialty matches, etc.).
