The difference between a wrestling match and a Broadway play, though, is that stunts can go terribly wrong in wrestling. The most tragic example that comes to mind is that of Owen Hart, who died when his harness failed during a choreographed descent into the ring. Try telling wrestlers like Mick Foley, who had his ear ripped off in the ring, or Scott Steiner, who was kicked in his throat during a match and required emergency surgery to repair his damaged trachea, that wrestling is "fake.
You see what they want you to see, not what's truly happening! As a professional wrestler and journalist, let me take you through a few frequently asked questions that make me wonder what the hell they're teaching in schools these days.
No, not the Greco-Roman wrestling you might have seen at the Olympics or in Foxcatcher, where wrestlers try and pin each other to the mat. You're getting closer, but no. The UFC, or Ultimate Fighting Championship, is a mixed martial arts competition that features people beating the snot out of each other using whatever fighting style they like.
Today's wrestling was borne out of "catch wrestling", a combat sport combining elements of Greco-Roman and European grappling. Promoters realised that they could make more money if they started rigging elements of the competition to create stars and build anticipation for matches. But wrestling did spend years pouring energy into extending the illusion of legitimate competition beyond the fourth wall, to the point that rivals were forbidden from travelling together between shows.
This made it super awkward when mortal enemies Hacksaw Jim Duggan and the Iron Sheik were arrested while travelling in the same car in They were arrested for drug possession, not for breaking "kayfabe". Kayfabe refers to the web of illusion that disguises the contrived elements of wrestling.
Giving away results, publicly appearing out of character or writing articles like this, spoils that illusion and reveals the inner workings of wrestling to outsiders — or breaking kayfabe. The original idea was that punters would be more inclined to buy tickets and emotionally invest in the wrestlers if they thought the competition was real.
Rigging matches and constructing storylines raises the stakes — but the more you mess with the legitimacy of the competition, the harder it becomes to maintain the illusion of that legitimacy. Turns out it's a slippery slope from two wrestlers grappling in a believably competitive way until one deliberately takes a dive, to two wrestlers fighting over a magical funeral urn with one wrestler burying the other alive in a giant pile of dirt and then that dirt being struck by lightning to bring that wrestler back to life.
This actually happened. For last week's Raw , the backstage title was "The Evolution of Justice. Knowing what the fans remember is very important motivation for the wrestlers. Then there are the "dark matches. Then there's the audience prep. Just like any TV show, the audience has to be conditioned to react to certain things.
So WWE announcer Jerry Lawler, who gets his own pre-event, full-stage introduction, is instructed to remind fans to put on their masks so that WWE can go live on the air with a tribute. Then comes the first match. It'll be interrupted by a commercial break, which is something that the wrestlers know — they can't decide to go to "the finish" when the TV audience is watching a Pringles commercial.
Of the action, the script simply says this click and zoom to enlarge :. The announcers know who will get "over," i. This allows them to actually announce the action in the match legitimately. The next segment takes us backstage. WWE executive vice president Paul "Triple H" Levesque has a live and entirely scripted-to-the-letter encounter with two other wrestlers.
Daniel Bryan isn't here tonight. And now we have even bigger problem on our hands. It is simply scripted. Allow me to elaborate to those who see it just as 'fake. Nearly every month I order that month's WWE pay-per-view events. Yet whenever I do, I always get an earful from my sister.
It just makes me think, "Wow, could there be a bigger misconception? First things first, a wrestling ring contains a very limited amount of padding. These athletes are not landing on piles of pillows like we all used to do as kids. They are in a solid wrestling ring. Check out the video I got from YouTube so you can see just how much padding there is. Then a misconception of wires. Sorry people this is just not true at all. From Shane McMahon's leap of faith. To Rikishi falling from Hell in a Cell.
To Jeff Hardy's many swanton bombs off ladders. To the most famous image of Foley being thrown off the Hell in a Cell at the King of the Ring pay-per-view back in If anyone thinks as my sister does that there are wires used in free falls spots—guess what Just accept the fact that these wrestlers are willing to put their bodies on the line for the sake of entertaining millions of fans around the globe. I know these are just a couple of misconceptions that many non-wrestling fans have and I'm sure there are more absurd claims than just these two.
The next three slides show some famous spots that have occurred in the WWE throughout the years. So to those people out there, how fake is falling 20 feet, I ask? In any physical competition at any level or age, injuries can and will happen.
In many sports, they happen frequently.
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