Beyond the Gimmickry: The ‘Real’ World of Professional Wrestling
Most of us loved watching wrestling on TV as children; the insane costumes, the over-the-top story lines (scripted every time), the huge steroid-fuelled wrestlers and the exaggerated wrestling that went on. As most of us grew up, we forgot about wrestling and concentrated on what we felt were real sports: football, rugby, cricket and others. But for some reason, a lot of people still love watching wrestling today. One look at the crowds that fill the arenas of wrestling matches and you will hardly see any kids; it will mostly be fully grown adults and an even mix of men and women. The most interesting part of it all is that everyone in the audience knows that the wrestling all but a sham, yet they still turn up every week and pay exorbitant prices for tickets. What attraction does this form of entertainment hold for them?
Wrestling actually came about from travelling circus strongmen a long time ago, who would challenge people to wrestling matches. They took money from the challengers and the strongmen never lost because they cheated using help from their crew. From there the sport progressed, when in the late 1800s wrestlers were put into arenas and big events were staged. It was only after World War II that the modern style of wrestling took off. Leagues were formed and one of those became the WWF (World Wrestling Federation), now the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment), started by current chairman Vince McMahon Jr.’s father, Vincent James McMahon Sr. From there wrestling really took off.
When wrestling really became popular in the 1970s, the sport was regulated under the state sporting commission authority. However, the owners of the different leagues understood that they could avoid a lot of hassle by labelling the sport as a form of entertainment instead of calling it a ‘sport’. This way, they were free from regulations and sanctions, and professional wrestling became a form of sports entertainment, the first of its kind. Over the years, some very popular wrestlers came and went, and today, wrestling is one of the most popular forms of entertainment on TV. It is all scripted; all of the matches are worked out beforehand and all of the wrestlers know what is going to happen. However, people still show up to every match excited as ever to find out the progression of their favourite stars.
There are several things in wrestling that are very fake and nothing anyone says can actually prove that they are not. The storylines are the biggest sham about wrestling today. Every single storyline is fixed beforehand, and all the wrestlers are aware of what is going to happen in a match or in a series of matches. Also, each wrestler has a gimmick; a style or characteristic that differentiates him from other wrestlers. Feuds are engineered to be part of the storyline and each wrestler either becomes a good guy or ‘face’, as they are known in the business, or a bad guy or ‘heel’. What is real about the wrestling is that even though the storylines are scripted and the feuds are all fake, the actual moves that the wrestlers do are real. Jumping off a platform and landing on somebody, even though it is rehearsed, is dangerous and requires some serious athletic ability to perfect. Also, even though the matches are scripted, usually wrestlers will only know who is going to win and who is going to lose, they make up the rest as they go along. Also, contrary to popular opinion, when wrestlers bleed it is real. Most of the time, wrestlers will have a small razor blade taped to their wrists that they will use to slyly cut themselves on the forehead after a strong move from an opponent. Matches that feature blood heavily have been getting more and more popular over the years, inspired by the extreme matches found in Japan.
There are a lot of critics of the WWE and other professional wrestling leagues out there. They say that it is a strange sort of entertainment where it seems the storylines are being targeted towards children but then the overtly sexual nature of some matches (women’s wrestling / wrestlers’ scantily clad girlfriends, anyone?) are not suitable for children. The sport has lost its core audience who are looking for more extreme and real wrestling that can be found in Japan and in other lesser known leagues that offer much more sports and much less entertainment in the form of rather amateurish storylines.
Whatever anyone thinks of wrestling today, it is an extremely popular form of entertainment and has millions of fans all over the world. Whether it stays as popular as it is today is debatable, but judging by how wrestling has survived the 70s, the 80s, the 90s and is still popular in 2010, it seems that it will continue to be as popular as ever. However, as the taste and penchant of the fans will change, wrestling will have to change along with it. The future looks very bright for this innovative form of sports entertainment.
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