Read more Still, you know how to fall, so it doesn't hurt? The ultimate theatre in the round, great wrestling is part complex choreography and part improvisation - with wrestlers feeding off each other and the crowd to create a unique work of art.īehind the Belt is the ABC's "deep dive" into pro wrestling. Unlike stunt performers, wrestlers perform these staged contests in one take, before a live audience. Like stunt performers, wrestlers execute feats of athleticism, fly, collide with each other and the floor - all while staying in character. You don't call Wuthering Heights or Star Wars "fake", you call it fiction.Īlso, while the events in wrestling are staged, the physicality is real. ( Supplied: Cory Lockwood Photography)Īs the characters and storylines became more outlandish, the pretence to legitimacy was abandoned and today, the world's biggest wrestling promotion - the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) - has openly admitted that its wrestlers are performers engaging in storylines.īut the deception dies hard and wrestling struggles to overcome the stigma of its sporting pretence and be accepted for its theatrical reality. Wrestling struggles to overcome the stigma of its sporting pretence. 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.
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. 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. 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. Kayfabe refers to the web of illusion that disguises the contrived elements of wrestling.
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Hulk Hogan is considered by many as the greatest professional wrestler. (They were arrested for drug possession, not for breaking "kayfabe".) This made it super awkward when mortal enemies Hacksaw Jim Duggan and the Iron Sheik were arrested while travelling in the same car in 1987. So you're saying pro wrestling is fake?īut wrestling did spend 100 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. Promoters realised that they could make more money if they started rigging elements of the competition to create stars and build anticipation for matches. Today's wrestling was borne out of "catch wrestling", a combat sport combining elements of Greco-Roman and European grappling. 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. 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.
Take a look through the comments to see what some of our readers had to say about scripted wrestling. While the events in wrestling are staged, the physicality is real.
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