this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2023
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I've wondered about the audiences at the actual event. I was watching some on TV and there seemed to be people in the audience genuinely and earnestly cheering on fighters, or getting riled up if their favourite was getting beat up.
But the fighting is so obviously fake, as are the personas and the rivalries/grudges. I can understand watching it as a fun spectacle, I guess like monster trucks might be fun? But can you tell me if people actually believe it's real?
There's probably people that believe it's all 100% real. Wrestlers try never to drop the 'act' so it can be convincing to some people just like soap operas are.
There was a storyline where one of the wrestlers died and then gained psychic powers or maybe was a demon. No one really thought it was real. Maybe like kids did.
For me, it's like entering a House of horrors. I know it's fake, but the jumping, slapping and bodies are real. You need to engage in the moment and let yourself go. Suspend your disbelief and appreciate the show. It's pretty awesome. But yeah, a lot of people believe it.
I mean, that guy is doing a backflip. That is real and cool. There is underground wrestling where they hit eachother with barbed wire, that stuff is real. Plays aren't real and yet we like them. Wrestling is just a play with action scenes.
It's improv, most of the "results" might be determined before hand, but getting there is up to the wrestlers, and the audience doesn't know where the story is meant to go so can stay invested. The damage is fake but the athletics is very much real.
Oh I can certainly appreciate that much. It's impressive athleticism and I guess I can equate the 'violence' to pantomime. It's just the look on some of the audience's faces that haunts me...
So, there's a certain level of suspension of disbelief that has to be done by the audience in order to enjoy the show. The purpose of the wrestlers is to entertain the audience in that state, which can be as simple as chain wrestling (which is only really enjoyed by a certain segment of hardcore fans) or as convoluted as a swanton bomb (which is a flip off the top rope). It's more vaudeville, but it allows individual wrestlers to better adapt tge story of the match to the emotions in the audience. For example, at wrestlemania x8, hulk hogan was to play the bad guy, and the rock the good guy. The audience, however, sided with Hogan, which caused a decision between the two wrestlers to wrestle in a way that aligned them with the opposite of what they initially entered the match for. It's understanding audience psychology and being able to adapt on the fly, thus fulfilling the preconceptions of the audience. It's amazing to watch to skilled workers be able to manipulate the audience to their advantage, but even more incredible to see the audience force the workers to change their direction mid-match.
So this is something I wasn't aware of. I assumed it was scripted and choreographed end to end. Very interesting thanks!
No problem! I'm obviously a bit biased since i've been a fan since the late 90s and dabble in the art (i've been an off and on pro wrestler since the late 00's), but i view it as more as an improvisational art than i do a sport. It's basically live theatre, with the actors and actresses having more to do with ballet then, say, combat sports and mma. It's actually fascinating to see how professional wrestling had influenced sports as a whole. Muhammed Ali, for example, has cited Gorgeous George as the reason why he would trash talk his opponents. And Conor McGregor, well, he talks like he's straight out of the WWE. Filthy Tom Lawlor is a guy who basically went from being a pro-wrestling character in the ufc to becoming a full-time pro wrestler. Never mind the fact that there's been matches where the ring is an entire island, or floating in the pacific with pyrotechnics everywhere, or even more cinematic productions set entirely within a house (or not so cinematically in the case of ddt). All together, though, is it's an art benched on the back of blood, sweat, and even more blood of its performers. There's nothing "safe" about pro-wrestling, as even the tiniest mishap could cripple a person, but it's done through years of training, fitness, and finesse, that it is able to continue.