Professional wrestling has a defensive fanbase. It’s not as bad as hardcore gamers, though check the replies on any wrestler tweet and you’ll see people trying to cut promos. Don’t believe me? Vince McMahon tweeted how John Cena and KJ, a kid who got a new kidney and got to celebrate it in a WWE ring, puts a smile on his face. Here’s some of the replies, apologies for vulgarity:
@VinceMcMahon @JohnCena Hey Vince is Johnny boy being a good alterboy and sucking your nuttys?!? #CMPunk #President
— Matty Ashton (@TheHatTrick33) July 22, 2015
@VinceMcMahon @JohnCena fukd vm and fuck the wwe — Jeff Howard (@RANTWITHJEFF) July 25, 2015
@VinceMcMahon I hate you so much it hurts!!!!
— Ed Stone (@stonebrakers_ed) July 28, 2015
A lot of the tweets are people telling Vince to push guys or fire Kevin Dunn. This is what you find from pro wrestling fans. CM Punk and Chris Hardwick even discussed on The Nerdist how wrestling fans seem to take talking to wrestlers as if they are talking to the wrestler and not the person. They take this extremely serious. Almost as if the person running the Twitter account they are tweeting isn’t actually the person Vince McMahon, but the character of Mr. McMahon: Chairman of WWE and owner of the Kiss My Ass Club. That’s funny, isn’t it? It’s funny when people take something fictional like pro wrestling so serious. You don’t see people tweeting at an Iron Man Twitter account telling him to stop holding Hawkeye back and give him more dialogue in the Avengers. There’s nobody barking at Kevin Spacey that he screwed Kate Mara out of a bigger role in House of Cards. It’s absolutely wacky. But not in pro wrestling. And that dichotomy came out in full force when Dana White decided to use the F word. No, not that F word:
@RKORollins I hear u bro but fake shit should be 9.99 — Dana White (@danawhite) August 1, 2015
@RKORollins trust me my friend….. IT’s FAKE
— Dana White (@danawhite) August 1, 2015
The real history of fake wrestling
Once upon a time, pro wrestling was legitimate. It was amateur wrestlers getting paid to wrestle in front of crowds, the very definition of turning “amateur” into “professional”. This began to change (there were still fixes but not as prominent) in the 1920s with the Gold Dust Trio introducing Slam Bang Western Style Wrestling. This was when finishes began to get protected and more moves were executed. Wrestlers stood more to use the ropes instead of making it an entire experience on the mat. Journalists in the 1920s started to catch on that finishes were fixed, no different to them catching when it happened in boxing or baseball. But professional wrestling slowly moved away from being a legitimate sport and transformed into being sporting theatre.
That’s what it is today. Sporting theatre. There’s nothing “fake” about what wrestlers put themselves through, just as there’s nothing fake about the pain that stuntpeople deal with. There’s nothing fake about what actors put themselves through to make roles believable or the training they take to be method in their performances. Professional wrestlers perform a dance together that’s an unquestionable skill. That skill is beautiful. But it’s not a legitimate athletic competition. It hasn’t been an athletic competition in close to 100 years. Heck, back in the 1800s wrestling competitions in the Colorado Klondike were fixed to get gold out of prospectors without picking up an axe pick.
F for Fake
Fake is a cruddy word to use and it’s used by people who wish to dismiss pro wrestling, but it isn’t wrong. Professional wrestling sells itself, in its name, as professional wrestling. We wrestling fans hate it when Vince McMahon calls it “sports entertainment” but it’s much closer to the truth than being professional wrestling. Wrestling is a sport. Professional wrestling is not a sport. To proclaim yourself as professional wrestling and not actually be a legitimate sport means you’re illegitimate. You’re fixing it. You’re performing. You’re acting. You’re fake.
But that doesn’t stop even the people involved in the wrestling business to take this as a slight. I should point out that CM Punk has called it fake as a wrestler (see Nerdist podcast) and now retired and working to become a mixed martial artist. Punk calling it fake ruffled the feathers of some folks but nothing like UFC owner Dana White. Now we have wrestlers coming out of the woodwork to stand up and defend pro wrestling and talk about how fake it isn’t. When they know it’s fake.
Dana White is wrong but not why you think
I’m not defending Dana White, per se. Dana was trying to defend the cost of his pay per view compared to the WWE Network. He should have been a businessman and discussed how WWE purposely devalued their own product to sell the WWE Network as a monthly service and that’s why they give away $60 PPVs for $9.99. Instead, he just said it can happen because UFC is legitimate (true) and WWE is fake (true) which, well, isn’t true. The reason that’s a foot in mouth isn’t because he called it fake, it’s because in the next few years I predict WWE making Wrestlemania a pay per view you can’t get for $9.99 when UFC and boxing PPV tickets continue to rise. Wrestlemania could have sold for $80 this year, $100 even. If that happens, Dana White’s argument fails.
Instead, UFC is real so they charge high costs while WWE is fake so it’s only $9.99. It’s a silly argument on both sides since some are trying to stand up that professional wrestling isn’t fake (see Hornswoggle/Carlito video) while Dana White is trying to justify the cost of his product on pay per view for a reason that historically it has absolutely nothing to do with. Everyone looks stupid. Heck, Dana White looks worse because he angered pro wrestling fans, one of which is his biggest draw in Ronda Rousey.
I love fake
We need to get to the important question as pro wrestling fans. So what? So what if some people still prefer to call it fake? So what if it doesn’t get the respect it deserves as sporting theatre? So what if the president of UFC is justifying the cost of his product by comparing it to the WWE Network? None of this changes what pro wrestling really is. If people go back to thinking it’s legitimate, it isn’t going to change a thing. We need to stop getting so uptight when someone tells you what wrestling is and doesn’t do it in the nicest way. It’s not a legitimate sport. It hasn’t been in close to 100 years. To the common person, that means it hasn’t been real since we still call it pro wrestling. If we don’t want people to call it fake, we need to stop calling it pro wrestling. And that sure isn’t happening among the folks who yell at Vince McMahon to fire Kevin Dunn when he’s trying to tweet how a child being in the ring with John Cena puts a smile on his face. But we don’t have to stop calling it pro wrestling. Magic is fake and everyone knows it isn’t supernatural powers. We don’t have to call magic “illusion entertainment” to still enjoy it. Magic is beautiful and pro wrestling? Pro wrestling is beautiful too.
Fake is beautiful.
Dana White and CM Punk can call pro wrestling fake as much as they want. So can anyone else. The reason we love it is because it is fake. We love the fact that we can watch what appears to be a legitimate sport but it gets built around storylines. It’s why we loved Friday Night Lights. It’s why we love Rocky. It’s why we loved Slap Shot and Goon. It’s great when sports write their own stories but they don’t come often enough. There’s a story in every wrestling match and every wrestling show, and whether it’s good or bad, it hits a nerve that legitimate competition can never hit. Legitimate sports are random. Every team thinks they are the hero and every fan thinks the other teams are villains. In pro wrestling, the story is tight. It’s focused. There’s thought behind it. It can be the most exciting thing to watch and unlike most sports, it’s replay value ensures it’s worth seeing again. You don’t get that from sports. You get the rush of the now, never the rush of the past. Professional wrestling when it’s on its game is better than any sporting event because it doesn’t just cater one fanbase. It caters everyone in the arena. It caters everyone watching at home. It connects to everyone. Sports will never have that over pro wrestling and we know it.
The most powerful part of wrestling is when you know it’s not real and yet you still believe in it. It’s why we use words like sell when a person is showing pain. We’re supposed to buy into the pain. Into the spectacle. Into the magic. We don’t watch pro wrestling for sport. We watch pro wrestling for the illusion of sport. We don’t watch athletes. We watch charlatans that work a trick more athletic and physically demanding than any athlete in a sport all to sell that illusion. What Dana White promotes in UFC might be more legitimate and might be more of a sport, but it’s supposed to be. He can have his legitimacy. He’ll never have our story.
Is pro wrestling fake? Of course it is. And I wouldn’t want it any other way.
