Why Wrestling Is Fake, Explained

WrestleTalk

When did you first realise wrestling was 'fake'? Let me know in the comments... How Championship Belts Are Made, Explained  https://youtu.be/I0pW0uG81t0 The History of Lucha Masks, Explained  https://youtu.be/UTpGkOQrzC0 #Wrestling #WWE #AEW Why Wrestling Is Fake, Explained  SUPPORT US ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/wrestletalk SUBSCRIBE TO partsFUNknown: https://bit.ly/2J2Hl6q TWITTER: https://twitter.com/partsfunknown FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/partsfunknown/  Professional wrestling is a noble art founded on some very ignoble practices designed to part 'marks' with their hard-earned money. But just how did freestyle wrestling contests of old convert to sports entertainment we watch now. Laurie is here to Explain how wrestling turned fake and the birth of kayfabe.

Transcript

00:00 Wrestling is fake!

00:18 There is a contentious phrase.

00:20 Because for most of its existence the noble sport of professional wrestling has been locked

00:24 away behind the wall of kayfabe, this illusion of realness that has been upheld by everyone

00:31 in the business.

00:32 So much so that walking right up to a wrestler and asking them if what they do for a living

00:37 is fake is going to get you one of these.

00:43 After Vince McMahon blew the lid off the whole thing in 1989 to get out from under the various

00:47 state athletic commissions, which is a tale for another video, we now live in a post-kayfabe

00:53 era, where the audience has been enlightened to the fact that the people on screen are

00:57 performers and these are characters taking part in this weird athletic morality play.

01:06 But even now calling the whole thing fake is still going to get you in trouble with

01:11 Randy Orton on Twitter.

01:12 Back up for a second, because in case you've been living under a Dwayne Johnson, wrestling

01:16 is predetermined.

01:18 The winner is decided by the booker and the competitors work together to tell a story

01:22 about good guys and bad guys and deliver moves that look painful and awe-inspiring and are

01:28 actually as safe as possible or they just cover each other in dog food.

01:32 Not all art is high art.

01:36 Prior to the revelations about kayfabe, the media was obsessed with this notion that wrestling

01:41 was a fixed sport, with endless articles and exposés trying to uncover the truth about

01:47 it, which the wrestlers and promoters rightly viewed as someone trying to put them out of

01:52 business.

01:53 And they went to absurd lengths to protect it.

01:57 Dr David D. Schultz essentially ended his own career with that slap we saw earlier to

02:01 2020 reporter Jon Stossel.

02:03 Lou Albano took a televised lie detector test and failed and in years prior performers would

02:09 invite punters into the ring to get a right good stretching and double check how fake

02:16 the whole thing is.

02:17 So something that evolved out of legitimate amateur wrestling, let's look at how professional

02:21 wrestling actually became one big work.

02:25 I'm Laurie Hailing from partsFUNknown and this is how wrestling is fake explained.

02:37 Before we get on with the video please do consider giving this channel a subscribe.

02:41 We know a lot of you guys regularly watch all of our content but a lot of you aren't

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02:52 Which also means we can make more videos like this, Luke's Actually Good series, Adam's

02:56 booking videos and the lists.

03:01 The origins of kayfabe and pro wrestling share a knotted history as the sport evolved out

03:06 of freestyle wrestling in Europe during the 1800s and other native forms of competition

03:11 in North America and Japan.

03:13 Kayfabe, with the appearance of realness, became more integral to the performance because

03:18 of how the business was run.

03:20 Professor Dan Glenday from the Department of Sociology at Brock University calls wrestling

03:25 a "culturally embedded spectacle" and said "Commonly known as catch-as-catch-can,

03:30 the early wrestling contests in the 19th and early 20th century normally included side

03:36 bets or gambling.

03:38 Most historians of professional wrestling look to Great Britain as the cradle of catch

03:41 wrestling while Germany and France receive honourable mention."

03:45 Wrestling was a carnival act, starting sometime in the 1860s and 70s.

03:51 Amateur wrestlers would basically compete to entertain the crowd whilst carnival workers

03:56 would act as their promoters and bookers.

04:00 Carnival razzmatazz, a lot of guys wore colourful costumes and created fictional backstories

04:05 to their characters, adding some much needed drama to proceedings.

04:09 Curiously these were legitimate athletic contests, though we're going on the word of the performers

04:15 and carnival workers of the time and that's what they would say.

04:19 But these competitions did used to last hours, so you would think that if you were working

04:24 it you would make it snappy, give them a tight 8 minutes with three restarts just like Raw.

04:28 Professor Glenday explains that the purity of the competition got corrupted when money

04:33 became involved.

04:35 The link between the evolution of freestyle wrestling with gambling, side bets, carnivals

04:40 and entertainment in Europe and North America probably explains the branching to professional

04:45 wrestling from its freestyle roots.

04:48 Money became the name of the contest, deception became the means to make more money.

04:55 Just like how pay to play carnival games are rigged in favour of the house, so too were

05:01 the wrestling contests.

05:03 To a degree.

05:04 Wrestlers like George Hackenschmidt distinguished himself from other wrestling competitors with

05:08 his version of the bear hug.

05:10 However by 1904 in Great Britain, Hackenschmidt had learned showmanship from Tom Cannon and

05:17 Charles Cochran in order to make money wrestling as a variety act during the popular bodybuilding

05:22 strongman contests.

05:24 These talents he brought with him to the USA the following year when he lost his first

05:29 match against Frank Gotch.

05:31 Prior to Hackenschmidt and Gotch, the sport of wrestling evolved because of the competing

05:36 interests of three factions, the impresarios, the carnies and the barnstormers.

05:43 All united in the search of one thing.

05:46 Honesty.

05:47 Money.

05:48 It's money.

05:49 It was money.

05:50 Impresarios are managers who would help craft the personas for the wrestlers to make them

05:54 more appealing and book matches to make them more interesting.

05:57 The carnies developed dangerous wrestling moves known as hooks that were illegal on

06:02 the amateur wrestling scene but not in carnival competition, which gave themselves a high

06:07 win rate.

06:08 But also they worked in tandem with the barnstormers, who were guys who competed like travelling

06:13 wrestlers but often would work with the carnies in order to stage matches and hoover up all

06:18 the profits made through betting.

06:21 And it was this focus on squeezing as much cash as possible out of each performance that

06:26 fundamentally changed the way people approached wrestling.

06:30 The DNA is there, you've got booked matches, outlandish personalities, moves you wouldn't

06:36 see on the amateur circuit.

06:38 This era is also where the term 'mark' originates.

06:42 You take your carnival, your rigged games, your ring toss, your balloon dart, your duck

06:46 pond - which all sound like drop retribution names - but the goal of all of them was to

06:50 attract people susceptible to spending their money on a pay to play basis.

06:57 It's a similar model to how free to play mobile games and the like work.

07:00 Some people are just whales and they're much more likely to spend money than others,

07:04 whether that's through frustration, bravado or gullibility.

07:07 And when the game operators found someone who was easily enticed into playing the game

07:14 back to back and had a fair amount of dough, they would literally mark them with chalk.

07:20 Here's Al Snow explaining to some trainees.

07:43 So then all the folks manning the games have to do is look for the marked mark and entice

07:49 them over to throw their money at a rigged game.

07:52 Wrestling in this early evolutionary period before the last vestiges of true sport were

07:56 drummed out of it, marks are there to lose their money on the bets for a rigged competition.

08:01 Let's hop back to Hackenschmidt and Gotch as the pair had two of the most significant

08:06 matches in early wrestling history in 1908 and 1911 over the World Championship which

08:12 Gotch came out on top of.

08:15 We talked about Hackenschmidt's showmanship earlier, what a tongue twister that is, and

08:20 that was essentially to play with his opponents to give the illusion that they might be able

08:26 to beat this dominant wrestler.

08:27 Because then the stakes are higher and people will come back to see the matches.

08:33 Though those tables were turned when he met Frank Gotch.

08:38 Because at his peak, good ol' Gotch was described as utterly peerless and was a talented

08:43 technical wrestler, but even this championship match, this defining moment in Gotch's career,

08:50 is overcast with the shadows of trickery.

08:53 Because during the 1908 match with Hackenschmidt for the World Championship, George complained

08:57 to the referee about Gotch's foul tactics, including thumbing and headbutting which left

09:03 Hackenschmidt bleeding and Gotch was also reportedly covered in oil, which Hackenschmidt

09:10 asked for him to have a shower before they continued the match.

09:13 Interestingly, the referee ruled that he should have pointed that out before the match started.

09:17 Hey, this guy's cheating.

09:20 You should have said that before the match started.

09:22 What is your job again?

09:23 The whole thing got so bad that after a two hour battle to the first fall, Hackenschmidt

09:28 just refused to return to the ring for a second fall and relinquished his world title to Gotch.

09:34 They then met again in 1911, but even greater controversy hung over this meeting as Hackenschmidt

09:39 had injured his knee training against partner Dr. Ben Roller, though years later Ad Santel

09:45 would tell Lou Thesz that he was paid $5,000 by Gotch's backers to injure Hackenschmidt.

09:52 Weirdly, Hackenschmidt himself denied any involvement from Santel and maintained that

09:57 it was Roller who caused the injury.

09:59 Either way, Gotch discovered the injury mid-match and took advantage of the entire thing to

10:04 walk out with the World Championship.

10:05 With the World Championship around his waist, Gotch became a national sensation in the US

10:10 and reigned until his retirement in 1913, but the sport was gaining a different sort

10:16 of notoriety as the critical eye of the media sought to expose wrestling's secrets.

10:23 One of those brazen fakes which has soured the people of this city on travelling professional

10:27 wrestlers has said that the match was not on the square, that it was a fake, pure and

10:32 simple.

10:33 It's fair to say that 99% of all wrestling matches where an admission fee is charged

10:37 and where professionals take part have been pre-arranged.

10:40 As the media began to draw back the curtain on kayfabe and expose the business, interest

10:45 in wrestling began to wane throughout the 1910s and the death knell was almost heard

10:50 after Old Oily himself Frank Gotch retired in 1913.

10:54 By 1920 in the US things were looking bleaker than staring down the barrel of a three hour

11:00 Raw.

11:01 It was the Great White North and evolution was underway, as Dan Glenday explained.

11:06 The Northeastern US, Ontario and Quebec became a centre for professional wrestling when promoters

11:11 Toots Mont, Ed Strangler-Lewis and his manager Billy Sandow, also known as the Gold Dust

11:17 Trio, developed most of the features associated with professional wrestling today, including

11:22 a time limit to matches, more acrobatic moves such as the dropkick and unlikely submission

11:28 holds.

11:29 Suddenly here was this move away from the plodding pacing of the matches of yore which

11:34 would drag on for hours.

11:36 Mont called this blend of Greco-Roman wrestling, freestyle, lumber camp fighting and theatre

11:42 slam bang western style wrestling.

11:46 Which you are correct, sounds like a grill house.

11:49 With Slam Bang the trio took wrestling out of the carnivals and into burlesque theatres

11:54 and eventually sporting arenas, creating the first real promotion in the process.

11:59 It helped that Ed Strangler-Lewis was legitimately an elite shoot wrestler and the world's

12:05 champion so he alone could draw a large crowd, but with the greater take they made on the

12:10 gate at the sports venues, they made the smart move of signing performers to exclusive contracts

12:16 and becoming the only game in town.

12:19 Eventually and with this ultimate control over how wrestling was presented, they were

12:23 able to mould it like clay into a new form.

12:27 They gave matches a shorter, snappier structure, invented the concept of finishing moves and

12:32 tag team wrestling.

12:33 They also began to pair teams and rivals up for extended periods, basically creating storylines

12:40 that evolved throughout the matches and advanced the chemistry between the combatants.

12:44 We're now seeing this taken to its ultimate conclusion as WWE moves into its Groundhog

12:49 Day phase and gives us the same match week in and week out.

12:54 News of this new style of wrestling travelled on the breeze or through a shared connection

12:59 to the Queen to the UK where a one-upping of that format was created called All In Wrestling

13:05 which added foreign weapons like steel chairs and apparently women wrestling in mud.

13:12 That sounds bad doesn't it?

13:15 But that's just what we called the North back then.

13:17 I can say that because I live here.

13:28 So wrestling was on the rise again and now had the added hook of these flashy moves.

13:34 Flashy moves, a dropkick.

13:36 Who am I, Jim Cornette?

13:37 That's too flashy for me.

13:39 Storylines which kept the fans returning.

13:42 But it was a fragile business still and one that still lived in fear of being exposed

13:47 for the pseudo competition that it was.

13:49 Which happened in New York in 1933 after this coalition of promoters decided to share their

13:55 profits, but in the process burned one Jack Pfeiffer.

14:00 Pfeiffer was a promoter himself, but he was now on the outside of the business looking

14:05 in, so he took his revenge by organising an interview with Dan Parker, the sports editor

14:10 of the New York Daily Mirror and telling all.

14:14 This is the thing, fans had long suspected that wrestling wasn't a true competition

14:18 and they'd likely made up their minds that they liked it anyway.

14:22 But this revelation fundamentally changed wrestling's relationship with the press.

14:28 It engendered a feeling of bitterness amongst sports writers who felt as if they were being

14:32 taken for fools and used as mere promotional tools when reporting the results of fixed

14:38 matches.

14:39 The Daily just stopped reporting the results because it wasn't legitimate competition.

14:43 Without that promotion in the press, the business in New York struggled for 15 years.

14:50 It feels like legitimacy has been the bone of contention with wrestling for the longest

14:55 time from 1895 when the sport was still mostly shoot all the way up to the most famous expose,

15:04 John Stossel's 2020 report on the business in 1984.

15:08 The overarching media narrative has been about whether or not wrestling is fake.

15:14 And you can see how that would lead an already clandestine industry to retreat even further

15:19 behind the barricade of kayfabe.

15:22 The few times the curtain had been peeled back, the house had all but burned down.

15:29 From the media's perspective it must be the brazenness of the lie, the doubling down

15:34 on the idea that it's all real, the slaps to reporters, the choking out talk show hosts

15:39 that just perpetuated this weird feud in slow motion between the two parties.

15:47 And it didn't even end after the veil was lifted, as Paul McArthur wrote for Wrestling

15:52 Perspective in 1998.

15:54 They are so blinded by the real vs fake issue that they keep their heads in the sand when

16:00 it comes to understanding pro wrestling.

16:02 The record ratings, the revenue, the drugs, the sex scandals, the premature deaths and

16:08 all the other important issues that surround this business are overlooked.

16:12 They're probably fake too.

16:14 It's almost as if kayfabe was so all-encompassing that the lines between fiction and reality

16:19 were so blurred that perhaps for the media it was better to just ignore the big stories

16:26 rather than be bitten on the arse if it turned out it was all just another work.

16:31 And unfortunately kayfabe certainly covered for its share of dodgy business practices

16:36 and shady dealings across the years.

16:39 But in 1989 the kayfabe wall was torn down.

16:44 That's the Berlin Wall, which also went in '89.

16:47 And Vince McMahon asked the New Jersey State Senate to consider wrestling an activity providing

16:52 entertainment to spectators rather than conducting bona fide athletic contests.

16:59 This was all to get out of paying the Athletic Commission fees and adhering to their legislation,

17:02 which is kind of complex to get into right now and likely the subject for a follow up

17:08 video.

17:09 Let me know if you want that in the comments.

17:11 But it's worth noting here that 30 years later wrestling is still on the telly.

17:17 Their biggest secret didn't exactly cause the business to explode.

17:21 I think Terry Funk put it well when he was on the Steve Austin show and said.

17:25 What is professional wrestling?

17:27 It was a parachute in 1905.

17:30 And it was total entertainment, Vince announced it total entertainment in 2010.

17:37 Well if you stretch a line along that, we all evolve somewhere along the line.

17:43 And what we evolve to is what the people wanted us to be.

17:50 What turned the turnstile.

17:52 That's what this business is.

17:54 What the people want it to be.

17:56 And that's what it always is.

17:58 And that is the thing about kayfabe, it kind of became the cover under which all of this

18:03 evolution could happen.

18:05 Narrowly avoiding the tricky question of why in the hell are you pretending to fight?

18:09 Because once you see it for what it is, pro wrestling just makes a sort of sense doesn't

18:15 it?

18:16 And your disbelief can be easily suspended as you're dragged into this wonderful, silly,

18:21 pantomime football match atmosphere and swept along by a story.

18:25 In his book Hooker, an authentic wrestler's adventures inside the world of pro wrestling,

18:29 the legendary Luther wrote "The reality or substance of professional wrestling is

18:35 the ability to perpetuate a fantasy.

18:38 It didn't matter to me that professional wrestling was a performance."

18:42 I hope that was published by Luther's press.

18:44 And I think that's it, because once the gambling rackets died out, did it ever matter

18:49 that it was a performance?

18:50 Because the biz was dying out when it was just two guys stretching each other out for

18:53 three hours at a time, and that little bit of showmanship, a little bit of fantasy, a

18:58 little bit of work is what has kept the business going strong all of these years.

19:09 Thanks for watching, I hope you enjoyed this look at professional wrestling's evolution

19:12 from fight to fraud.

19:14 Please do like, subscribe, comment and share this video around if you really liked it as

19:18 that would help us out.

19:19 And if you're in the mood for more explainers, why not watch this one about how championship

19:24 belts are made and why they even exist in the first place.

19:28 Thanks also to our lovely Patrons who are scrolling on the bottom of the screen, details

19:32 for that in the description down below.

19:34 See you next time, Jam That Jam.

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