When did you learn that wrestling is (*GASP*) fake?

[berlinbrawler]

For myself it was a gradual thing. I heard the "truth" from day one, but I wasn't quite ready to believe it.

The first time I came in contact with wrestling was through my older brother when I was about maybe 7. Smartass that he was, though, he didn't waste any time going on and on about how fake it was,pointing out instances where you could "clearly see it" - which, in his mind, was at about every single move any of the wrestlers did. Superfly Snuka would jump off the top rop big splashing some poor Schmoe at the other end of the ring, and he would say "See? The guy on the mat rose up a little before he hit. This way it doesn't hurt at all"! (What can I say, he was 12, a smartass, and for some reason there was nothing he enjoyed more about wrestling than saying it was fake every chance he got...)

So yeah, I got used to the idea that all was predetermined from an early age. But deep down I still believed what I saw. Some guy lost a title to some mean ********, I felt terrible for him, thinking about how devastated he must feel now. I kinda knew the wrestling was, yes, fake, but my brother had said nothing about the characters not being real, damnit! This guy was Hacksaw on an off-camera, no doubt about it, going grocery shopping with a 2-by-4 and shouting HOOOOOOO! I sincerely believed that Randy Savage hated Jake Roberts' guts. After all this guy not only ruined his wedding, he had his freakin' snake BITE Randy! You can't fake that! Randy wanted to KILL Jake, no doubt about it, and I hoped he would!!!!

It wasn't until I was 10, maybe 11, that I begrudgingly admitted to myself that Kamala wasn't really a ******ed cannibal who was locked in a cage and only got let out to wrestle a couple of times a week. Some things simply didn't add up. Learning from some wrestling magazine that Hulk's name was actually Terry and the Undertaker was a guy named Marc and that he wasn't even really from Death Valley helped speed up that process.

So,

When did you learn the awful truth? How did you take it?

 

[Karilas]

Weird thing for me, I didn't start watching Wrestling 'til I was in my early teens, by then I already knew it was fake, but I didn't yet know to what extent things were predetermined. I do remember the gradual process pretty much culminating when I read in an interview in a magazine about how heavily worked DDPs matches tended to be. Can't remember who the interview was, but that was the first time it had occurred to me that Wrestlers might actually go through their matches beforehand. I'd always just assumed they went out there, got told who would win and did the rest on the fly. Obviously in hind-sight it makes sense to plan the big spots.

So yeah, for me it was around the time Arquette won the World Heavyweight Championship. Also, Pro Wrestling's Greatest Secrets Revealed, that shit introduced me to the "Stunt Granny."

 

[Jessie Lynn DivaGirl]

Okay, this is going to be embarrasing to talk about but I started watching wrestling the week after Batista attacked John Cena after Raw. So I thought that was all real. After I told my parents I almost heard them laughin which pissed me off (they did the same thing with my brother). When I found out?

Bret Hart took off his cast. I sort of sat there and blinked a while then raced to my trusty computer. I looked up some wrestlers and found a few things saying they were all friends in real life.

After that I just sat there and enjoyed watching hot guys fighting each other for my reaction. It didn't affect me that much.