berlinbrawler
Lovable Curmudgeon
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?
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?