When did you see wrestling was "fake?"

[closet_fan]

I'm 38 years old. I've been watching wrestling since around 1984-1985. As a 10-11 year old, of course I believed it was just as real as Santa Claus was on December 25th.

But like the speech your parents gave about the guy in the red suit, eventually all of us figured out wrestling wasn't real. Either we were told by our parents, our friends who hated it made us cave in or we actually saw a performer break kayfabe either by accident or by him/her not realizing when someone was watching them.

I think some kids found out when Hacksaw Jim Duggan and Iron Sheik were pulled over and busted for drugs. But because the wrestling business wasn't accessible online like it is now, most kids didn't even realize it happened unless they happened to be reading it in a magazine.

Mine was a strange one. It was at a house show at the Scranton Catholic Youth Center. Keep in mind, house shows back then were cheaply made. Undertaker and Paul Bearer performed, but I don't remember the opponent.

Anyway, when the show was over, I happened to look towards the area where the wrestlers came in and came out. Sure enough, there was Paul Bearer out of his costume, out of his face paint looking like just some normal fat guy. He was holding a piece of paper on a wall and asking one of the CYC attendants how to get to the Scranton airport. Giving right and left "turn" signals to make sure he was getting the right directions while writing them down.

I kind of felt wrestling had been fake, but seeing this normal guy who was just in the ring holding an urn for a guy who was supposed to be "dead" pretty much did it for me.

Does anyone have similar stories from their youth? Kayfabe is sooooo much different now than it was back then. It was an unwritten sin to be seen by anyone out of character. And if you were caught and a promoter caught wind, look out.

 

[KitsuneDreamer]

First, I would like to say, what a great topic! and great Post! I am 26 years old. I started to watch wrestling before the "Attitude Era", but have devoted YEARS to watching multitudes of different wrestling promotions of old to enrich my wrestling knowledge.

And yes, Kayfabe is vastly different from the days of yesteryear, just look at the lengths Tim Woods took to preserve it.

I was at the Springfield Civic Center in 94 or 95 I think, and the match before the Main Event (which was Diesel vs Tekno Team 2000. HBK didn't wrestle *sad face) was Adam Bomb vs Bret Hart.

They looked like they hated each other, and naturally as a kid I wanted Bret Hart to win.
they had a great match and I eventually left the arena happy.

My Gramps took me to a Pizza place near the arena and there were a crowd of people inside.

After the crowd dissipated, in the back of the parlor, were Bomb and Hart, seated together, eating,laughing, signing autographs on napkins together.

Gone was the intensity, the hatred, and disdain that these two just displayed an hour prior. Also the innocence and mysticism of Professional Wrestling for my young self.

I was completely dumbfounded.

Ah. Those were the days. (The days when people held up lighters to the Undertaker's entrance and not smartphones!! LOL)

Thanks for giving me this opportunity to tell this, I hadn't thought of this for a long time. Cheers.

 

[Blade]

Wow, that is a good question. I'm really not sure. I don't think there was any one specific moment, it's just one of those things that I've known for a long time. I assume I thought it was real when I started watching at the age of 3. But even then, I'm not sure I bought it fully. Even from an early age you know there's something a little off about wrestling, though you never want to think about it or admit to it, because it's entertaining you so much.

If I had to guess, I think I worked it out myself, then asked my dad one day and he confirmed my suspicions. That's what happened with Santa Claus, anyway.

 

[Wolf Pac]

It was this show.

[youtube]r9u8x0Xrj4A[/youtube]

Well, this was what confirmed it for me. Before that, other kids in my school, who didn't watch wrestling or who did watch but weren't as passionate about it as I was, would usually tell me it was fake whenever I had a conversation about an episode of Raw or a PPV. It never bothered me when the kids told me that and it didn't bother me even after I watched that show. I still enjoyed watching Raw, Smackdown and the PPV's regardless.

 

[myGiant]

24 years this april I been watching. And I got a few that come to mind. But one that really in away made me upset. Just a few years ago on Hart Michaels dvd they both acknowledge that their feud was all storylines and had no real problem with each other pre-screw job.

 

[Dirk]

I remember my mom telling me it's not really fighting when I was about six or seven, but not believing her. I remember an interview or vignette or something where Bret said there's no way to fake a 500-pound guy jumping on you, coupled with an action shot of Yokozuna.

I was pretty freaked out by some of the more gimmicky characters, like Undertaker, Goldust and the Brood.

When I was about ten or so, I saw a wrestling show at the Robertson fairground and got a ringside seat, only to see for myself how they work with near-hits and help each other pull off the moves. Looking back on it, those guys botched (as in totally missed some of the time, then oversold), but at least they were safe. I suppose it was a certain amount of denial, but then the penny finally dropped.

It was only when I accepted it as an action soapy that I started watching again.

 

[Mustang Sally]

The earliest I can remember watching pro wrestling on TV was age 5, in the heart of the Hulkamania era. My Dad was a real fan and I watched because he did.

Even then, I knew the regular lineup of Saturday morning cartoons we saw on TV weren't real.....and honestly, I think I knew at the same time that wrestling wasn't real either, largely because Hulk Hogan was essentially a cartoon character himself, reminiscent of the made-up characters we saw on Saturday. Of course, when I was 5, Hogan was overwhelmingly the most visible character in pro wrestling.

This isn't a criticism of Hogan. I think I probably believed he was fighting "for real," yet knew he wasn't really hurt even when seemingly beaten nearly to death by his dastardly opponent. Even then, when he was pummeled to a state from which no human could ever recover, Hogan would mount a counterattack within seconds after all hope seemed to be gone. I mean, c'mon now!

At age 5, it's easier to suspend disbelief and simply accept what is being presented on your TV.......and although it's harder when we're older, we've all seen that it's still possible to get caught up in the action even as adults.

In many ways, then, nothing has changed over the years, but I still submit there was never really a time I didn't think the spectacle of pro wrestling was staged. You get as "into" it as you allow yourself to, whatever age you are.

 

[LSN80]

Unlike most people here, I took somewhat of a backwards approach to becoming a pro-wrestling fan.

I grew up in a family of wrestlers, yet I was the aberration. My dad, uncles, cousins, and so forth were all 5'8 and under, so I tower over them at 6'2. They were as in to the WWE(F) wrestling as they were committed to making weight for their wrestling matches, and as a result, I watched along. But I never truly followed along, and when I became a
teenager, football and basketball dominated my time. After that, it was college and girls, and I didn't give wrestling a second thought.

For those who don't know this about me, I'm a mental health therapist. I once had a client I worked with, at age 23, who had extreme Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. One of his obsessions was watching(and talking) about wrestling. So I made him a promise that if he could get through an hour session with me and not talk about pro wrestling, I'd watch an episode of Raw that Monday night, and talk about it with him the next time I saw him.

I never thought him capable, but it must have meant something to him that I made him such a grandiose promisep), and he was successful.

So the first episode I tuned into and truly paid attention to was the "Trial of Eric Bischoff". With Judge Vince McMahon, Maria Kaneiles going from a dumb bimbo to an eloquent speaker, Mick Foley in a suit yet using a sock, and finally John Cena hitting an FU on Bischoff and throwing him in a garbage truck, it would be hard for anyone not to recognize wrestling as fake.

The funny thing is, the years I watched with family and friends, I never looked at is as fake. And when I finally paid attention and did, I was hooked. Still, I look at angles like the Bryan/HHH one that closed Raw, and all thoughts of it feeling "fake" go out the window. It's a performance art, and believing and emotionally investing in such angles removes the "fake" aspects for me.

It's as real as you want it to be.

 

[Waylon Mercy]

Anybody who grew up in the Hulkamania years knew it wasn't real right away. Fortunately, though, other promotions had bloody feuds that offset the cartoon world of Hulk Hogan and kept it looking legit.

 

[DarksideEric]

I'm 31 now, been watching since I was 2 (tapered off from watching in the last few years though, still keep up with it at least).

I think I realized it was fake around, I wanna say WrestleMania X time? Probably earlier though.

 

[BLeonard]

A combination of my stepfather and the Legion of Doom...

I started watching when I was 7 (which was between WrestleMania and WrestleMania 2). I remember seeing the SNME where the Magnificent Muraco and King Kong Bundy injured Hulk Hogan's ribs, so that tells you how long I've been watching.

Anyway, my stepfather was a wrestler in high school, so he of course, took every opportunity to tell me that "that shit is all fake," even coming to a point where he was playing some of my tapes of "WWF Superstars of Wrestling" (the 80's show, not the current show) in slow motion to show me how the moves were performed. To be fair, though, this never stopped him from taking me to see the WWF shows when they came to town.

Then, in 1990, when I was 12, it happened:

We went to a WWF show that was a TV taping. Back then, they taped 3 weeks of shows in one night and at this show, they even taped an episode of "Saturday Night's Main Event." Oddly enough, this was the same TV taping that had the Rockers winning the tag titles from the Hart Foundation that never aired.

During that taping, the Legion of Doom (who I was never a big fan of... I was always a Demolition guy) beat up a couple of jobbers. At the end, while setting up the Doomsday Device, the jobber fell backwards off of Animal's shoulders well before Hawk hit his clothesline. Hawk still made the cover... 1,2,3. Bell rings and Howard Finkel announces that LOD had won...

Almost instantly, the music cut off, Animal picked the jobber up and Hawk reascended the turnbuckle, this time hitting the Doomsday Device correctly... Another cover, another three count, another announcement of LOD victory from Finkel.

My first thought was that LOD had turned heel, but why would they redo the pin and the announcement? My stepfather was there with the answer: "They did it again because it didn't look good on TV."

Sure enough, when I watched that episode of "Superstars of Wrestling" a few weeks later, the first, botched Doomsday Device was cut out, with the second one seamlessly entered, as if there had never been a first one.

-Bill

 

[Bythedockofthebay]

I was like 8 I don't exactly remember but my brother gave me a tombstone piledriver that landed me in the hospital and my dad told me we were idiots and wrestling was fake, done by people who trained for a long time. And then he showed us a bloppers wrestling tape and it all made sense.

 

[Naniwa91]

I was watching a repeat of wrestling secrets exposed about 2 years ago, and it revealed to me that it was fake. However, the difference between knowing it was fake and no longer believing that it was real, and not caring that it was fake is roughly the same as... say... loving a car beyond its major faults. You know some of what's wrong but still drive it out of passion.


I always viewed wrestling as an experience more than anything else. I wasn't really into considering it as a sport when I started watching really watching it about 10 years ago. I was about 5 or 6 when I attempted to stay up past my bedtime watching WCW Monday Night Nitro. My family wasn't a wrestling family, but knew who some of the wrestlers were. I didn't, nor did I bother to ask. But I started watching SmackDown sometime in 2004 and was hooked ever since. I bought the games up to SvR 11 for my PS3. But not once did I view it more than an experience until about 2008, when it was more than that.


But, even though I watched that documentary, learned that wrestling was not as real as I really even gave a serious thought to, I love watching it, discussing it (although I don't discuss it too often as it is), and playing it.

 

[JaeDavies23]

I can't honestly remember when it was, probably around 10-11. All I knew was I enjoyed it and it didn't bother me that it wasn't "real" in the slightest.

 

[Bernkastel]

I started watching wrestling with my friends as a child. Earliest memories would probably have to be 4 or 5 because my father watched it on occasion before he passed. Afterwards I remember watching WCW with my pals up until age 10 or so until, I guess, we grew out of it. It was like Saturday morning cartoons.

I didn't start watching WWE until late 2001. So about age 13. I was into it and I was kind of on the edge about it being real or not. I knew the outcomes were predetermined but I was never sure whether or not the guys actually hit each other for reals. And interviews with wrestlers didn't make it any better, because I didn't really understand the protection of kayfabe at that age. Even in 2014 some wrestlers will still protect that side of kayfabe with trade secrets. I never would have guessed "he's leaning with the punches, or he's falling a certain way, or he's helping with a move, or he's not applying pressure to this hold, or he's not actually touching the guy."

It wasn't until I started reading books and watching documentaries that exposed the industry that I did become aware of how WWE wrestlers actually work matches. Understanding all of that came much later, and it really didn't change the way I viewed the product. It's always been strictly entertainment for me. And some of that mysticism I had as a child just never went away.

 

[HORRORHOLIC]

I almost always knew. I'm 34 and started watching wrestling regularly when I was really young, when Hulkamania was taking off and Cyndi Lauper started getting involved. I must have been about 6 or so when I brought my Hulk Hogan wrestling figure on the school bus, almost right away two older kids started laughing and one of them said "wrestling is fake" I immediately responded my saying no it's not, but right at that moment I knew in my heart it was.

To be honest, I didn't really know any kids my age after that that thought it was real. I'm surprised to hear about people being a lot older than that and still thinking it was real.

 

[Slash-LN]

I'm 29 and was sat down as a three year old to watch it in 1988.
My mom and siblings always told me it was fake as long as I can remember. I would get so mad at them about it.
I guess the moment for me was I had gone to my first ever house show and it was The Undertaker vs. Mankind. The Undertaker won the match. Then on RAW I believe it was they said that The Undertaker had never beaten Mankind. I didn't know any of the ins and outs of the business so I didn't know that house shows didn't count for anything. Not only did I finally come to terms with it being scripted but I also almost quit watching because it really bugged me that what I went and saw amounted to nothing.

I was kind of slow at catching on I guess.

 

[Hollywood Naitch]

I've always known wrestling was "fake" for as long as I can remember. I'm pretty sure I was told as a young kid that it was pre-determined and they weren't really hitting each other, so I never bought into it as "real fighting", and had little interest in it as a youngster.

I only really started watching in around 1997 or something like that, as we never had SKY TV at my parents until then, so I didn't get chance to watch until then. Even though I knew it was fixed, it didn't change my enjoyment of the show as after all, the films/cartoons/soap operas people watch aren't real, so why should wrestling being fixed stop me enjoying it?!

The time I really doubted how fake it was, was the I Quit Match at the 1999 Royal Rumble between The Rock and Mankind. I'd never seen a match as violent as that before, and to this day I cringe seeing those unprotected chair shots that Mick Foley took. The spot where he fell onto the electrical towers looks really fake now, but at the time I had seen nothing like it, and really thought he had fallen onto them by mistake and that he was really electrocuted.

As you get older, and learn more about the business its surprising how much punishment to their bodies that the wrestlers actually take, and although the results are pre-determined, wrestlers help each other take the moves and make mistakes, but the beatings they take can be shocking, and I have alot of respect for the guys who do it as I know I couldn't.

 

[berlinbrawler]

I was aware that it was fake right from the get-go, thanks to my older brother. That dick!! Seriously.

You know the type. Smart-ass teenager feeling all wise, grown up and self-important because he is four entire years older than you. That kid was my brother.
Through him I got my first glimpse of wrestling. He was a Hulkamaniac. But he sure didn't waste any time pointing out every single thing and explaining with his 12 year old wisdom why absolutely nothing of it hurt even the slightest bit. Superfly Snuka jumps like a thousand feet and bellyflops onto his opponent - doesn't hurt at all, because the guy raised his shoulders at the very last instance, as can be clearly seen in the slow-mo shot. Evidently that completely absorbs the impact. Any idiot could do it. And so on and so forth.
But I became a fan anyway and eventually realized that while it was indeed and obviously theatre, my brother was also full of shit. At the very latest when I put my friend David in the Sharpshooter and he started screaming in agony I realized that the whole nothing-hurts-at-all-and-any-idiot-could-do-it-concept was fundamentally flawed.

 

[pipebomber]

you know... I think I always kinda new it wasn't real. The Undertaker has been around ever since I was old enough to follow it. In my very young days there was also characters like the gobbledy gooker, doink, and others.

But to answer your question better, I think the point where it became harder to suspend belief in the way I used to was around 14 or 15. It started at the buyout of wcw but I really phased out at that age. I think it's because that's about the time most WCW stars stopped showing up, and I was a WCW fan during the attitude era.