Wrestling

Damini

Part of the furniture
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Dec 22, 2003
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Please can someone explain wrestling to me?

If it's all coreographed, and people don't really get hit, how can their be winners and losers? Is everything rigged? How can their be leagues and competitions if everything is rigged? Who decided who will win and lose?
 

leggy

Probably Scottish
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Dec 23, 2003
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EVERYTHING is rigged. It's all scripted and they know who will win before the fight.

Can I also add that it's the worst for of entertainment I've ever encountered. (I include watching a small child poking a badger with a spoon)

Megz will castrate me for that but ultimately it's shit :)
 

Deadmanwalking

Fledgling Freddie
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Dec 29, 2003
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Im with leggy. Wrestling is a complete gimick, aimed at fat 12 year old americans and more recently this country.

It's all staged and about as fun and entertaining as leggys sex life.
 

Deady

Fledgling Freddie
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Dec 22, 2003
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It is staged.

It doesnt really matter who wins or who loses, theres no money involved for the players, they'll all get paid the same. For winning they just get a big belt. Then next season someone defeats them and wins the belt etc.

The actors wages come from the high fees cable networks pay to televise it.
 

Gumbo

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It's like the Wild West Stunt Shows that they have at some theme parks. No doubt the wrestlers are athletes, no doubt they are stuntmen, for some people they are showmen. They are not however sportsmen, whilst they are wrestling.

Having said that, a few great sportsmen have then done a bit of wrestling to cash in. Look at Dennis Rodman, an absolutely fantastic basketball player, best rebounder the game ever saw. Cashed in in retirement with a spot of wrestling.

Not my cup of tea certainly, but you can't doubt the showmanship behind it, a lot of people support it, just look at the companies behind its balance sheets.
 

Shaeffer

Dear Little Mite
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Dec 22, 2003
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Edit: Speaking purely from a WWE/WWF perspective

Personally I'm one of the few who are perhaps not so much fans of the 'sport' <which it clearly isnt> ..yet I do try and keep up with it on a regular basis. I find it interesting once I can get past the obvious corniness and americanness of it. Once you can look past that, I tend to see it as a unique medium of storytelling. Different, yet similar to things like television soaps, comics, and things like this.

Everything in Eastenders is scripted. Before each episode is shown all those backstage know whats going to happen etc etc. Exact same thing here. The thing is to not see it as a sport at all. Much in the same way as you can pretty much dismiss Eastenders as being realistic <lets face it nowhere has as high a deathrate as Walford :p>

I dont watch it for the 'action' as such, but it does interest me how they can tell a story over the course of a match, or longer if its one of the big pay per views. To the best of my knowledge, although the results are certainly scripted, the actual match itself isnt in terms of its content. I may be wrong on this, but bar a few set pieces within the match, I believe much of it is down to the two wrestlers involved.

I guess its hard to explain and im struggling a little to find the words. But if you wathc how they try and influence and motivate a crowd, by controling the pace and tempo etc, it really is quite impressive on a showman level.

Got to be taken with a pinch of salt, obviously, and its as american as hell, but purely from a creative point of view, I do think it succeeds in what it does.
 

SilverHood

FH is my second home
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Damini, Think of it as Neighbours with Spandex, bad hair days and bad breath.
:)
 

Jonaldo

Can't get enough of FH
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Wrestling is also more fun on PS2 than I think Eastenders would be :p
 

xane

Fledgling Freddie
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Dec 22, 2003
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Saturday lunchtimes where never complete without watching Grandstand and wrestling, this was of course the British edition. They always had a "serious" match, an "exhibition" match, and a couple of "staged" matches, the mixture kept the sport alive but showed how it could make good entertainment.

I've even seen British Wrestling live a few times, including one televised edition, and meeting the great Catweazle !

The American version is just the "staged" matches alone, and with network TV it's all dragged out into a bit of a soap opera too, so it's a classic entertainment formula, but it certainly isn't a sport anymore.

British wrestling had its share of staged matches to rival anything the Americans brought along; the legendary bouts between Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks, the unmasking of Kendo Nagasaki (sp?), the retirement of Mick McManas to refereeing, the rise and fall of "Cry Baby" Jim Breaks and his "special" arm-twisting move, the championship of Rollerball Rocco - ahh memories :)

If you are puzzled about American Wrestling, see a film called The One And Only with Henry "The Fonz" Winkler.
 

Rubric

Part of the furniture
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Have to agree with Shaeffer, watch as a sort of soap opera and it can be quite entertaining. I wouldnt go as far as to stay in to watch it but WWF can be easy to watch if youve got nothing else to do and havn't missed it for so long that all the good guys are now bad guys & vice versa.
 

Gurnox

One of Freddy's beloved
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Dec 28, 2003
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leggy said:
EVERYTHING is rigged. It's all scripted and they know who will win before the fight.

Of course it's rigged. That's the point! Forget the 'wrestling'. Have a beer or a spliff and just laugh at the sheer corniness of it all. :)
 

dysfunction

FH is my second home
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Gurnox said:
Of course it's rigged. That's the point! Forget the 'wrestling'. Have a beer or a spliff and just laugh at the sheer corniness of it all. :)


I get no joy out of watching this drivel...no matter what substances I've abused beforehand
 

Ch3tan

I aer teh win!!
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Its entertainment. The WWE labels itself "sports entertainment". The wrestlers involved are all fit altheltes many coming from amature/college wrestling of American football backgrounds. They are stunt men who can act, but that doesnt take away from the risk and brilliance of some of the choreography they pull off -much of it improvised on the spot.

It is in the WWE's case a very succesful soap. You get addicted to the storylines, the action is great. Its good no brain entertainment.

There are lots of other independent wrestling companies in the US and no doubt those without TV contracts are very different, but I cant comment on those not living there.
 

Jonny_Darko

Fledgling Freddie
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Dec 29, 2003
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I used to love the WWF until a couple of years ago (I hate it now but understand the mechanics of how it works better than most). There's a hell of a lot more to it than "fat blokes pretending to hit each other" - it's fake and staged, yes, but it's also extremely rough. Believe it or not two fantastic (by any standards) documentaries have been made - Wrestling With Shadows, which documents what happens when the promoter told Bret Hart to lie down for someone he hated and give up the belt in his hometown and he refused. And Beyond The Mat, which mainly focusses on Mick Foley and the time he smashed his body into a horrific bloody pulp for entertainment. Tell him he's just an actor while the surgeons are taking that tooth out from where it lodged itself (in his nose!) when he threw himself off the top of that cage and through a table.
 

Jonny_Darko

Fledgling Freddie
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I should also point out that most times in history that a proper Pro Wrestler has met an opponent from another combat sport in the ring for a real fight, the wrestler has won. Not always, as evidenced by the time Boxer Butterbean knocked out Wrestler Bart Gunn at Wrestlemania in less than 2 seconds, but usually - the Ultimate Fighting Championship is usually won by wrestlers who seem to have the moves and the skill to take down kickboxing champs etc as if they're not there.
 

Gurnox

One of Freddy's beloved
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A real wrestler versus one of the WWE ones would be like Keanu Reeves actually having a serious fight with whatsis' name (The Oracles' protector - I forget his name enitrely. D'Oh!). He'd last about a millisecond :)

I admit it could be argued that WWE takes the focus away from some very talented athletes who appear in the real tournaments. However, that's not to say at all that the people in WWE are talentless. I dare say a real wrestler would break every bone in their body if they attempted some of the stunts, and they are stunts, that are performed in WWE.

And God only knows what would happen if a real wrestler was hit by a 'SOLID STEEL CHAIR' :)
 

Jonny_Darko

Fledgling Freddie
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See that's the thing - there's no trick behind the chair - it's a metal folding chair, and they get hit with it. There's certain places where they can get hit full whack with the chair and not really do too much damage - across the shoulders, on the forehead, but other times they get hit at a funny angle by mistake and you can tell it's gone wrong - it's like they've figured out that a deep cut across the forehead produces shitloads of blood, but doesn't really do much harm - which is why wrestlers always bleed from the head - (mouth, nose, facial blood etc is always an accident).

And most of the WWE guys are the "real wrestlers". Ken Shamrock was a WWE wrestler and Ultimate Fight Champion, Kurt Angle won Olympic Gold etc.
 

Gurnox

One of Freddy's beloved
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Jonny_Darko said:
See that's the thing - there's no trick behind the chair - it's a metal folding chair, and they get hit with it. There's certain places where they can get hit full whack with the chair and not really do too much damage - across the shoulders, on the forehead, but other times they get hit at a funny angle by mistake and you can tell it's gone wrong - it's like they've figured out that a deep cut across the forehead produces shitloads of blood, but doesn't really do much harm - which is why wrestlers always bleed from the head - (mouth, nose, facial blood etc is always an accident).

And most of the WWE guys are the "real wrestlers". Ken Shamrock was a WWE wrestler and Ultimate Fight Champion, Kurt Angle won Olympic Gold etc.

I knew Kurt Angle and Benoit were real wrestlers (It's a bit hard not to know in Kurts' case) didn't know that any others were though. I dare say they get paid shed loads more for going to WWE than they would if they stayed in the real game.

Yes, you can always tell when something's not worked out the way they'd planned it. I think that the danger that something could go wrong is one of the things that makes the actual wrestling, as opposed to the super-funny plot lines, worth watching. Otherwise it would merely be a panto. Just with bigger actors and more spandex.

Don't know how true this is, but I was told that certain wrestlers, in the old British game, used to conceal razor blades in their socks. They would use this to cut themselves during bouts to make the whole thing more realistic. Like I say, have no idea how true this is but if this sort of thing did/does happen, that's pretty hardcore.
 

Miles_Binck

Fledgling Freddie
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Dec 27, 2003
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113
blading does happen it isn't a myth. If you ever see someone knocked out of the ring and they have some of their body under the ring apron the camera will cut away to the crowd or something then when it cuts back they are bleeding, they will use a razor blade or small knife to cut themselves. Sometimes there will also be bad blade jobs when they cut in the wrong place or just cut too deep, this happened recently when Vince McMahon (Chairman of the WWE) cut himself much too deep and he lost several pints of blood
 

Gurnox

One of Freddy's beloved
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Miles_Binck said:
this happened recently when Vince McMahon (Chairman of the WWE) cut himself much too deep and he lost several pints of blood

Couldn't happen to a nicer bloke :)
 

Munkey

Can't get enough of FH
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Shaeffer said:
Edit: Speaking purely from a WWE/WWF perspective

Personally I'm one of the few who are perhaps not so much fans of the 'sport' <which it clearly isnt> ..yet I do try and keep up with it on a regular basis. I find it interesting once I can get past the obvious corniness and americanness of it. Once you can look past that, I tend to see it as a unique medium of storytelling. Different, yet similar to things like television soaps, comics, and things like this.

Everything in Eastenders is scripted. Before each episode is shown all those backstage know whats going to happen etc etc. Exact same thing here. The thing is to not see it as a sport at all. Much in the same way as you can pretty much dismiss Eastenders as being realistic <lets face it nowhere has as high a deathrate as Walford :p>

I dont watch it for the 'action' as such, but it does interest me how they can tell a story over the course of a match, or longer if its one of the big pay per views. To the best of my knowledge, although the results are certainly scripted, the actual match itself isnt in terms of its content. I may be wrong on this, but bar a few set pieces within the match, I believe much of it is down to the two wrestlers involved.

I guess its hard to explain and im struggling a little to find the words. But if you wathc how they try and influence and motivate a crowd, by controling the pace and tempo etc, it really is quite impressive on a showman level.

Got to be taken with a pinch of salt, obviously, and its as american as hell, but purely from a creative point of view, I do think it succeeds in what it does.
So accusing your daughter of incest and pimping her out counts as good story telling? Whilst this is being televised to little kiddies? Purlease. Back in my old school, the reason why most people watched it was because of the moves the wrestlers pulled off, which they would then proceed to recreate in detail. Silly gits.
 

Gurnox

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Munkey said:
So accusing your daughter of incest and pimping her out counts as good story telling? Whilst this is being televised to little kiddies? Purlease. Back in my old school, the reason why most people watched it was because of the moves the wrestlers pulled off, which they would then proceed to recreate in detail. Silly gits.

If you found that offensive, you'd just love what they do to disabled people these days. :)

Vince McMahon is a bad guy. He sets himself up to be as loathsome as possible. He does a very good job of it and it is hilarious.

If you don't like it, don't watch it. As for kiddies, I'm sure they hear far worse than that in the school playground.
 

Shaeffer

Dear Little Mite
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Munkey said:
So accusing your daughter of incest and pimping her out counts as good story telling? Whilst this is being televised to little kiddies? Purlease. Back in my old school, the reason why most people watched it was because of the moves the wrestlers pulled off, which they would then proceed to recreate in detail. Silly gits.


unique storytelling medium i said, not good storytelling ;) i admire it for how it manages to mix the two..even if i dont particuarly agree with the storylines. some of them are crap, offensive to some and distasteful. But hten if we're going into that just check out a tv guide or whatever for the recent storylines in the soaps heh. almost as bad sometimes. *disclaimer: sometimes* :p

i'm intrigued by it for how it achieves its goals, in much the same way i look at movies and think about how they worked the story..such as lord of the rings for example. i know they changed loads of scenes and stuff and people generally moaned, but i found it interesting to think WHY they would do that..and whether they think they enhanced the story for that medium and its audience becuase of it.

i appreciate that its only going to be there for a few days before its obsolete, but check out www.wwe.com ...theres a featured video there which is like a 'trailer' to the match between Shawn Michaels and Triple H in a week or so. Noone says its real or realistic or anything like that..but then neither are most of the hollywood flicks now. Its just doing trying to tell a story through that medium, which is bloody hard to do, and I do find it interesting to see HOW they do that..rather than the actual what-happens thing.

Incidentally, the broken back referred to in that by Shawn Michaels was real.
 

Smurflord

Fledgling Freddie
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I think my favourite time in WWE (or WWF as it was then before the panda people sued them) was when Kurt Angle first came onto the scene. He was an ex-olympic gold medialist, and really knew proper competitive wrestling. His first few matches, he didn't do any of this staged stuff, phoney or pulled moves, he was doing it for real in the greco-roman style and you could see his opponents really getting hurt. Shame he got toned down soon after, no doubt after complaints from the other wrestlers.
Was just funny to see someone beat the crap out of them.

As regard the whole thing, if you treat it as a sports soap opera it can be entertaining.

Mick Foley's auto-biography is a very interesting read btw, about the whole wrestling entertainment scene. The first thing in the book he says is that he's not going to insult people's intelligence and pretend it's all real competitive matches, but the people are doing these feats for real, and people do get hurt.

Still enjoyable to watch.
 

Gurnox

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Smurflord said:
the people are doing these feats for real, and people do get hurt.

Wrestlemania 17. Shane McMahon vs Big Show. Shane jumping from lighting gantry onto Big Show.

That could have gone so very, very wrong! Such a good stunt. Especially when you consider it's all being done live in front of an audience.
 

Ch3tan

I aer teh win!!
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Smurflord said:
I think my favourite time in WWE (or WWF as it was then before the panda people sued them) was when Kurt Angle first came onto the scene. He was an ex-olympic gold medialist, and really knew proper competitive wrestling. His first few matches, he didn't do any of this staged stuff, phoney or pulled moves, he was doing it for real in the greco-roman style and you could see his opponents really getting hurt. Shame he got toned down soon after, no doubt after complaints from the other wrestlers.
he's not going to insult people's intelligence and pretend it's all real competitive matches, but the people are doing these feats for real, and people do get hurt.
Well no... It was staged like that, Kurt came in as the Olympic champ, able to wrestle like they taught them at school. He did mat wrestling and abhored the silly moves, made a good heal character and comedy out of it. He was never doing it for real, the fact that you belive he was simply shows how good the WWE is at story telling and the wrestlers are at what they do.
 

Jonny_Darko

Fledgling Freddie
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Miles_Binck said:
blading does happen it isn't a myth. If you ever see someone knocked out of the ring and they have some of their body under the ring apron the camera will cut away to the crowd or something then when it cuts back they are bleeding, they will use a razor blade or small knife to cut themselves. Sometimes there will also be bad blade jobs when they cut in the wrong place or just cut too deep, this happened recently when Vince McMahon (Chairman of the WWE) cut himself much too deep and he lost several pints of blood

When you know about it it's well obvious - if someone's on the mat face down "holding their head in pain" you can sometimes see them slicing their head open with a razorblade - it makes a hell of a mess but it's apparently quite safe and doesn't even scar - the referees usually slip the razors to the wrestlers!

Got to say though - one of the most horrible things I ever saw was Big Van Vader break some preliminary wrestler's back - and it wasn't a plot - no one watching could even begin to argue what happened, it was sickening, and the move was executed fine, just with a bit too much power! Shawn Michaels also paralysed someone from the waist down.

Best wrestling story ever - Vader again, wrestling Mick Foley - Foley lost his fucking ear! They put it on ice and reattached it afterwards. The guy went on with the show with blood pouring from a hole in his head for about ten mintues - finished the match. These guys deserve serious respect for what they do.
 

Tom

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I did some work on some WWE thing in Sheffield a few years ago. I was working with the crew who do all the 'behind the scenes' filming, wrestlers arguing, fighting, screaming to the camera, etc. It was shit.

Anyway, there were these 2 women who were supposed to be huge enemies. We spent around 30 minutes rehearsing a fight in a corridor, involving doors, stainless steel foodtrays, trolleys, and all kinds of other shit. When it was done, everyone was laughing and patting each other on the back. Well, I wasn't, because I was thinking 'pfft how gay' and counting the hours until I could leave :/
 

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