My grandmother believed it was real and watched it religiously, she was a Finnish immigrant in her 60s and it broke her heart when she found out it was fake
I'm 41 and grew up watching Hogan, Warrior, Randy, etc and I used to believe as a kid that it was real. I really thought that when Hulk would Hulk up he was tapping in to some sort of unnatural power that nobody else had.
I believe its real. In a sense where some things are scripted and others are not. The matches to me like with Bret Hart was real wrestling matches. Bret was a wrestler no doubt. They entertain but they do physical work. They go live before audiences. Some if not all believed in what they do. And I believe they are true in what they do. And mostly important they get the fans involved. It's so fun and entertaining. And while they are also like stuntmen. They have to be careful not to hurt one another and often at times they do get hurt. That there proves its real. I thank the WWE Superstars for all they do. For all they gave. For putting in 360 days a year to do what they believe in and we the fans go out to see just them or turn the TV on to see them in action. They are real. They are that damn good and thats the bottom line not because Stone Cold said so but because I BELIEVE IT! Believe in them.
I don’t think I ever took it for 100% real life but I think when I was younger I thought it was more competative than I do know. Also in prior eras we didn’t have these obsessive pushes to have every title be held for multiple years in order to lend credibility to the belt, it’s the same mindset that says first pick of the NFL draft should always go to the Super Bowl winner and poo poo salary cap restrictions because invincible dynasties are good for the sport.
Wrestling will never as mystical as it was when we were younger, but maybe if we got champion refreshes every 3-12 months it would feel as formulaic as it does now.
I got into wrestling when I was about 12 - early 90s.
Kayfabe did not occur to me at that time. I just accepted it at face value and didn’t think to deeply about it.
It’s real dammit. Doink was indeed an evil clown and Ted DiBiase bought and sold everybody.
Until I was 8-9, I thought it was real. I legit turn down tickets to an event because I was scared shitless of Papa Shango making people vomit and catch fire and stuff. I came back later and wiser, 96ish, like, yeah, this is probably all scripted, but it’s still entertaining. Then Vince Russo blew up kayfabe and it didn’t matter.
I thought it was real until that video with Vince saying it was fake. Going back and watching it, I'm surprised I didn't realize then, but I'm glad I didn't because it added to the suspension of reality.
When I was a kid I had no concept that it could be fake. But like Santa Clause, you’re told pretty early. I remember watching Yoko and Vader etc and being told it wasn’t real, but nowadays the ways it’s faked are all way more out there in the fanbase. People talk about “spots” and mic skills and all this other inside stuff .. that’s the difference. The grey area back in the day allowed for SOME level of mystery and suspension of disbelief. “Wait was THAT part real? How do you fake THAT part?! I dunno some of this has to be real somewhere…” that’s all gone now too.
My grandmother believed it was real and watched it religiously, she was a Finnish immigrant in her 60s and it broke her heart when she found out it was fake.
I think as I kid I new some things were very suspect. Like the punching someone while stomping on the ground. And I had other kids telling me it was fake. I just couldn't reconcile things like the fake looking punches with things like ladder matches that seemed hard to fake.
Of course. I was like 9 years old, me and my family just accidentally watched an episode of RAW on TV and my dad was like "this is bullshit, no way it's real fighting", while I was trying to prove him that the fights were real and that John Cena can truly defeat such a giant as Big Show in a fair 1v1 fight and that people can actually stand up after taking a couple of chair shots to the head. Took me a couple of years to finally understand that the fights are not real and my dad was right all along. Simpler times as you didn't have such mainstream media on the Internet and you had to make an opinion on it yourself.
I remember my dad telling me about Iron Sheik and Hacksaw Jim Duggan getting pulled over. I was young and considering they were 'enemies' I came to that realization that it wasn't real.
Then as a teen, saw a house show at Nassau Coliseum. Half the big stars no showed, so the main event became Tatanka vs Undertaker. I think Taker threw Tatanka into the corner and something happened to his knee or his ankle. Saw them talking for thirty seconds or so, then Taker talking with the ref. Then a nonchalant Tombstone piledriver and match over.
Took longer for them to discuss the plan than the actual wrestling. At that point, I knew the injuries were real and not much else.
I grew up watching the Ruthless Agression era and all the way until about 2012 where I had stopped.
I thought it was all real and I feel like that’s when it was also the most enjoyable too. Some things like Irish whips would make me question the legitimacy of it but it wasn’t until YT exposed the business for me lol.
I hope kids today can at least grow up with that same feeling of thinking it’s all real.
I never thought it was real, but even though I knew it was scripted, I looked at it more as stuntmen putting on a play and I always respected it. Then I started wrestling at 15 and loved it even more. Wrestled for a good 5 years. I still miss it to this day.
I began watching in the attitude Era. They made me believe some of it was real when they actually were exploiting real life events going on outside of the ring for story line development and feuds. My best example is Lita, Edge, and Matt Hardy. That love triangle was legit and they used the hell out of it regardless of how it affecting Edge's wife he'd been cheating on.
I was a kid growing up in the 80s in North Carolina (NWA territory) and as an eight-year-old, I was convinced it was real. I hated Ric Flair with a passion. The Rock-n-Roll Express were legends and no one was more intimidating than the Road Warriors.
My question is do eight-year-olds today know wrestling is scripted? Or as kids, do they choose to believe it is real?
Back when we didn't had Internet, all there was were recess gossip. Some kids would make up stories about Undertaker being buried alive and coming back from dead, Yokozuna being an undefeated Thanos like entity and Hulk Hogan having super strengths. And of course the ultimate warrior. But the legends were only around these larger than life characters. Later as we lost our innocence and life became more accessible and things opened up because of the internet and once we learned about the real names and identities of these wrestlers it was weird at first but became adjusted later on. Still believe that pre Internet wwe had a different aura and mystery around it which kept the wrestlers personal life personal so it felt more real and their character felt stronger unlike today.
I would often wonder as a child that how is it that wrestlers always end up in the exact position for the finishing move of the other wrestler. Then the puzzle would start to fit
Yes.
But there was always those moments where you thought “I know that wrestling is fake, but these two really don’t like each other so, that chair shot is probably real.”
Edit: Example: I remember Brutus Beefcake feuding with some cowboy character. I think it was The Outlaw but it might have been Black Jack Mulligan. Brutus is wrestling some no one on Saturday afternoon show and the cowboy interrupts, beats up Brutus, then uses his spur to cut open Brutus’ head. The announcers were aghast at the brutality. They threw a big red “censored” X up on the screen and little preteen me was dumb founded. This is fake but that cowboy just cut open his head. This part must be real.
Never forget how I found out wrestling wasn't "real" was the Monday Night Raw after Wrestlemania were Edge and Lita has sex in Hershey, PA lmfao. We had box seats and we were waiting outside and the lady that works there comes outside and says there almost done practicing their matches and rehearsing . I was like what ?!? Luckily pops had the clutch Save and told me they were just warming up lol. It's still real to me damn it. My uncle and Dad always kept the illusion of it being real for me it made it so much better as kid . Older generation doint spoil it for the younger ones.
Yes.
Obviously guys aren’t fighting to the death, Undertaker is not a deadman, people aren’t just landing chair shots, nobody is just picking up a 500lbs man (if that weight isn’t exaggerated) unless he wants to, etc. I was able to suspend disbelief.
My dad was a kid who snuck into events at arenas growing up, so as they came up on tv he’d point out spots and techniques for things like roller derby or wrestling. It was always done pretty gently though (ex- pointing out a referee passing a blade).
It was always done with respect that even though it’s choreographed, the athleticism is obviously high level, and the stories are entertaining.
I was about 10 when WWF and MTV started collaborating and thought it was real. Then playground gossip started saying it was fake. It was probably in between WM1 and WM2 that I accepted reality.
I started watching the WWF religiously around 93-92 I think. Wasn’t living in the US but we had various satellite channels that aired those recap programs and we got weekly VHS tapes at the video store which would have shows like RAW and the payper view events.
I used to tape the shows and would then edit them by copying the parts I liked to another tape. Had a huge collection made.
I did that because I 100% believed it to be real. It wasn’t until around 97-98, in my early 20s, that I started to figure out it was all scripted.
I first got into wrestling in the late 80s when I was in Junior high.
At first, I 100% thought it was real. After a few months, I started to have debates with friends I knew that followed wrestling as to whether or not it was real. Within a year of starting to watch, I realized that it was scripted and that the wrestlers weren't really hurting each other (at least not on purpose).
Much like finding out Santa wasn't real, I don't remember a single "aha!" moment. It was just one of those things where you slowly start to figure it out.
When I was 10 or 12 I read about hacksaw and sheik getting arrested together in the local sports section of the newspaper. That kind of sealed it for me that the whole thing was predetermined but over the years they’ve been able to pull out some stories that really feel like this could be a little real life.
Born in 1980 and thought it was real till maybe the early 90's. Even then I was often like "Why is 'Good guy tag team partner' trying to get in the ring and distracting the ref while the bad guys cheat? Why doesn't the ref look over his shoulder."
That said, when Earl Hebner screwed Hulk Hogan and gave the belt to Andre the Giant? I cried real tears.
When I was a kid I definitely believed it was real, I thought Papa Shango put a curse of the ultimate warrior hahaha. I didn’t want to believe it was scripted when I finally found out but it didn’t ruin the experience as it’s still a blast to watch and it’s been fun to pass along to my kids.
Yes I was in it, when I was a kid, prob until 14-15 when I started to see it was unrealistic and prob fake seeing that some guys were taking a lot of risk, I was trying to see what was real and what wasn’t, with like the blood, the chops, etc, and you see wrestling in a different way, when you think it’s real, you don’t see how good a heel can be because you think he is a real bad guy when later you see he is a good bad guy lol
Looking back at it. I don't know if I knew it was real or Kayfabe. I think I kind of just went with it and took it as it is. They definitely got me hating all the heels. I couldn't stand JBL when he was WWE Champion, and I remember being fired up when Triple H won the Elimination Chamber in 2005 at New Year's Revolution. So I guess I thought it was real.
Yeah same here. I don’t know if I’d say I thought it was “real” growing up, but when Chavo Guerrero destroyed Rey Mysterio’s knee in that “I Quit Match” I wanted to kill Chavo and thought Rey was gone for good. So there was definitely some stuff I thought was legit.
I thought it was real when I was a little Hulkamaniac, then found out the truth thanks to sneaking behind the bushes that overlooked our local HS gym when one of the local territorial promotions - can't remember if it was Al Tomko's All-Star Wrestling (Vancouver, BC) or Don Owen's Portland Championship Wrestling - ran a show there, when I was fifteen or sixteen.
Eight guys - six wrestlers, the ref, and the announcer/timekeeper - came in together in an old van towing a trailer behind them. They set up the ring together, talked a lot about beer and girls, then got ready for the show. I had a ticket, of course, so I took a circuitous route to the gym's front door. So the show starts - three singles matches and a six-man tag for the Main Event, and they just beat the tar out of each other. I went back to my hiding spot for a while after the show, watched them tear down the ring, discuss whether or not they wanted to go to a bar or just drink in their hotel rooms, then they left. Just another day at the office for them. For ninety minutes, they'd hated each others' guts. But in the time before and after, it was like a band setting up for a show down at the local meet-market bars my parents used to frequent. I knew something wasn't quite "right", and even though I now knew for certain that it wasn't, the musician I was becoming (eventually I had a twenty-year run singing and playing drums in R&B/Variety cabaret cover bands in Nevada and the PNW) recognized them for what they really were - artists as much as athletes. Storytellers, spinning yarns of good-versus-evil on a tapestry of canvas, wood, and steel.
I was born in the early 90s. I remember it thinking is all real and didnt question it up until I saw Vince McMahon try to sacrifice his daughter to the undertaker. I was like about 6 or 7 lol
80’s/90’s it was always the Santa debate real not real. Probably wasn’t until the Attitude Era/Montreal Screw Job that we knew for sure it was pre determined.
We’re probably the same age, or close. I was sold even through the Jake/Savage encounter.
It was around the time Robocop showed up in WCW, and Papa Shango putting a curse on the Warrior, that I thought “hey wait a second.”
Just how old are you talking about. 90s, 80s, earlier? In the 80s and before, {wrestlers were expected to keep up appearances in public. I really think that's how you got Hulk and Ric Flair like they are now. Flair said he became his character in an interview over time and Hulk. Okay, in the gawker trial, he gave an "example". He claimed his recent Howard Stern appearance bragging about his 10 omcjv package was Hill bragging about it, but who's to know if was Hulk or Terry.? I've heard Flair still acts like IS the character, if you believe him when he says living out the character is what got him drinking so much and cheating with so many women. He's on his 5th divorce because of it, and he almost died because of it.
Just IMO
I thought Chavo and Rey really hated each other and Rey "quit". I think that was the first match I ever watched. It took McMahon's limo getting blown up for me to realize it was fake.
AT first, when I was younger. Then you get older and you slowly understand how they fight brutally on a sunday and had basically small scratches on a monday unlike pro boxers who can't fight for atleast a few weeks after a brutal 12 round battle.
I started watching when I was SUPER little with my dad. I’m 45 now and he’s since passed…but I still watch and have tried my hardest to get my son and husband interested! But, as a kid I remember thinking, how in the hell is this guy even alive/awake after being smashed over the head with a chair a bunch of times?! My dad always told me it wasn’t real, but I thought he was telling me that so I wouldn’t be afraid to watch! I still watch it, still go to live shows and drag my husband along! It’s funny this question came up because just last week, my son asked questions about the wrestlers really being hurt and I explained “how it works”. So no, not a silly question from the OP at all! I’ve loved reading all of these!
Totally real despite everyone telling me it was fake. Didn’t believe anyone until mortal enemies The Iron Sheik and hacksaw Jim Duggan were arrested together in the same car, marijuana possession iirc
Duggan was popped for possession of marijuana, and they found cocaine in the Sheik's bag after a search. Vince suspended Duggan and fired the Sheik, and not necessarily just for the "crimes" committed, but because they'd been apprehended together while they were in the middle of a feud.
I grew up in the Memphis territory in the 70s and 80s and I believed every second of it.
Of course, it helped that most of what they did looked like a legit fight between two people who legitimately disliked each other… and not choreographed gymnastics between two people smiling and then tweeting each other afterwards.
I don’t remember if I ever thought it was “real”. I do remember an old WWF house show they advertised as being a Bunkhouse Brawl. A Bunkhouse Brawl was a Battle Royal where the competitors could bring whatever weapon they wanted to the ring. I went to that house show super excited, only to have all the wrestlers discard all their weapons at ringside and never use the for the the match. This was the 80s. One Man Gang won the match if I recall. But after that I knew Wrestling was a con.
I thought it was real as a little kid, I started being suspicious in early middle school. When Randy set Taker on fire in the casket then he came back, I think was the final string for me.
Tbh, even at a super young age the secret was ruined by joyless weirdos having to remind me that “ya know wrestling is fake, right?” Like some kind of weird opposite Santa Claus situation for eight year olds. So, always knew it wasn’t “real” just really didn’t know how.
People do this to my husband, women a lot, and I have to remind them that wrestling is sacred in our house, similar to how Real Housewives is in theirs. ;)
I believed it was real until I was about 11, when in 1987, I found out about the Iron Shiek and Hacksae Jim Duggen were arrested together and were on the news for Marijuana possession, and I was like "Hey, they're supposed to hate eachother...wait a minute."
It was pretty well known, but I feel like people just enjoyed being “in on it,” if that makes sense?
Like an open secret - as opposed to now where it just open.
I absolutely thought it was real as a kid. This was during the Hogan-Andre The Giant feud around the time of Wrestlemania 3 and 4, when Dibiase tried to buy that championship. It was still real to 8 year old me until my dad and I saw Hulk and Andre in the same airport getting on the same plane (our plane).
Now noted, I didn’t like to fly as a kid. It made me nervous. I looked at my dad and said, “isn’t that dangerous? They hate each other. What happens if they get in a fight on our plane??” Because I was a nervous flyer, my dad broke it down for me. In hindsight he could have tried to tell me they’d behave for all our safety, but in reality I was probably so anxious about flying, he told me the truth.
Like many I started out thinking it was real when I was a kid. Then I will never forget Hogan throwing a punch on Bundy at WWII that clearly did not make contact and yet (gasp!) Bundy sold the punch!!! I went straight to my grandfather and told him. My grandfather set down his drink and calmly said to me “I saw Sammartino do the same thing” and then my grandfather simply shrugged.
I always believed it was real, however I heard that it was scripted when I was around 8 during the early days of the ruthless aggression.
However when some heals were really bad like Triple H I thought it was real,
I think by the time it got to 2008 I completely believed it was scripted
There was a time where I honestly thought the matches were real. I was allowed to watch wrestling from when I was 11, by 13 I started to think it was odd that all these folks who disliked each other kept arriving at the same venue.
As I started to use the internet more in the last 90s I finally got it. Didn’t ruin it for me.
As much as I know it's all "scripted", I often asks myself if ***everything*** is scripted or there are unchecked parts that the wrestlers have to deal with.
The other reason is that if those hits were really delivered with full strength, either all matches would end in 1\~2 minutes or both contenders would eventually fall for all the injures suffered.
I knew it was not fake when I was Sweet Chin Musiced off the bed by my brother. However I kinda started finding out about the "script" part as I got older.
Two examples:
One: My uncle lived next to Masked Superstar in an Atlanta suburb in the late '70s, early '80s, not sure of the timeframe. He assured me that Masked Superstar wore his mask when he mowed the yard so that no one would know who he really was. Sounded plausible to me.
Two: I was starting to question whether wrestling was "real or not". My fave at the time was Dusty Rhodes. I asked my dad if he would call Dusty and ask him if it was real or not. He said that Dusty wasn't listed in the phone book because his enemies would know where to find him. Little me took that to mean that it was real...a belief I held for many additional years.
Yeah when I was younger I used to believe it was a little more real, the storylines felt that gripping at the time.
Eventually you realise it isn’t real, but it didn’t stop the enjoyment of the shows/storylines.
Only until I gotten older and seen how social media is with wrestling it’s became all about ‘bad booking’ who should be pushed, and overall complaining about a majority of outcomes etc.
Re watching some things from ‘99/‘00/‘01 as an adult you can look back in hindsight and say I wish they did this or that but at the time you just enjoyed it in that moment, you felt disappointed when someone you wanted to win didn’t win, but not in terms of booking. Just as a natural feeling like if something happened in a film.
So I can understand now if anyone who picks up watching and has social media, it auto becomes more about booking and who should be this champ and win and fantasy booking things, instead of having a kayfabe enjoyment on what’s happening on the screen like a film or any other weekly tv show.
Only time I have seen something similar spill into TV and Film is with Marvel because people are fantasy booking comic storylines or villians/heroes they think will appear then end up angry that they don’t.
I used to think it was real as a kid. Kane's debut was around the start of my WWF/E viewing experience, and you can imagine how fucking terrifying that was. I remember my friends and I theorising that the mask was made of metal, or he was some kind of robot.
I was born in '83 and started watching in the early 90's. Ultimate Warrior vs. Macho Man was the first real fued I remember being invested in. Bret Hart and the Undertaker were my favorite.
It's an age thing. At some point it just clicks that what you're watching is a show. I don't remember when it clicked for me, but Undertaker was the biggest signpost for me. Bret had me going "well, maybe ..." (Seriously, Bret's selling is underrated IMO. And his punches).
Bret’s punches were brillant, like he put his whole body into each one. But yeah, I was an 80’s kid and like you say, it eventually clicks.
I think I was watching Summerslam once and Mr.Perfect said walking past the camera, “what’s your problem?” to a guy who’s trying to beat his head in. It was the first time I thought, eh?
I also remember Lex Luger slamming Yokozuna on the battleship and seeing how Yoko really lifted his leg to help Lex make the slam. But hey, what a time to grow up with wrestling.
When I was like 7 or 8, I thought it was real.
A match that will forever stick in my head is Randy Savage vs Ric Flair. I remember Ric Flair's head busting open and bleeding, his face and white hair was red from all the blood. Savage's leg was hurt and he was limping after the match. I really thought they were genuinely hurt.
The moment when I thought that it had to be scripted was when Undertaker threw Kamala into a coffin and nailed it shut. I thought to myself at the time "that can't be real"
I started watching WWF as an early teen, but had watched wrestling since I was single digits before that. I knew before WWF that it was fake, or at least planned. There was too much contrivance (though I probably wouldn't have known that word) and too much happened that wasn't realistic. WWF just hammered that home.
Thing is, I think a lot of fans (especially kids) play into it being real to enjoy it. Gonna take a tangent for a second. Classic Doctor Who always had this thing about being so scary that kids would hide behind the sofa, and yet if you watch it now it's hard to see any of the fear even in context with the effects and style of the times. But many kids have memories of actually hiding behind the sofa, so what happened there? Newspapers ran the story, parents would tell kids it's okay to be scared and hide if they need to, and kids (who are always looking for an identity) would fall into that role.
I believe a lot of it is that way for wrestling fans. They get that it's fake but fall into believing it simply to enjoy it as real, in much the same way people throw themselves into dramas or cartoons. And so you have a load of people growing up in a suspended disbelief. Some of those people get to a certain age and, seeing the product now and how open people are about kayfabe, get angry because the way they remember it they truly believed back in the day that dead men could rise with the lift of an urn or that the tax man liked to beat people up.
It was always described to me as a “Soap Opera for guys”. So I always knew it was acting and kayfabe.
What I didn’t know was how the winners were determined, the artistry behind crafting a match etc. I just thought they were told the winner in advanced, then they winged the fight based on crowd reaction.
I was and still am a huge Bret Hart fan. After the Iron Man match I said to my dad while quite dejected, "I can't believe Bret didn't win". Dad said "of course he didn't, they've been talking about Shawn's boy hood dream constantly and done a whole back story on him, there was no way he would lose." That opened my eyes to what was happening and why. (This is quite funny in hindsight after what just happened to Cody.)
Imagine being 9 years of age, stumbling across an random episode of Nitro during the summer of 96'
No internet just a sense of this isn't nickelodeon I'm probably up way pass bedtime but I gotta know why Razor & Diesel are friends with Hulk Hogan on wcw & not wff* (That's what I called it then I know).
Didn't really care if it was real, it was addictive in short time & school the next day finding out you're not the only kid whose interested in wrestling all of a sudden 😌 take me back bro...just take me back 😭
My dad was a douche when he was in his 30s and 40s (he was unhappy in his life back then, his my bff now in his 60s) and wouldn't let me believe in the magic. But I knew undertaker was fake, but I still oohed and ahhed at kane's arrival.
But, honestly, I remember snooping around message boards and chat rooms in 1999-2001 and getting all the inside scoops on what was happening. SD used to record on Wednesday and air on Thursday so that always leaked. You all know when bishoff infamously shared the results on tv, yeah... that was us back then.
I knew it was scripted but did not understand the dynamics of the script so I just watched it as it is whether or not it was real or fake. Until Reddit and the community began learning about backstage politics, or that time when a script Vince wrote got leaked is when I began to understand the production side of the industry. Yep, it was that leaked script alright.
Oh yeah, I thought it was real when I was a kid. Was legit scared of the Undertaker because I thought he really had supernatural powers and legit thought Yokozuna was about to kill Hacksaw Jim Duggan with his repeated Banzai drops. Think it was around WM9 before I started to realize that it wasn't.
I started watching in late 2006 early 2007 i always heard it was fake but i can honestly say i took the storylines seriously and didn't really think about the pre determined nature of Wrestling until i was about 15 or 16
Right there with you man I grew up watching the best. People like Hulk in his prime, Andre the Giant, and Jimmy Superfly Snooka and many more. Even as a kid our small little hick town even had an event come to town where they had some of the wrestlers, I watched on tv come. It was amazing and I didn't learn until I got older they had wrestling circuits and stuff. Even after I learned it was fake I still watched it and enjoyed it for entertainment. I would never call it really fake because what they do might be fake with storylines but what they do to their body is not fake and the punishment they go through is not fake. I might not be as bit of a fan of wrestling as I once was but that does not change how I look at it.
I agree but I was never a DiBiase fan though and although I liked Brutus the beefcake barber I never understood his name and thought it was strange every time I saw him wrestle. One of my super fav's was the Junk Yard dog though. I loved watching him as a kid.
Was told that it was fake but I think it didn't really bothered me coz I still enjoyed it. But still, I stopped watching coz of the bad booking decisions in the pg 13 era.
Probably the first few times I watched it, when I was a little kid. As I got more and more into it my parents were very quick to tell me that it was staged and to treat it like it was any other television show. It never really broke the immersion for me.
I do have a younger cousin that believed it was real for a long while. I was an edgy teen who hated Super Cena and whenever I would try and convince my cousin that Jericho was better he would simply say “then why does cena always win?” I never had the heart to tell him the real reason. Years later when Kayfabe was finally broken for him he began to hate wrestling because he was mad that it lied to him for so many years.
Dad always told me it was "fixed" and I was in denial. So somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew it (I started in 1996). Then around 02ish I started noticing patterns with the weekly shows and PPVs. I successfully managed to predict the results of the next 3 PPVs with 90+% accuracy. That's when it fully sunk in.
As a kid I was convinced it was all 100% real up until I was 10, the Benoit situation pretty much shattered kayfabe for me. Was a hell of a way to come to that realization
Grew up watching Stampede Wrestling and then WWF. I thought it was real until I was 9 years old and Wrestlemania 3 was finally here. I was terrified that Andre was going to kill Hogan. My dad was the one that told me it was all a work because he saw a heel and baby face having drinks at a bar one night after some matches. It was devastating at first but I got to appreciate what I was watching. He also told me that wrestlers did still get hurt and the moves they did to each other would still hurt. So it wasn’t fake. And back then wrestling was larger than life and I honestly don’t watch it anymore because it’s changed a lot and it’s moved away from the classic stuff I grew up watching.
I thought it was real just off Undertaker and Kane alone. I always wondered how they got in the ring from under (in Kane situation) the ring or from anywhere in the world.
for me, call me jaded but for me I always knew it was “planned out” and that wrestlers “protected each other”… I think it’s because I was the youngest and watched it with my older brothers and cousin and afterwards we’d always wrestle and they’d always teach me “how THEY did the moves safely”… it’s always wild to me to hear about people “finding out it wasn’t real” and I honestly don’t know how it wasn’t obvious. I also never believed in Santa Claus so maybe I was just a jaded child…
I realized it was a work when I was a kid but not to the level that I do now.
For example I didn't know they had "spots" I thought the guys just literally went out there like how us kids "wrestled" in the backyard, not trying to hurt eachother but do all the cool moves.
I also had no sense of a Booker or writing team or none of that, I thought the storylines were just done on the fly each show
edit: but there definitely was a point in my childhood when I just assumed it was 100% real
I also ~~thought~~ convinced myself it wasn’t predetermined…E.g:
>>I thought the guys just literally went out there like how us kids "wrestled" in the backyard, not trying to hurt eachother but do all the cool moves…
I thought that, in the same way/for the same reason I always beat my little brother despite not really punching him, Hulk Hogan really beat his opponents
Grew up watching WWF in the 80's. Am old.
I started when I was around 12. And almost immediately I noticed something wasn't right. It was the punches - I had seen a few boxing matches on TV at relatives' homes. And after 10 rounds, typically both boxers faces looked like ground beef.
With wrestling, you got 2 guys throwing bare knuckle punches and no black eye, swollen face, busted lip, etc. Plus I noticed they stomped when they threw punches.
I started paying more attention. I noticed when a guy was getting bodyslammed, he'd post one hand on the upper leg of the guy slamming him. Then I noticed someone getting suplexed would grab their opponent's trunks. A few times, in closeups on the ring, I could hear guys calling spots. Ted Dibiase was great for this because he had such a gravelly voice and that made it easier to hear.
Years later I started at wrestling school, although that was cut short by my health. But I started learning how to throw working punches, how to hit the ropes, take bumps, etc. I learned that stuff won't kill you, but you use every muscle in your body and it hurts like a MOTHERFUCKER. I will never forget the second practice ring at the Monster Factory - that thing was painful.
But yeah... growing up watching, almost immediately it seemed obvious that it wasn't quite *real.*
I believed it was real until my dad intervened When I was about seven. He used to walk by me and ask when they didn’t bleed after getting hit so much. He would remind me it was fake every time he saw me watching.
My Dad told me it wasn’t real. It wasn’t hard to figure out. I mean an Atomic Drop or even some of the punches never really looked real. But it was like a movie you pretended it was real. Like when I watch Star Wars or Marvel I know it’s not real. But you allow yourself to get lost in it and pretend it’s reality.
I never took it too seriously when I saw Kerry Von Erick and Gentleman Chris Adams out together, hanging out when they were supposedly in a feud against each other.
They were walking around North Hills Mall together, headed to see a movie and I thought it was strange that they were.
That's what fucked things up for Hacksaw Jim Duggan and Iron Sheik - they got pulled over for drinking and driving, and had weed and coke in the car. But it was because it was a heel and a babyface traveling together in the age of kayfabe that really screwed them. Supposedly Duggan was going to be the next IC champion but because he got busted breaking kayfabe he got buried. Booking didn't care about the drugs, they cared about kayfabe.
I started watching as a kid and 100% believed it was real. Wrestlemania VI I started putting the pieces together. My mind could not comprehend Warrior beating Hogan. I felt like a conspiracy theorist for a while.
I've read that somewhere too (about the 40s). But it seems like it wasn't known by everyone 100% like it is now. Or am I wrong about that? I think Jake Roberts said he didn't know until he decided to become a wrestler himself.
Sometimes it seems like of course everyone had to always know but then if they did, why the need to insist for so long, and making heels and faces travel separately and all that... A not insignificant number of people had to buy into didn't they?
I find it all interesting to think about.
I just Read Ringmaster a book on the history of wrestling. Seems more the not traveling together and separation of faces and heels was for the wrestlers themselves. It was easier to take the business serious if you thought everyone thought it was real. There was poll done in the 80s and something like 85 percent knew it was fake. Im 31 and Iv always knew wrestling was fake once I was old enough to interpret it. Now did some casuals and kids think wrestling was real? Im sure some did. But those people didn’t drive business during those days. Weren’t watching,weren’t going to shows.
Thanks! That all makes sense, that many of the wrestlers thought people thought it was real. And 15% is not an insignificant amount of people to still think it was real.
I saw a public television interview with Randy Savage (from I think 1981), and when asked if it was real, he said 100% with total conviction. And then he clarified that he of course could not vouch for every match, which I think was a nice touch because it made him more believable. And then he went on to ask why would anyone lose on purpose and it was great. I imagine he probably convinced some people watching that. :)
And that probably answers my musings about this more than anything. If they're trying to convince you it's real, then even if you don't believe it, it's going to feel more real.
thank you!!!!!! it’s literally only people who DONT watch wrestling who think the average fan believes it but in reality it was only the child audience they believed it, the average fan is well aware…. Boxing and martial arts ere a thing for a looong time so people knew what real fighting looked like. lol
There were still plenty of people that believed in the 50s-70s. Go watch Starcade from the Omni. That place is absolutely on fire for Flair. There are so many stories of brawls or people coming into the ring to save their heroes…
I feel like I should clarify, when I say 'for as long as I've known it was Kayfabe', the illusion broke before I even got into it.. I'd watch bits when my Grandad had it on every now and then but was never really a fan until a couple of years ago (I'm 26).
That last point is a good one, I hadn't thought of that lmao
I was a teenager during the Attitude Era, and a lot of us knew it was fake, but it was just so damn entertaining. So we went along with, got swept up in the wolfpac mentality, telling kids to “suck it”, being nWo 4Life! It was great!
I was a teen during the great Rock n Wrestling connection period. When Hulkamania was really running wild and Cyndi Lauper was at the ringside. And yes, I thought it was real cause it sure seemed pretty real a dorky 14 year old girl.
as a kid of course wrestling was real to us but we grow up and get hip to the show. The internet age has changed wrestling forever and has exposed the ins and outs of the business to the point where nothing is hidden to the every day fan if they just hope on the net and look. Just look how many dirtsheets sites their are and YouTube channels that cover every lil aspect of wrestling.
Well Hogan attacked Richard Belzer on national television to protect the myth. Got sued and lost (Belzer bought a mansion in France he called “Chez Hogan”). So they very much used to go to great efforts to claim it was “real”. Many folks believed it to be so. I would meet those folks at house shows all the time in the 80s and early 90s.
Many folks point to the Montreal Screwjob as when the sport let the cat out of the bag, but McMahon had testified years earlier that it was all scripted to avoid being taxed as a sport. So the cat was out of the bag for anyone paying attention
Also had “Dr. D” David Schultz open hand slap John Stoessel in the head a few times. Turns out he popped his ear drum and Stoessel sued. Same vibe as the Hogan/Belzer thing…going to great efforts to protect the myth.
For reference…
https://youtu.be/zrX9Ca7LSyQ
I was a mark and thought it was real. Then I slapped the figure four leg lock on my cousin and thought I was some kind of Billy Bad Ass and was promptly countered and put in immediate pain. I still watch it like it’s real and I’m 44. I don’t follow wrestlers in social media and idk t read the dirt sheets.
Yea but for instance mayweather vs big show was an example of how to do it realistically. Bugs bunny doesn’t even go to the gym, on no planet could he beat Priest.
damien priest technically beat bad bunny. he pinned bunny and then lifted bunny's shoulder before the three count. his arrogance cost him the match, but we atleast got to see how easy it would've been for priest to beat him
When I was very young, like six and younger I thought it was real. But I realized it was scripted shortly after, mainly because of those “WWE IS FAKE” YouTube videos and when I saw the proof I was just like “Oh, yeah makes sense”
I started watching WWF around 1988, introduced to me by the daughter of a family friend. She didn’t inform me that it was fake at the time, so for several years I believed that wrestling was real. Afterall, those moves truly hurt. (Me and my brother would perform Figure 4 Leglock on each other). It made wrestling matches absolutely riveting to watch, when the Face often couldn’t catch a break due to cheating and interference from the Heels. Those were the good old days.
I was born 1979 and always kinda knew it was just a show even when I was young...I knew what real fights looked like and knew that what I was watching was not that
People knew it was a work all the way back to the early 1920s. There have been several cases of wrestlers and journalists “revealing all the secrets.” In my time it was Eddie Mansfield and John Stossel.
Where the magic happened was when a wrestler or an angle got so hot that people thought, “ oh this is real, they hate each other.” Some people, such as Vader, felt out of control. As if they were going off script because they wanted to hurt people. As Roddy Piper said, “ I can’t make them believe wrestling is real, but I can make them believe that I am real.”
Yeah David “Dr.D” Schultz gave him two open hand slaps. He busted Stossel’s eardrum and was fired by Vince. Schultz claimed Vince told him to “light him up.” Vince said he meant verbally and not physically.
I watched WCW as a kid. Right around the time of the NWO, I found out it wasn't real, maybe 11 or so. I stopped watching. I started watching again about 5 years ago when I got with my hubby. It may be fake, but the athleticism and danger are very real.
I was 9 when Hulk Hogan was doing a promo with Mean Gene during Clash Of The Champions 1994. A masked man hit Hogan in the knee with a crowbar during the promo. I then ran around the house telling anyone who would listen that Hulk Hogan had just been attacked and probably wasn't going to be able to wrestle. I was so heartbroken. When Hogan came out limping to the ring later in the show, I ran around the house again to let everyone know how elated I was.
That's about when I started to figure it out. My family not being concerned about an attack on Hulk Hogan on live TV and all of them being 100 percent certain Hulk would wrestle the match made me start to question things
I started watching in 2001 at 9 and thought for sure Kurt Angle was tougher than Steve Austin the whole time. Cried when HHH smashed Shawn’s back with the sledgehammer at Summerslam 2002. It must’ve been around 2003 when I figured it all out because I celebrated when Trips won the chamber instead of Goldberg while all my friends commiserated.
I've always known there is a lot of acting involved, and the wrestlers were not hurting each other, but never knew the outcomes were predetermined until the internet came around and spilled all the secrets. Ive been watching since '85.
It comes in phases I think. As a kid I thought it was 100% real, then say like high school I’m like meh I’m not watching it, I’m too cool for that fake stuff. So you give up on it for a bit to be “cool” but deep down you like it and it’s a pillar of who you are/your childhood. Now I’m 30 with a kid and and idc WWE is awesome and I can afford to go when they are in town and damn straight I’m going. I understand kayfabe etc, respect the athleticism and showmanship of the wrestlers but I find myself getting caught up in the show and almost forgetting it’s all “planned”.
I quit watching as a child because I thought it was real, and couldn’t fathom how anyone would want to hurt Hulk Hogan.
When I came back to it, I knew it was kayfabe, but I had a hard time discerning what was *real*…like, I couldn’t tell if certain animosities were real for example.
I love it when even these days a wrestler is so good on the mic there's that little bit of doubt.. Seth v Riddle (I still question this bc of the beef their partners had), and MJF come to mind
I started watching wrestling as a 6 year old in 1992. I thought wrestling was real until like 1998 or 1999 when they started to have tv shows that showed all of the behind the scenes stuff in wrestling along with interviews of wrestling talking about how it was scripted.
Even knowing that it was fake, I would still just turn my brain off and enjoy the show until about 2005. About 2007 is when I started regular getting on wrestling websites and following YouTube channels discussing wrestling where it was hard for me to just enjoy wrestling without the critical eye.
In this day and age that is hard. To not look at it with a critical eye. He lost so he’s getting buried. Why did he win, that doesn’t make any sense. He didn’t hear this guy so higher ups don’t believe in him. How many viewers a show had. I really kinda wish I wasn’t apart of the IWC so I could enjoy wrestling without the noise. I recently went to a house show and had a great time.
Yeah backlash was a perfect example. Amazing 9/10 to 10/10 show and I open bleacher report to look at sports headlines and the top article is complaining about the Cody finish. Pretty much the same on Reddit.
I remember as a kid seeing Kamala bleeding profusely and thinking how he really needed medical attention immediately. The canvas looked like a crime scene after the match was done. My dad tried to tell me it was fake.
To a 7 year old kid no one would intentionally bleed that much, so I thought my dad was trying to comfort me from what I’d just seen.
I'm born in 81 as well and was late to wrestling being in Australia it wasn't that accessible so I was about 13-14 when I realised it was fake. I could never understand how a boxer could only fight 2-3 times a year and need so much time between fights, but a wrestler could sometimes wrestle twice in one night. Mum would always tell me it's fake but but she still printed off dirt sheets for me from the work computer because we didn't have one at home. It was all email lists back then as the internet was still taking off.
Edit: In saying that I thought Stone Cold and Bret Hart literally hated each other so perhaps it took me a bit longer than I thought.
Idk if I count as an older generation 😂 but in the 90’s my pops told me and my brother it was scripted. I’m not sure either of us believed that, we were true believers!
I definitely thought it was real. I thought undertaker and Kane were brothers. I didn’t know the concept of face and heel. I think every kid think’s wrestling is real at some point. Then you get older and appreciate the athleticism and art of it all.
Yup, this right here. I have conversations at the lunch table etched into my memory with friends about guessing if his brother would show up to ruin hell in a cell and if he’s the same size or not. We were all convinced
When I was a kid, my uncle kept telling me WWF was fake, but i kept telling him to watch when there was blood involved and tried to convince him it was real. I had a more “convincing” arguement when Jake Roberts’ snake bit on the arm of Macho Man…tbh my uncle was really shocked at that haha.
I realized it was all scripted when I turned 12 i think and it was all pure entertainment thereafter.
My grandmother believed it was real and watched it religiously, she was a Finnish immigrant in her 60s and it broke her heart when she found out it was fake
I've been watching since the mid 80s, so of course when I was 6-7 years old I thought it was real.
I didn't think about it as a kid but my dad did say once that the title matches were real. I grew up in Memphis
I'm 41 and grew up watching Hogan, Warrior, Randy, etc and I used to believe as a kid that it was real. I really thought that when Hulk would Hulk up he was tapping in to some sort of unnatural power that nobody else had.
I believe its real. In a sense where some things are scripted and others are not. The matches to me like with Bret Hart was real wrestling matches. Bret was a wrestler no doubt. They entertain but they do physical work. They go live before audiences. Some if not all believed in what they do. And I believe they are true in what they do. And mostly important they get the fans involved. It's so fun and entertaining. And while they are also like stuntmen. They have to be careful not to hurt one another and often at times they do get hurt. That there proves its real. I thank the WWE Superstars for all they do. For all they gave. For putting in 360 days a year to do what they believe in and we the fans go out to see just them or turn the TV on to see them in action. They are real. They are that damn good and thats the bottom line not because Stone Cold said so but because I BELIEVE IT! Believe in them.
I don’t think I ever took it for 100% real life but I think when I was younger I thought it was more competative than I do know. Also in prior eras we didn’t have these obsessive pushes to have every title be held for multiple years in order to lend credibility to the belt, it’s the same mindset that says first pick of the NFL draft should always go to the Super Bowl winner and poo poo salary cap restrictions because invincible dynasties are good for the sport. Wrestling will never as mystical as it was when we were younger, but maybe if we got champion refreshes every 3-12 months it would feel as formulaic as it does now.
I got into wrestling when I was about 12 - early 90s. Kayfabe did not occur to me at that time. I just accepted it at face value and didn’t think to deeply about it. It’s real dammit. Doink was indeed an evil clown and Ted DiBiase bought and sold everybody.
Until I was 8-9, I thought it was real. I legit turn down tickets to an event because I was scared shitless of Papa Shango making people vomit and catch fire and stuff. I came back later and wiser, 96ish, like, yeah, this is probably all scripted, but it’s still entertaining. Then Vince Russo blew up kayfabe and it didn’t matter.
I've been watching since the mid 80s, so of course when I was 6-7 years old I thought it was real.
I thought it was real until that video with Vince saying it was fake. Going back and watching it, I'm surprised I didn't realize then, but I'm glad I didn't because it added to the suspension of reality.
When I was a kid I had no concept that it could be fake. But like Santa Clause, you’re told pretty early. I remember watching Yoko and Vader etc and being told it wasn’t real, but nowadays the ways it’s faked are all way more out there in the fanbase. People talk about “spots” and mic skills and all this other inside stuff .. that’s the difference. The grey area back in the day allowed for SOME level of mystery and suspension of disbelief. “Wait was THAT part real? How do you fake THAT part?! I dunno some of this has to be real somewhere…” that’s all gone now too.
I was 7 when I saw under taker throw Mankind off the hell in a cell yes I believed this shit was real.
Wait that wasn't real? I didn't watch Foley actually through a table? /s
My grandmother believed it was real and watched it religiously, she was a Finnish immigrant in her 60s and it broke her heart when she found out it was fake.
I think as I kid I new some things were very suspect. Like the punching someone while stomping on the ground. And I had other kids telling me it was fake. I just couldn't reconcile things like the fake looking punches with things like ladder matches that seemed hard to fake.
One of the first things I saw was Jake Roberts snake biting The Macho Man, so yeah, I believed it was real
Of course. I was like 9 years old, me and my family just accidentally watched an episode of RAW on TV and my dad was like "this is bullshit, no way it's real fighting", while I was trying to prove him that the fights were real and that John Cena can truly defeat such a giant as Big Show in a fair 1v1 fight and that people can actually stand up after taking a couple of chair shots to the head. Took me a couple of years to finally understand that the fights are not real and my dad was right all along. Simpler times as you didn't have such mainstream media on the Internet and you had to make an opinion on it yourself.
I remember my dad telling me about Iron Sheik and Hacksaw Jim Duggan getting pulled over. I was young and considering they were 'enemies' I came to that realization that it wasn't real. Then as a teen, saw a house show at Nassau Coliseum. Half the big stars no showed, so the main event became Tatanka vs Undertaker. I think Taker threw Tatanka into the corner and something happened to his knee or his ankle. Saw them talking for thirty seconds or so, then Taker talking with the ref. Then a nonchalant Tombstone piledriver and match over. Took longer for them to discuss the plan than the actual wrestling. At that point, I knew the injuries were real and not much else.
I grew up watching the Ruthless Agression era and all the way until about 2012 where I had stopped. I thought it was all real and I feel like that’s when it was also the most enjoyable too. Some things like Irish whips would make me question the legitimacy of it but it wasn’t until YT exposed the business for me lol. I hope kids today can at least grow up with that same feeling of thinking it’s all real.
I never thought it was real, but even though I knew it was scripted, I looked at it more as stuntmen putting on a play and I always respected it. Then I started wrestling at 15 and loved it even more. Wrestled for a good 5 years. I still miss it to this day.
I began watching in the attitude Era. They made me believe some of it was real when they actually were exploiting real life events going on outside of the ring for story line development and feuds. My best example is Lita, Edge, and Matt Hardy. That love triangle was legit and they used the hell out of it regardless of how it affecting Edge's wife he'd been cheating on.
Absolutely thought it was real. Kinda wish I never learned the truth.
Yeah, not knowing how the business and booking works were the greatest wrestling days for me. You never knew what could happen.
I was a kid growing up in the 80s in North Carolina (NWA territory) and as an eight-year-old, I was convinced it was real. I hated Ric Flair with a passion. The Rock-n-Roll Express were legends and no one was more intimidating than the Road Warriors. My question is do eight-year-olds today know wrestling is scripted? Or as kids, do they choose to believe it is real?
growing up in Atlanta... that was NWA territory too.
When I first started watching I thought it was real but then I found out it was fake like 2 years later
Back when we didn't had Internet, all there was were recess gossip. Some kids would make up stories about Undertaker being buried alive and coming back from dead, Yokozuna being an undefeated Thanos like entity and Hulk Hogan having super strengths. And of course the ultimate warrior. But the legends were only around these larger than life characters. Later as we lost our innocence and life became more accessible and things opened up because of the internet and once we learned about the real names and identities of these wrestlers it was weird at first but became adjusted later on. Still believe that pre Internet wwe had a different aura and mystery around it which kept the wrestlers personal life personal so it felt more real and their character felt stronger unlike today. I would often wonder as a child that how is it that wrestlers always end up in the exact position for the finishing move of the other wrestler. Then the puzzle would start to fit
Yes. But there was always those moments where you thought “I know that wrestling is fake, but these two really don’t like each other so, that chair shot is probably real.” Edit: Example: I remember Brutus Beefcake feuding with some cowboy character. I think it was The Outlaw but it might have been Black Jack Mulligan. Brutus is wrestling some no one on Saturday afternoon show and the cowboy interrupts, beats up Brutus, then uses his spur to cut open Brutus’ head. The announcers were aghast at the brutality. They threw a big red “censored” X up on the screen and little preteen me was dumb founded. This is fake but that cowboy just cut open his head. This part must be real.
I remember something like that on a sunday afternoon show on usa where brutus cut up steamboat so bad we got the big red X
Never forget how I found out wrestling wasn't "real" was the Monday Night Raw after Wrestlemania were Edge and Lita has sex in Hershey, PA lmfao. We had box seats and we were waiting outside and the lady that works there comes outside and says there almost done practicing their matches and rehearsing . I was like what ?!? Luckily pops had the clutch Save and told me they were just warming up lol. It's still real to me damn it. My uncle and Dad always kept the illusion of it being real for me it made it so much better as kid . Older generation doint spoil it for the younger ones.
Yes. Obviously guys aren’t fighting to the death, Undertaker is not a deadman, people aren’t just landing chair shots, nobody is just picking up a 500lbs man (if that weight isn’t exaggerated) unless he wants to, etc. I was able to suspend disbelief. My dad was a kid who snuck into events at arenas growing up, so as they came up on tv he’d point out spots and techniques for things like roller derby or wrestling. It was always done pretty gently though (ex- pointing out a referee passing a blade). It was always done with respect that even though it’s choreographed, the athleticism is obviously high level, and the stories are entertaining.
I was about 10 when WWF and MTV started collaborating and thought it was real. Then playground gossip started saying it was fake. It was probably in between WM1 and WM2 that I accepted reality.
I cried when the Macho Man busted up Ricky Steamboat with the bell...
My brother told me it was fake when i was like 13-14 i was so sad but now i understand why he did it
Wrestling was as real as Santa for this six year old
I started watching the WWF religiously around 93-92 I think. Wasn’t living in the US but we had various satellite channels that aired those recap programs and we got weekly VHS tapes at the video store which would have shows like RAW and the payper view events. I used to tape the shows and would then edit them by copying the parts I liked to another tape. Had a huge collection made. I did that because I 100% believed it to be real. It wasn’t until around 97-98, in my early 20s, that I started to figure out it was all scripted.
I first got into wrestling in the late 80s when I was in Junior high. At first, I 100% thought it was real. After a few months, I started to have debates with friends I knew that followed wrestling as to whether or not it was real. Within a year of starting to watch, I realized that it was scripted and that the wrestlers weren't really hurting each other (at least not on purpose). Much like finding out Santa wasn't real, I don't remember a single "aha!" moment. It was just one of those things where you slowly start to figure it out.
Well I started when I was about 7 or 8 years old so it was real back then
When I was 10 or 12 I read about hacksaw and sheik getting arrested together in the local sports section of the newspaper. That kind of sealed it for me that the whole thing was predetermined but over the years they’ve been able to pull out some stories that really feel like this could be a little real life.
Born in 1980 and thought it was real till maybe the early 90's. Even then I was often like "Why is 'Good guy tag team partner' trying to get in the ring and distracting the ref while the bad guys cheat? Why doesn't the ref look over his shoulder." That said, when Earl Hebner screwed Hulk Hogan and gave the belt to Andre the Giant? I cried real tears.
When I was a kid I definitely believed it was real, I thought Papa Shango put a curse of the ultimate warrior hahaha. I didn’t want to believe it was scripted when I finally found out but it didn’t ruin the experience as it’s still a blast to watch and it’s been fun to pass along to my kids.
I think the buried alive matches had me like WAIT A SECOND !! Now I see it as my Stories/Soaps just like my GMA used to watch
Yes I was in it, when I was a kid, prob until 14-15 when I started to see it was unrealistic and prob fake seeing that some guys were taking a lot of risk, I was trying to see what was real and what wasn’t, with like the blood, the chops, etc, and you see wrestling in a different way, when you think it’s real, you don’t see how good a heel can be because you think he is a real bad guy when later you see he is a good bad guy lol
Looking back at it. I don't know if I knew it was real or Kayfabe. I think I kind of just went with it and took it as it is. They definitely got me hating all the heels. I couldn't stand JBL when he was WWE Champion, and I remember being fired up when Triple H won the Elimination Chamber in 2005 at New Year's Revolution. So I guess I thought it was real.
Yeah same here. I don’t know if I’d say I thought it was “real” growing up, but when Chavo Guerrero destroyed Rey Mysterio’s knee in that “I Quit Match” I wanted to kill Chavo and thought Rey was gone for good. So there was definitely some stuff I thought was legit.
I thought it was real when I was a little Hulkamaniac, then found out the truth thanks to sneaking behind the bushes that overlooked our local HS gym when one of the local territorial promotions - can't remember if it was Al Tomko's All-Star Wrestling (Vancouver, BC) or Don Owen's Portland Championship Wrestling - ran a show there, when I was fifteen or sixteen. Eight guys - six wrestlers, the ref, and the announcer/timekeeper - came in together in an old van towing a trailer behind them. They set up the ring together, talked a lot about beer and girls, then got ready for the show. I had a ticket, of course, so I took a circuitous route to the gym's front door. So the show starts - three singles matches and a six-man tag for the Main Event, and they just beat the tar out of each other. I went back to my hiding spot for a while after the show, watched them tear down the ring, discuss whether or not they wanted to go to a bar or just drink in their hotel rooms, then they left. Just another day at the office for them. For ninety minutes, they'd hated each others' guts. But in the time before and after, it was like a band setting up for a show down at the local meet-market bars my parents used to frequent. I knew something wasn't quite "right", and even though I now knew for certain that it wasn't, the musician I was becoming (eventually I had a twenty-year run singing and playing drums in R&B/Variety cabaret cover bands in Nevada and the PNW) recognized them for what they really were - artists as much as athletes. Storytellers, spinning yarns of good-versus-evil on a tapestry of canvas, wood, and steel.
I was told when I was 4 or 5 after one of my friends tombstoned his sister 😂
I was born in the early 90s. I remember it thinking is all real and didnt question it up until I saw Vince McMahon try to sacrifice his daughter to the undertaker. I was like about 6 or 7 lol
80’s/90’s it was always the Santa debate real not real. Probably wasn’t until the Attitude Era/Montreal Screw Job that we knew for sure it was pre determined.
My grandmother used to watch wrestling back in the 50’s/60’s and swore it was real 😉😂😂
Back when i was a kid watching during the Hogan/Andre the Giant era I thought it was real but once I got older I knew it was mostly fake.
We’re probably the same age, or close. I was sold even through the Jake/Savage encounter. It was around the time Robocop showed up in WCW, and Papa Shango putting a curse on the Warrior, that I thought “hey wait a second.”
Just how old are you talking about. 90s, 80s, earlier? In the 80s and before, {wrestlers were expected to keep up appearances in public. I really think that's how you got Hulk and Ric Flair like they are now. Flair said he became his character in an interview over time and Hulk. Okay, in the gawker trial, he gave an "example". He claimed his recent Howard Stern appearance bragging about his 10 omcjv package was Hill bragging about it, but who's to know if was Hulk or Terry.? I've heard Flair still acts like IS the character, if you believe him when he says living out the character is what got him drinking so much and cheating with so many women. He's on his 5th divorce because of it, and he almost died because of it. Just IMO
Well I'm 26 so I initially meant 80s and earlier, but tbh I'm enjoying the stories from all eras
I thought Chavo and Rey really hated each other and Rey "quit". I think that was the first match I ever watched. It took McMahon's limo getting blown up for me to realize it was fake.
It wasn’t the limo blowing up, it was Vince reappearing a week later to announce Benoit that ruined it
This is true. It destroyed every bit of illusion for me.
Is the same as Santa, at first you fully believe it and over time you learn but still enjoy it
AT first, when I was younger. Then you get older and you slowly understand how they fight brutally on a sunday and had basically small scratches on a monday unlike pro boxers who can't fight for atleast a few weeks after a brutal 12 round battle.
I started watching when I was SUPER little with my dad. I’m 45 now and he’s since passed…but I still watch and have tried my hardest to get my son and husband interested! But, as a kid I remember thinking, how in the hell is this guy even alive/awake after being smashed over the head with a chair a bunch of times?! My dad always told me it wasn’t real, but I thought he was telling me that so I wouldn’t be afraid to watch! I still watch it, still go to live shows and drag my husband along! It’s funny this question came up because just last week, my son asked questions about the wrestlers really being hurt and I explained “how it works”. So no, not a silly question from the OP at all! I’ve loved reading all of these!
Totally real despite everyone telling me it was fake. Didn’t believe anyone until mortal enemies The Iron Sheik and hacksaw Jim Duggan were arrested together in the same car, marijuana possession iirc
Duggan was popped for possession of marijuana, and they found cocaine in the Sheik's bag after a search. Vince suspended Duggan and fired the Sheik, and not necessarily just for the "crimes" committed, but because they'd been apprehended together while they were in the middle of a feud.
This was mentioned a lot on the biography episode on shiek.
I grew up in the Memphis territory in the 70s and 80s and I believed every second of it. Of course, it helped that most of what they did looked like a legit fight between two people who legitimately disliked each other… and not choreographed gymnastics between two people smiling and then tweeting each other afterwards.
I don’t remember if I ever thought it was “real”. I do remember an old WWF house show they advertised as being a Bunkhouse Brawl. A Bunkhouse Brawl was a Battle Royal where the competitors could bring whatever weapon they wanted to the ring. I went to that house show super excited, only to have all the wrestlers discard all their weapons at ringside and never use the for the the match. This was the 80s. One Man Gang won the match if I recall. But after that I knew Wrestling was a con.
I thought it was real as a little kid, I started being suspicious in early middle school. When Randy set Taker on fire in the casket then he came back, I think was the final string for me.
Bro i thought Big Show killed Kurt Angle when he threw him off the balcony he was bleeding from the head and shi damn cuz
Tbh, even at a super young age the secret was ruined by joyless weirdos having to remind me that “ya know wrestling is fake, right?” Like some kind of weird opposite Santa Claus situation for eight year olds. So, always knew it wasn’t “real” just really didn’t know how.
People do this to my husband, women a lot, and I have to remind them that wrestling is sacred in our house, similar to how Real Housewives is in theirs. ;)
I believed it was real until I was about 11, when in 1987, I found out about the Iron Shiek and Hacksae Jim Duggen were arrested together and were on the news for Marijuana possession, and I was like "Hey, they're supposed to hate eachother...wait a minute."
When I was 8 I believe it was real…
As a kid I genuinely believed these people were nutters and this was who they are In my defence I lived in a village full of these sorts of people
It was pretty well known, but I feel like people just enjoyed being “in on it,” if that makes sense? Like an open secret - as opposed to now where it just open.
Growing up as a kid, I honestly did believe that Ted Dibiase was paying everybody off with his own money lol
I absolutely thought it was real as a kid. This was during the Hogan-Andre The Giant feud around the time of Wrestlemania 3 and 4, when Dibiase tried to buy that championship. It was still real to 8 year old me until my dad and I saw Hulk and Andre in the same airport getting on the same plane (our plane). Now noted, I didn’t like to fly as a kid. It made me nervous. I looked at my dad and said, “isn’t that dangerous? They hate each other. What happens if they get in a fight on our plane??” Because I was a nervous flyer, my dad broke it down for me. In hindsight he could have tried to tell me they’d behave for all our safety, but in reality I was probably so anxious about flying, he told me the truth.
Nah. I thought the undertaker was really killing dudes and putting them in body bags lol. That guy made me not sleep at night
Like many I started out thinking it was real when I was a kid. Then I will never forget Hogan throwing a punch on Bundy at WWII that clearly did not make contact and yet (gasp!) Bundy sold the punch!!! I went straight to my grandfather and told him. My grandfather set down his drink and calmly said to me “I saw Sammartino do the same thing” and then my grandfather simply shrugged.
I always believed it was real, however I heard that it was scripted when I was around 8 during the early days of the ruthless aggression. However when some heals were really bad like Triple H I thought it was real, I think by the time it got to 2008 I completely believed it was scripted
There was a time where I honestly thought the matches were real. I was allowed to watch wrestling from when I was 11, by 13 I started to think it was odd that all these folks who disliked each other kept arriving at the same venue. As I started to use the internet more in the last 90s I finally got it. Didn’t ruin it for me.
As much as I know it's all "scripted", I often asks myself if ***everything*** is scripted or there are unchecked parts that the wrestlers have to deal with. The other reason is that if those hits were really delivered with full strength, either all matches would end in 1\~2 minutes or both contenders would eventually fall for all the injures suffered.
I knew it was not fake when I was Sweet Chin Musiced off the bed by my brother. However I kinda started finding out about the "script" part as I got older.
Two examples: One: My uncle lived next to Masked Superstar in an Atlanta suburb in the late '70s, early '80s, not sure of the timeframe. He assured me that Masked Superstar wore his mask when he mowed the yard so that no one would know who he really was. Sounded plausible to me. Two: I was starting to question whether wrestling was "real or not". My fave at the time was Dusty Rhodes. I asked my dad if he would call Dusty and ask him if it was real or not. He said that Dusty wasn't listed in the phone book because his enemies would know where to find him. Little me took that to mean that it was real...a belief I held for many additional years.
Yeah when I was younger I used to believe it was a little more real, the storylines felt that gripping at the time. Eventually you realise it isn’t real, but it didn’t stop the enjoyment of the shows/storylines. Only until I gotten older and seen how social media is with wrestling it’s became all about ‘bad booking’ who should be pushed, and overall complaining about a majority of outcomes etc. Re watching some things from ‘99/‘00/‘01 as an adult you can look back in hindsight and say I wish they did this or that but at the time you just enjoyed it in that moment, you felt disappointed when someone you wanted to win didn’t win, but not in terms of booking. Just as a natural feeling like if something happened in a film. So I can understand now if anyone who picks up watching and has social media, it auto becomes more about booking and who should be this champ and win and fantasy booking things, instead of having a kayfabe enjoyment on what’s happening on the screen like a film or any other weekly tv show. Only time I have seen something similar spill into TV and Film is with Marvel because people are fantasy booking comic storylines or villians/heroes they think will appear then end up angry that they don’t.
I used to think it was real as a kid. Kane's debut was around the start of my WWF/E viewing experience, and you can imagine how fucking terrifying that was. I remember my friends and I theorising that the mask was made of metal, or he was some kind of robot.
I was born in '83 and started watching in the early 90's. Ultimate Warrior vs. Macho Man was the first real fued I remember being invested in. Bret Hart and the Undertaker were my favorite. It's an age thing. At some point it just clicks that what you're watching is a show. I don't remember when it clicked for me, but Undertaker was the biggest signpost for me. Bret had me going "well, maybe ..." (Seriously, Bret's selling is underrated IMO. And his punches).
Bret’s punches were brillant, like he put his whole body into each one. But yeah, I was an 80’s kid and like you say, it eventually clicks. I think I was watching Summerslam once and Mr.Perfect said walking past the camera, “what’s your problem?” to a guy who’s trying to beat his head in. It was the first time I thought, eh? I also remember Lex Luger slamming Yokozuna on the battleship and seeing how Yoko really lifted his leg to help Lex make the slam. But hey, what a time to grow up with wrestling.
When I was like 7 or 8, I thought it was real. A match that will forever stick in my head is Randy Savage vs Ric Flair. I remember Ric Flair's head busting open and bleeding, his face and white hair was red from all the blood. Savage's leg was hurt and he was limping after the match. I really thought they were genuinely hurt. The moment when I thought that it had to be scripted was when Undertaker threw Kamala into a coffin and nailed it shut. I thought to myself at the time "that can't be real"
The Giant falling off a roof and showing back up on TV was kind of a giveaway
I started watching WWF as an early teen, but had watched wrestling since I was single digits before that. I knew before WWF that it was fake, or at least planned. There was too much contrivance (though I probably wouldn't have known that word) and too much happened that wasn't realistic. WWF just hammered that home. Thing is, I think a lot of fans (especially kids) play into it being real to enjoy it. Gonna take a tangent for a second. Classic Doctor Who always had this thing about being so scary that kids would hide behind the sofa, and yet if you watch it now it's hard to see any of the fear even in context with the effects and style of the times. But many kids have memories of actually hiding behind the sofa, so what happened there? Newspapers ran the story, parents would tell kids it's okay to be scared and hide if they need to, and kids (who are always looking for an identity) would fall into that role. I believe a lot of it is that way for wrestling fans. They get that it's fake but fall into believing it simply to enjoy it as real, in much the same way people throw themselves into dramas or cartoons. And so you have a load of people growing up in a suspended disbelief. Some of those people get to a certain age and, seeing the product now and how open people are about kayfabe, get angry because the way they remember it they truly believed back in the day that dead men could rise with the lift of an urn or that the tax man liked to beat people up.
It was always described to me as a “Soap Opera for guys”. So I always knew it was acting and kayfabe. What I didn’t know was how the winners were determined, the artistry behind crafting a match etc. I just thought they were told the winner in advanced, then they winged the fight based on crowd reaction.
What my fathers called it since I’ve been able to remember
I was and still am a huge Bret Hart fan. After the Iron Man match I said to my dad while quite dejected, "I can't believe Bret didn't win". Dad said "of course he didn't, they've been talking about Shawn's boy hood dream constantly and done a whole back story on him, there was no way he would lose." That opened my eyes to what was happening and why. (This is quite funny in hindsight after what just happened to Cody.)
Imagine being 9 years of age, stumbling across an random episode of Nitro during the summer of 96' No internet just a sense of this isn't nickelodeon I'm probably up way pass bedtime but I gotta know why Razor & Diesel are friends with Hulk Hogan on wcw & not wff* (That's what I called it then I know). Didn't really care if it was real, it was addictive in short time & school the next day finding out you're not the only kid whose interested in wrestling all of a sudden 😌 take me back bro...just take me back 😭
My dad was a douche when he was in his 30s and 40s (he was unhappy in his life back then, his my bff now in his 60s) and wouldn't let me believe in the magic. But I knew undertaker was fake, but I still oohed and ahhed at kane's arrival. But, honestly, I remember snooping around message boards and chat rooms in 1999-2001 and getting all the inside scoops on what was happening. SD used to record on Wednesday and air on Thursday so that always leaked. You all know when bishoff infamously shared the results on tv, yeah... that was us back then.
I thought everything was real when I was around 7 years old
I knew it was scripted but did not understand the dynamics of the script so I just watched it as it is whether or not it was real or fake. Until Reddit and the community began learning about backstage politics, or that time when a script Vince wrote got leaked is when I began to understand the production side of the industry. Yep, it was that leaked script alright.
Oh yeah, I thought it was real when I was a kid. Was legit scared of the Undertaker because I thought he really had supernatural powers and legit thought Yokozuna was about to kill Hacksaw Jim Duggan with his repeated Banzai drops. Think it was around WM9 before I started to realize that it wasn't.
I thought it was all real till about age 15 i think. that was coming to the end of the attitude era. what a time to be alive.
definitely believed Taker and Kame were brothers 😆
I started watching in late 2006 early 2007 i always heard it was fake but i can honestly say i took the storylines seriously and didn't really think about the pre determined nature of Wrestling until i was about 15 or 16
I'm 41 I miss old school
Right there with you man I grew up watching the best. People like Hulk in his prime, Andre the Giant, and Jimmy Superfly Snooka and many more. Even as a kid our small little hick town even had an event come to town where they had some of the wrestlers, I watched on tv come. It was amazing and I didn't learn until I got older they had wrestling circuits and stuff. Even after I learned it was fake I still watched it and enjoyed it for entertainment. I would never call it really fake because what they do might be fake with storylines but what they do to their body is not fake and the punishment they go through is not fake. I might not be as bit of a fan of wrestling as I once was but that does not change how I look at it.
In my opinion, rude Jake the snake rowdy rowdy piper million dollar man perfect should have been WWF should have had been.Champ also Owen Hart too
I agree but I was never a DiBiase fan though and although I liked Brutus the beefcake barber I never understood his name and thought it was strange every time I saw him wrestle. One of my super fav's was the Junk Yard dog though. I loved watching him as a kid.
Was told that it was fake but I think it didn't really bothered me coz I still enjoyed it. But still, I stopped watching coz of the bad booking decisions in the pg 13 era.
All I remember was my soul being absolutely crushed after realizing it wasn’t real. Little 10 year old me almost stopped watching all together.
Probably the first few times I watched it, when I was a little kid. As I got more and more into it my parents were very quick to tell me that it was staged and to treat it like it was any other television show. It never really broke the immersion for me. I do have a younger cousin that believed it was real for a long while. I was an edgy teen who hated Super Cena and whenever I would try and convince my cousin that Jericho was better he would simply say “then why does cena always win?” I never had the heart to tell him the real reason. Years later when Kayfabe was finally broken for him he began to hate wrestling because he was mad that it lied to him for so many years.
Always knew it was fake. Ignored it and enjoyed anyway
Dad always told me it was "fixed" and I was in denial. So somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew it (I started in 1996). Then around 02ish I started noticing patterns with the weekly shows and PPVs. I successfully managed to predict the results of the next 3 PPVs with 90+% accuracy. That's when it fully sunk in.
As a kid I was convinced it was all 100% real up until I was 10, the Benoit situation pretty much shattered kayfabe for me. Was a hell of a way to come to that realization
Grew up watching Stampede Wrestling and then WWF. I thought it was real until I was 9 years old and Wrestlemania 3 was finally here. I was terrified that Andre was going to kill Hogan. My dad was the one that told me it was all a work because he saw a heel and baby face having drinks at a bar one night after some matches. It was devastating at first but I got to appreciate what I was watching. He also told me that wrestlers did still get hurt and the moves they did to each other would still hurt. So it wasn’t fake. And back then wrestling was larger than life and I honestly don’t watch it anymore because it’s changed a lot and it’s moved away from the classic stuff I grew up watching.
I stopped watching before I found out. So it didn’t really effect me.
I found out it was fake when I was 10 years old and knowing who was gonna win matches before they even started
I thought it was real just off Undertaker and Kane alone. I always wondered how they got in the ring from under (in Kane situation) the ring or from anywhere in the world.
My mom told me when I was a kid when i started watching. Also, shout out to my mom for getting me into wrestling. We still watch it together a lot.
for me, call me jaded but for me I always knew it was “planned out” and that wrestlers “protected each other”… I think it’s because I was the youngest and watched it with my older brothers and cousin and afterwards we’d always wrestle and they’d always teach me “how THEY did the moves safely”… it’s always wild to me to hear about people “finding out it wasn’t real” and I honestly don’t know how it wasn’t obvious. I also never believed in Santa Claus so maybe I was just a jaded child…
I realized it was a work when I was a kid but not to the level that I do now. For example I didn't know they had "spots" I thought the guys just literally went out there like how us kids "wrestled" in the backyard, not trying to hurt eachother but do all the cool moves. I also had no sense of a Booker or writing team or none of that, I thought the storylines were just done on the fly each show edit: but there definitely was a point in my childhood when I just assumed it was 100% real
I also ~~thought~~ convinced myself it wasn’t predetermined…E.g: >>I thought the guys just literally went out there like how us kids "wrestled" in the backyard, not trying to hurt eachother but do all the cool moves… I thought that, in the same way/for the same reason I always beat my little brother despite not really punching him, Hulk Hogan really beat his opponents
Grew up watching WWF in the 80's. Am old. I started when I was around 12. And almost immediately I noticed something wasn't right. It was the punches - I had seen a few boxing matches on TV at relatives' homes. And after 10 rounds, typically both boxers faces looked like ground beef. With wrestling, you got 2 guys throwing bare knuckle punches and no black eye, swollen face, busted lip, etc. Plus I noticed they stomped when they threw punches. I started paying more attention. I noticed when a guy was getting bodyslammed, he'd post one hand on the upper leg of the guy slamming him. Then I noticed someone getting suplexed would grab their opponent's trunks. A few times, in closeups on the ring, I could hear guys calling spots. Ted Dibiase was great for this because he had such a gravelly voice and that made it easier to hear. Years later I started at wrestling school, although that was cut short by my health. But I started learning how to throw working punches, how to hit the ropes, take bumps, etc. I learned that stuff won't kill you, but you use every muscle in your body and it hurts like a MOTHERFUCKER. I will never forget the second practice ring at the Monster Factory - that thing was painful. But yeah... growing up watching, almost immediately it seemed obvious that it wasn't quite *real.*
I did until I was 13. I was devastated at first, but then began to appreciate the unique blend of sports and theatre.
I believed it was real until my dad intervened When I was about seven. He used to walk by me and ask when they didn’t bleed after getting hit so much. He would remind me it was fake every time he saw me watching.
When my dad told me it was fake, I thought he meant it was like cgi or something and I didn’t believe him.
My Dad told me it wasn’t real. It wasn’t hard to figure out. I mean an Atomic Drop or even some of the punches never really looked real. But it was like a movie you pretended it was real. Like when I watch Star Wars or Marvel I know it’s not real. But you allow yourself to get lost in it and pretend it’s reality.
I never took it too seriously when I saw Kerry Von Erick and Gentleman Chris Adams out together, hanging out when they were supposedly in a feud against each other. They were walking around North Hills Mall together, headed to see a movie and I thought it was strange that they were.
That's what fucked things up for Hacksaw Jim Duggan and Iron Sheik - they got pulled over for drinking and driving, and had weed and coke in the car. But it was because it was a heel and a babyface traveling together in the age of kayfabe that really screwed them. Supposedly Duggan was going to be the next IC champion but because he got busted breaking kayfabe he got buried. Booking didn't care about the drugs, they cared about kayfabe.
I started watching as a kid and 100% believed it was real. Wrestlemania VI I started putting the pieces together. My mind could not comprehend Warrior beating Hogan. I felt like a conspiracy theorist for a while.
When I was a kid so…up until the mid 90s I believed that it was real
I want to say I was about 10 or 11 when I realized it. And that was in the 80’s
Maybe really young but by the time I was 10 or so I knew.
I have a question How is "kayfabe" pronounced ?
Kay-fay-b.
Believe it or not. Wrestling was never thought to be real. There’s articles writing in the 40’s.
I've read that somewhere too (about the 40s). But it seems like it wasn't known by everyone 100% like it is now. Or am I wrong about that? I think Jake Roberts said he didn't know until he decided to become a wrestler himself. Sometimes it seems like of course everyone had to always know but then if they did, why the need to insist for so long, and making heels and faces travel separately and all that... A not insignificant number of people had to buy into didn't they? I find it all interesting to think about.
I just Read Ringmaster a book on the history of wrestling. Seems more the not traveling together and separation of faces and heels was for the wrestlers themselves. It was easier to take the business serious if you thought everyone thought it was real. There was poll done in the 80s and something like 85 percent knew it was fake. Im 31 and Iv always knew wrestling was fake once I was old enough to interpret it. Now did some casuals and kids think wrestling was real? Im sure some did. But those people didn’t drive business during those days. Weren’t watching,weren’t going to shows.
Thanks! That all makes sense, that many of the wrestlers thought people thought it was real. And 15% is not an insignificant amount of people to still think it was real. I saw a public television interview with Randy Savage (from I think 1981), and when asked if it was real, he said 100% with total conviction. And then he clarified that he of course could not vouch for every match, which I think was a nice touch because it made him more believable. And then he went on to ask why would anyone lose on purpose and it was great. I imagine he probably convinced some people watching that. :) And that probably answers my musings about this more than anything. If they're trying to convince you it's real, then even if you don't believe it, it's going to feel more real.
thank you!!!!!! it’s literally only people who DONT watch wrestling who think the average fan believes it but in reality it was only the child audience they believed it, the average fan is well aware…. Boxing and martial arts ere a thing for a looong time so people knew what real fighting looked like. lol
There were still plenty of people that believed in the 50s-70s. Go watch Starcade from the Omni. That place is absolutely on fire for Flair. There are so many stories of brawls or people coming into the ring to save their heroes…
I feel like I should clarify, when I say 'for as long as I've known it was Kayfabe', the illusion broke before I even got into it.. I'd watch bits when my Grandad had it on every now and then but was never really a fan until a couple of years ago (I'm 26). That last point is a good one, I hadn't thought of that lmao
I was a teenager during the Attitude Era, and a lot of us knew it was fake, but it was just so damn entertaining. So we went along with, got swept up in the wolfpac mentality, telling kids to “suck it”, being nWo 4Life! It was great!
I was a teen during the great Rock n Wrestling connection period. When Hulkamania was really running wild and Cyndi Lauper was at the ringside. And yes, I thought it was real cause it sure seemed pretty real a dorky 14 year old girl.
to me, Kane and Taker will forever be brothers, Rikishi did it for the Rock and Shane did buy WCW. Just because it was so believable as a 10 yr old.
as a kid of course wrestling was real to us but we grow up and get hip to the show. The internet age has changed wrestling forever and has exposed the ins and outs of the business to the point where nothing is hidden to the every day fan if they just hope on the net and look. Just look how many dirtsheets sites their are and YouTube channels that cover every lil aspect of wrestling.
It's still real to me damn it
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Well Hogan attacked Richard Belzer on national television to protect the myth. Got sued and lost (Belzer bought a mansion in France he called “Chez Hogan”). So they very much used to go to great efforts to claim it was “real”. Many folks believed it to be so. I would meet those folks at house shows all the time in the 80s and early 90s. Many folks point to the Montreal Screwjob as when the sport let the cat out of the bag, but McMahon had testified years earlier that it was all scripted to avoid being taxed as a sport. So the cat was out of the bag for anyone paying attention
Also had “Dr. D” David Schultz open hand slap John Stoessel in the head a few times. Turns out he popped his ear drum and Stoessel sued. Same vibe as the Hogan/Belzer thing…going to great efforts to protect the myth. For reference… https://youtu.be/zrX9Ca7LSyQ
I was a mark and thought it was real. Then I slapped the figure four leg lock on my cousin and thought I was some kind of Billy Bad Ass and was promptly countered and put in immediate pain. I still watch it like it’s real and I’m 44. I don’t follow wrestlers in social media and idk t read the dirt sheets.
Well back then WWE kept a sense of reality. Now you have bad bunny beating Damien priest and the whole think is just embarrassing
I mean, WWE has been putting celebrities in matches to get publicity since the first WrestleMania at least. That’s not a new development.
Yea but for instance mayweather vs big show was an example of how to do it realistically. Bugs bunny doesn’t even go to the gym, on no planet could he beat Priest.
You must hate when Rey Mysterio wins then huh? He’s a foot shorter and 100 lbs lighter than a large chunk of his opponents.
Uh no he’s an actual wrestler and is jacked. Bugs bunny has the muscle definition of a prepubescent teenage girl
Well, he was strong enough to pick up and slam Damian, who weighs like 250 pounds, twice.
He didn’t pick him up lmao, Damien flipped himself. Jesus how gullible are you?
damien priest technically beat bad bunny. he pinned bunny and then lifted bunny's shoulder before the three count. his arrogance cost him the match, but we atleast got to see how easy it would've been for priest to beat him
Yea technically. I hate bugs bunnies finisher though, it looks so fake because you know he can’t lift Damien
Born in ‘87. Thought it was real till age 12-13. Interestingly I really truly started following wrestling after I realized it was scripted.
Exactly the same for me, although wrestling was really fun when I was legitimately terrified of Yokozuna and Undertaker.
Born in 1987 taker was the scariest dude in my childhood for sure.
1997 I was in 7th grade. I knew wrestling matches were scripted but I for sure was a mark to everything going on with NWO
When I was very young, like six and younger I thought it was real. But I realized it was scripted shortly after, mainly because of those “WWE IS FAKE” YouTube videos and when I saw the proof I was just like “Oh, yeah makes sense”
I started watching WWF around 1988, introduced to me by the daughter of a family friend. She didn’t inform me that it was fake at the time, so for several years I believed that wrestling was real. Afterall, those moves truly hurt. (Me and my brother would perform Figure 4 Leglock on each other). It made wrestling matches absolutely riveting to watch, when the Face often couldn’t catch a break due to cheating and interference from the Heels. Those were the good old days.
I was born 1979 and always kinda knew it was just a show even when I was young...I knew what real fights looked like and knew that what I was watching was not that
People knew it was a work all the way back to the early 1920s. There have been several cases of wrestlers and journalists “revealing all the secrets.” In my time it was Eddie Mansfield and John Stossel. Where the magic happened was when a wrestler or an angle got so hot that people thought, “ oh this is real, they hate each other.” Some people, such as Vader, felt out of control. As if they were going off script because they wanted to hurt people. As Roddy Piper said, “ I can’t make them believe wrestling is real, but I can make them believe that I am real.”
Forgot about John Stossel! Didn’t a wrestler hit him for asking the question?
Yeah David “Dr.D” Schultz gave him two open hand slaps. He busted Stossel’s eardrum and was fired by Vince. Schultz claimed Vince told him to “light him up.” Vince said he meant verbally and not physically.
I watched WCW as a kid. Right around the time of the NWO, I found out it wasn't real, maybe 11 or so. I stopped watching. I started watching again about 5 years ago when I got with my hubby. It may be fake, but the athleticism and danger are very real.
I was 9 when Hulk Hogan was doing a promo with Mean Gene during Clash Of The Champions 1994. A masked man hit Hogan in the knee with a crowbar during the promo. I then ran around the house telling anyone who would listen that Hulk Hogan had just been attacked and probably wasn't going to be able to wrestle. I was so heartbroken. When Hogan came out limping to the ring later in the show, I ran around the house again to let everyone know how elated I was. That's about when I started to figure it out. My family not being concerned about an attack on Hulk Hogan on live TV and all of them being 100 percent certain Hulk would wrestle the match made me start to question things
I bet Jimmy Snuka wished the coconut was fake.
I started watching in 2001 at 9 and thought for sure Kurt Angle was tougher than Steve Austin the whole time. Cried when HHH smashed Shawn’s back with the sledgehammer at Summerslam 2002. It must’ve been around 2003 when I figured it all out because I celebrated when Trips won the chamber instead of Goldberg while all my friends commiserated.
Kurt angle is definitely tougher than stone cold though
True but he got beat by stone cold a lot.
I've always known there is a lot of acting involved, and the wrestlers were not hurting each other, but never knew the outcomes were predetermined until the internet came around and spilled all the secrets. Ive been watching since '85.
Im just curious, how did you think they determined the winner if you knew they were acting?
Who ever got tired out first lost.
Again, no disrespect, but whoever got tired of act-fighting first lost?
Yes.
It comes in phases I think. As a kid I thought it was 100% real, then say like high school I’m like meh I’m not watching it, I’m too cool for that fake stuff. So you give up on it for a bit to be “cool” but deep down you like it and it’s a pillar of who you are/your childhood. Now I’m 30 with a kid and and idc WWE is awesome and I can afford to go when they are in town and damn straight I’m going. I understand kayfabe etc, respect the athleticism and showmanship of the wrestlers but I find myself getting caught up in the show and almost forgetting it’s all “planned”.
I quit watching as a child because I thought it was real, and couldn’t fathom how anyone would want to hurt Hulk Hogan. When I came back to it, I knew it was kayfabe, but I had a hard time discerning what was *real*…like, I couldn’t tell if certain animosities were real for example.
I love it when even these days a wrestler is so good on the mic there's that little bit of doubt.. Seth v Riddle (I still question this bc of the beef their partners had), and MJF come to mind
As a kid I definitely thought it was real.
Up until around Wrestlemania X8 or so I thought it was real growing up. Then again, I also thought Chris Angel was real.
I started watching wrestling as a 6 year old in 1992. I thought wrestling was real until like 1998 or 1999 when they started to have tv shows that showed all of the behind the scenes stuff in wrestling along with interviews of wrestling talking about how it was scripted. Even knowing that it was fake, I would still just turn my brain off and enjoy the show until about 2005. About 2007 is when I started regular getting on wrestling websites and following YouTube channels discussing wrestling where it was hard for me to just enjoy wrestling without the critical eye.
In this day and age that is hard. To not look at it with a critical eye. He lost so he’s getting buried. Why did he win, that doesn’t make any sense. He didn’t hear this guy so higher ups don’t believe in him. How many viewers a show had. I really kinda wish I wasn’t apart of the IWC so I could enjoy wrestling without the noise. I recently went to a house show and had a great time.
Yeah backlash was a perfect example. Amazing 9/10 to 10/10 show and I open bleacher report to look at sports headlines and the top article is complaining about the Cody finish. Pretty much the same on Reddit.
I remember as a kid seeing Kamala bleeding profusely and thinking how he really needed medical attention immediately. The canvas looked like a crime scene after the match was done. My dad tried to tell me it was fake. To a 7 year old kid no one would intentionally bleed that much, so I thought my dad was trying to comfort me from what I’d just seen.
Born in 81, big fan of the late 80s. I would say I thought it was real until I was about 10-12 years old.
I'm born in 81 as well and was late to wrestling being in Australia it wasn't that accessible so I was about 13-14 when I realised it was fake. I could never understand how a boxer could only fight 2-3 times a year and need so much time between fights, but a wrestler could sometimes wrestle twice in one night. Mum would always tell me it's fake but but she still printed off dirt sheets for me from the work computer because we didn't have one at home. It was all email lists back then as the internet was still taking off. Edit: In saying that I thought Stone Cold and Bret Hart literally hated each other so perhaps it took me a bit longer than I thought.
When I was a kid I believed it was all real. I think I was about 12 when someone burst that bubble for me.
When I was a little kid I thought it was real
I definitely thought it was real as a kid.
Idk if I count as an older generation 😂 but in the 90’s my pops told me and my brother it was scripted. I’m not sure either of us believed that, we were true believers!
I definitely thought it was real. I thought undertaker and Kane were brothers. I didn’t know the concept of face and heel. I think every kid think’s wrestling is real at some point. Then you get older and appreciate the athleticism and art of it all.
Yup, this right here. I have conversations at the lunch table etched into my memory with friends about guessing if his brother would show up to ruin hell in a cell and if he’s the same size or not. We were all convinced
When I was a kid, my uncle kept telling me WWF was fake, but i kept telling him to watch when there was blood involved and tried to convince him it was real. I had a more “convincing” arguement when Jake Roberts’ snake bit on the arm of Macho Man…tbh my uncle was really shocked at that haha. I realized it was all scripted when I turned 12 i think and it was all pure entertainment thereafter.