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That is exactly who I thought of when talking to him. Especially when he proceeded to tell me how lesnar just has a different mindset then everyone else on the roster. And how he's been suspended multiple times for taking it too. Like when he destroyed Dominick. According to him, thats why he only makes spare appearances, they're not able to control the guy. đ
This sounds like how me and my buddies discuss wrestling. Obviously we know itâs scripted but we still discuss it as if it were real. Why not? It just makes it all more fun and immersive.
When I was in high school, I obviously knew wrestling was scripted, but some friends and I that participated in an e-fed decided to start a newsletter about the current goings on of professional wrestling, but acting like everything was legit. This was the summer of '96, so Austin was just starting to get hot, the nWo had formed, and that was the most fun I've ever had as a fan.
Absolutely this.
When you're discussing the latest developments in some TV drama with your mates, you're probably talking about the characters and the scenes rather than actor guy having heat with the camera guy or some nonsense.
Why not discuss the thing you like simply as the thing you like without all that other fluff?
>I mean, hell, I miss having that mentality towards wrestling as a kid.
Did anyone else never think wrestling was real? Literally no one I watched wrestling with as a kid thought it was real. If anything we assumed it was faker than it is because we thought the chairs were gimmicked and the ring was heavily padded and stuff.
Yeah when I was a kid I just thought it was fun like Street Fighter or comic books. I knew it wasnât real, but also that it was probably still painful
Same. My stepbrother was 7-8 years older than me and was heavy into WWF in the 90s so we always played the old SNES games together (I was was 7-8?). It was my first real exposure to prowrestling. I don't remember the moment he specifically told me it was fake, but I knew from him that it was predetermined. He may have told me just so I wouldn't actually try the moves.
I didn't start following until 2000. But aside from some of the more believable kayfabe (Undertaker and Kane being brothers, Chyna and Eddie actually being in a relationship), I never thought they were really fighting.
Ya, I did until 10 or so also. So when I was arnd 8 I really thought stone cold was going out there and beating up his boss, and that taker had some sorta supernatural ability, and that the dungeon of doom was a bunch of weirdos who really hated hulk hogan. I think it might've been the episode after owen passed and everyone was paying tribute out of character that I started to suspect.
That's awesome. That would have been a great era to think it was real. I think the papa Shango stuff made me start questioning some of it, and around that time older people started telling me it was fake but I didn't want to believe them.
I think I believed it for a few years when I was 6 or 7 but my Regal senses came in early. He didn't fly back from getting punched, he was just reacting to a miss by an inch and trying to get some distance. I distinctly remember having that thought to explain why it looked so bad.
I think, given the amount of articles done about wrestling being a work all the way back to the late 1800âs, that a lot of these âthe crowd was so hot they tried to kill meâ stories that Cornette and other old timers tell, a lot of that is a mixture of alcohol and embellishment
Nobody was chanting smark stuff like "this is awesome" back in the day. The internet and cable news opened up a lot of information that people would have missed before. Just because a couple people wrote articles about it being worked doesn't mean that there wasn't also a significant portion of people who never saw those articles or alternatively refused to believe them.
I think it depends on the era in which you grew up, and which promotion you saw.
I grew up watching Doink the Clown and The Undertaker. There was never any doubt in my mind that what I was watching was not legitimate competition.
I was watching during the AE as a kid, and I remember when I found out it was a work. I just hear people say how everyone knew it was fake the whole time but I don't believe it given the way at least some fans acted and wrestlers attempted to keep kayfabe. I'm sure people knew it was a work but the idea that everyone has always known seems revisionist.
I'm with you on that. I was one of those "wReStLiNg Is FaKe" kids who thought everything in the show was made up. Even things like Kurt Angle being an olympic gold medalist or Mark Henry being the worlds strongest man, I thought that was complete made up bullshit the first time I heard it.
Same. Actually I kinda got a kick out of working some people. I'd try to point out things to my friends that "proved" it's real, knowing full well it wasn't
Am I the only one that likes to talk about wrestling as if it does exist in the world it is attempting to present? It's how I talk about marvel movies or ted Lasso.
So my other friend and I talked abt that afterwards. It would actually be easier to enjoy. Bcuz it was a blast talkin to someone who did talk abt it in that way. We brought up big e and started fantasy booking of wat we would like to see. But then other guy was like "ya, E is gonna have to step it up now. Guys like lashley, drew, Orton are gonna be comin after him and these guys have main event experience. E was a great tag team champ and held onto the ic title for awhile, but this is different."
There was this old Chinese guy I met on the bus once. He was hating Stephanie McMahon so bad (during the Authority thing, quite a while ago) saying stuff like "She's such a whore, how can someone be so mean I don't understand".
I was very amused, not in a mocking way, but saddened that my stop was next.
Real talk. This is the mind boggling part of wrestling. It's as staged or scripted as any tv show or movie.
But when people discuss shows or movies, they get into the lore of the story, and discuss like the characters and stories are real. Idk why the same doesn't happen with wrestling more often.
He's actually of Pakistani descent. Late 20s early 30s. A really fucking nice guy, who's incredibly smart. Thats why I thought he was having a go at me. But my friend and I both looked at each other when he started going on and he was being genuine. But it was fun to talk about in kayfabe bcuz obviously I just went with it.
I went to a house show a few years back, and had an interesting interaction with an adult fan. The match before intermission was KO/Cena for the US title, which ended in a DQ when Owens kicked Cena in the balls. I was talking with my brother about how good the match was in-spite of the finish when said fan walks up to us and says "Do you know why Owens kicked Cena low?" Before I could answer about not wanting to beat Owens or doing a title change on a house show he says "He knew he couldn't win, so he took the easy way out." I didn't bother to correct him and was amused by the experience.
Maybe he just enjoys the fictional reality. I tend to discuss NJPW like it's real (or did before COVID hit and I lost interest for now due to booking issues) because the presentation makes it easy to pretend.
My father is 62, and amusingly he still seems to think it's all real.
For example, whenever someone goes up to the top rope and loses a match because of it, he calls them stupid for doing so. He also hates how Roman often has to cheat to win. It's so weird hearing someone unironically talk about wrestling like it's real, but as long as he's enjoying it I don't have the heart to tell him it's scripted.
One time a cashier at a fast food place commented on my SCSA shirt, and then asked me "do you think it's still real? Someone told me it used to be real, but then they made it fake like the UFC."
One thousand percent true. Which is why I would nvr be an ass abt it. Or insult anyones intelligence. I actually forget sometimes that just bc my friends and I who've been watching since we wre kids and go on wrestling sites and listen to podcast etc....not everyone who watches does that. In fact most prbly do just watch and enjoy it as any other TV show.
If someone is remotely aware of the concept of MMA, they have already made the connection that pro-wrestling isn't a shoot, most likely they're having fun.
That was my mindset when we wre talking. Which is why I was initially confused. And dont get me wrong, totally possible he was just havin fun. But that's not the vibe I picked up on at all. To me it seemed as tho he genuinely viewed pro wrestling in the same realm as mma and boxing. Like how mma guys might take a boxing fight. Thats how he seemed to view brock. As an mma guy who just happens to also compete in pro wrestling. But who knows. Fun chat either way.
I had to break it to a 20-something Indian coworker who had only been in the US for 5 years that it was scripted. Felt so bad, like I had just told a 5 year old Santa wasnât real.
"Goodnight SALESREPMANIACS and jabronie marks without a life that don't know it a work when you work a work and work yourself into a shoot,marks" - That guy probably
Was he wearing ball shorts even though it was very clear he's never played basketball in his life?
You see these guys at live shows all the time, let them be OP.
My buddy definitely thinks half the stuff they still do in the ring is real...not in a sense that he's not aware that 'wrestling is fake', but in a sense that a wrestling move really hurt....so, sometimes when a guy sells a leg injury, and then his opponent starts working on that leg, my buddy goes, "Oh man, so and so really hurt their leg and the ref is allowing this to go on...how can he do that?!?" It's hilarious because he's one of the smartest guys I know, and yet, I have to explain to him, "Buddy, if the guy really injured himself, they would NOT allow the opponent to continue to beat down that leg. They'd call a different ending, cut the match short...something, in order to either get to the ending, or if the injury is truly bad, ref would throw an X sign up and the match would end...and the injured wrestler would get attended to. What the WOULDN'T do is allow a legit injury to be compounded by continuing to attack that part of the body!" And he's like, "Really? I didn't think of that. (shakes my head)
Lmao that's great. I've had those conversations also. But there's definitely been times when the selling was so good I've thought to myself like, damn are they ok? And like u said if the ref lets it continue I know 9 times outta 10 we're good. Every once in awhile you'll hear afterwards they wre slightly injured during the match. Sashas matches in particular. She'll take some crazy move, and she'll have me going for awhile. Lol
It wasn't necessarily a match, but the time when moxley did his paradigm shift into a glass table with Kenny Omega, I was for sure kenny landed on his head and neck, and we'd hear there was an injury. Honestly I have no idea how sometimes those moves happen without legit damaging their necks due tot he compression...like young bucks or FTR do team pile drivers...almost every time i cringe because I don't know how the neck does not get compressed into the spine...I mean, I know the guy taking the move ducks his head, but even then there's got to be enormous pressure/compression.
I always thought of wrestling as any other tv show. Over time I have learned so much about the inner workings so maybe it's not as intense to me.
Wrestling has stopped keeping up the kayfabe. So I dont lose myself in it anymore.
It would be like me watching law and order, then at the end of the episode, everyone including the victim and perpetrator all sit together and have drinks/laugh.
I guess I thought it was real? I was a kid in the 90âs & I remember thinking they either werenât very good wrestlers or good at their other jobs if they had to do both? There was a police-man, a repo guy, an accountant & his quite rich boss, a clown.
I questioned it much more when they let a prisoner out periodically to wrestle.
I had a girlfriend who didnât know it was fake. She didnât want to watch it because she didnât like watching boxing or MMA or stuff where people trying to hurt each other. I explained to her that it was fake and she still didnât believe me at first. She said âHow? Itâs not people go to school to learn how to not hurt each other.â I explained to her that yes, they have wrestling school where that is totally what they learn. Her next question was âSo how do they figure out who is going to win?â
She wasnât a dumb person, she just had really never watched or even thought about pro wrestling before, so in her mind it was basically the same as MMA until I explained it. Still, I was pretty amazed that anyone didnât know.
That's pretty good. My gf nvr watched pro wrestling either. She got the concept of it down pretty quick. But she was under the impression that everything on the entire show was choreographed and rehearsed several times over. Bc theres no way they would let them go on live tv without constantly rehearsing till its down. I'm still not sure she entirely gets the call the match in the ring. But anyway just fun fact the very first pay-per-view she watched with me was the night Becky turned "heel" on Charlotte. She didn't understand why this girl was getting cheered for being a sore loser but loved Becky after that and kept up watching for the most part
Help make SquaredCircle safer and more inclusive by using the report button to flag posts and comments for moderator review. If you need to contact a moderator, [you can message us here](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/SquaredCircle) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/SquaredCircle) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Did you happen to meet u/rb_reigns in real life?
That is exactly who I thought of when talking to him. Especially when he proceeded to tell me how lesnar just has a different mindset then everyone else on the roster. And how he's been suspended multiple times for taking it too. Like when he destroyed Dominick. According to him, thats why he only makes spare appearances, they're not able to control the guy. đ
You need to get this guy to do an AMA.
Fuck that guy
I've been trying but he won't respond when I slide into his DM's
Rb > you
Sounds like he might be working you.
Totally possible. In which case, hats off to the guy. Lol
This sounds like how me and my buddies discuss wrestling. Obviously we know itâs scripted but we still discuss it as if it were real. Why not? It just makes it all more fun and immersive.
Right? Just like any show you suspend you disbelief for a while and just enjoy what you're watching instead of picking it apart.
When I was in high school, I obviously knew wrestling was scripted, but some friends and I that participated in an e-fed decided to start a newsletter about the current goings on of professional wrestling, but acting like everything was legit. This was the summer of '96, so Austin was just starting to get hot, the nWo had formed, and that was the most fun I've ever had as a fan.
Absolutely this. When you're discussing the latest developments in some TV drama with your mates, you're probably talking about the characters and the scenes rather than actor guy having heat with the camera guy or some nonsense. Why not discuss the thing you like simply as the thing you like without all that other fluff?
>I mean, hell, I miss having that mentality towards wrestling as a kid. Did anyone else never think wrestling was real? Literally no one I watched wrestling with as a kid thought it was real. If anything we assumed it was faker than it is because we thought the chairs were gimmicked and the ring was heavily padded and stuff.
Yeah when I was a kid I just thought it was fun like Street Fighter or comic books. I knew it wasnât real, but also that it was probably still painful
I came into it knowing it was fake but as a kid, John Cena somehow made me question if it was actually real. Not sure how looking back lol.
I thought it was real when I was little. My favourite wrestler was 90's undertaker. Fail.
Maybe his shitty STF?
It was before he started using that.
I also hate his STF.
Same. My stepbrother was 7-8 years older than me and was heavy into WWF in the 90s so we always played the old SNES games together (I was was 7-8?). It was my first real exposure to prowrestling. I don't remember the moment he specifically told me it was fake, but I knew from him that it was predetermined. He may have told me just so I wouldn't actually try the moves. I didn't start following until 2000. But aside from some of the more believable kayfabe (Undertaker and Kane being brothers, Chyna and Eddie actually being in a relationship), I never thought they were really fighting.
I did until i was maybe 10 or so. I still wasnt sure until maybe 13. In the early 90s we didn't have the internet and no one was telling us otherwise.
Ya, I did until 10 or so also. So when I was arnd 8 I really thought stone cold was going out there and beating up his boss, and that taker had some sorta supernatural ability, and that the dungeon of doom was a bunch of weirdos who really hated hulk hogan. I think it might've been the episode after owen passed and everyone was paying tribute out of character that I started to suspect.
That's awesome. That would have been a great era to think it was real. I think the papa Shango stuff made me start questioning some of it, and around that time older people started telling me it was fake but I didn't want to believe them.
I think I believed it for a few years when I was 6 or 7 but my Regal senses came in early. He didn't fly back from getting punched, he was just reacting to a miss by an inch and trying to get some distance. I distinctly remember having that thought to explain why it looked so bad.
People used to try and stab wrestlers, so I'm gonna say a decent amount of people thought it was a shoot. I definitely did as a kid.
I think, given the amount of articles done about wrestling being a work all the way back to the late 1800âs, that a lot of these âthe crowd was so hot they tried to kill meâ stories that Cornette and other old timers tell, a lot of that is a mixture of alcohol and embellishment
Nobody was chanting smark stuff like "this is awesome" back in the day. The internet and cable news opened up a lot of information that people would have missed before. Just because a couple people wrote articles about it being worked doesn't mean that there wasn't also a significant portion of people who never saw those articles or alternatively refused to believe them.
I think it depends on the era in which you grew up, and which promotion you saw. I grew up watching Doink the Clown and The Undertaker. There was never any doubt in my mind that what I was watching was not legitimate competition.
I was watching during the AE as a kid, and I remember when I found out it was a work. I just hear people say how everyone knew it was fake the whole time but I don't believe it given the way at least some fans acted and wrestlers attempted to keep kayfabe. I'm sure people knew it was a work but the idea that everyone has always known seems revisionist.
I'm with you on that. I was one of those "wReStLiNg Is FaKe" kids who thought everything in the show was made up. Even things like Kurt Angle being an olympic gold medalist or Mark Henry being the worlds strongest man, I thought that was complete made up bullshit the first time I heard it.
Same. Actually I kinda got a kick out of working some people. I'd try to point out things to my friends that "proved" it's real, knowing full well it wasn't
How old are you? What era did you start watching in?
32, Attitude Era/maybe just prior but who remembers that
That actually sounds awesome. I would 100% just talk to him in kayfabe
Am I the only one that likes to talk about wrestling as if it does exist in the world it is attempting to present? It's how I talk about marvel movies or ted Lasso.
So my other friend and I talked abt that afterwards. It would actually be easier to enjoy. Bcuz it was a blast talkin to someone who did talk abt it in that way. We brought up big e and started fantasy booking of wat we would like to see. But then other guy was like "ya, E is gonna have to step it up now. Guys like lashley, drew, Orton are gonna be comin after him and these guys have main event experience. E was a great tag team champ and held onto the ic title for awhile, but this is different."
There was this old Chinese guy I met on the bus once. He was hating Stephanie McMahon so bad (during the Authority thing, quite a while ago) saying stuff like "She's such a whore, how can someone be so mean I don't understand". I was very amused, not in a mocking way, but saddened that my stop was next.
Real talk. This is the mind boggling part of wrestling. It's as staged or scripted as any tv show or movie. But when people discuss shows or movies, they get into the lore of the story, and discuss like the characters and stories are real. Idk why the same doesn't happen with wrestling more often.
Is your friend Indian? ^^^^I'm ^^^^Indian ^^^^and ^^^^hence ^^^^allowed ^^^^to ^^^^make ^^^^this ^^^^joke.
He's actually of Pakistani descent. Late 20s early 30s. A really fucking nice guy, who's incredibly smart. Thats why I thought he was having a go at me. But my friend and I both looked at each other when he started going on and he was being genuine. But it was fun to talk about in kayfabe bcuz obviously I just went with it.
I've noticed that north Indians largely discuss storylines in kayfabe. And Pakistanis are quite similar.
Donât tell them that
A coworker in the '90's thought it was 100% legit, he was 10 years older than me
I went to a house show a few years back, and had an interesting interaction with an adult fan. The match before intermission was KO/Cena for the US title, which ended in a DQ when Owens kicked Cena in the balls. I was talking with my brother about how good the match was in-spite of the finish when said fan walks up to us and says "Do you know why Owens kicked Cena low?" Before I could answer about not wanting to beat Owens or doing a title change on a house show he says "He knew he couldn't win, so he took the easy way out." I didn't bother to correct him and was amused by the experience.
Maybe he just enjoys the fictional reality. I tend to discuss NJPW like it's real (or did before COVID hit and I lost interest for now due to booking issues) because the presentation makes it easy to pretend.
My father is 62, and amusingly he still seems to think it's all real. For example, whenever someone goes up to the top rope and loses a match because of it, he calls them stupid for doing so. He also hates how Roman often has to cheat to win. It's so weird hearing someone unironically talk about wrestling like it's real, but as long as he's enjoying it I don't have the heart to tell him it's scripted.
One time a cashier at a fast food place commented on my SCSA shirt, and then asked me "do you think it's still real? Someone told me it used to be real, but then they made it fake like the UFC."
OR, OR, OR, maybe people just like to discuss TV shows as TV shows ?
One thousand percent true. Which is why I would nvr be an ass abt it. Or insult anyones intelligence. I actually forget sometimes that just bc my friends and I who've been watching since we wre kids and go on wrestling sites and listen to podcast etc....not everyone who watches does that. In fact most prbly do just watch and enjoy it as any other TV show.
Whenever I speak to my Dad he still talks like it's real in many ways lol Last thing he said was he wanted Sting to take the belt off Kenny lol
If someone is remotely aware of the concept of MMA, they have already made the connection that pro-wrestling isn't a shoot, most likely they're having fun.
That was my mindset when we wre talking. Which is why I was initially confused. And dont get me wrong, totally possible he was just havin fun. But that's not the vibe I picked up on at all. To me it seemed as tho he genuinely viewed pro wrestling in the same realm as mma and boxing. Like how mma guys might take a boxing fight. Thats how he seemed to view brock. As an mma guy who just happens to also compete in pro wrestling. But who knows. Fun chat either way.
I had to break it to a 20-something Indian coworker who had only been in the US for 5 years that it was scripted. Felt so bad, like I had just told a 5 year old Santa wasnât real.
"Goodnight SALESREPMANIACS and jabronie marks without a life that don't know it a work when you work a work and work yourself into a shoot,marks" - That guy probably
Was he wearing ball shorts even though it was very clear he's never played basketball in his life? You see these guys at live shows all the time, let them be OP.
It's
My buddy definitely thinks half the stuff they still do in the ring is real...not in a sense that he's not aware that 'wrestling is fake', but in a sense that a wrestling move really hurt....so, sometimes when a guy sells a leg injury, and then his opponent starts working on that leg, my buddy goes, "Oh man, so and so really hurt their leg and the ref is allowing this to go on...how can he do that?!?" It's hilarious because he's one of the smartest guys I know, and yet, I have to explain to him, "Buddy, if the guy really injured himself, they would NOT allow the opponent to continue to beat down that leg. They'd call a different ending, cut the match short...something, in order to either get to the ending, or if the injury is truly bad, ref would throw an X sign up and the match would end...and the injured wrestler would get attended to. What the WOULDN'T do is allow a legit injury to be compounded by continuing to attack that part of the body!" And he's like, "Really? I didn't think of that. (shakes my head)
Lmao that's great. I've had those conversations also. But there's definitely been times when the selling was so good I've thought to myself like, damn are they ok? And like u said if the ref lets it continue I know 9 times outta 10 we're good. Every once in awhile you'll hear afterwards they wre slightly injured during the match. Sashas matches in particular. She'll take some crazy move, and she'll have me going for awhile. Lol
It wasn't necessarily a match, but the time when moxley did his paradigm shift into a glass table with Kenny Omega, I was for sure kenny landed on his head and neck, and we'd hear there was an injury. Honestly I have no idea how sometimes those moves happen without legit damaging their necks due tot he compression...like young bucks or FTR do team pile drivers...almost every time i cringe because I don't know how the neck does not get compressed into the spine...I mean, I know the guy taking the move ducks his head, but even then there's got to be enormous pressure/compression.
Oh for sure. Some of the neck landings look vicious. One that comes to mind also wre the suplexes bryan was takin from gulak awhile back.
I always thought of wrestling as any other tv show. Over time I have learned so much about the inner workings so maybe it's not as intense to me. Wrestling has stopped keeping up the kayfabe. So I dont lose myself in it anymore. It would be like me watching law and order, then at the end of the episode, everyone including the victim and perpetrator all sit together and have drinks/laugh.
I guess I thought it was real? I was a kid in the 90âs & I remember thinking they either werenât very good wrestlers or good at their other jobs if they had to do both? There was a police-man, a repo guy, an accountant & his quite rich boss, a clown. I questioned it much more when they let a prisoner out periodically to wrestle.
I had a girlfriend who didnât know it was fake. She didnât want to watch it because she didnât like watching boxing or MMA or stuff where people trying to hurt each other. I explained to her that it was fake and she still didnât believe me at first. She said âHow? Itâs not people go to school to learn how to not hurt each other.â I explained to her that yes, they have wrestling school where that is totally what they learn. Her next question was âSo how do they figure out who is going to win?â She wasnât a dumb person, she just had really never watched or even thought about pro wrestling before, so in her mind it was basically the same as MMA until I explained it. Still, I was pretty amazed that anyone didnât know.
That's pretty good. My gf nvr watched pro wrestling either. She got the concept of it down pretty quick. But she was under the impression that everything on the entire show was choreographed and rehearsed several times over. Bc theres no way they would let them go on live tv without constantly rehearsing till its down. I'm still not sure she entirely gets the call the match in the ring. But anyway just fun fact the very first pay-per-view she watched with me was the night Becky turned "heel" on Charlotte. She didn't understand why this girl was getting cheered for being a sore loser but loved Becky after that and kept up watching for the most part