A defence of my love for wrestling

It’s all fake. The matches are rigged. The acting is terrible. They’re just pretending to be hurt.

These are just some of the criticisms levelled at professional wrestling and the people who dare to mention being fans. It’s almost a taboo subject in some places; I’ve been verbally abused in the past for enjoying wrestling as if I’m some kind of drooling imbecile who really believes the big men are hurting each other, for cheering on one competitor over another despite the matches being fixed or for daring to stay up until 4am to watch the big pay-per-views a few times a year rather than simply going to bed like everyone else. I’m not saying there aren’t people out there covered in drool and repeatedly walking into the same bit of wall who really do believe that everything they’re seeing is “real”, but then again, how do you actually define “real”?

I bet that fire isn't even hot.

It’s easy to see why so many people in the world don’t like wrestling; or rather, I should say, who don’t like the idea of wrestling, because inevitably none of them have ever actually watched it or tried to enjoy it. They find it very difficult to grasp the concept of these men (and women, but let’s focus on the men for the sake of argument) dedicating their lives to sculpting their bodies to the point where Adonis would get a complex and learning intricate and complicated sets of fighting manoeuvres that are specifically designed not to cause any serious harm to the other guy but look like they are. Of course, the wrestlers themselves get paid pretty well; some of them earn millions of dollars a year doing what they do, so it’s easy to see where their motivation comes from. I don’t mean to say that they’re all in it for the money, but it must certainly be a perk.

However, I’m not here to discuss that. No, the reason for this post is to finally dispel the two wrestling myths that are: 1. Everything you see isn’t real, and therefore 2. Everyone who regularly watches it has got something wrong with them.

There’s no question that the wrestlers in a pro-wrestling ring aren’t trying to hurt or injure one another – they’re trying to help each other to make the moves look as devastating and painful as possible without actually causing too much harm. I use the words “too much” quite deliberately because, however you look at it, there’s no way for them to do some of the things they do without hurting themselves, even if – by wrestler standards – they’re not hurt too badly. A wrestling ring generally has one gigantic spring underneath it in the middle to both stop it from collapsing and to absorb some of the impact. This leads some people to think it’s like a trampoline, but naturally this isn’t the case. The tension of the spring is set so that it absorbs maximum impact without the wrestlers visibly bouncing around whenever they hit the mat; otherwise, a wrestling match would be akin to two grown men in their underpants gaying it up on a bouncy castle.

You be Spiderman. Now shoot your sticky goo in my face!

No, I can testify that a wrestling mat is hard. I had a friend at uni who was a pro-wrestler and I once did a spot of ring announcing for an event in Reading – I watched them set up and I spent a lot of time in the ring, and I can tell you, I wouldn’t want to be knocked over onto it, let alone picked up and forcibly driven into it back-first. One current WWE wrestler recently said that the impacts of a wrestling match are equivalent to being in a series of 20mph car crashes. Not necessarily serious by themselves, but if you’re doing that for hours at a time five days a week you’re eventually going to need to make a sheepish call to your insurance company.

However, despite probably being in the sort of pain that you or I would take a few minutes to recover from with, perhaps, a nice sit down, a cup of tea and a quick check on Google to assess the chances of fused vertebrae, wrestlers have to get right up and take the next hit. And the next, and the next, and so on, leaving them very little recovery time between each move they take or perform. So, in reality, a lot of the time wrestlers aren’t pretending to be hurt: they are hurt, but they’re pretending not to be. This is something that seems to totally escape most wrestling naysayers. There have been guys who have suffered broken bones, muscles and tendons completely torn away and even the humiliation of their pants slipping down halfway through a match but unfortunately for them, as we all know, this is a show. And the show must go on. It didn’t look very compelling at the time, but when Stone Cold Steve Austin had his neck broken halfway through a match and still finished it, I realised all this for myself.

Now obviously he was booked to win the match, hence the ridiculous-looking finish. But I think it kinda supports my argument in the most potentially paralysing way. The overarching point I’m trying to make is that, yes, the match outcomes are pre-determined. We all know this. We also know that the guys in the ring are trying to strike a balance between making their moves look dangerous while not totally incapacitating each other and, in fact, trying to protect one another at all times. However, to call this fake is just not fair – it’s incredibly skillful, and some of the wrestlers, both male and female, are among the best athletes I’ve ever seen. The people taking part are legitimately hurt quite a lot of the time and sometimes get hurt very seriously – they’re putting themselves in danger by getting in the ring, it’s not a picnic regardless of how much they try to avoid hurting each other. And, more to the point, it’s compelling; if you’re prepared to tune in long enough to appreciate some of the remarkable feats of strength, agility and balls that take place on a typical show (metal folding chairs and kendo sticks to the face fucking hurt, I don’t care what anyone says), it’s rippingly good fun to watch.

Oooh, stop it, it tickles!

And so we come on to the people who sit down and enjoy wrestling. Let’s assume that you’re on board with what I’ve said above, but now you’re asking about the often-absurd storylines, plot twists and characters that have more holes than a slice of swiss cheese that’s turned a shotgun on itself. Surely these are indefensible? Well, no. There’s a girl I used to work with who would scoff at me for being excited about the Royal Rumble but then spend the next half an hour talking about Eastenders as if it was really happening. For me, there’s very little difference in terms of what you’re doing when you sit down in front of these shows – you’re suspending disbelief, you’re investing yourself in the entertainment and you’re allowing yourself to be lost in another world for an hour or so. It’s escapism at its finest, and if you choose to read about things going on behind the scenes and then relate that back to what you’re seeing on the television, a whole new world of real-life interest opens itself up to you. Wrestling storylines are no different to or more ridiculous than soap opera storylines – they’re appropriate for the world that the scriptwriters create. If the doors of the Queen Vic burst open and Phil Mitchell strode in through a dry-ice cloud wearing a one-piece leotard to the tune of “Eye Of The Tiger”, people would be confused. And so it is the same with wrestling; the things that happen are appropriate to their surroundings and moreover, the people watching it come to expect a level of ridiculousness and are happy to just go with it. It’s fun. You should try it some time!