Since Wrestlemania there’s been nothing but stories about John Cena winning an amazing 17th title, blah blah blah… It’s a “History making moment”, yadda yadda yadda…
Like…of course he did. It’s the storyline. It’s quite literally “in the script”.
This isn’t an achievement. Why is this in my sports news next to last night’s hockey scores instead of next to an article about who was the bitchiest on the lastest episode of Real Housewives?
I get it. I loved Wrestling growing up. Back when we all WERE pretending it was real; Macho Man, Hulk Hogan, The Undertaker, etc… But I thought at some point they steered into the whole “entertainment” aspect when most of us grew the hell up and clued into the absurdity of it all.
No, we know the outcome’s predetermined. Last year’s Wrestlemania was basically written six-months ahead of time.
It’s still fun to watch though, and the athletes do some amazing shit.
I wouldn’t call them athletes if their skill isn’t what determines the outcome. Performers certainly like cirque du Soleil.
LOL
Go try to do moonsault off a steel cage without breaking your neck and then you can judge.
Still not an athlete.
I wanted to be a pro wrestler in my teens, I have no around with local wrestlers and did ring crew work from time to time when a show was local. Eventually they started giving me some training and let me tell you it takes a lot of athletic ability to make those moves look good without injuring the other person.
Just because the outcome is predetermined doesn’t mean the lead up to the outcome isn’t an athletic competition. They are competing in that ring, it’s just that they are competing for a chance at a belt and earning the belt is the equivalent of a promotion in the workplace. Champions get better pay and more opportunities.
Why not? What definition of ‘athlete’ are you even using? Did you just decide this?
athlete Athletes compete or strive against others to attain a goal, TV wrestlers perform, or enact a feat before an audience.
You could say there goal is to perform for that audience, as a team….of athletes.
No idea why my previous comment shows as quoted, but whatever
My argument is that if they were actually competing that would mess with the performative nature of the storytelling.
wwe have to labe them as sports performers, so they arnt subject to any regulatory issues, like with roids and standards. we know alot of the wrestlers was on PEDS, rock and cena was the most obvious.
Freestyle skiing, snowboarding, skating, bmx, motocross, mountain bike etc says you’re wrong.
While it’s possible to compete in events for most or all of those things competition is only a tiny part of it.
WWE is a special beast. They embraced The Internet a lot earlier than most media and their social media and astro turfing game is on point. It is why you’ll hear that every single wrestler on the planet’s life goal is to be in the WWE Hall of Fame ™ and why Roman “The Rock’s Cousin Who Was Such A Charisma Void That All His Lines In Hobbes And Shaw were cut” Reigns and whoever the hell is the greatest story ever told on television ™ and so forth.
Spend a bit of time discussing wrestling and you rapidly realize you are talking to a “bot” in that different statements trigger the exact same response from different people.
So it is less that The Fans think that cena taking time out of his busy schedule of caping for a rapist sex trafficker was truly amazing and more that people on twitter and PR folk on The Subreddit told them to think that and they are repeating it.
As for the other aspect:
Why is this in my sports news next to last night’s hockey scores instead of next to an article about who was the bitchiest on the lastest episode of Real Housewives?
Because wrestling is “event television” in a way that only sports really is anymore. Andor is one of the greatest shows of all time but, unless you are doing a Reaction podcast, it doesn’t matter if you watch that episode from Season 2 tonight or tomorrow or a week from now. Wrestling and sports? People DO still want to watch that “live” because they are afraid someone will spoil the score of the Bulls game (in large part because we grew up with sitcoms where that was the joke). So, in that regard, it makes more sense to cover it with sports rather than to cut into a movie review with how taylor swift’s boyfriend caught a ball real good.
Which… gets to the last point that is not WWE specific. A lot of people don’t have the time or money to watch it live. This mostly goes back to when PPVs were 50-90 bucks and when all weekly shows were on TV that a lot of “cord cutters” didn’t have. But it also just speaks to the general lack of an attention span. A LOT of the Internet Wrestling Community (IWC)… don’t actually watch wrestling. They follow live threads or watch clips and then they wait for Dave “It’s cool, he just didn’t like her tits” Meltzer to give them a star rating.
It has become a lot more prevalent in the AEW era where we have “something else” on weekly TV (no. TNA didn’t count. I loved TNA but that shit was the #4 promotion even when there were only two on TV in the US) and the “AEW style” is still heavily informed by The Indies and New Japan where people try to tell a self contained story in every match rather than relying on six months of promos on TV. You will RAPIDLY notice that the IWC will barely mention character work that is not part of a clip released by the company or one that was so good that wrestling twitter clipped it themselves. A live thread might lose their shit over how much rotation a tall lady got on a powerbomb spot and then immediately “forget it” because wrestling twitter didn’t care and the company didn’t bother to release a clip of it.
What outlets do you follow?
Because this is the first I’m hearing about it.
I guess they pretend that wrestling is real to have more fun? idk.
Since when is that allowed!? /s
I’m fine with that. My bigger question was simply why am I seeing it in sports news instead of entertainment news all of a sudden? It’s not a sport. it’s a variety show sponsored by the makers of steroids.
It’s a soap opera with fighting. Of course fans are talking about the characters and the story. Nobody talking about anything that happens in a soap Opera will add that it’s just fiction, they’re talking about the events.
Wrestling and the media surrounding it will always be written/performed as though it is real. There were just as many adults that knew it was fake when we were kids that didn’t. It’s santa clause and easter bunny style culture. Once you are disillusioned, if you want to continue being involved, you join in on the act.
We’ve regressed into believing a lot of imaginary things are real.
Wrestling is the least of our worries.
Wrestling is a form of theatre.
Its just the high octane, sensationalized, ridiculous, coked up, american pop culture version of Theatre.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnvSs3HEz2o excellent video where someone talks about why Wrestling got popular
Wrestling Isn’t Sports. But it also isn’t fake. Not entirely. the outcomes are usually scripted, and theres a card they are usually following (Sometimes, they aren’t. Whether its a botch, a shoot, etc) (botch means a mistake, a shoot means someone’s not acting, and they’re throwing real punches)
but the acrobatics and "stunts’ people are doing, are very real. an incredible amount of effort and skill is needed to have the physical ability and timing to make the stuff look real for the kids and cameras
thats why its called sports entertainment,
I think OP is specifically asking why Pro Wrestling is being treated like it’s real in some sports publications.
Just to further your point. It’s like Cirque du Soleil, scripted, but they are really doing those moves.
Makes me wonder how ‘real’ roman gladiators were.
Far as I know, not very.
Real combat with weapons is not all that entertaining.
You nick a guy in the right place and he’ll die a slow agonising death in the locker room, far from the eyes of the crowd, then you’re down an athlete and even the enslaved ones aren’t cheap, and they need training, and housing, and feeding, etc.
Moreover this may happen at any point of the fight and that’s not very satisfying to watch, think Mike Tyson one-hit KO vs a 20 minute banger with back nad forth.
So obviously you’d make it look good and take your time, send the crowd home happy. Even were it a real competition, which it was at times.
Gladiators that were intantionally killed in the arena were “bought” by the editor (the person paying for the games overall), and it was at a premium. Afterall the lanista got a major cut of their stable’s wins, so you’d have to cover the sum of all the potential winnings of the rest of their careers, and then some, to make it worth it.
So it wasn’t quite pro wrestling, but it was definitely close, the economics of it make more sense that way, and the (relative) longevity of certain documented gladiators also.
Interesting thanks. Not all that surprising though.
People are excited about the writting in the show they watch. 90 banillion articles came out about Severence too.
People that are fans then play into the kayfabe, as thats a large part of the point of the show.
Let people enjoy things, they arent harming you by talking about wrestling.
The only professional wrestling I pay attention to is the current US administration.
I wouldn’t call myself a wrestling fan but I see the entertainment/art in professional wrestling. Like anything else entertainment wise it’s an escape for the viewers. Sure the outcome of matches are pre determined but it’s the entire spectacle that you get lost in and forget about the forged display. I never watched WWE growing up but I always heard about John Cena being a charismatic well liked person in and out of the ring. I’m sure the headlines fit more into sports feeds rather than the arts/theater section.
I mean people get excited over TV shows all the time? Doesnt have to be real for people to talk about it and be excited
I’m still not quite sure if the winner is predetermined or not. I know the “fighting” isn’t real, though the stunts still take skill to pull off safely and in a believable manner, and the rivalries are scripted… Not sure if the entire fight is written in advance or if it’s ad-libbed and the winner is just whoever happens to be winning when the fight needs to end for the next event.
And mostly just because I’ve seen backyard wrestling groups that can go either way with it (without even counting the ones that think it’s entirely real and just hurt each other the whole time). Some are entirely scripted, others just ad-lib the fight and the winner is still unknown until it’s called.
WWE is less wrestling and more a glorification vehicle for the MacMahon syndicate. All the real pro wrestling is on AEW or the circuits now.
I haven’t tuned into wresting since the NWO/Wolf Pack days, but I just assumed it was the next generation of naive kids keeping the business alive. In my mind the audience comprises of young boys (mostly) who can still believe it’s ‘real’, their parents who throw money at it because it makes their kid happy, and then of course the fringe set of “wrestling is totally real” guys who should know better but choose not to.
