KnifeMissile

I just read in a fark thread that Professional Wrestlers and the WWE have admitted that it's all ficiton. Considering they air ads for writers, this may come as little surprise to some. However, this is all news to me!

So, when did they start admitting that it's all staged and why?
Thank you...

Lebell

I think when they changed the name from the World Wrestling Federation to World Wrestling Entertainment. That happened what, three years ago?

The athleticism isn't fake however. I couldn't train hard enough to do the shit those guys do. Nor could you pay me enough.

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Charlatan

I don't think the name change had anything do to with it... They changed the name from WWF to WWE because the World Wildlife Fund was using WWF first and won the lawsuit (I can't remember who sued whom). In losing the law suit they were forced to change the name and they chose WWE.

I'm not sure when they came out about being scripted... but I did notice it a while back (maybe 2001 or so?).

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stevie667

I figured out it was scripted when i noticed that the guy who gets the crap beaten out of him at the beginning generally makes a wonderful recovery to the pleasure of the audience, and gets the other guy in a great pin.

That was some 6-7 years ago now.

Still fun to watch, the guys are amazing athletes, and fucking huge, i do admire them for what they do. They're still fighting out in the ring, even if it is scripted.

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pan6467

As for scripting, this was done in the early 90's when McMahon was going through the steroids lawsuits. Turner was reinventing WCW to truly compete and secretly paying injured wrestlers to sue McMahon seeing weakness as he was spending all his energies fighting the steroids case and other Federal charges.

The finishing blow was many states were taxing live sporting events, like these to the point that they couldn't make any money and had very unfriendly laws against wrestling and boxing, Oregon and Washington come to mind..... as such McMahon testified that wrestling was (and coining the catch phrase) "SPORTS ENTERTAINMENT". This allowed wrestling into the states that barred boxing and such and/or had commissions that oversaw these "sports". WCW followed suit and made the same claim.

(ECW however, never claimed to be scripted and refused to call themselves "sports entertainment".)

In the 90's Turner really fucked with McMahon hard and tried all he could to destroy him. And came damn close, but in the end WCW wrestlers pays and egos were too much. WCW had very few "house shows" just their tv events. And when AOL merged with Time/Warner and Turner stepped down, AOL saw WCW as a money pit and sold it to McMahon. (Along with a 5 year no compete clause that ends at the beginning of '06)

It says a lot about McMahon, though, to have battled Turner for so long and have had Turner's money against him. McMahon a few times was almost bankrupt. But he kept coming back and never gave up and destroyed Turner's WCW, beat the Feds and IRS and trampled any other competition.

The World Wildlife Fund started suing the WWF around 1995 in Europe, (it is believed by some Ted Turner, a huge fund donater did this to put McMahon and company out of business for good, but around 1999-2000 the lawsuit became big in the states, mainly because of internet problems websites and what not.

At first the WWE just had to change their web addresses and were allowed to keep the WWF...... but then the Fund saw dollar signs and went after more.

Finally, McMahon had enough and just switched to WWE and basically said "try to get money from me now."

I admire McMahon immensely for being such a battler and never quitting even when noone would have blamed him for giving up.

(PS.... all the above came from stories in the wrestling rags such as Wade Keller's Torch and other mags I subscribed to or read in the 90's)

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Charlatan

I think *everybody* (except perhaps little kids) knew it was fake before they admitted it... It was only the wrestlers themselves that argued it was real...

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Cynthetiq

I used to know a couple of the writers in the early 90s. It was funny to see people like the undertaker having casual dinner yukking it up with his sworn enemy Andre the Giant or something such whatever.... (never remember the characters)

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Stompy

Eh? You honestly had no idea it was scripted??

I knew even 10+ years ago that wrestling was fake and scripted. I thought it was pretty obvious since anytime they went to hit each other, they had to do that little funky move with their leg.

Everything they did.. the way they fell, any attacks against an opponent.. screamed "fake".

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Johnny Pyro

They admitted is was fake(scripted) awhile ago. Thats why they started calling it, "Sports Entertainment."

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spongy

Whewn Christine Whitman was Gov of Nj, she did a press conference with some wrestlers .. WWE if memory serves.. and they admiited it was scripted to get out of the sports tax thingee. That was the first I heard of it.. kinda like the Sun tabloid saying they were not really a newspaper and therefore shouldn't have the same libel concerns as real papers.

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Lockjaw

Ever since they started calling it WWE...I just can't geek out over it like I used to.

Never though I'd outgrow wrasslin...

Derwood

I'm not sure they ever really argued too hard that it was real.

Besides, how do you think these guys get punched in the face over and over again and never get bloody noses or black eyes?

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ICER

When I saw a 300lb man jump off a 6 foot pole and pile drived into another man laying on the floor guts. And the other man gets up after few seconds later. That's when I figured something wasn't right.

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