Hey Scott,
Love your work etc etc. Just a quick question, but I was wondering if there was a specific moment when kayfabe died for you and your readers? Y'know, like in the same way you learn that Father Christmas doesn't exist! For me, as young fan in the early 90's, it was after buying a bunch of old WWF magazines from a few years earlier, at a garage sale. There was a big feature on "new star" Saba Simba, and I spotted he was carrying exactly the same ceremonial shield that Kamala was using on the shows I was then watching.
My 10-year old mind knew something was fishy, and reluctantly came to the conclusion that there was indeed a WWF Props Warehouse and that this wasn't an intricately woven storyline leading to the formation of an African faction that would soon reunite to terrorise the federation.
A sad day!
Haha, I've even found the offending picture...
Simba: http://i211.photobucket.com/albums/bb320/Lthomascsonka/simbasd8.jpg
Kamala: http://www.obsessedwithwrestling.com/pictures/k/kamala/08.jpg
Say what about Father Christmas now?
I'm sure I've told this bit many times before, but it's always a fun discussion. For me, I had always had nagging doubts about the reality of what I was watching, but the light bulb moment was Wrestlemania V, when Hogan kicked out of the big elbow and came back to win the title. For whatever reason, that's when the switch went off in my head and I couldn't suspend disbelief. Stage two of the shattering of kayfabe came when I logged onto the internet for the first time in 1992 and discovered RSPW, with other people casually talking about just HOW fake the business really was. Up until then I had always thought that the world was divided into people who believed in the "reality" of the sport and people who hated it. I didn't really think there was an entire group of fans who knew it was fake and entered into a whole new level of discussion based around that.
The final stage of the shattering of kayfabe for me actually came a few years after that, when I started viewing the actual mechanics of matches differently. When I first watched the ladder match between Shawn and Razor at Wrestlemania X, I was impressed by what a great job Razor Ramon did. Then the light bulb went off and I watched the match from a totally different perspective, at which point it became the Shawn Michaels Show for me.
And you know the rest.
Tags: Mailbags
My nagging doubts really set in when I worked out that main events pay per views always seemed to finish exactly 15-20 minutes before the show was due to end which couldn’t be natural (of course UFC deals with this by running an undercard and then filling the end of the PPV with shows from the undercard if needed).
The plunder under the ring always “worried” me as well – why exactly was there a steel dustbin and a baking try (?) under the ring and how on earth the wrestlers know where to look for it (plus I I’ve always wondered who the **** uses steel dustbins since I’ve never seen them anywhere else ??).
It’s the little things that do it…
For me (other than my father saying he heard Hacksaw Duggan on the radio right before WM4 talking about how all the outcomes were decided, which I still don’t believe), it was the timing. Like you said, the ppvs always ended conveniently at the same time. Plus I knew the syndicated shows that aired at 10:30 p.m. Saturday night couldn’t be live, though they treated it as such. After that realization, then the smoking gun was how after something like the Hogan-Andre main event, Superstars was on TV the next morning in my area and the announcers were talking about the event in the past-tense. Although I think there was something like they said they couldn’t really say much about what happened.
My “lightbulb” moment was Savage-Steamboat at WM III. The whole thing just seemed TOO phony. People made fun of Muraco for slipping off the buckles at WM4 or Jericho for falling off the buckles against Rhyno, but that stuff makes it seem more real. With Savage-Steamboat it was obvious they had already done taht match beforehand and were working from a script. Never underestimate the importance of blown spots for the “Real” effect.
Oh yeah, and Steamboat’s goofy selling didn’t help matters either.
Not a “light bulb” moment, just Coach Kurt’s Wrestling Hotline in the Royal Oak Daily Tribune newspaper in the 80’s that smartened me up to the business.
I knew from day one but didn’t care.
First proof I had, though, was renting some WWF video that included a steel cage bout from a house show between Hogan and Bossman, and realizing it was nearly a move-by-move copy of the match I’d recorded from Saturday Night’s Main Event.
Soon after, I read in WWF Magazine about Warrior wrestling Andre dozens of times overseas, “And beating him in under thirty seconds every time!”
I couldn’t believe they’d do a tour and the matches would be mostly the same every night.
…and despite my “knowing,” I’d let myself believe in even the dumbest crap, like Jake being blinded by Martel’s cologne.
My friends and I would always get crap from our dads with the usual, “You know it’s fake don’t you!?”
We went through a progression. First, NWA/WCW was fake but the WWF was real. Then we moved to the idea that just the jobber matches on Superstars were rigged so the jobbers wouldnt get hurt and sue the WWF. I’m sure the Charles Austin inury helped that in our minds.
What finally did it in for us was the Pillman-Sullivan strap match. I watched that match and was telling my friend how weird the ending was and how Pillman yelled Bookerman! at Sullivan and left.
You should have seen the look on his face. He leaned over and grabbed this dirt sheet he had come across that had outlined what happens with wrestling and how it was all rigged and planned by a man they called the “bookerman.”
My friend wasn’t really buying into/ready to believe what was in the dirt sheet, until that match blew it all open. He gave me the sheet and kayfaybe was over for both of us.
I’m not sure if there was a specific moment I could pinpoint. I remember believing, being just horrified when Honky and The Hart Foundation were beating on Savage and going to hit Liz with the guitar and then later when Savage walked out on Hogan vs The Twin Towers I thought for sure even Hogan wouldn’t be able to overcome those odds. Warrior being locked in the casket on The Funeral Parlour was a big moment for me too.
By the time I was 11-12 I knew something was up (lots of people are very good at letting you know that it’s fake) but never truly understood just HOW fake until I got online around 1994 and started reading RSPW and later sites like MiCasa.
I’ve always known it was “fake” to some extent. What really killed it for me was how everyone’s finishers would revive Hogan (i.e The Reviving Elbow) but knock everyone else out cold.
I never bought Sgt. Slaughter as an “Iraqi Symphatizer”, nor his sidekick General Addnaan (sp?), I mean c’mon, that’s the Iron Sheik. Isn’t he from Iran? So that right there shattered kayfabe for me. Whenever they repacked someone it turned the lightbulb on.
Then what really enforced it was just the flat out horrible wrestling in 92-93, guys would go down or sell when contact was obviously not made. Specifically in Royal Rumble 92, Shawn Michaels superkicks Bulldog and obviously doesn’t connect, and Bulldog goes down, then he does like two more times and never makes contact. Funny how HBK was the one who broke kayfabe for me seeing as he’s such a good performer.
phase one: Wrestling is real
phase two: the actual matches are real but the characters are made up (selfpromotion the same way Alice Cooper or Michael Jackson do/did it)
phase three: what the hell? the matches ain’t real neither?!
interesting enough I already started discussing match quality before I was convinced the matches were scripted (I remember that I just wanted a good match in the main event of WrestleMania XI and didn’t care for the winner. I looked out for a great match and wanted the better man
to win).
the end of this came when I stumbled upon my first “dirt sheet”.
I was opposite, in I never liked wrestling as a little kid and thought it was fake until a few moments sucked me in and wonder if it really was. I rarely watched it (I was the guy saying to friends “its fake”, but I had no idea how or for sure). But the morning I saw “Ravishing Rick Rude” pick his women to kiss and it was Cheryl Roberts, I was hooked. Of course I thought that was real and everything else fake. Hogan/Andre fri nite main event, convinced me it was fake but could be e njoyable like TV shows
I figured it out a few minutes into my first show (World Class): I saw a vertical suplex and realized it couldn’t possibly work without the other guy’s cooperation. And how can a guy who’s been beaten to the point he can barely stand still get up and run for an Irish Whip?
That show also had a tag match with the Fantastics vs. someone (don’t remember if it was the Midnights), and the whole face-in-peril segment, with cut-off tags, false tags, and the Hot Tag, was so melodramatic, it couldn’t be real. Plus the quick recovery of the face in peril after the hot tag when all four guys fight.
But the enthusiastic World Class crowd also showed me that it didn’t matter. You know movies are fake, but go for good storytelling and charismatic performers. World Class had both, as did NWA/WCW. WWF had some, but their big, slow comic book characters kept me from getting into them much.
For a lot of us, I think deep down, we all really knew it was fake all along. My light bulb moment though, where there was no turning back, came in the build up before Wrestlemania 8. This was right around/before that year’s Rumble where everything seemed to be building towards Hogan/Flair. A friend of the family had worked for WWF at the time and smuggled out a print ad for W8, with Flair/Savage and Hogan/Sid as the card. Nothing earth shattering, but just confirmation that everything was worked and nothing was left to chance.
I remember being teased in 2nd grade (this was about the time Hogan vs Andre and WM III, and everyone watched a Saturday night’s Main Event battle royal over the weekend), and there was this one jerk that just had to keep saying that it’s phony and all they do is stomp their feet and fake punch. The thing I hated most about his arguement was the “Why do the come back to the guy after being thrown into the rope!?” “It’s so fake.” I simply couldn’t answer the damn kid. Why do they come back to the opponent after being whipped into the ropes? lol. Damn Kayfabe.
A little off topic, since I knew wrestling was fake by high school, but, in a similar vein. I had an English teacher in high school, who was a great guy, but he would always tease my friends and I (remember this was 1998-99, when wrestling was *everywhere*) and tell us that wrestling was fake because the wrestlers shaved their body hair. WTF?! He wasn’t joking either. I never understood that line of reasoning, but he was an otherwise intellegent guy, so….
Again, though, he was a hell of a guy and I loved being in class with him.
“Why do they come back to the opponent after being whipped into the ropes?”
What do you expect them to do? Just stop running? That’s just crazy talk. Really there could probably be a whole thread about flaws in wrestling physics. I remember seeing something about 20 years ago in one of the PWI-type mags asking why it doesn’t hurt landing after performing a dropkick, but it does hurt landing if you miss the dropkick. The answer given was that the wrestler performing the dropkick braces himself for the impact after the kick connects, and after missing he is not prepared for how and when his body hits the mat, which I guess does make some degree of sense, or at least as much as anything else in wrestling. You could expand this to cover why the guy performing a suplex or superplex is hurt less than the guy receiving the move, which again makes some degree of sense as the guy being suplexed travels farther and drops from a greater height than the executor of the move. Of course when you get to things like Hogan no-selling finishers, Warrior, Sting, Luger, or Tatanka suddenly deciding to no-sell, or Hawk’s no-selling of piledrivers, the only real argument that can be made is “his adrenaline must really be pumping.” The one thing that I’ve always hated to see in a match is when two guys are preparing to double suplex someone, but he blocks the move and then suplexes both guys at once. That one just looks ridiculous as he is only grasping the guys with his arms curled around their heads and the notion that he could propel them all the way over just by that grip is just ridiculous.
I honestly can’t remember when reality shattered for me. I’m pretty sure it was early on, because my dad thought it was stupid and told me it was all fake. This is coming from someone who plays and wins a lot of tennis tournaments, so I don’t think he liked it being called a “sport”.
Still, much like sci-fi movies, cartoons and superheroes, I didn’t care. It was still hugely entertaining and I grew up a happy mark. I knew it was “fake” and that they stomped their feet for punches, but I didn’t know about them following a script, their lives outside the character or how much the matches were pre-planned. Of course, they were still protecting kayfabe at this point, so you really DIDN’T know much behind the scenes
I can’t remember when I started finding out things on the ‘net. I came into it pretty late, actually, like around ‘96 or so. I think Mankind did it, actually. I found a site that listed wrestler’s real names and my friend and I couldn’t believe how “lame” a real name “Mick Foley” was (stupid High Schoolers, don’t hold it against us). From there, I discovered other wrestling news sites and started reading about things behind the scenes.
Honestly, a lot of times, I find the behind the scenes stuff more interesting than what’s going on TV. But when it comes to watching it live, ESPECIALLY if I’m in the crowd, I’m still a huge mark.
Yeah, how the irish whip worked was a big one for me too. I think I always kind of knew it was fake (plus my dad reminded me of it at every moment), but the first time I realized all of the moves were phony was when I went to a local wrestling event for Pacific Northwest Pro Wrestling. I was up in the front row and it was easy to see the punches being pulled.
I got on the internet in about 1993, although I didn’t really start reading wrestling related stuff until I became a fan again in 1995.
I think overall that the internet was bad for my enjoyment of wrestling though. It revealed too much and it made it seem much more ordinary.
It was so tempting though, to read about how would be signing with the WWF/WCW next, or what was most likely to happend due to the results of TV tapings that hadn’t actually aired yet. It really did kill a lot of the surprise though.
People getting punched in the face. I knew that when you punch someone in the face, they’re either gonna bleed at some point or just welt up. Guys never got their noses broken, they never had black eyes, and they never lost teeth. I’d seen how playground fights had ended. If a kid can cause a bloody nose then these monsters should be knocking people’s heads off. Kinda made me wonder, “Hm, they’re either not punching very hard or this is fake.” Didn’t really matter. I still was in near hysterics when Razor Ramon kept getting so close to beating Bret Hart at the ‘92 Survivor Series. Bret was a god in my 8 year old mind. That’s about the only thing that hasn’t changed.
Sure you got the right PPV there?
For me, it was how 2 guys could be in the midst of a feud, then all the sudden be partners, and all is forgotten because they’re both on the same side now. One that sticks out is Earthquake-Jake, with Earthquake crushing Damien, and then a few months later they’re slated to be partners in the 1991 Survivor Series.
The punches were my first tip-off, too. I think the Point of No Return for me was reading a WWF Magazine before Wrestlemania IV that referred to Randy Savage as the “WWF champion”.
I believe I got the WWF Magazine with Flair as WWF champion the day after the Royal Rumble (Monday). I knew then how the mail worked, and that there was no way it was sent after the show.
5 minutes ago, when I read this entry! You mean to tell me that the last segment on Raw with Jericho/Batista beating/losing in 2 minute squashes was fake?
There is an age before which the reality of anything is a matter of second importance. When I was a kid, adventure books, comic books, monster and science fiction movies, as well as sports were all the same to me: matters of supreme importance with good guys and bad ones… and I wanted the good guys to win. To some degree, the willingness to believe comes from the sense that the battle itself is more important than the specifics of who is really who and what is really what. In that vein, I would posit that the belief in good and evil is in some ways more fundamental than any of the specific instances of it we encounter in our lifetimes, and that stories are more important than facts, at least as far as our emotional makeup goes.
I think you could make the argument that in this sense, successful wrestling promoters are like political strategists of all parties: they put forth a deceptive show, hoping to convince people (most of whom know what they are seeing isn’t real) of the ultimate importance of the reality behind the images. Unsuccessful wrestling promoters, of course, are more like violent criminals, but without the good press.
The question naturally arises at this point: why do wrestling fans want to pretend these are real contests and non-fans don’t? What is it about specific wrestlers or promotions or angles that draws us in?
I was in Springfield, IL for a TV taping of shows that would air after Wrestlemania IV. I remember Strike Force came out to show everyone they had the belts, then they taped the match proper without the belts. Amazingly, at WMIV, they lost the belts, and the match aired afterwards. That, along with the whole Duggan/Sheik incident, pretty much sealed the deal for me.
Here’s a sad story…
I went to an indy event in Climax, MI (good wrestlers, too). There was a father and son sitting beside me. The son had never even seen wrestling before, and within 5 minutes of the first match, he exclaimed to his dad, “This is FAKE!”. I was sad for humanity at that point.
Mine came a bit later than other peoples, but I have a hiatus in my wrestling watching from about 89-96. When Mankind first debuted in 96 I was ten and watching with my brother and he goes, “Hey, isn’t that Cactus Jack?” Yes… Yes it was. How could he be two different people? Then I hit the internet and found a wrestling rumor site. The rest, as they say, is history.
My big moment: the Hogan/Flair cage match at Halloween Havoc. The closeup during the pin, you can see Flair WATCHING Mr. T. make the three count, and then I knew something was wrong.
I still kept the facade up (it had to be real… they LOOK like their beating each other up), but it didn’t help a few months later when my dad flipped out during the first Hogan/Vader match, when Hogan did the flase slam attempt (you know, he goes for the slam but falls backwards and nearly gets pinned because the guy is just darn big), and my dad flips out, screaming, “Goddamnit Hogan! Every time you fucking try that it doesn’t work!”
My dad was always a bigger mark than me… still is.
Watching both the NWA and the WWF was interesting as a 8-11 year old. The nature of the overly formulaic Hogan match was the first signs for me, but because the guys in the NWA bled, I still believed the NWA was real. The final shattering occurred when Flair left for the WWF and he became more cartoon-y and then it all just hit me that what my dad had been saying for years (that you can’t punch a guy straight in the face and not be bruised up) was true.
By the way, we all know that wrestling is “fake”, but did you ever stop to think about why wrestling is fake?
According to Bret Hart’s book, and based on a story by Lou Thesz, wrestling was a total shoot until 1925. Back then Ed “Strangler” Lewis was world’s champion, but he and his headlock were so dominant that nobody could beat him. So Lewis worked a title change so that they could pop business for a rematch. Once they realized that manipulating results resulted in greater profits, there was no turning back.
Of course, that story may be a work as well…
Kayfabe died for me with the Stossel report on 20/20 and the discovery that Vince McMahon owned the WWF through what was then called, Titan Sports. There was also a report by WOR, Channel 9 in ‘85 where they tape recorded a match on a Pro Wrestling USA Card between Backlund and Zybysko where they are mapping out sports during the match (which I was at and the card shown in the original Highlander film).
For me it was in 2003 when I started reading Scott Keith.
I went on “hiatus” from wrestling in 1994 when I was 11, then randomly one day heard about Royal Rumble 2003 and decided to order it. I loved it– it was fun like all Rumbles I remembered from the past, had a great wrestling match in Benoit/Angle, and was the first PPV I ever watched live.
Then I got on the internets and started reading about what had been going on in the “business” the past 10 years, mostly from Keith’s essays and rants. I started hanging around 411mania, reading everyone’s bitching and over-analyzing everything, and by Armageddon I was pretty much a burnt-out smarky bastard myself.
I was basically told it was fake by every kid on the playground, as well as my mom & dad (my dad was an old school Stampede fan, so probably knew when he saw the more cartoony shit WWF was putting on, if not earlier). So it was no big ‘moment’ or anything. I do recall being confused why Randy Savage would WILLINGLY quit wrestling forever after losing to the Warrior at WrestleMania VII, though (I figured “who would give up their job?”), so it was a slow climb still.
Jeez, did any of us have dads who actually nutured our love of our fake sport? I’m having a cats in the cradle moment here.
I got my first idea that something was amiss when reading the WWF magazine back in 87 and it listed Vincent Kennedy McMahon Jr as the company owner in the annual publication/circulation statement that has published in the magazine by law. You mean he isn’t just the announcer???…my little 11 year old mind was blown…WTF??
Any illusion of reality was shattered in 89, as I live in New Jersey, and this was the state Vince first declared wrestling was predetermined to get it declared as entertainment and not a sport and it was all over the local news.
My dad told me wrestling was fake all the time (one of my best friend’s Dad did as well), it doesn’t mean he didn’t take me to shows before I was old enough to drive.
Hell, my MOM took me to IYH: Cold Day in Hell when I was 11… ON MOTHERS DAY because my dad’s dad had had a heart attack and he couldn’t take me. Now that is a hell of a mom.
My Dad loved wrestling, he had grown up in the same town that Whipper Billy Watson lived in and he and his friends got to know him and help set up the ring and what not for the Toronto shows. He even wrestled a handful of times in the old Toronto territory under different masked gimmicks (”Dr X” and awesome jobber names like that).
He never outright explained things to me, but always encouraged me not to take it too seriously.
I don’t think I ever thought it was real. The fakeness of it was drummed into me by family and friends from the very beginning. One moment that does sort of stand out was the 1991 Survivor Series. Before that event, a friend somehow got wind of what the results would be (apparently through a hotline or something) and proceeded to win a nice sum of money “betting” on the outcomes with another friend.
Sorry, totally off-topic, has ANYONE here voted on ANY of the Cyber Sunday matches?
Yeah, I voted on wwe.com for Festus for the preview match about 15 times.
As far as Kayfabe breaking for me…on doubt…watching Earl Hebner’s insanely slow counts to end a match. During a near-fall it was normal cadence, but when, say, Bad News Brown hit that Ghetto Blaster, we’d get the 1…………………………..2………………………………..3!
But, it is still damn entertaining to watch, so I stick with it.
For me, it was the Wrestlemania IV title tournament, where EVERY match worked out perfectly so that faces always faced heels.
I also noticed that with pins, the wrestler on the bottom until ‘2′, and then would magically resuscitate and kick-out. In my ‘matches’ with friends, you would be wriggling and struggling straight away..