Hey kids, it’s time to use the f-word.
Because wrestling is a performance that has long blurred the lines between reality and
fiction, the veil of kayfabe long left people questioning whether what they were seeing
was combat or contrived.
And as we explored in the last episode, the question mark over wrestling’s legitimacy
was one that the media couldn’t let go, overshadowing bigger issues regarding business
practices and the treatment of talent.
So when someone drops the f-bomb and calls the business fake, people get defensive.
A very quick glance through the comments of the last video on how wrestling transitioned
from legitimate competition into a work could tell you that it's the sort of thing that
riles people up. It’s not fake: it’s predetermined, it’s scripted.
Because everyone’s definition of fake is different - is it about whether or not taking
a bump hurts, because they do, but the overall aim isn’t to hurt your opponent, despite
what the commentary, promos and narrative say.
A lot of people made the comparison to movies or TV in that they’re pieces of entertainment
in which actors play characters and we don’t call those fake.
Which is a fair point, the difference of course being that Daniel Craig doesn’t turn up
to events claiming to be James Bond, well apart from that time at the Olympics. But
he was also waved to by the statue of wartime Prime Minister, mad old racist and Man City
supporter Winston Churchill.
Over the years wrestling’s desire to keep a lid on the lie that it was a sporting competition
lead them to try everything from stretching out random rubes from the crowd to prove that
holds hurt, choking out comedians, slapping John Stossel and keeping heels and faces from
hanging out together on the road in case someone spotted them.
All of this effort to maintain what for many was an open secret, as I said in the last
video, which you can watch here btw, people were writing articles about wrestling being
a fix since before the dawn of the 20th century.
All of this effort to keep up the facade until one day.
I’m Laurie hailing from partsFUNknown and this is the day that kayfabe died explained.
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I don’t know what it means but it sounds provocative.
Nowadays, it seems almost inconceivable to imagine a time when we didn’t know almost
every intimate detail about wrestlers and their personal lives.
Not only is the industry surrounding wrestling bigger than it’s ever been with journalists
closely tied to sources within the business breaking news day in and day out on Twitter,
YouTube and dedicated websites, but wrestlers themselves are giving us glimpses of their
personal lives on their own social media accounts.
How else are we going to know that Braun Strowman or Adam Scherr likes lifting weights and eating
steaks or needs ten eggs, but only four yolks, two grilled chicken breasts, a double order
of hashbrowns and an orange juice and coffee to start the day off right. I always assumed
he ran off of coal, because he’s a train. Sorry, was a train. Some things are a blessing
in disguise.
But rolling the clock back 40 years to the 1980s and the backstage goings on in wrestling
were a mystery to most. Wrestling was undergoing a bit of a renaissance in the territories
and the promotions thought that if what was really happening inside the ring became common
knowledge it could seriously hurt their bottom lines.
Hence the extreme measures to keep it covered up. That’s why in 1984 David Schultz was
sent out by Vince McMahon to talk to 20/20 reporter John Stossel and shut down the ‘standard
question’ about whether wrestling was fake with a pair of open hand slaps.
Ironically, it was this act of realism that marked the beginning of the end of Schultz’s
WWF career. Stossel sued the WWF, settling out of court to the tune of $425,000 and Schultz
was suspended - not by Vince McMahon, but by the New York State Athletic Commissioner
who had watched the encounter unfold.
Once again the circus around wrestling’s realism became the dominant story in this
expose - with Schultz’s actions and Eddie Mansfield’s blading becoming the two stand
out moments of the segment.
Which is something another contributor, Jim Wilson, was annoyed by, in his book Chokehold:
Pro Wrestling’s Real Mayhem Outside the Ring he said:
“The obligatory topics of working and blading dealt with, 20/20 finally turned to what I
regard as the only important issues raised by pro wrestling , t.”
Wilson had made a habit of exposing the business in order to get his points across about blacklisting
and the broken promises promoters utilised and was thoroughly underwhelmed by 20/20s
reporting on the matter - after airing Mansfield and Wilson’s stories they turned to Vince
McMahon for a response who denied fixing matches and knowing about blading at all and said
of blacklisting:
“I would say that, generally speaking, most of that is sour grapes. Certainly, something
like that would never happen in the World Wrestling Federation, I assure you.”
Wilson called this “Flimsy homework and stumbling enquiry” on 20/20s part adding
that Stossel “failed to ask McMahon the obvious followup question - why no promoter
outside of McMahon’s own family had been permitted to stage wrestling shows in Madison
Square Garden for over 30 years? And why McMahon paid arena managers and TV stations in several
cities to grant him exclusive deals? And why two of his competitors sued him for antitrust
violations and racketeering?”
At this time the curtain of kayfabe was not only covering up how the business worked,
but how the business was run, and here was Vince, Mr Monopoly, trying to keep it from
coming apart at the seams.
Because pressure was mounting throughout the 80s as the media circled looking for any break
in the fake debate.
And while it had always been an open secret that wrestling wasn’t exactly on the level,
just looking at the reaction to the Iron Sheik and Jim Duggan both being picked up by New
Jersey police in 1987 for drug offences shows you that it was still real to a lot of fans
dammit.
Because it wasn’t the drugs that shocked the audience, it was the fact that babyface
patriot Duggan and hated foreign heel The Iron Sheik, bitter rivals, would be car-sharing
and sipping beers together.
Duggan says that he phoned Vince about the incident who said: “what have you done to
us?” and told him to go home. It was a scandal that stalled Duggan’s momentum.
But all the while Vince was making this out to be some business killing event, he had
already been making moves to expose it himself.
It’s become a bit of a meme now, but the sports entertainment moniker sprang up around
this time. In one interview with the Boston Globe in 1985 they asked if WWE was real or
fake to which Vince replied:
“I really don’t respond to that question, I think it was done to death in the ’20s.
But I hasten to say that we’re in the sports entertainment field. It’s not important
to determine what wrestling is or not. It doesn’t fall into one particular category.
It’s not in the category of sport, in the strictest sense of the word.”
The company was also forced to admit that what we were watching wasn’t exactly true
to life in 1986 when volunteers from a hotline for abused women threatened to protest a WWF
event over the portrayal of Randy Savage and Miss Elizabeth’s relationship.
Forcing spokesman Mike Weber to say that “wrestling is entertainment” and the couple's dysfunction
was “part of the show” in an effort to quieten the demonstrators.
And after the melodramatic, what have you done to us, he laid at Duggan’s feet in
‘87 it was just two years later that Vince peeled the curtain back himself.
February 10th, 1989 Vince went before the New Jersey State Senate to comment on a bill
that would remove wrestling from the regulations applied by Athletic Commissions.
You see, because wrestling was masquerading as a real sport it got tied up in sporting
sanctions - meaning each State’s athletic commission would have a presence at each wrestling
show and grant licenses to the wrestlers, the referees and timekeepers in order for
them to ‘compete’.
Different commissions also had certain requirements and restrictions, like the need for an ambulance
or injury insurance or in the case of Louisiana bans on certain wrestling moves: which came
up around WrestleMania 34 where it was revealed that powerbombs, pile drivers, moonsaults,
fighting in the crowd and bleeding among others were all banned. Not for major promotions
like WWE mind.
But at the time, the WWF had to adhere closely to these rules or risk losing its licenses.
It also had to shell out cash as tax and share a percentage of the gate in certain states.
Which you can bet your ass, Vince wasn’t thrilled about. There goes the money.
When interviewed for a 1989 Nightline episode about the regulations, Michael Hayes said
“I’m not knocking the commission, but they don’t do nothing for their percentage,
I’m down here, they take our blood pressure. We know we’re healthy. They make us sign
a contract and they get a big percentage.” Jesse Ventura told ESPN that sometimes there
would be “14 guys in suits sitting around the ring and doing absolutely nothing”.
Promotions frowned on this obvious cash grab, and the Athletic Commissions position wasn't
helped by outlandish asks like the Pennsylvania commissioners threatening to shut down a show
if a table was made available for their family at ringside.
So Vince must have weighed up the importance of kayfabe compared to the cost - after all
kayfabe had been created to up the cash flow of wrestling shows, first through rigging
the gambling then through creating more exciting matchups and storylines. So if it was going
to save them money in the long run what harm could it do?
So Vince, representing the World Wrestling Federation tells the New Jersey State Senate
that professional wrestling is "t" This moment was the culmination of a years
long quest by Vince and Linda McMahon to change the legislation, one they had poured a reported
$400,000 into. Linda had already testified before an ad-hoc committee in Pennsylvania’s
House of Representatives a year earlier equating WWF athletes to “the skilled athletes you
see in the circus or the Harlem Globetrotters, our athletes are well-conditioned professionals
who are the best at what they do. And what they do is entertain people.”
The New Jersey state senate was swayed by Vince’s testimony, voting 37 to 1 in favour
of deregulation, but the bill never actually passed. Vince had opened up a can of worms
and pissed off a lot of smaller promotions in the process who were worried they could
never put the genie back into the bottle as it were.
It would actually take 8 more years before the bill was pushed through in New Jersey
as state Governor Christine Todd Whitman signed the legislation while flanked by the Undertaker
- a symbol of just how far ‘professional wrestling’ had come from its sporting roots.
The signing removed a $100,000 media tax on wrestling and brought the WWF back to New
Jersey as they had been avoiding putting on shows there due to the cost.
It’s a decision a lot of states weighed up - Arizona, Colorado, Tennessee and West
Virginia all deregulated wrestling as well to attract the shows and their business to
the area. While other states have stopped due to the financial costs involved outweighing
the money brought in, and others have never regulated at all.
Though some states took the revelation of wrestling not being a true sporting contest
as reason to move the regulation to the jurisdiction of a different governing body.
In states with no regulations this created a bit of a boom of indie promotions - without
the overheads of having to share profits or pay for licenses smaller wrestling promotions
were able to flourish.
While it was always thought that exposing the business would hurt it - it actually made
it stronger, eventually.
And it also coincided with the birth of a new era in the WWF:
“Even though we call ourselves "sports entertainment" because of the athleticism involved, the key
word in that phrase is "entertainment". The WWF extends far beyond the strict confines
of sports presentation into the wide open environment of broad-based entertainment.”
“We in the WWF think that you, the audience, are quite frankly tired of having your intelligence
insulted. We also think that you're tired of the same old simplistic theory of "good
guys vs. bad guys".
The Attitude Era was to allow WWE to push the ‘creative envelope’ and move away
from stories of good guys and bad guys and borrow more from soap operas or Jerry Springer
to fully embrace the entertainment product. Because the audience had been primed that
this WAS NOT A REAL SPORT ANYMORE.
So it’s weird isn’t it that real life still bleeds into wrestling in such a strange
way. Sometimes through the very nature of performing in front of a live crowd like when
Edge and Lita’s affair was discovered or through the awkward interest of tabloid’s
like TMZ who derailed the Rusev storyline by breaking the news that he and Lana had
got engaged.
It’s a weird hangover of the kayfabe era that the performers and the characters are
sort of interchangeable, like I said earlier we don’t constantly conflate Daniel Craig
and James Bond as one and the same.
So it’s weird that WWE would change direction on Rusev and Lana or be annoyed, because the
characters are not the same people as CJ Perry and Miroslav Barnyashev. The audience know
it's not true, we’re already suspending our disbelief so why does it matter.
And I think the answer is that people just don’t know why, as Arn Anderson revealed
about the ‘tense’ moment had he have thought old school it would have been “they shouldn’t
have done that’, then entire companies and groups of people *cough* Vince *cough* are
exposing the business on the other side of the tracks. So I don’t know what to think
to be honest with you.”
Looking into this it’s funny to me that this fiercely guarded tradition springs up
out of a swindle, turns into a way to protect the mystique of the business and amplify the
interest, is shattered because Vince wants mo money and yet wrestling is still struggling
to untangle itself from the knotted web of lies it wove throughout its lifespan.
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Thanks for watching I hope you enjoyed this look at the end of kayfabe, or the sort of
end of kayfabe,, please do like, subscribe, comment and share this video around if you
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Explainers why not watch this one about the history of lucha masks which is not as simple
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