thecrusherwi
El Dandy
the Financially Responsible Man
Brawl For All
Posts: 7,660
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Post by thecrusherwi on Jun 12, 2020 8:00:15 GMT -5
I don't think it ever crossed my mind that it was real. I mean, say what you will about wrestling but it rarely resembles anything that looks like a real fight. By the time I started watching wrestling I'd already seen stuff like Power Rangers, Bond films and probably a fair few action movies with my Dad too, all of which depicted far more realistic fighting than your average WWF match did at the time. At no point did I think they were real, so wrestling was just the same in my eyes I guess. I do remember the strange situation that I'm sure most wrestling fans experienced as children though, of cocky adults thinking they were so clever by saying 'it's fake you know' and me thinking 'well obviously it's fake, I have eyes.' Mine was similar. I first watched wrestling at my friend Teddy's house, some Hulk Hogan and Jimmy Snuka tag match. I knew it was fake right away, and I was 8. Later that day, Teddy was watching another WWF show, and some adults in the house were smugly saying "You know this is fake, right Teddy?" And I thought "Just let him enjoy his thing he likes. What do they get out of trying to ruin it for him?" It's amazing but people STILL like to point out that it's fake. For years I'd point out how the finishes were, but injuries still happened, and mention how Seinfeld was fake too but its still amazing, or whatever. Now I just say "Oh yeah? I didn't know." Because then they realize how dumb they sound. A couple years ago, I was at a friend’s party. A group of us were talking about wrestling when his cousin interjected and said he couldn’t believe that adults would watch that fake stuff. Later at this party, this same person expressed excitement for an upcoming convention he was attending where he was going to be cosplaying as some Japanese anime character.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Jun 12, 2020 10:39:27 GMT -5
The Invasion storyline. The curtain had slowly been getting pulled back for a while before that - for example, I remember my dad showing me some old-ass Geocities page with a list of wrestlers' real names and feeling totally blown away - but the sense of wonder, and belief in kayfabe reality, was still there. But I was a fan of WWF, WCW and ECW in pretty much equal measure. So seeing guys I thought were the coolest thing ever in their respective companies - RVD, Tommy Dreamer, DDP, Booker T - getting bossed around by Stephanie McMahon or getting made to look like assholes gave me a distinct feeling like "these guys were so cool, why are they not cool anymore?" I did some Internet sleuthing, made my way to the GameFAQs pro wrestling board, and my understanding of wrestling was forever changed.
So basically, Paul Heyman introducing Stephanie McMahon as the owner of ECW killed kayfabe for me.
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Post by johnnyk9 on Jun 12, 2020 14:12:07 GMT -5
Seeing pretaped results on Wrestlezone
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agent817
Fry's dog Seymour
Doesn't Know Whose Ring It Is
Posts: 21,303
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Post by agent817 on Jun 13, 2020 14:20:09 GMT -5
I will admit that I was a bit of a mark when I first got into it, but there was an underlying thought in the back of my mind that knew that a lot of things were a work. For example, the public firing of Steve Austin. I knew that he wasn't really fired. I had also read that Undertaker and Kane were not real-life brothers and when I saw what he looked like under the mask, I knew that he wasn't disfigured, not to mention that he wrestled under different personas before becoming Kane. I knew that Sable wasn't really gone. I could go on.
What's funny about Kane is that I had heard from people that they thought he was really burned.
As for the violence, I kind of was on the fence about it. However, what got me was how some people tried to sell injuries, there's just no way that someone would be back in about a week after suffering something that may have looked real. But then you have the infamous off-the-cell bump from Mick Foley, or even Austin's neck injury.
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Phil Parent
El Dandy
Your Favourite Teacher
Posts: 8,508
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Post by Phil Parent on Jun 14, 2020 9:28:11 GMT -5
My father told me when I was a little kid that he went to a bar after a show when he was young and he saw all the wrestlers together drinking beer. That's when I understood they weren't really mad at each other. A couple years later I'd frame-by-frame moves in matches with my VCR to see how they were done. The one move that puzzled me for a while was the Razor's Edge. I was looking at a lot of jobber matches and it was like he was really murdering these guys dropping them on their necks. And then I saw him do it to Santana, Martel and mostly, DiBiase and how much gentler he was laying big name veterans down and it dawned on me.
The weird thing is, I'm surprised that a promoter in the 60s or 70s would allow his guys to break kayfabe in public.
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Dean-o
Grimlock
Haha we're having fun Maggle!
Posts: 13,865
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Post by Dean-o on Jun 14, 2020 23:25:04 GMT -5
I started watching late 1991, and thanks to local video stores, rented as many PPV & match comp tapes as I could. At WretleMania VII, Hogan does a pretty obvious blade job after Slaughter wacks him with a chair. You can even see the ref pick up the blade and put it in his pocket.
It never bothered me. Even as a kid, I was fascinated with how it all worked.
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SmashTV
Dennis Stamp
Big Money, Big Prizes, I Love It!
The Excellence of Allocation
Posts: 4,495
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Post by SmashTV on Jun 15, 2020 14:21:50 GMT -5
I think as a kid I didn’t want to admit it was fake, but two late 80s segments did it for me. The first was the Megapowers exploding, where the backstage timing was off by a few seconds and you had Hogan asking for a countdown and the director saying ‘cut’ during the credits.
The other was during a promo for the 89 Survivor Series. The face team were featured and Jim Neidhart specifically called out Haku. This made no sense to me as he’d had no feud or interaction with Haku, and that’s when I thought it was all being done as part of a storyline. Using that logic, I determined that if it WAS part of a storyline then the whole thing must be made up of storylines and as such it couldn’t be real.
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Post by Celexa Bliss 54 on Jun 15, 2020 16:43:08 GMT -5
I'm not sure if I had a true moment where it all came together. I think I always sort of knew, but allowed myself to get absorbed in the pageantry of it all. But as I was trying to think about the question, I realized that whenever I played with my toys, I always treated it from a booker's perspective. I would lay it all out before I played. I had notebooks of stories and match results, which I don't think I'd have done if I believed it was real. So I think it was a case of me being able to buy into kayfabe while watching, but deep down, I knew the truth.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Jun 15, 2020 17:39:56 GMT -5
Austin getting fired by Vince at Judgment Day 1998.
I remember watching that and just feeling shot for the rest of the day. I was 11. I thought Austin was really gone. I had no idea it was just a story and that the top guy in the company wasn't just fired because of bullshit.
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Post by Hickster on Jun 15, 2020 17:49:27 GMT -5
I knew really early on, but the event that sealed it was seeing the same match on Saturday Night Main Event that I had seen at a house show in Fitchburg, Mass.
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Post by Natural Born Farmer on Jun 15, 2020 20:54:12 GMT -5
I don't remember a specific moment, but at some point the combo of missed hits, my young peers saying "you know its fake, right?", and the ridiculous storylines caught up with me.
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Post by DerktheDerk on Jun 17, 2020 10:31:56 GMT -5
Owen Hart's death. I knew wrestling wasn't legit since I was like, 7. But the day Owen died was the one where kayfabe completely shattered to me. And then you had the Raw Is Owen episode the next day where everyone completely threw kayfabe away to give tribute to a man they loved. I came in here to post this exact thing. Owen being killed always kinda soiled wrestling for me in a lot of ways.
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nisidhe
Hank Scorpio
O Superman....O judge....O Mom and Dad....
Posts: 5,731
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Post by nisidhe on Jun 18, 2020 21:00:40 GMT -5
For me, I was able to connect the dots about the business on March 27, 1988.
I had told my new boyfriend at the time that I thought Randy Savage would win the title at WM IV, but I wasn't quite sure why until it occurred to me that that was precisely the outcome they were going with and had been planning for a while (since the initial face turn and the build which pulled the spotlight off Hogan). He was still a total mark and said he thought it would be Steamboat, despite him not having been anywhere near a title since he'd lost the I-C belt in June 1987. He called me later that night (he had gone to the closed-circuit airing - we had just starting going steady), to let me know that I was right.
It was then that I realized that, at least in WWE, it was possible to plan a build and a payoff for a talent who was insanely over at that moment; and that promoters hope for that sort of thing as it tends to boost the numbers. It did nothing to diminish my enjoyment - as long as I was able to suspend disbelief, I was still entertained by it and, at moments, still am.
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Post by Seth Drakin of Monster Crap on Jun 18, 2020 21:08:16 GMT -5
I don't think I ever had that moment because I think my parents always made sure to make me know that pro wrestling wasn't completely real. My dad had already left it before even Hulkamania happened, saying it was "fake". So I never got to have that "it is real" illusion.
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Post by DASH 243✅ on Jun 18, 2020 21:43:38 GMT -5
I think today is that day.
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Post by The Legendary Ring Troll {BLM} on Jun 18, 2020 21:49:57 GMT -5
I think today is that day. Yeah, it’s today.
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ASYLUMHAUSEN
Fry's dog Seymour
GIFs | Shitposts | Fun
Posts: 24,499
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Post by ASYLUMHAUSEN on Jun 18, 2020 22:04:52 GMT -5
I think today is that day. I started to post this same thing about 2 hours ago.... Today is just...man....
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Post by Milkman Norm on Jun 18, 2020 22:07:34 GMT -5
Yeah....
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Derk!
Hank Scorpio
Yeah, "looks like."
Posts: 5,074
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Post by Derk! on Jun 19, 2020 1:18:01 GMT -5
I think today is that day. If it wasn't dead for some people, I'm pretty sure it is now. And it seems like it's only the tip of the iceberg
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auph10imitated
Dennis Stamp
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Posts: 4,951
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Post by auph10imitated on Jun 19, 2020 8:08:19 GMT -5
Wrestlemania 17. In fact to be more specific it was actually December 2000. From September 1991-December 2000 I recorded almost every show and PPV, barely missed a thing, then in December 2000 we cancelled our subscription to Sky Sports. From theN on in I watched alot more sporadically, by summer 2001 I had my first job and entered the real world, I literally dipped in and out until 2002, then from 2002-2014 I only pretty much followed on the net. 2014 I got the Network and managed to follow more casually again, but yeah id say that transition period of Wrestlemania 17 was where it died out for me. Which ironically is considered as the WWE's true peak.
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