00:00 Wrestling is fake!
00:18 There is a contentious phrase.
00:20 Because for most of its existence the noble sport of professional wrestling has been locked
00:24 away behind the wall of kayfabe, this illusion of realness that has been upheld by everyone
00:31 in the business.
00:32 So much so that walking right up to a wrestler and asking them if what they do for a living
00:37 is fake is going to get you one of these.
00:43 After Vince McMahon blew the lid off the whole thing in 1989 to get out from under the various
00:47 state athletic commissions, which is a tale for another video, we now live in a post-kayfabe
00:53 era, where the audience has been enlightened to the fact that the people on screen are
00:57 performers and these are characters taking part in this weird athletic morality play.
01:06 But even now calling the whole thing fake is still going to get you in trouble with
01:11 Randy Orton on Twitter.
01:12 Back up for a second, because in case you've been living under a Dwayne Johnson, wrestling
01:16 is predetermined.
01:18 The winner is decided by the booker and the competitors work together to tell a story
01:22 about good guys and bad guys and deliver moves that look painful and awe-inspiring and are
01:28 actually as safe as possible or they just cover each other in dog food.
01:32 Not all art is high art.
01:36 Prior to the revelations about kayfabe, the media was obsessed with this notion that wrestling
01:41 was a fixed sport, with endless articles and exposés trying to uncover the truth about
01:47 it, which the wrestlers and promoters rightly viewed as someone trying to put them out of
01:52 business.
01:53 And they went to absurd lengths to protect it.
01:57 Dr David D. Schultz essentially ended his own career with that slap we saw earlier to
02:01 2020 reporter Jon Stossel.
02:03 Lou Albano took a televised lie detector test and failed and in years prior performers would
02:09 invite punters into the ring to get a right good stretching and double check how fake
02:16 the whole thing is.
02:17 So something that evolved out of legitimate amateur wrestling, let's look at how professional
02:21 wrestling actually became one big work.
02:25 I'm Laurie Hailing from partsFUNknown and this is how wrestling is fake explained.
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03:01 The origins of kayfabe and pro wrestling share a knotted history as the sport evolved out
03:06 of freestyle wrestling in Europe during the 1800s and other native forms of competition
03:11 in North America and Japan.
03:13 Kayfabe, with the appearance of realness, became more integral to the performance because
03:18 of how the business was run.
03:20 Professor Dan Glenday from the Department of Sociology at Brock University calls wrestling
03:25 a "culturally embedded spectacle" and said "Commonly known as catch-as-catch-can,
03:30 the early wrestling contests in the 19th and early 20th century normally included side
03:36 bets or gambling.
03:38 Most historians of professional wrestling look to Great Britain as the cradle of catch
03:41 wrestling while Germany and France receive honourable mention."
03:45 Wrestling was a carnival act, starting sometime in the 1860s and 70s.
03:51 Amateur wrestlers would basically compete to entertain the crowd whilst carnival workers
03:56 would act as their promoters and bookers.
04:00 Carnival razzmatazz, a lot of guys wore colourful costumes and created fictional backstories
04:05 to their characters, adding some much needed drama to proceedings.
04:09 Curiously these were legitimate athletic contests, though we're going on the word of the performers
04:15 and carnival workers of the time and that's what they would say.
04:19 But these competitions did used to last hours, so you would think that if you were working
04:24 it you would make it snappy, give them a tight 8 minutes with three restarts just like Raw.
04:28 Professor Glenday explains that the purity of the competition got corrupted when money
04:33 became involved.
04:35 The link between the evolution of freestyle wrestling with gambling, side bets, carnivals
04:40 and entertainment in Europe and North America probably explains the branching to professional
04:45 wrestling from its freestyle roots.
04:48 Money became the name of the contest, deception became the means to make more money.
04:55 Just like how pay to play carnival games are rigged in favour of the house, so too were
05:01 the wrestling contests.
05:03 To a degree.
05:04 Wrestlers like George Hackenschmidt distinguished himself from other wrestling competitors with
05:08 his version of the bear hug.
05:10 However by 1904 in Great Britain, Hackenschmidt had learned showmanship from Tom Cannon and
05:17 Charles Cochran in order to make money wrestling as a variety act during the popular bodybuilding
05:22 strongman contests.
05:24 These talents he brought with him to the USA the following year when he lost his first
05:29 match against Frank Gotch.
05:31 Prior to Hackenschmidt and Gotch, the sport of wrestling evolved because of the competing
05:36 interests of three factions, the impresarios, the carnies and the barnstormers.
05:43 All united in the search of one thing.
05:46 Honesty.
05:47 Money.
05:48 It's money.
05:49 It was money.
05:50 Impresarios are managers who would help craft the personas for the wrestlers to make them
05:54 more appealing and book matches to make them more interesting.
05:57 The carnies developed dangerous wrestling moves known as hooks that were illegal on
06:02 the amateur wrestling scene but not in carnival competition, which gave themselves a high
06:07 win rate.
06:08 But also they worked in tandem with the barnstormers, who were guys who competed like travelling
06:13 wrestlers but often would work with the carnies in order to stage matches and hoover up all
06:18 the profits made through betting.
06:21 And it was this focus on squeezing as much cash as possible out of each performance that
06:26 fundamentally changed the way people approached wrestling.
06:30 The DNA is there, you've got booked matches, outlandish personalities, moves you wouldn't
06:36 see on the amateur circuit.
06:38 This era is also where the term 'mark' originates.
06:42 You take your carnival, your rigged games, your ring toss, your balloon dart, your duck
06:46 pond - which all sound like drop retribution names - but the goal of all of them was to
06:50 attract people susceptible to spending their money on a pay to play basis.
06:57 It's a similar model to how free to play mobile games and the like work.
07:00 Some people are just whales and they're much more likely to spend money than others,
07:04 whether that's through frustration, bravado or gullibility.
07:07 And when the game operators found someone who was easily enticed into playing the game
07:14 back to back and had a fair amount of dough, they would literally mark them with chalk.
07:20 Here's Al Snow explaining to some trainees.
07:43 So then all the folks manning the games have to do is look for the marked mark and entice
07:49 them over to throw their money at a rigged game.
07:52 Wrestling in this early evolutionary period before the last vestiges of true sport were
07:56 drummed out of it, marks are there to lose their money on the bets for a rigged competition.
08:01 Let's hop back to Hackenschmidt and Gotch as the pair had two of the most significant
08:06 matches in early wrestling history in 1908 and 1911 over the World Championship which
08:12 Gotch came out on top of.
08:15 We talked about Hackenschmidt's showmanship earlier, what a tongue twister that is, and
08:20 that was essentially to play with his opponents to give the illusion that they might be able
08:26 to beat this dominant wrestler.
08:27 Because then the stakes are higher and people will come back to see the matches.
08:33 Though those tables were turned when he met Frank Gotch.
08:38 Because at his peak, good ol' Gotch was described as utterly peerless and was a talented
08:43 technical wrestler, but even this championship match, this defining moment in Gotch's career,
08:50 is overcast with the shadows of trickery.
08:53 Because during the 1908 match with Hackenschmidt for the World Championship, George complained
08:57 to the referee about Gotch's foul tactics, including thumbing and headbutting which left
09:03 Hackenschmidt bleeding and Gotch was also reportedly covered in oil, which Hackenschmidt
09:10 asked for him to have a shower before they continued the match.
09:13 Interestingly, the referee ruled that he should have pointed that out before the match started.
09:17 Hey, this guy's cheating.
09:20 You should have said that before the match started.
09:22 What is your job again?
09:23 The whole thing got so bad that after a two hour battle to the first fall, Hackenschmidt
09:28 just refused to return to the ring for a second fall and relinquished his world title to Gotch.
09:34 They then met again in 1911, but even greater controversy hung over this meeting as Hackenschmidt
09:39 had injured his knee training against partner Dr. Ben Roller, though years later Ad Santel
09:45 would tell Lou Thesz that he was paid $5,000 by Gotch's backers to injure Hackenschmidt.
09:52 Weirdly, Hackenschmidt himself denied any involvement from Santel and maintained that
09:57 it was Roller who caused the injury.
09:59 Either way, Gotch discovered the injury mid-match and took advantage of the entire thing to
10:04 walk out with the World Championship.
10:05 With the World Championship around his waist, Gotch became a national sensation in the US
10:10 and reigned until his retirement in 1913, but the sport was gaining a different sort
10:16 of notoriety as the critical eye of the media sought to expose wrestling's secrets.
10:23 One of those brazen fakes which has soured the people of this city on travelling professional
10:27 wrestlers has said that the match was not on the square, that it was a fake, pure and
10:32 simple.
10:33 It's fair to say that 99% of all wrestling matches where an admission fee is charged
10:37 and where professionals take part have been pre-arranged.
10:40 As the media began to draw back the curtain on kayfabe and expose the business, interest
10:45 in wrestling began to wane throughout the 1910s and the death knell was almost heard
10:50 after Old Oily himself Frank Gotch retired in 1913.
10:54 By 1920 in the US things were looking bleaker than staring down the barrel of a three hour
11:00 Raw.
11:01 It was the Great White North and evolution was underway, as Dan Glenday explained.
11:06 The Northeastern US, Ontario and Quebec became a centre for professional wrestling when promoters
11:11 Toots Mont, Ed Strangler-Lewis and his manager Billy Sandow, also known as the Gold Dust
11:17 Trio, developed most of the features associated with professional wrestling today, including
11:22 a time limit to matches, more acrobatic moves such as the dropkick and unlikely submission
11:28 holds.
11:29 Suddenly here was this move away from the plodding pacing of the matches of yore which
11:34 would drag on for hours.
11:36 Mont called this blend of Greco-Roman wrestling, freestyle, lumber camp fighting and theatre
11:42 slam bang western style wrestling.
11:46 Which you are correct, sounds like a grill house.
11:49 With Slam Bang the trio took wrestling out of the carnivals and into burlesque theatres
11:54 and eventually sporting arenas, creating the first real promotion in the process.
11:59 It helped that Ed Strangler-Lewis was legitimately an elite shoot wrestler and the world's
12:05 champion so he alone could draw a large crowd, but with the greater take they made on the
12:10 gate at the sports venues, they made the smart move of signing performers to exclusive contracts
12:16 and becoming the only game in town.
12:19 Eventually and with this ultimate control over how wrestling was presented, they were
12:23 able to mould it like clay into a new form.
12:27 They gave matches a shorter, snappier structure, invented the concept of finishing moves and
12:32 tag team wrestling.
12:33 They also began to pair teams and rivals up for extended periods, basically creating storylines
12:40 that evolved throughout the matches and advanced the chemistry between the combatants.
12:44 We're now seeing this taken to its ultimate conclusion as WWE moves into its Groundhog
12:49 Day phase and gives us the same match week in and week out.
12:54 News of this new style of wrestling travelled on the breeze or through a shared connection
12:59 to the Queen to the UK where a one-upping of that format was created called All In Wrestling
13:05 which added foreign weapons like steel chairs and apparently women wrestling in mud.
13:12 That sounds bad doesn't it?
13:15 But that's just what we called the North back then.
13:17 I can say that because I live here.
13:28 So wrestling was on the rise again and now had the added hook of these flashy moves.
13:34 Flashy moves, a dropkick.
13:36 Who am I, Jim Cornette?
13:37 That's too flashy for me.
13:39 Storylines which kept the fans returning.
13:42 But it was a fragile business still and one that still lived in fear of being exposed
13:47 for the pseudo competition that it was.
13:49 Which happened in New York in 1933 after this coalition of promoters decided to share their
13:55 profits, but in the process burned one Jack Pfeiffer.
14:00 Pfeiffer was a promoter himself, but he was now on the outside of the business looking
14:05 in, so he took his revenge by organising an interview with Dan Parker, the sports editor
14:10 of the New York Daily Mirror and telling all.
14:14 This is the thing, fans had long suspected that wrestling wasn't a true competition
14:18 and they'd likely made up their minds that they liked it anyway.
14:22 But this revelation fundamentally changed wrestling's relationship with the press.
14:28 It engendered a feeling of bitterness amongst sports writers who felt as if they were being
14:32 taken for fools and used as mere promotional tools when reporting the results of fixed
14:38 matches.
14:39 The Daily just stopped reporting the results because it wasn't legitimate competition.
14:43 Without that promotion in the press, the business in New York struggled for 15 years.
14:50 It feels like legitimacy has been the bone of contention with wrestling for the longest
14:55 time from 1895 when the sport was still mostly shoot all the way up to the most famous expose,
15:04 John Stossel's 2020 report on the business in 1984.
15:08 The overarching media narrative has been about whether or not wrestling is fake.
15:14 And you can see how that would lead an already clandestine industry to retreat even further
15:19 behind the barricade of kayfabe.
15:22 The few times the curtain had been peeled back, the house had all but burned down.
15:29 From the media's perspective it must be the brazenness of the lie, the doubling down
15:34 on the idea that it's all real, the slaps to reporters, the choking out talk show hosts
15:39 that just perpetuated this weird feud in slow motion between the two parties.
15:47 And it didn't even end after the veil was lifted, as Paul McArthur wrote for Wrestling
15:52 Perspective in 1998.
15:54 They are so blinded by the real vs fake issue that they keep their heads in the sand when
16:00 it comes to understanding pro wrestling.
16:02 The record ratings, the revenue, the drugs, the sex scandals, the premature deaths and
16:08 all the other important issues that surround this business are overlooked.
16:12 They're probably fake too.
16:14 It's almost as if kayfabe was so all-encompassing that the lines between fiction and reality
16:19 were so blurred that perhaps for the media it was better to just ignore the big stories
16:26 rather than be bitten on the arse if it turned out it was all just another work.
16:31 And unfortunately kayfabe certainly covered for its share of dodgy business practices
16:36 and shady dealings across the years.
16:39 But in 1989 the kayfabe wall was torn down.
16:44 That's the Berlin Wall, which also went in '89.
16:47 And Vince McMahon asked the New Jersey State Senate to consider wrestling an activity providing
16:52 entertainment to spectators rather than conducting bona fide athletic contests.
16:59 This was all to get out of paying the Athletic Commission fees and adhering to their legislation,
17:02 which is kind of complex to get into right now and likely the subject for a follow up
17:08 video.
17:09 Let me know if you want that in the comments.
17:11 But it's worth noting here that 30 years later wrestling is still on the telly.
17:17 Their biggest secret didn't exactly cause the business to explode.
17:21 I think Terry Funk put it well when he was on the Steve Austin show and said.
17:25 What is professional wrestling?
17:27 It was a parachute in 1905.
17:30 And it was total entertainment, Vince announced it total entertainment in 2010.
17:37 Well if you stretch a line along that, we all evolve somewhere along the line.
17:43 And what we evolve to is what the people wanted us to be.
17:50 What turned the turnstile.
17:52 That's what this business is.
17:54 What the people want it to be.
17:56 And that's what it always is.
17:58 And that is the thing about kayfabe, it kind of became the cover under which all of this
18:03 evolution could happen.
18:05 Narrowly avoiding the tricky question of why in the hell are you pretending to fight?
18:09 Because once you see it for what it is, pro wrestling just makes a sort of sense doesn't
18:15 it?
18:16 And your disbelief can be easily suspended as you're dragged into this wonderful, silly,
18:21 pantomime football match atmosphere and swept along by a story.
18:25 In his book Hooker, an authentic wrestler's adventures inside the world of pro wrestling,
18:29 the legendary Luther wrote "The reality or substance of professional wrestling is
18:35 the ability to perpetuate a fantasy.
18:38 It didn't matter to me that professional wrestling was a performance."
18:42 I hope that was published by Luther's press.
18:44 And I think that's it, because once the gambling rackets died out, did it ever matter
18:49 that it was a performance?
18:50 Because the biz was dying out when it was just two guys stretching each other out for
18:53 three hours at a time, and that little bit of showmanship, a little bit of fantasy, a
18:58 little bit of work is what has kept the business going strong all of these years.
19:09 Thanks for watching, I hope you enjoyed this look at professional wrestling's evolution
19:12 from fight to fraud.
19:14 Please do like, subscribe, comment and share this video around if you really liked it as
19:18 that would help us out.
19:19 And if you're in the mood for more explainers, why not watch this one about how championship
19:24 belts are made and why they even exist in the first place.
19:28 Thanks also to our lovely Patrons who are scrolling on the bottom of the screen, details
19:32 for that in the description down below.
19:34 See you next time, Jam That Jam.
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