When I was a child, I used to believe that everything that came on television was live. I was convinced that everyone would dress up and play their characters in a movie or a show every single time it was supposed to be screened. Yes, the pure innocence and utter stupidity in children go hand in hand. However, I don’t have a clear memory of when I found out that all of TV was not live and that there were no tiny people living inside the big black Luminar box. As I grew up, I just accepted it for what it was. And life went on.
It was the same case with professional wrestling. Having been a fan since I was 10 years old, I believed it was real fighting, as all kids usually did. Once, my father even pointed out its scripted nature. I said “no, it’s not” and laughed it off. He didn’t push it. And the same thing happened. I don’t clearly remember the moment when I realised that pro-wrestling is scripted. As I grew up, I accepted it for what it was.
Gotcha!
So, in 2025, it grinds my gears that an adult, upon finding out that I love professional wrestling, would say, “You know it’s fake, right?” as if it’s a “Gotcha!” moment. I guess they expect us to grab our chest and drop to the ground at the magnitude of the epiphany that they believe they drop on us when they say these ridiculous words.
When I get off the ground, calm down after overselling my fake heart attack like I was Shawn Michaels wrestling Hulk Hogan at SummerSlam 2005, I ask them if they know that the films and shows that they love are also scripted. And cue the stutters that would put Johnny Lever’s Chota Chhatri to shame. The only legible words that then come out are, “Yeah, but you know, it’s different.”
But it’s not. It’s an endless TV show that has characters and storylines that you follow. In fact, it’s more real than the reality TV programs that people swear by. It’s as real as Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad. There are characters you fall in love with, whose journeys you follow for years and watch them evolve and become champions. They go through very real emotions that they portray through fictional characters. The in-ring action is where stories or, say rivalries, are settled.
While the drama and the endings are scripted, the action is as real as it could be. Wrestling is fake only if gravity is fake. Sure, they pull punches and kicks, but you can’t fake a six feet drop on a wooden stage. You can’t fake being hit in the back with a metal chair. You can’t fake being thrown off a 15 feet high steel cage onto a table. Ask Mick Foley how his broken ribs, countless fractures and a tooth penetrating through his nose was all fake. Ask Stone Cold whose career was cut short due to a neck injury. Ask Droz who became quadriplegic after suffering an injury during a match. Ask the 35-year-old luchador Perro Aguayo Jr. who died in a match against Rey Mysterio because of a simple dropkick towards the rope, the whiplash of which resulted in three broken vertebrae and a sudden heart attack and death.
Kayfabe
In the past, kayfabe - the suspension of disbelief and the insistence that the business and hatred between characters was real - was strictly maintained for decades. However, the audience has almost always known of its scripted nature. It’s an unsaid mutual understanding between pro-wrestling and its audience. Nowadays, fans have smartened up. Just like the wrestlers, they know the difference and are comfortable with separating the characters from the wrestlers.
If pro-wrestling weren’t ‘fake’, I dare you to say it to a wrestler’s face and not have yours broken in half. It has happened before many times. David Schultz once slapped a reporter twice for insulting his profession and dropping the aforementioned f-bomb. In 1999, Rowdy Roddy Piper stripped his pants down to show his broken hip to Bill Maher on his show when he questioned the nature of pro-wrestling. He showed his wrist too which had been broken for seven years. He also said to Maher to ask Owen Hart, who died in the ring due to an accident, about how fake it is.
For decades until recently, wrestlers died before the age of 45. One of the reasons was due to the toll this physically demanding profession took on their bodies, which resulted in substance abuse to numb the pain. The result was dozens of them dying young due to cardiovascular illnesses, mental health issues and drug use.
It’s only in the last decade or so that, years after the steroid scandal and especially after Chris Benoit’s murder-suicide, that the industry has changed and wrestlers have found alternative, healthier ways to deal with the pain they put their bodies through for our entertainment.
Calling their efforts fake is not just an insult to pro-wrestling, but frankly, it’s quite embarrassing for those who can’t accept this sports entertainment art form for what it is. And this is not even a matter of literacy, economic status or media exposure. I have come across supposedly educated people who react the same way. And they are the same people who would follow Pakistani politics like their lives were on the line. I should tell them, "But you know it’s fake, right?”
Tiny TV people
In over 22 years of watching wrestling, I have seen countless wrestlers including Triple H, Bryan Danielson, Paige, Edge, and so many more battle concussions, broken necks, torn ligaments and injuries whose names I can’t even pronounce, and they go away for surgeries for months and years only to come back and wrestle and put their bodies through tables, ladders, chairs, thumbtacks and fire just to entertain us through the beautiful wrestling violence and the stories they tell with their bodies.
Yes, theatricality is a big element of pro-wrestling. But the in-ring is far from the forbidden f-word. The bottom line is that unless you know what it feels like to wrestle 200 to 250 days per year, break your bones, have innumerable surgeries and continue doing it for years, don’t drop the f-word so casually.
It’s 2025. Everyone knows pro-wrestling is scripted. We know Joel died in The Last of Us. Even though it’s only a scripted show, people cried all the same. You aren’t blowing our minds when you tell us pro-wrestling is fake. It doesn’t make you look smarter - in fact, quite the opposite. If your simple a** brain isn’t capable of accepting characters and stories told through physical combat on a screen, you, the enlightened adults who call wrestling fake, might as well believe that tiny people live inside your TV and perform according to your desires.
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