In my opinion, professional wrestling is just a show.
There are reasons why I felt so; professional wrestling are scripted and the matches are predetermined. Winner or loser of the match is already decided before the match starts. Professional wrestlers also practice the in-ring action before the match starts. They have to practice to slam opponent but no to hurt the opponent, who is very difficult and need to practise a lot. There are storyline for professional wrestling. Crowds like the storyline more than the wrestling itself. That’s why they buy the merchandise to show how they support the professional wrestlers. However, some of the professional wrestler bleeds during the match. This is real, but this is caused by accident; they really do hit each
other.
PROS
The very first thing you need to understand about professional wrestling is that it’s fake. I hope that I’m not ruining anyone’s fun here, but all those professional wrestlers are just some great actors. All matches are predetermined and scripted months before by bookers, which means some matches are already decided which wrestler become the good guy and which wrestler become the bad guy. Even the behind-the-scenes action or in-the-ring action are predetermined, and the wrestlers develop their own characters according the script by the help of the writers and executives. For an example, a wrestler switches allegiances or team up against a third party based on the storyline. Audience often shocked by the reaction of the wrestler, thanks to the creative writer of the script. One professional wrestler may have many characteristics, depending on which script they in. They wrestle out of their own personalities, which is why they are actors. The storylines are more interesting than wrestling itself for some of the fans. The effectiveness of storylines to enhance interest in professional wrestling was proved. Like I mentioned above, Monday Night Raw had just reached 900th episode and it had been a better show than some other sports channel! Mr McMahon called this as "sports entertainment." It is indeed an entertainment, because professional wrestlers are not engaged in a competition, since the outcome of the matches are already decided; crowd are aggressive nowadays, so it is entertaining for them, as the storyline is as absurd as the soap theatre. Professional wrestler is not an easy job: they have to be athletes, performer, stunt-person, actors (like I mentioned above), and most importantly they must have the ability to heal from the injuries faster than normal person, they must also not let those injuries visible to the crowd. It is never easy to become a professional wrestler and it takes time. Things like how to land punches, how to slam your opponent, how to fall so that you won’t get injured, how execute wrestling moves properly and make them look like real, and that entire sort of thing; it takes time to master those things. For an example, “Piledriver”, one of the wrestling moves, they have to hold their opponent higher than their knees, so that the force of the moves is on the knees, and not on his opponent’s head. If you ever tried to execute wrestling moves at home, you may have broken someone else’s neck! Although the outcome of the matches are always predetermined, but thing is not always goes perfectly as planned. For sure, good wrestlers can improvise what happens during the match. Some matches are practiced move by move, but most just the outcome and some major happenings decided earlier. For example, two wrestlers might go into a match knowing which of them will win, who will start out dominant, which will interfere in the match, and what move will finish off the loser. In accordance with the wrestler’s skill, they will make up the rest of the match as they go along. They generally cooperate to make the match become better and look good, and they often whisper moves to each other during the match. Crowds are easily influenced by this storyline based professional wrestling. They will threat some of the professional wrestlers as their idol and keep cheering for them for anything those professional wrestlers do. Here are the business tricks; they sell professional wrestler’s merchandise. To show how much they love and support for their idol, crowds will buy the merchandise. Not only merchandise, professional wrestling also have magazine. People who love wrestling will subscribe to the magazine. Professional wrestler will also interact with their fans. This is how they earn profit from the crowds. This shows that professional wrestling are just like a show. However, it is real when wrestlers bleed. They rarely use fake blood. They always use razor blade to cut themselves when it is time for them to bleed. This usually occurs when his opponent executed finishing move on himself. When he cut himself, is it called “blading” while when he bleeds, it is called “juicing”. When a wrestler’s opponent executed finishing move, he will quickly cut himself across the forehead, which will produce enough blood to give him a convincingly battered appearance. But if they cut themselves anywhere else, it would be extremely dangerous. Sometimes they bleed from actually contact. Even they try to pull their punches, accidents will also happen as they really do hit each other. They called this bleeding as “hardway”. Professional wrestling is just a show, it is not reality. But it is still an entertaining show though professional wrestling is fake in most way.