When did you find out...

[Shooting Star 0]

Come on...you can't have always known it was a work. We were all dumb marks for Hulk Hogan at one time.

 

Well for me it was in 2000 after seeing HHH come back 2 weeks after being dropped from a high place while inside a car. I mean shit...not even a scratch?

[Team Angle Pusher 0]

In 2001 when I came on the internet and became a smark/mark.

[snuffbox 0]

I was told the first time I watched it...which was like 1989.

 

Its funny how people coninue to mock wrestling for being fake, yet never have a problem with the even-more-obvious fakeness in movies.

[Guest JerichosHi-Lite]

I've watched since I was really little and because it was so cartoonish when I was really young, I never REALLY believed it. Found out for sure when I was about eleven, though, which is old-ish

[Masked Man of Mystery 0]

Because my mom was so very anti wrestling(Still is, for that matter), I knew long before I actually began watching wrestling, which was in 1999. I had seen bits and pieces here and there and I knew of some of ther personalities, but couldn't watch 'till Smackdown started up, which is when my mom worked nights, so my dad and I watched it because he always liked it

[Placebo Effect 0]

Right here in this very thread.

 

You bastards.

[Dangerous A 0]

I figured it out awhile back in the early/mid 80's. My father always told me it was fixed, but I was skeptical. Then during a tag match with Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff vs some nameless jobbers, Sheik spit on the back of one of th jobbers and the guy sold it like he had been shot. That pretty much did it right there.

 

In regards to snuffbox's comment about the fakeness of wrestling and the fakeness of movies. Some people just don't wish to suspend disbelief when it comes to wrestling because of the liveliness of it. They'll do it for movies and TV, but not for wrestling. That was the point of "get it". Suspend your disbelief and give us a chance to entertain you with our action/adventure, which was and still is the company line when it comes to what product they are. (but aren't doing a good job of presenting lately)

[Epic Reine 0]

6th grade. My friend brought a TIME magezine to school with a story inside that explained how wrestling was fake. I had my doubts for awhile beforehand but this just confirmed it all for me.

[Guest Soul boy]

Its funny how people coninue to mock wrestling for being fake, yet never have a problem with the even-more-obvious fakeness in movies.

 

Yeah,that's why I say.I find it hypocritical for someone to ask someone else

why they watch such and such.Because it's not real.When them same people

watch soap operas or movies.

 

Wrestlers can be artistic and dramatic as any movie actor.They just do it by

scripted matches.

 

I also just love how some people think ALL wrestling fans are dumbasses that

need to know "they aren't really hitting each other".I love it.

[TheDevilAndGodAreRagingInsideMe 0]

Long before I started watching in 1997.

[syxx2001 0]

The internet?

 

I remember when Bulldog hit Stephanie with that trash can and she lost her memory I was on some message board like "I cant believe he did that. He needs to be fired, thats a man's daughter" and all of that jibberish.

[Guest Andrew J.]

I knew way before I started watching it. I started watching in the first place because an online writer I like was always talking about WWE's storylines from the writing perspective, and I tuned in to see what the hell he was talking about.

[Guest Fook]

I found out in the early 90s when I was still young. I was watching wrestling with my dad (who always hated wrestling but went along with it because I loved it) and he was able to predict what was going to happen in the match. "Now this guy will reverse and get the advantage", etc.

 

I was still a mark until I started going online in 97, but from that moment I figured it was fixed.

[Shooting Star 0]

I watch in spanish with Hugo and Carlos and they always give inside information and when the wrestlers do really big spot they say that it may be a show but they get hurt for real...I didn't know what they meant and when other people told me I was in denial(like when I was 13 and found out about Santa) until the whole Triple H thing.

[yankovic fan 0]

I argued with my dad for years on the real vs. fake thing. I finally seen a 20/20 episode when I was like 13 and they had a microphone pick up two wrestlers whispering instructions to each other. I "knew" then, but kept it inside because if I admitted I was wrong, the old man would go nuts partying (even as a youth I proved him wrong frequently).

 

I finally became open about "knowing" when I started dating a girl that was related to a local indy guy. I had a crash course on "insider" lingo hanging with that guy.

[BHK 0]

Right here in this very thread.

 

You bastards.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

^Post of the year

[Guest Super Leather]

People told me it was "fake" for years, to which I would say "if wrestling's fake, so's boxing." They'd scoff, and meanwhile the boxing industry is centered around gambling more than anything else. Then around 1989 or 1990, I read some article on Hulk Hogan in People magazine, and they wrote that the outcomes were pre-determined, but not what goes on during the body of the match.

 

It never had much of an effect on me (obviously), and now I can live with it. People flip me shit, and then I blow them away with vast knowledge. My friends love it when I pick out the New Jack/Jack Victory parking lot fight on the Heat Wave '98 video and tell them "this is where New Jack tells him to throw him on the hood of the car," or "watch real quick, New Jack's blading."

 

If anything, the revelation of "fake" wrestling has actually made it more fun.

 

Fuck the haters. I bet they watch soap operas, the Simpsons, and crap like Jerry Springer. If anyone's ever read a music magazine called HitList, there was a great article in the second issue written by a guy calling himself the Whiskey Rebel: "Professional wrestling is real...YOU'RE fake."

[Guest The Iron Yuppie]

I knew well before I started watching it (which was around '98-'99).

 

Prior to then I was one of those deluded individuals giving shit to my brother under the impression that he (and others watching it) thought it was all real. Which is an attitude that many still seem to have.

[Aero 0]

I can't remember ever thinking it was real. My dad almost immediately told me it was fake when I first started watching around 1990-1991, but I just kept watching anyway. He didn't like wrestling, but he was a huge IRS fan.

[Slickster 0]

I've watched since I was really little and because it was so cartoonish when I was really young, I never REALLY believed it. Found out for sure when I was about eleven, though, which is old-ish

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Yeah, I started watching around 1992. The rest of the modern media constantly labeling it fake led me to believe there was some truth to it (see the 'Garfield' series and its constant use of pro wrestling being scripted as a running gag). The more I watched, the more I began to pick up on stuff, like how certain guys got bigger pushes than others. The best example would be Yokozuna. I mean, from the first time they brought him in it was clear he was groomed to be a top contender, what with the announcers marveling at everything he did and all. Ditto for when Luger turned face the next year.

 

I didn't really get how wrestling was faked until....wait for it...the infamous 1998 NBC special (stunt grannies and all). Before then I had never really figured out how wrestlers called spots or threw punches.

[Guest JerichosHi-Lite]

It's quite funny, I go to the equivalent of a private school, all-girls, where I can pretty much guarantee I'm the only one in the school who watches wrestling. I don't tell people that I watch wrestling, not out of shame, I'll gladly show off my wrestling-themed bedroom (where I'm still young enough to not look weird about having mass collections of crap) , but I don't tell people because every time I do they're like "OMGZ!!111 UR SO SAD ITZ ALL SO FAKE!!11" and I'm like "Yep, it is" and they're like "OMGZ!!! U NO ITZ FAKE!!??!?!?!"

 

A lot of my friends are wholly impressed with my wrestling VHS/DVD collection and any time a friend of mine, at my house, brings out the old "it's fake" routine, I get out Judgment Day 2004 and show them Eddie/JBL. That usually does the trick. Ha.

 

I was so young when I first started watching but I think I was always like "well if Sargeant Slaughter's such a bad man, why don't they fire him"? and I think it was the Ultimate Warrior who first told me. I was so convinced he wasn't a real person (bear in mind, at WrestleMania 6, I was 2) that I started to think "well if he's not real ...". Same applied to the Undertaker. Didn't think he was real, either. My older brother watched (still does on and off) and never told me it wasn't real, but I always had a pretty good idea.

 

While I always really knew, I OFFICIALLY found out during the Shawn/Taker HIAC match. 1997's pretty late, but in 1997 I was *thinks* nine, so it's not that late. Shawn was getting his ass handed to him and I said to my brother "Shouldn't they stop the match if he's getting a complete kicking?" That's when I was told. Saddest day of my life. Even tops the Santa Claus deal being worked

[Guest Ether]

I actually knew since the late 80's after I read in a TV Guide that the WWF admitted it was staged to avoid paying some sports tax in New Jersey. I just never admitted it because much of my family, particularly my mother, hated wrestling and always gave me shit for watching it and always wanted to tell me "it's fake." I just never wanted to admit that they were right (well, partially right). I finally "accepted" it in the mid-90's with the internet with a buddy of mine who had access giving me all the inside scoop.

 

Well for me it was in 2000 after seeing HHH come back 2 weeks after being dropped from a high place while inside a car. I mean shit...not even a scratch?

 

I always did wonder how wrestlers, who basically get hit in the face for a living, never had black eyes - except Dustin Rhoades - and most still had all their teeth.

[MDH257 0]

In 1990 there was a Connie Chung show on CBS that had a segment going behind the scenes of WCW. That was the end of any doubt I had.

[nl5xsk1 0]

I don't think I ever had the pretense that it was real ... even back in like 1985 when I first started watching. I remember having conversations with friend's older siblings about it, and blatantly talking about how winners are predetermined and whatnot.

 

Fuck the haters. I bet they watch soap operas, the Simpsons, and crap like Jerry Springer.

Um, who says that any of those things ARE real?? One is a cartoon ... I'm pretty sure that no one is under the delusion that it's real. And it's hard to watch Springer and NOT recognize that they're actors at this point.

[Slayer 0]

I started watching in 1985 at the tender age of 5, but even within a couple years got little hints that it was fake. By the time I was a teenager, debates with friends centered around not whether it was fake, but rather how much was fake.

[Kahran Ramsus 0]

I knew before I even started watching in 1988 during the Hogan/Andre/Dibiase angle. Probably as early as about 1986, although I didn't take any real interest in at that point. I definitely knew by Wrestlemania III that it was fake. So did everybody else though. Nobody at school back then thought it was real.

 

I was never a Hogan fan either. I actually appreciate him now a lot more than I ever did back then. Almost immediately my favourite wrestlers were Savage, Dibiase, Roberts, Rude & Demolition. I didn't start watching NWA/WCW until 1989, right in the middle of the Steamboat/Flair feud.

[nl5xsk1 0]

We were all dumb marks for Hulk Hogan at one time.

 

I was never a Hogan fan either.

Thank you, Kahran ... I dig the fact that there's another person that admits that they weren't a Hogan mark. I HATED Hogan from the day I got into wrestling onward; I was always a mark for the heels, even as a little kid. Of course, even when Hogan went heel I couldn't find a way to root for him.

[Guest Fishyswa]

I loved Hogan as a kid, because I was a normal child who wanted to see good guys win and bad guys lose.

 

Pretty much the first time I saw something really brutal and my dad needed to explain to me that it was fake. Think it was someone getting thrown into a cage. From the there the intrigue of how they faked it took over, and once I figured that out I was pretty much done. Then I got back into it around 96/97 by taking it at face value. Started appreciating history watching old tapes with my friends dad while he babysat me, and I've been following it all ever since.

[claydude14 0]

I knew it was pre-determined before I started watching around 95 (I was 10) but me and my friends figured only the matches were pre-determined, and that the wrestling was pretty legit. The HBK collapse incident backed up our theories. I never thought the blood was real until the NBC special. I still got that on tape somewhere (with Sunday Night HeAT during commercials), I'll have to dig that out. Hillarious stuff. The best part was going to an indy show a few months later and actually being given signs. Some drunk guy behind us started yelling about how he couldn't believe they actually handed out signs. Fun stuff.

[Prime Time Andrew Doyle 0]

I learnt when I was about 5 or 6, when I started watching. However, I always thought the ring post and the chairs were plastic and that they didn't really hurt.