As others have said, it is entertainment, kind of like Gladiators in Roman times, scripted, yes, fake, yes, and as said, nascar with chairs. There are good guys, bad guys, story lines & plots, plus, they use plots that everyone can relate to, remember the Iron Sheik??

Now, even though we all know that it is fixed & fake, some of the stunts these guys do really can't be explained, cause it isn't movie magic in the ring and yes, sometimes someone goes off script. BITD, I worked with a raslin program and would be at the big matches when they came to down, back stage & going ring side with these guys. Unlike the movies where they take a 5' nothing "action hero" and make him appear huge on screen, these guys really are huge, I still remember the 1st time I met Dustin Rhodes, son of the "Bionic Elbow" Dusty Rhodes, the guy was big, 6'6", as were the other wrestlers.
Like I said, not everything goes to script, and you are dealing with guys with Roid Rage, it can be messy, as I saw one time back stage when a big fight after the match broke out. How do I know it wasn't part of the act, easy, no cameras or fans there. They can be fun to take to your local bar too, some are real cool to hang out with..

Now that's funny!

Linda McMahon is running for the senate here in Ct. Interesting story about the McMahons actually. They had to file bankruptcy in 76' . Then last year she makes $43 mil.
Not a bad haul.

bookmarked

I know a founding partner at the talent agency that represents the WWE and all of its wrestlers. I don't know how things were historically, but nowdays these guys are total professionals who know that if they really go off the script, they're getting written out, and when it seems "unscripted" it's just written to seem that way.

Like I said, this was in the back, no camera or fans, had to be broken up and was told That wasn't suppose to happen, this was back in the 80s.. Gotta find the pix..
It is MUCH bigger business now..

As a kid in about the 9th grade, my father took me to three or four matches. They were fake then, but things still happened in the ring. Once there was a tag team match between two "bad guys" and two "good guys." One of the good guys was a guy named Paul Anderson. He won the unlimited weight lifting in two or more Olympics - can't remember how many. He was 5'10" & weighed in at 350 lbs. & looked like a pretty fat guy with thighs maybe 45+ inches. The bad guys beat up on his partner pretty bad in one of the rounds. At the beginning of the next round Anderson went out, grabbed the other guy's wrist and reeled him in by the arm. He turned the guy around so that his back was to his chest, put his arms around him and hoisted him up on his chest and squeezed him until he went limp. He just dropped the guy on the mat and walked away. That cut the match short, but was pretty amazing & not fake. He was pissed.

Yeah, it was a very different operation back in the day. I could totally see how somebody could get into it back in the '80s, the personalities were so much more memorable and the whole thing had a sense of humor. Even the 90s stuff was decent, at least as a kid watching it. From what I've seen nowdays it's nothing but a bunch of identical cookie-cutter pretty boys, I don't even think I would've watched today's WWE if it were on when I was 10.

It's so friggin' slick nowdays too. More like a top-tier broadway play than a sport. Everything choreographed to the second from the moves, to the signs in the audience, to the camera angles, the "arguments", the "backstage" stuff, and so on.

It's like roller derby for this generation.

My girlfriends brother is a current WWE referee. Of course the show is scripted. As has been posted, it's pure entertainment, soap opera's for men. All of the wrestlers I have met are really nice people and not at all like their in ring personas. Make no mistake, these guys and gals are athletes. The injuries they recieve are real and matches are often completed with dislocated elbows, torn ligaments etc.

Hell of a business too. Vince McMahon is at every single show. You won't see him, but he is in a booth calling the shots...