You wouldn't call a movie rigged. You'd call it scripted. But if a Football player match fixed you'd call it rigged.
Wrestling is actually a sport. An Olympic sport now. Where contests occur and outcomes are based on the efforts of the opponents. Yet "Professional" wrestling in the WWF/E isn't a sport despite following the same pattern of putting two opponents in a ring to "compete" to the point of having commentators giving opinion during said 'contests'. Are their disclaimers anywhere to state it's all just fixed pantomime? I suspect not. So personally, rigged is a very accurate descriptor. And I wouldn't call a film a 'movie.'
Precisely. I don't feel there's any lecturing at all. Just personal views respectfully given on both sides. If only that were more widely the case in our world.
To me rigged suggests dishonesty - something that is understood to be legitimate which is deceptively controlled. There's no understanding that WWE is meant to be a legitimate sporting competition, so I wouldn't call it rigged.
Interesting point, but they certainly don't admit its all set up, no explicit comment or disclaimer that today's encounters are not sporting in nature but merely performative. I wonder if kids who watched it are fully aware their heroes have no control whether they win or lose? And thinking about it, I'd probably not class WWE as an honest entity either.
RIP Hulk Hogan ️ the character Hulk Hogan was a true pioneer of professional wrestling & it’s down to him why the sport/product is as big as it is today! When I started watching WWE back in 2001 WCW had just been bought out by Vince McMahon & Hulk Hogan was sat at home for a year due to contract issues, so my memories of him was when he made his return to WWE in 2002 with NWO. That match with The Rock at Wrestlemania 18 went down as one of the industry’s greatest matches! Great memories! I watch WWE occasionally now, keeping up to date via YouTube highlights mainly. It’s in a better state now morally than it has ever been, although there have been some great & iconic moments throughout the years that will be part of history forever.
I think you're separating the 'sports' side of it from the 'theatre' side of it too much. Take both in equal measure, and it's pretty obvious it's entirely scripted, even to kids. Does it need a disclaimer? Most other fictional TV shows don't have one either. It's described as 'Sports Entertainment', a phrase invented by McMahon to disassociate it from legitimate sport. Granted, initially he did this during a steroid trial to try and avoid prosecution, but the term stuck and is still used now as a differentiator. I've always known it's predetermined. I started watching it when I was about 8, and I didn't need to be told that Shane McMahon had jumped onto a crash mat and not onto the Big Show, or that Val Venis hadn't really been castrated, or that Mae Young hadn't really given birth to a hand. If I knew that wasn't 'real', then I knew that the 'People's Elbow' was the most devastating move in the industry.
They call themselves sports entertainment to let it be known it's theatre and storytelling. Also to avoid certain regulations that Sports are under. Next Tuesday they have a Netflix 5 parter that breaks kayfabe for anyone under the impression it's real. https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/wwe-netflix-documentary-unreal-release-date-trailer-news
My sympathies don’t lie with the wrestlers who died. Mine lie with the people who wanted to be wrestlers but wouldn’t go down the steroids route. It’s like the sprinters that never made a 100m final as they wouldn’t take drugs or the cyclists that didn’t make a Tour de France squad because they wouldn’t dope.
I wasn't so much showing sympathy for those that passed (though I do probably have a modicum), I'm more criticising the type of people who would pressure others to do that, knowing a good number would die, and profiting and gaining power from it. I'm genuinely surprised this is deemed acceptable in the venue of "sports entertainment" but not in, say, modern slavery used in the building of world cup venues. I guess the difference being wrestlers have a chance to get richer.
WWE it classes itself as "sports entertainment" so it can do what it wants. There's no need for a regulatory body, fair outcome, drug testing etc. It can just script as it wishes.
I am real American. Fight for the rights of everyman. Fight for what's right, fight for your life. Had Hulkamania Forever Video Tape as a kid. Was gutted when he lost to the Ultimate Warrior in Wrestlemania six. R.I.P