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PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING SECRETS

A wrestler never usually wants to hurt his opponent any more than he wants to get hurt himself. This is the unwritten rule despite how much they act like they hate each other and talk like they want to end each others career in each and every bout, but unfortunately career-ending injuries do occur accidentally. If everything goes according to plan, any injuries sustained by wrestlers during a show should only happen by accident.

When you see so-called head locks or leg locks, typically very little pressure is being applied and the wrestlers, at times, may even be resting during this time in the match. When punching each other, the punches are pulled, so to speak, meaning there is not a lot of force behind each punch. The karate chops to the chest may be nothing more than a hard slap. Pain is inflicted here make no mistake about it, but they are not devastating blows as wrestlers may portray them to be.

Head-butts, if you notice, the one doing the butting, places his hand on the head of the opponent as their heads butt or meet which deflects the blow protecting each other from an actual head-butt. The wrestler, more or less, is actually butting his own hand. In a real fight, without this cushion or padding, a head-butt could be a devastating blow!

Flips, body slams, or flying about the ring, and pile-drivers are some of the riskier moves. The trick here is to help the wrestler being slammed or flipped so he lands flat on his back. If he does not land properly he could sustain a career-ending injury. So every wrestler needs a little help from his friends inside the ring. When turning an opponent upside down and pile-driving the opponents head into the ring mat all of the force should be taken on the victims shoulders and his head should not hit the mat as it appears.

The back-breaker is when an opponent is dropped backwards across a wrestlers knee. The trick here is the victims feet must hit the mat first and the wrestler performing the move on his opponent must also at the same time catch the victim so the victims back never really gets slammed across the knee with full force.

In leg drops when a wrestler takes his opponent down to the mat flat on his back and then drops his leg across an opponents face, notice that the wrestlers knee may be bent so the blow is lessened.

In a body splash the wrestler typically dives off the top rope landing on his opponent, who at the time happens to be flat on his back in the middle of the ring. In this move the wrestler doing the splashing (dive) tends to take the full brunt of the force on his OWN elbows and knees instead of crushing the opponents body with his body!

The rings turnbuckles in each corner of the ring are known as pillows. They are generally supposed to be so heavily padded that when an opponents head is driven into them it does not do significant damage compared to the pain the wrestlers act like it inflicts.

Everyone knows wrestling is a show for entertainment purposes, but not everyone is aware of the shows mechanics or how it is put together. For example, the ringside announcer uses covert sign language to signal the referee inside the ring when a match is to end, especially if the fans in the arena are losing interest in a particular match. The referee then signals the wrestlers to wrap it up.

Also when a referee checks for foreign objects in a wrestlers clothing before a match, this may also be an opportunity for the ref to communicate some last minute instructions from the boss or match promoter concerning the bout. When a ref is distracted during a match by a member of one team, once the 2-on-1 damage has been done by the opposing team to his OWN teammate, you will likely see the wrestler, doing the distracting, all of a sudden start frantically pointing to the ring, like look whats happening to my partner ref. This is the signal to the referee to finally turn around and break it up!

Referees have even been known to slip a wrestler a razor blade during a match so the wrestler can cut his own forehead and when the wrestler takes a pounding from his opponent this cut will open up and he will bleed profusely. However, it will heal with no where near as much scar tissue if he had been beaten bloody with no help from a razor blade.

In addition, the wrestlers may talk to each other in the ring during the match, letting each other know which move they are going to perform on each other next. If you ever happen to sit ringside during a professional wrestling match you may even be able to hear them give each other cues as to which move is coming up next!

Matches are, in a sense, expertly choreographed as everyone involved is really on each others side performing to sell the show to unsuspecting fans. There are usually no real opposing teams.

Typically, any fan in the audience that gets abused by a wrestler is either a paid participant in the match or a relative of the promoter or of one of the wrestlers working for the show. Moreover, sometimes the signs that are held up at matches that you see on TV and may have thought were homemade signs brought to the match by the fans, may actually be signs that were made by the match promoter and handed out to the fans before the match.

More times than not opposing wrestlers are really friends and may even rehearse their moves together so there are no real surprises on fight night. Remember, most times, someone always has to be the good guy (baby face) and the bad guy (heel) in a match. A loser-leave-town or leave-the-wrestling-federation match may really mean the loser is simply going on tour for a while, or signing up with a competing wrestling federation due to contract disputes, or maybe he is going to wrestle overseas for more money.

Whatever you do NEVER taunt or take on a wrestler all by yourself outside the arena. They can and will inflict more pain and injury in a few seconds than you can ever imagine and yes, some wrestlers, by nature, do have a mean streak, meaning they can be mean!

SUPPLEMENTAL SOURCE: NBC TV DOCUMENTARY EXPOSED! PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING SECRETS 11/1/98

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