Willfully Suspending Disbelief

A wrestling match? What should I wear? I’d never even seen a match on TV. These were my first thoughts as I accepted the invitation to see a live event last night. 

I had been warned that it would be an event unlike any I had seen before. The crowd and participants were all reputed to be entertaining, interesting and unusual. And it was. 

The line to enter stretched around the block and had begun queuing about ninety minutes before the event began. The folks were all races, ages, genders and some of the families were made up of several generations. This love of wrestling was passed on as well as shared for many decades. 

My friend Nancy and her son Brandon have been involved in local wrestling events for many years, and were now the announcer and the ticket person at the front gate. She invited Ivor and me and paid for our first ringside tickets giving us blue armbands signifying that we could sit anywhere but in the front row. There was a crowd of over 400 folks filling seats that circled the ring on three sides. People had signs and championship belts and teeshirts that all proclaimed who their favorites were. The cheering and the energy of the fans was intense as they waited for the parade of wrestlers to walk across the stage to enter the locker room. Excitement heightened as Brandon, the announcer, dressed in a suit, appeared in the ring. In his most announcer-like voice he began. “ Ladies and gentlemen …”it was just like I imagined it would be on TV. Apparently, this was a special night which drew an even larger crowd than usual. 

Once the matches began, I was captivated and shocked by how much it looked like it hurt. Those guys in the ring were flipped, slammed, thrown, dragged and smashed to the floor. Each time to a sound that was loud and horrible to hear. My nurse-brain was thinking of bruises and pain and paralysis but the rest of the crowd was eating it up. 

Throughout the event, the momentum increased with more people entering the melee in the ring until the final event. This was the Main Event with 20 wrestlers coming into the ring one-by-one to join the fray. The object was to throw each of the fighters out of the ring. Being thrown from the ring would  make them ineligible for the “Title”. 

I’ve never seen anything like it before, with bodies of men, all shapes and sizes flying over, under and between the ropes onto the floor around the ring. Finally there was only one man standing, and he got the championship belt along with the roar of the crowd. 

We thanked our hosts and made our way to the car while Ivor railed about how this was just ridiculous violence. He said that it reminded him of a bullfight. I stayed quiet because, knowing Nancy, I knew there had to be more to it than just a random, brutal free for all. 

Fortunately, we were able to meet Nancy and Brandon for breakfast this morning for a debriefing of last night’s spectacle. Brandon explained to us that the event that we had attended was a scripted performance and the wrestlers/ performers were very serious about safety and trust. Each was both an athlete and an actor as they through wrestling they revealed an alter ego to their day jobs. These guys were bankers, teachers and businessmen who had honed their skills in the ring through years of training and practice. 

Although this was just a minor league event, it seemed extremely well choreographed and totally convincing. It was explained to us that wrestlers who injure their ‘opponents’ by carelessness or going rogue makes them undesirable to have in the ring  because they put the others as well as themselves at risk of being hurt. We also learned that these are ‘events’ , not shows, and that what the audience is enjoying is not ‘fake’ but instead a very well composed performance which encourages the audience to willfully suspend disbelief, and lose themselves in the mayhem in the ring. 

Now that we understand how it works, we intend to go back for a second look. This time I won’t be experiencing pain and worry each time someone makes a loud crash landing on the mat. And my husband won’t feel guilty about watching random, senseless violence. It is truly performance art. That’s entertainment.