WWE is clearly fake, right?
That’s what I believed during my season as a varsity wrestler at my high school. Doing one of the hardest sports, I built up strength I didn’t know I had, from the bottom up. If you had asked me, at the time, if my wrestling was the same as the “WWE meatheads,” I would’ve looked at you like you were out of your mind.
When you’re constantly doing physically relentless drills, lifting weights until you’re red in the face and trying to desperately avoid ringworm in the locker room, how could you not think that a “sport” that is choreographed and predetermined is fake? Where the “players,” who are often shirtless, or wearing flashy, impractical clothing and footwear, are glorified for a sport they don’t work as hard for?
Well, that isn’t entirely true.
Like my teammates, WWE wrestlers most definitely need to keep their shape. In an interview with Jeremiah Morris, a Newport High School Wrestling alumnus and WWE fanatic, he gave me some insight on the matter. “Just a couple weeks ago, I went to an event where it was like stand-up and storytelling- Mick Foley. He’s infamous for flying off the top of a cage and crashing down on a table. You can’t fake that,” Morris said.
“You can’t fall sixteen feet onto a table, and it not be real. So, pro-wrestling is predetermined. They know when they go out there, or the referee will tell them during the match who’s going to win. There are certain things, called spots, where the wrestlers are going to do their big moves to entertain the audience. It is incredibly athletic, and getting hit with a chair, being pushed into a post, even if you’re blocking with your hands, you’re still hitting it.”
Morris went on to say that WWE is a physically demanding sport, where it pushes the boundaries of the wrestlers, inevitably “trashing their bodies by the time they’re in their forties.” Overall, he says it’s “very real” in its athleticism and physical spectacle, but “the predetermined aspect of it makes it what people call ‘not real.’”
Morris wrestled for Newport High School in Bellevue throughout his high school years, beginning his career in seventh to twelfth grade, graduating in 1992, and competing in national freestyle competitions post-grad. He was a high school coach for about 12 years after a significant knee injury.
Newport Wrestling’s current Head Coach, Sonny Shin, provided his comments on the topic as well. When asked about what he defined wrestling as, he stated, “Wrestling is the world’s oldest sport, that’s what they say. It’s a martial art, and also a sport. It builds character, tenacity, and I would say, as far as high school sports go, it’s one of the toughest ones you could do,” said Shin.
On the topic of the validity of WWE as a “real sport,” Shin said he “considers it entertainment.”
“I consider WWE wrestlers talented people and very athletic people. But, as far as it being wrestling as a sport, it’s predetermined, they choreograph things, and so it’s not real wrestling, but there are elements in there that utilize real wrestling moves, and so there’s a basis for it.”
Both Morris and Shin mentioned there being a financial incentive for WWE wrestlers. They also reported on the heavy physical toll pro-wrestling has on the body.
There are many forms of wrestling, some of which consist of freestyle, Greco-Roman and folk-style, or collegiate wrestling. “WWE would be closer to freestyle wrestling or collegiate wrestling,” says Morris.
Freestyle is the most common type of wrestling practiced globally, with the objective being to pin your opponent’s shoulders to the mat for a brief moment of time, within two periods of three minutes, divided by a 30-second break. In collegiate wrestling, there are three periods一the first one is three minutes, with the last two being two minutes一and the ways to win are by “fall”一in other words, a pin一or by outscoring your opponent. Greco-Roman wrestling is very similar to collegiate, except that moves that attack the legs are prohibited, the length of each period is three minutes and the scoring is calculated differently.
To win in WWE, you would have to, similarly, pin your opponent until the referee counts to three, or by submission一an uncomfortable move done to force a surrender from your opponent. There are also other ways a match can be won: by count-out, where your opponent is outside of the ring for 10 seconds, disqualification or double-disqualification, where either you or both you and your opponent are disqualified for breaking the rules.
In freestyle wrestling, submissions are not allowed.
In addition to Coach Shin and Coach Morris’ interviews, I had the opportunity to interview current Newport wrestlers and my former teammates.
“I’ve wrestled freestyle, and I still do. I think it’s more fun because you get to do a lot more throws, but it’s scary sometimes,” said Makayla Vilayvanh, a junior at Newport and five-year wrestler.
“I’ve done freestyle and Greco-Roman. I would say, personally, they’re better than folkstyle because you can do more. You’re more free to do whatever you want and there are less rules,” added Laurissa Monroy, a senior at Newport and 5th-placer at this year’s Mat Classic.
“It’s the hardest sport in the world. It’s really fun because it’s hard. Now, getting out to compete and when you finally pull off that move you’ve been working on for a long time, just hearing them slam into the ground, it’s great,” another Newport senior Adrian Molina said, expressing his love for the sport.
Finally, when asked about his experience wrestling, Newport senior Damian Lang said he likes the “team camaraderie and winning.”
“I wrestle a little freestyle一freestyle’s a little different because there are a lot more ways to score points, but I think I like folk-style more.”
When asked about WWE, Lang mentioned Gable Stevenson and how “he went to WWE, but he came back to us.”
Overall, wrestling, in its many forms, can bring people together. Whether it’s on the mat or behind a screen, we all can appreciate the athletes that take part in such a rigorous, intense sport, for our enjoyment.
