Bill Hanstock - We Promised You a Great Main Event: WWE

To Kristen, who has loved and supported me all these years despite my obsession with pro wrestling.

And to Archer: may you never grow up to be a wrestling fan.

L ets go ahead and get this out of the way right up front: yes, professional wrestling fans know its fake.

The truth is that for the vast majority of pro wrestling fans, weve lived most of our lives being told that our pastime isnt actually realthe implication being, of course, that a perceived lack of authenticity means it isnt worth our time, attention, and passion. Its a very strange social and pop cultural stigma that is unique to wrestling, and its one that every single wrestling fan has encountered. Yes, its fake. And we really dont care, because that isnt the point.

For one thing, the athleticism and artistry of the performers and the consequences of the pro wrestling lifestyle couldnt be more real, but for another, no one goes up to someone excited about the latest Star Wars movie and says, You know that Darth Vader isnt real, right? Yep. All made up. You big dummy. Few (if any) people will cut someone off in the middle of gushing about a particular Meryl Streep performance to tell you that she didnt really have to choose which of her children would be killed, or that she wasnt really Julia Child.

It doesnt matter that wrestling is fake. In fact, it is that very artifice that makes it so enthralling and watchable. Consider this: Legitimate sports are in fact so random that our narrative-driven brains arent able to perceive them as the objective and random collection of moments that they really are. Our brains and our broadcasters and analysts and columnists and other assorted talking heads try to awkwardly staple a narrative to a given game, sport, or athlete: the Yankees always win; LeBron fades in the fourth quarter; the refs were biased against us; Matt Ryan isnt clutch. We look for a story in sports when there usually isnt one. Wrestling gives us that story we crave.

Of course, wrestling also goes above and beyond by giving us backstage skits and exploding cars and witch doctors who make bodybuilders throw up. But face it: wouldnt you be a lot more likely to tune in to a typical Thursday night NFL game if you knew Roger Goodell was going to show up beforehand and tell his archnemesis Aaron Rodgers that hell have to take on the Vikings using only seven players on offense all night? Youd watch the ever-living hell out of that. And even if it was fake, youd probably enjoy it just the same.

We want to suspend our disbelief. We love doing it. Just like when we take in any other form of a narrative, we pay attention to the stories that are being told. Maybe these two combatants in the ring arent really trying to defeat one another in unarmed combat for realsies, but if were lucky, the story that they tell inside that ring is going to transport and elevate our emotions as only the best combination of art and sport is capable of doing.

Pro wrestlings fakeness isnt a liability. Its a storytelling deviceone that wrestlers employ now with more self-awareness than ever. Fans have been in on the joke to varying degrees all along, but these days wrestlers are more than happy to make metacommentary on their own sport, from The Rocks hyper self-aware heel to CM Punks pipe bomb promo.

The world of The Rock and CM Punk is a wildly different one from that of Bruno Sammartino. For the first time in the sports hundred-year-plus history, most of the people plying their trade as wrestlers are not members of a sworn brotherhood or society, invested in keeping kayfabe at all costs and keeping outsiders at arms length. The people performing as wrestlers now arenearly exclusivelyfans of wrestling in all its forms. These arent mostly former amateur wrestlers or former football players or street fighters or bodybuilders or models pressed into service because of their legitimacy and look and physique and told to protect the business and make sure the marks dont peek behind the curtain; these are people who have grown up knowing about the artifice of wrestling and loving it with their entire hearts not just in spite of, but because of its postmodern, metatextual idiosyncrasies. These are fans of wrestling who loved the show so much that they became wrestlers, in an age when its never been easier to find credible wrestling schools. Theyve emerged and entered the business (or adapted their craft) in the age of social media and YouTube. Theyve practiced and distributed their promos and matches on the internet, posted on message boards, traded tapes, written letters to fan magazines, and promised themselves theyd have their very own WrestleMania moment. Not because they want to be rich, but because they want to be artistsand their medium is wrestling.

(Its not all pathos and high art, of course. Due to the very nature and sheer ridiculousness of the reality of the reality of professional wrestling, there are going to be some kitschy or hokey aspects on some level. You cannot completely separate the hokeyness of wrestling from all of wrestling.)

So yes, fans arent idiots. We are even well aware of the long history of problematic, racist, and bigoted characters and story lines, and the shady business practices that have plagued the industry in general and World Wrestling Entertainment in particular.

Not that we get any credit for that. The condescension that pro wrestling fans experience doesnt just extend to daily interactions with nonwrestling fans. I have had to wade through a good amount of biographies and memoirs and explainers and long-form articles that spend a lot of time trying to explain pro wrestling terms that most fans already know, while simultaneously having been through an editor who doesnt know there was a person named Lou Thesz, or why that person existed, or why he might have a move named after him. Or how his name is spelled. Weve had to deal with good but uninformed writers talking down to us, or (far more often) extremely knowledgeable fans and documentarians whose strong suit isnt entertaining or, sadly, legible writing. Generally, these histories are either dry to a fault or talk down to the audience.

Even so, well snatch up any piece of content that we can find if we think well get some quality wrestling-based entertainment or information out of itor just a shot of that pure, sweet, delectable pro wres nostalgia. In my decade of writing about wrestling on the internet, Ive learned two fundamental truths about wrestling fans: well click on and read absolutely anything we can about wrestling, and well never, ever be able to get enough of it.

What Im hoping to accomplish over the course of this book is a delicate balancing act. An informative history of the largest professional wrestling company in history (and by extension, a history of professional wrestling in the United States) that doesnt insult the intelligence of hardcore fans, doesnt alienate the uninitiated, and remains entertaining throughout. Im excited to take on the challenge, and Im excited that youre coming along with me.

The story of WWEformerly the World Wrestling Federation (WWF)is a drama for the ages. Real-life backstabbing; all the drugs, booze, and sex you could possibly imagine; cutthroat business takeovers; and actual murder. What has happened over the course of Vince McMahon and his companys ascendancy is every inch the soap opera for men that the on-camera pro wrestling product is constantly derided for aspiring to.

From the very beginning of the company, long before it was WWE, the McMahon family has been behind the scenes, steering the ship, and for forty years, since the company set its sights on national, and then global, expansion, theyve had to deal with purists crying loudly that theyre murdering the very sport in which they ply their trade.