Rant #1,402: Fake Can Be Real

Yes, professional wrestling, to a large degree, is fake.

Fake as a $3 dollar bill.

But accidents will happen, as they say, and a huge accident happened the other day in the AAA Wrestling Federation, which is sort of like the WWE in Mexico.

Wrestler Pedro Aguayo, known in the ring as Hijo del Perro Aguayo, fell unconscious on the ropes after he was hit head on by a flying kick from his opponent, Oscar Gutierrez, known as Rey Mysterio Jr., according to a review of the video made of the match in an auditorium in Tijuana.

This was supposedly all part of the script--the kick to the head and his lying there--but after the match continued for about two minutes, the participants--including the referee--realized that Aguayo was hurt, and the match was stopped.

The wrestler was rushed to a local hospital, reportedly just across the street from the arena, and he died there.

Dying in a wrestling ring is unusual, since everything is scripted, but it does happen, when a wrestler misses his mark or a punch or kick really hits its mark.

One fairly recent case of this happened in the WWE some years ago--the use of the word "recent" shows that it doesn't happen very often--when Owen Hart died performing a stunt before a match in 1999. Hart's family sued WWE, and the case just got fully settled maybe a year or two ago.

Wrestling is like the theater, as marks must be met, or whatever the action is can go awry.

Yes, a lot of the action is fake, the hitting is fake, the falls and drops and punches orchestrated in such a way that it won't hurt the wrestler receiving them.

These are highly trained athletes, by the way, and they learn to fall and take a punch where it won't hurt them much if at all.

But mistakes are made. That is why referees in both WWE and TNA and probably all other American wrestling organizations are linked up with backstage. You can see they all wear an earpiece, and if anything does not go according to plan, the referee can contact backstage immediately. They also put up their two arms crossed to signify that a wrestler is injured, yes, really injured.

Things happen. A punch that is supposed to be pulled is not, a drop kick to the head really hits the wrestler right in the cranium.

That is apparently what happened in Mexico, and I have to say I am not the familiar with AAA to know if the referees are well equipped, like they are in the States, to handle such a circumstance. Since the match went on for two minutes before anyone knew that the wrestler was really hurt tells me that they aren't.

So when people say that wrestling is fake, yes, it is. It is a performance, much like a live, stage show performance of a play. The difference is that athleticism is part of the production here, and since the human body is such an intricate structure, things do happen when something does not go according to plan.

Something happened in this case, in Mexico, where wrestling is held to a higher level of esteem than it is in the States.

Wrestlers are looked at as modern warriors there, and they are given accolades that wrestlers in America can only wonder about--beyond the pay that top wrestlers in the States can earn--even though wrestling over there is pretty much scripted, too.

But things can happen, it happened in this instance, and a wrestler died as a result.

Accidents will happen, I guess, and sometimes, such accidents can prove fatal.