Serious Business/Professional Wrestling


 * Professional Wrestling is very much Serious Business, as any issue, no matter how heinous, threatening, or illegal, can be settled by getting into the ring and fighting it out. In some of the more extreme cases, this can get handwaved, as the commentators will explicitly say that a wrestler "declined to press charges" in order to get his hands on the other wrestler at the Pay-Per-View this Sunday, only $34.95, call your cable or satellite provider to order now!
 * In Mexico Lucha Libre (as they call it) is more or less a religion.
 * Oh yes. They actually have a wrestling "mafia" who ensure that match stipulations are enforced. For example, if you lose a "Loser Leaves Town" match, they will make sure that you never wrestle in that town again.
 * This is referring to the athletic commission in Mexico City, which has retired wrestlers in major roles to help make sure that stipulations in what are essentially stage productions of professional fights are followed to the letter.
 * Don't forget the masks. Once a luchador has put on a mask, he NEVER takes it off. And if he's forced to take it off, he can NEVER put it on again (unless he's under Vince McMahon's protection, apparently).
 * The best example for the mask has got to be legendary Mexican wrestler El Santo, a massively popular guy who wrestled for nearly 50 years, stared in 52 films and even had his own comic book, all with his mask on. He removed his mask publicly only once, a year after retirement. He died a week later at the age of 66.
 * Eddie Guerrero and Rey Mysterio Jr once had a ladder match to determine which man would be granted custody of Rey's son, Dominic, whom Eddie claimed was biologically his. Oh yes.
 * Lampshaded when the social worker looking after Dominic in the storyline declared that they were both nuts for trying to settle the matter that way.
 * Kayfabe, at least until the late nineties, was Serious Business for wrestling promoters, many of whom would - as standard - forbid heels and faces from associating with each other in public. Some promoters and wrestlers have gone to insane lengths to keep Kayfabe, believing that the industry would collapse if the illusion was broken. WCW was most infamous for its promoters going so far as to lie to their own wrestlers in order to get Enforced Method Acting.
 * Here's one typical (but ultimately tragic) example of how far promoters would go to keep Kayfabe in the early nineties: booker Kevin Sullivan had made his wife (Nancy Sullivan, then known under the ring name "Woman") the (fictional) manager of Chris Benoit. To keep the illusion of this partnership alive, he ordered Nancy and Benoit to travel everywhere together. While they were on the road, they fell in love and Woman left Sullivan for Benoit. Oops!
 * Ever since then, it has been joked that Sullivan "booked his own divorce". Less funny when you realize that he ultimately also booked his own wife's death.
 * Recently Triple H broke into Randy Orton's "home", scared a bunch of women (including Orton's "wife"), fought with Orton and caused a lot of destruction, tossed Orton through a window, beat him up some more, and ended the show by getting "arrested". Guess what happened the next week? Triple H was "out on bail", and Orton... declined to press charges in order to get his hands on the other wrestler at the Pay-Per-View in three weeks, only $49.95, call your cable or satellite provider to order now.
 * That Pay-Per-View was Wrestlemania XXV, and everybody knows that every WM is a Serious Business!!
 * This is hardly a brand-new trope. Back in the early 1980s a wrestling promoter with Stampede Wrestling named J.R. Foley ran for mayor of Calgary as part of his shtick. He even took part in debates, making sure to wear cowboy clothes and not one of his usual Hirohito or Hitler costumes (he managed the Big Bad). He came in last, if I recall correctly.
 * The 1980s? This has been going on since the turn of the century!!
 * O rly! Century you say!! Wait...
 * And it still goes on today; The Great Sasuke ran for, and won, an assembly seat in Japan's Iwata Prefecture, and caused quite a stir by attending legislature sessions while wearing his mask.
 * Jesse Ventura.
 * PILLMAN'S GOT A GUN!
 * There was the feuds between Big Boss Man against both The Big Show and Al Snow respectively. In the latter, Boss Man killed Snow's dog and fed him to it as a "Pepper steak." In the former, he pretty much went through extreme lengths to ruin Show's life. He mocked him on his father's death, destroyed his father's pocket watch to Show, showed up at his father's funeral, ran the Big Show over, hooked the casket up to the back of his car, and drove off with it with Big Show latched onto it while riding it like a sled. He went on to interrogate his mother to admit that Show was "a bastard and his momma said so" and then caved Show's head in with a hammer. Both of these were settled with a single match in the ring and pretty much just accepted that victory as being better than having not had their lives ruined.
 * Kane TWICE got into a feud with someone because they ACCIDENTALLY SPILLED COFFEE ON HIM.
 * MAY NINETEENTH!
 * Arguably, his recent feud with John Cena, as it boils down to Kane hating the message behind Cena's recent t-shirt ("Rise Above Hate").
 * Arguably, his current feud with Randy Orton, as it boils down to Kane hating Randy Orton for shaking Kane's hand after a match and stopping Kane from becoming The Devil's Favourite Demon once again. Or something.
 * There must be a honourable Shout Out to the traditional British form of the sport, which was a cheap and cheerful form of the game as far removed from the glitzy razamattaz of the American version as it is possible to get. British pro wrestling usually took place on a Saturday afternoon and was screened just before the football results on the Saturday sports show. It was hosted in exotic locations like Batley Town Hall in Yorkshire, and wrestlers with names like Giant Haystacks, Big Daddy and Kendo Nagasaki would pound and pummel each other in front of an audience largely composed of old grannies, possibly the most vicious audience known to man. Kendo Nagasaki, a masked villain, would dread being thrown out of the ring, as the grannies were lethal, kicking, pinching, bruising and bashing, and some going to the lengths of sharpening a ferrule on their umbrellas so as to draw blood when they poked him with it. The name of "Kent Walton", ITV's legendary wrestling commentator, will bring back memories of those long-gone 1970's Saturday afternoons to British people of the right age...