Worked Shoot: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''"This is a shoot, dammit!"''|'''[[Stock Phrase]] of a wrestler delivering a [[Worked Shoot]]'''.}}

In [[Professional Wrestling]] parlance, a "Work" is anything scripted, anything that's part of [[Kayfabe]]. A "Shoot" is anything "real"; i.e. not scripted. Put them together and you have the [['''Worked Shoot]]'''; something that is definitely part of the act, but attempts to trick the viewer into thinking -- ifthinking—if only for a second -- thatsecond—that it's real.

A [['''Worked Shoot]]''' plays off of a wrestler's [[Real Life Writes the Plot|real life]], and it breaks many pro wrestling conventions, in an attempt to convince the viewer it's totally different from anything else that's going on, that it's totally real. Since a [['''Worked Shoot]]''' so often borrows from real-life elements, it can be difficult to tell where the shoot ends and the work begins.

[[Worked Shoot|'''Worked Shoots]]''' may be a reaction from pro-wrestling bookers to the apparent death of [[Kayfabe]] and the "outing" of pro-wrestling as scripted; they're an attempt to put that genie back in the bottle, to make fans think it's real again, just for a second. Of course, they must eventually spill over into wrestling storylines, but until then...

An alternate definition is a wrestler taking the planned storyline and using it to express his real feelings -- thusfeelings—thus shooting during a work, for a Worked Shoot.

When trying to figure out if something is a [['''Worked Shoot]]''', ask yourself the following questions:

* Arguably originated by [[Jerry Lawler]], Jimmy Hart, and Andy Kaufman, with the long-running Lawler/Kaufman feud. Qualifies as a [[Worked Shoot]] because some of the stunts Andy and Jerry pulled (like getting into a fight on the set of David Letterman's show) managed to convince a lot of people who weren't usually fooled into believing [[Kayfabe]].

* The on-screen [[Never Found the Body|apparent death]] of [[WWE]] chairman [[Vince McMahon]] may have been an unintentional [[Worked Shoot]] -- WWEShoot—WWE was very up-front about the fact that it's only the ''character'' "Mr. McMahon" that died, and the ''real'' Vince is alive and well, but that didn't stop some news outlets from running the story as real within a couple of days after it happened, and it hasn't stopped some finance columnists from [http://www.cnbc.com/id/19330600 all but accusing the WWE of securities fraud for faking the death of the chairman]. The storyline was scrapped, however, when the [[Chris Benoit]] incident happened, forcing McMahon out of "death" to address it.

* WCW saw another [[Worked Shoot]] backfire when wrestler/booker Kevin Sullivan put together a storyline that had his (on-screen and real-life) wife, Nancy "Woman" Sullivan, sleeping with his rival, [[Chris Benoit]]. Sullivan was from wrestling's old school, and he made sure that Woman and Benoit traveled together, were spotted entering each others' hotel rooms, and otherwise spent a lot of time together in public, just to drive the angle home. The problem? After spending all that time together, Nancy fell in love with Benoit, and left Kevin for real to marry him. This led to Woman being moved into a non-speaking role as a valet for [[Ric Flair]], and Benoit getting [[Squash Match|squashed]] repeatedly by Sullivan in the most brutal matches he could come up with, until Sullivan was eventually replaced as booker. Benoit left the company when Sullivan re-gained the head booker position, as Benoit feared that Sullivan was still holding a grudge. Worse yet for WCW, his friends Perry Saturn, Dean Malenko, and [[Eddie Guerrero]] all left for fear of becoming collateral damage; the quartet formed The Radicalz in the WWE, where Benoit and Guerrero became ''huge'' stars.

* The worst-ever [[Worked Shoot]] for WCW though was when the ''company itself starting shooting on itself'', complete with the user of insider terms during the show, example [[Kevin Nash]] and [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GN5dRWyoOaU Bill Goldberg cutting "shoot" promos ] and the commentators acting like it's a shoot, or rather explicit mentions of predetermined match finishes ''on purpose while the cameras are still rolling during the show''.

* [[Vince Russo]] has continued to do [[Worked Shoots]] in TNA. One particularly atrocious [[Worked Shoot]] was the scene where [[Mick Foley]] goes backstage and meets [[Vince Russo]] and the writers. Foley tells them that they're doing a great job, and asks if they can write a scene where Dixie Carter returns his phone calls. Foley was clearly not happy about having to break the fourth wall in this fashion.

** [[Worked Shoot|WorkedShoots]] were somewhat endemic to Japanese professional wrestling. First, there was Antonio Inoki, who won a series of (fake) shoot fights with fighters of various martial arts disciplines (and drew a real fight with Muhammad Ali, doing serious damage to Ali's legs in the process despite goofy restrictions on his side; one side or the other backed out of a worked fight at the last minute, and the rules were cobbled together about 15 minutes before the match started). Then in the 1980s, several wrestlers in Inoki's New Japan promotion with real martial arts backgrounds felt that they were being forced to lose to inferior opponents. Two of them (Satoru "Tiger Mask" Sayama and Akira Maeda) formed the UWF, which was the first shootwrestling promotion. The shootwrestlers eventually made their way back to the mainstream promotions, and New Japan to this day still has a heavy emphasis on matwork and submissions due to their influence (and almost all major promotions in Japan go to clean finishes for the same reason). Several promotions down the line, shootwrestlers such as Masakatsu Funaki and Ken Shamrock felt they were being forced to lose to inferior opponents, and formed Pancrase, which did away with the whole predetermined outcome thing, and set the stage for Japan's next cultural fad (and America's newest PPV phenomenon/human cockfight).

* The Sentry's appearance in [[Marvel Universe|Marvel Comics]] is a good example of a non-wrestling [[Worked Shoot]], as he was originally claimed to be a long-forgotten, pre-[[Fantastic Four]] creation of Stan Lee, an angle that Wizard Magazine helped to indulge. Of course, Sentry was, in actuality, a modern creation, created by Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee for the ''Marvel Knights'' line, and the idea of everybody having forgotten about him played prominently into his origin story.

* ''[[The Blair Witch Project]]'' is one big [[Worked Shoot]], by this definition.