In 1964 Michael Gabbert, an investigative journalist, revealed the soccer betting scandal which led to ten players being jailed for match fitting. In 1966 he turned his attention to professional wrestling, with a five week series in the Sunday newspaper, The People.
As an eleven year old with an insatiable thirst for knowledge I lapped up the revealing backgrounds of these strange and mysterious creatures that he revealed whilst retaining an ability to totally ignore the substance of the pieces, i.e. that matches were fixed.
This was not the first wrestling exposure, and wouldn't be the last.Every four or five years it seemed the Sunday newspapers could cash in on their new discovey.
It may surprise many to learn that today is the anniversary of one of those Sunday paper "Wrestling is Fixed" declarations way back in 1956, that's over sixty years ago.
In one of the earliest Sunday newspaper investigations into the legitimacy of professional wrestling the Sunday Dispatch reporter Jacqueline Mackenzie asked "Is wrestling fake?" As would be expected she found it hard to get a straight answer. There was an admission that not everything was genuine. Francis St Clair Gregory told of the time he had been reprimanded by a referee in Belgium for grimacing as if he was in pain when his opponent got a hold on him. One man did talk. He was former boxer and wrestler Jack Doyle. Doyle told the reporter that the result of all his wrestling matches were pre-planned and explained how blood could be produced on demand. By the end of the piece the reporter did have a grudging admiration for the men she had met.
Newspaper exposure may have contributed to the decline in populaity but newspapers have themselves faced a steep decline with only a small percentage of the population regularly purchasing a paper
Yes it is controlled but "no one has ever defied gravity in or out of the ring" Quote from Pat Roach
they stopped running alhambras in London in 1900s for that same reason...people stopped betting on it figured it was not a contest.
It was undoubtedly more appealing than legit amateur wrestling which can seem very slow.It was a credit to Professional Wrestling that a journalist would investigate soccer and then turn to wrestling
Whether it was fixed, fake, predetermined or whatever, the fact remains that 99% of spectators didn't know exactly how, and couldn't see how before their very eyes.
This was probably a bigger attraction than had it been truly competitive.
It was and remains so for me. Working out how they did it all.
Yes the greatest deception ever , but for a while we did not mind.
Often I've wondered, what if 'wrestling' had come clean at some point in the fifties or sixties, would it have done the terrible damage, that those running the game thought it would? Admittedly it was easier to be gullible in those days, (the Harlem Globe Trotters spring to mind) but would have fans stayed away in their thousands had they been told 'we are an entertainment'? We can only guess.
A year ago,my two Grandsons started to watch WWE on the box (no I didn't encourage them) so I toook them aside and explained a little of the biz., pointing out among other things, that just as they were aware that the action t.v. series and movies they watched, were not real and that the fight scenes were performed safely, so (pro) wrestling was similar in that whilst trying their hardest to be seen as good guys and bad guys, they did their uppermost to not seriously hurt one another. I pointed out that if wrestlers went around breaking their opponents legs, soon they'd be no one to wrestle against, so no show, no dough. I particularly put it to them, that unlike actors in a movie, etc, wrestlers can be seen live, so when two 100 kilo men collide, or one picks up another and then slams him to the canvas, that probably hurts and dangerous moves like jumping on someone from the top rope, when sweaty and tired are performed without cables, trampolines, or stand in stunt men. I mentioned this, as I explained that if they became fans, they would come across those who will use the word 'fixed' to which they could retort, 'it's an entertainment and like all such endeavors, if it's done well, you will enjoy it or not. If you see them collide, slam each other and throw themselves over the top rope, how is that 'fixed'exactly.'
I saw the afore mentioned Trotters, live, three times in my lifetime, as a kid, then a late teen, then in my late thirties. Entertaining initially, ultimately repetitive. Definitely fixed! 😄