Professional wrestling how does it work

There were stories, but there were also plain old matches. Now, there are writers. Every match, every encounter, is designed to advance a character. And all the matches fit in to the general theme of the broadcast, which is given a title. For last week's Raw , the backstage title was "The Evolution of Justice. Knowing what the fans remember is very important motivation for the wrestlers. Then there are the "dark matches. Then there's the audience prep. Just like any TV show, the audience has to be conditioned to react to certain things.

So WWE announcer Jerry Lawler, who gets his own pre-event, full-stage introduction, is instructed to remind fans to put on their masks so that WWE can go live on the air with a tribute.

Then comes the first match. It'll be interrupted by a commercial break, which is something that the wrestlers know — they can't decide to go to "the finish" when the TV audience is watching a Pringles commercial. Of the action, the script simply says this click and zoom to enlarge :.

The announcers know who will get "over," i. This allows them to actually announce the action in the match legitimately. The next segment takes us backstage.

In addition to pinfall, a match can be won by submission , count-out , disqualification , or failure to answer a ten count. Punching is permitted as long as the wrestler's fist is open. This is probably the most ignored rule in WWE, as referees almost never disqualify a wrestler for throwing closed-fist punches.

Instead, the referee simply admonishes the wrestler to stop, which is rarely successful. In addition, wrestlers may only kick with the flat part of the foot, and "low blow" only refers to actually striking the crotch. If either wrestler is in contact with the ropes or if any part of the wrestler is underneath the ropes, all contact between the wrestlers must be broken before the count of five. This strategy is often used in order to escape from a submission hold , and also, more seldom, a wrestler can place his foot on or under the ropes to avoid losing by pinfall.

Participants may try to abuse these rules, and it will often result in verbal or physical sparring with the ref. In order to win by pinfall , a wrestler must pin both his opponent's shoulders against the mat while the referee slaps the mat three times.

This is the most common form of defeat. Illegal pinning methods include using the ropes for leverage and hooking the opponent's tights, therefore they are popular cheating methods for heels. Such pins as these are rarely, if ever, seen by the referee and are subsequently often used by heels and on occasion by cheating faces to win matches.

To win by submission, the wrestler must make his opponent give up, usually, but not necessarily, by putting him in a submission hold i. Passing out in a submission hold constitutes a loss by knockout. To determine if a wrestler has passed out in WWE, the referee usually picks up and drops his hand. If it drops three consecutive times without the wrestler having the strength to stop it from falling, the wrestler is considered to have passed out.

At one point this was largely ignored, however the rule is no much more commonly observed. Often the third time, the WWE wrestler in the hold will fight their way out. Also, a wrestler can indicate a submission by " tapping out ," that is, tapping a free hand against the mat or against an opponent when no hand is free, as is the case in a Mexican Surfboard, the submitting wrestler may scream "I give up," which is the same as a submission. The tapout was once common-place in professional wrestling, especially in the days prior to it becoming a predominately pre-arranged contest.

However, following the decline of the submission-oriented catch-as-catch-can style from mainstream professional wrestling, the tap out largely faded, regaining prominence as a means of victory mostly in the face of the popularity of the Ultimate Fighting Championship in the early 90's. A countout alternatively "count-out" or "count out" happens when a wrestler is out of the ring long enough for the referee to count to 10 or 20 regular referees usually count very slowly, as opposed to one count per second, because countouts are very controversial and unsatisfying ways to end matches.

The count is broken and restarted when a wrestler inside the ring leaves the ring. Shoot: Going off-script and making something real. A shoot can be a promo in which a wrestler says something unscripted generally something negative directed toward another wrestler or does a legitimate move that may be used in actual fighting.

Spot: A scripted move or series of moves. Squash: A short match in which one wrestler beats another easily and quickly. Squash matches typically only last a couple of minutes, if that.

Stable: A group of wrestlers who unite, usually for one common purpose or because of a connection between multiple members of the group. Turn: When a wrestler switches from heel to babyface or from babyface to heel. Tweener: A wrestler who is viewed neither as a face nor a heel. He generally displays characters of both sides, and thus, is seen as a combination of both. This can also refer to someone who is fully heel as a character, but gets cheered anyway.

Work: Anything that is scripted to happen. The exact opposite of a shoot. The specific spots to hit will be worked out between them ahead of time, and the connective tissue between the big moves is mostly a matter of in-ring improvisation.

All the wrestlers have to do is make sure their match fits in to the allotted time—in this case, five minutes for the whole segment. Announcers are likely in on the matches' final sequences, so they can be prepared to call it properly.

But for obvious reasons, these sequences aren't written down. Here are the pages for dueling promos between Bray Wyatt and John Cena:. You'll notice right away, from the moment Wyatt adds a few lines before hitting his scripted words, that there are differences. This is a function of two things. First, this script was a draft the third, to be precise.

Like any show, Raw goes through a number of rewrites before hitting on the final product.