...it's like TV Tropes, but LINKED DATA!
Worked Shoot
- 238 statements
- 45 feature instances
- 58 referencing feature instances
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In Professional Wrestling parlance, a "work" is anything scripted (i.e. anything that's part of kayfabe), while 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 (if only for a second) that it's real. A worked shoot plays off of a wrestler's 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. 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 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 their real feelings — 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: Is the wrestler's microphone on? Are the cameras focusing on them? Are they claiming that this is a shoot, or that "this is not a work?" Are they using "insider" language such as face, heel, mark, smark or booker? Was their entrance music cued? Are members of the staff nowhere in sight or making no attempt to stop them? Do their actions make sense in the context of a storyline (e.g. crazy wrestler rebelling against the company or out for revenge)? Is their vocabulary roughly equivalent to their usual, scripted speaking pattern? Are highlights of their actions shown, mentioned, or otherwise recapped by anybody else on the program? Is Vince Russo booking? If you answered "yes" to more than half of the above questionsnote Especially that last one, then don't worry: that wrestler's "shoot" was all part of the show. Remember that the default response to something completely unexpected happening is to cut away and pretend it never happened. This can also be applied to entire matches and promotions. Japanese wrestling once had a tradition to stage "shoot fights", but most of them were actually worked matches with many degrees of realism. Years after, the promotions who followed the "shoot-style" movement featured matches designed to look like Mixed Martial Arts bouts, and many of them put actual MMA fights into their cards to blur the lines between kayfabe and reality. Even outside of Japan, the World Wrestling Federation had a similar system of real fights called Brawl for All. To tell apart between a real shoot fight and a worked shoot, you have to question: Firstly, are the wrestlers selling (or No Selling, but always in a theatrical way) each other's hits? Are they nonchalantly taking strikes which could be easily avoided or parried in a legitimate fight? Do they spend time in fully locked submissions doing nothing more than Theatrics of Pain only to miraculously revert it afterwards, instead of immediately searching for escape or reverting it before the locking? Are they fighting in a slow, meditated pace with innocuous rest holds and pauses, instead of a fast, instinctive rush? And lastly, are they using any sort of recognizable Wrestling Psychology which would be weird or improbable in a real fight? Again, if you have answered affirmatively to three or more, then you are watching a worked shoot fight. |
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After Cody Rhodes was fired on Raw, the Professional Wrestling Syndicate announced that as soon as Cody's 90 day no compete clause ran out he would be competing for them, which Rhodes confirmed on his Facebook page while putting over all the PWS talent he wanted to face. Of course his "firing" didn't even last 90 days. | |
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| Cody Rhodes (Wrestling) | hasFeature |
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Ring Of Honor also ran angles involving CM Punk and Tyler Black threatening to take the Ring Of Honor World Title Belt with them to WWE. This was also done in Full Impact Pro, only in this case the threat was to take the Florida Heritage Title to Japan. | |
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On the Raw following the 2015 Elimination Chamber, Kevin Owens, after defeating John Cena cleanly, mentioned how despite all the years it took for him to make it to WWE, his son looks up to Cena as his hero. He also mentioned the issues Cena's detractors have against him.note For example, he referred to Cena as "Super Cena" during his promo. | |
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In 1997, Shawn Michaels engaged in a series of "unscripted" incidents, including an entire tirade against The Undertaker that was edited out of a later Raw broadcast. Rumors flew left and right that Michaels was trying to get himself fired in order to go to rival WCW and join his friends Scott Hall and Kevin Nash in the nWo; in fact, the entire thing was a set-up to the birth of D-Generation X. This particular incident arose first as a dare by a fellow wrestler (and real life friend of Taker), and then Michaels decided to have some fun. The guy conducting the interview, Jim Ross, was none too happy about it, but the Undertaker took it better. | |
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Kevin Steen burying Ring Of Honor on their official message board while putting over Pro Wrestling Guerilla after being sent out of ROH by El Generico. | |
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| Worked Shoot / int_24705e44 | type |
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| Worked Shoot / int_24705e44 | comment |
A.J. Lee cut a (fittingly, considering their later marriage) CM Punk-esque promo during her run as the Divas Champion, and she used it to great effect, tearing apart the supposedly "plastic, interchangeable" Total Divas women who seemingly hadn't earned their spots on the roster like she had. Despite supposedly being a heel, it just got her over even further. | |
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| Worked Shoot / int_25818ae2 | type |
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| Worked Shoot / int_25818ae2 | comment |
The tendency for WCW staff not to be informed of plot developments led to some hilarious situations where, when something genuinely unexpected happen, the staff would assume it had been planned and just not told them. Most notably, a fan dressed as Sting jumped a barricade and started to interfere with a match and the commentators, so used to not being told about changes, assumed it was meant to be the real Sting. | |
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He actually did several of these throughout 2010 during his reign as the United States and later WWE Champion. He referred to the real life bullying he suffered in the locker room at the hands of JBL. | |
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| John "Bradshaw" Layfield (Wrestling) | hasFeature |
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| Worked Shoot / int_307b029a | type |
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| Worked Shoot / int_307b029a | comment |
Joey Styles's rant on sports entertainment before "quitting" the commentating job on Raw was a working shoot. This became more obvious as he later became the commentator for the WWE revival for ECW and there was no way in Hell Vince McMahon would have let him on TV if he legitimately bashed him and his whole company off the cuff on live TV. | |
| Worked Shoot / int_307b029a | featureApplicability |
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| Joey Styles (Wrestling) | hasFeature |
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| Worked Shoot / int_35b0ed14 | type |
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| Worked Shoot / int_35b0ed14 | comment |
When the sports company Anthem acquired TNA and Jeff Jarrett's Global Force Wrestling, it decided to merge them into one brand under the GFW name. At the shows, this was gradually demonstrated by having the GFW associated talent assault those associated with TNA/Impact Wrestling, defeat them in matches, unify their title belts and gradually take over everything until all was GFW. Basically a shoot turned work. However, the Anthem suits had a falling out with Jarrett, who took the GFW brand name with him out the door, so the Impact wrestlers rallied and got their company back. | |
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| Worked Shoot / int_372caa03 | comment |
On the very first WCW card Russo booked, Buff Bagwell and former tag partner Scotty Riggs shot a backstage segment where Riggs informed Bagwell that he (Riggs) would be winning the match, and Bagwell reacted with disbelief - and then when they actually had the match, Bagwell used a small package pin and "wouldn't let go", winning the match. A couple weeks after that Bagwell was in a match against La Parka. He no-sold everything, then took a dive from the "run into someone's feet in the corner" spot and "threw" the match. | |
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| Worked Shoot / int_4166f2bb | type |
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| Worked Shoot / int_4166f2bb | comment |
Matt Hardy discovered that his girlfriend Amy "Lita" Dumas was cheating on him with fellow wrestler Adam "Edge" Copeland, and when he started to talk publicly about it, he was unceremoniously fired. After he slowly built a rabid fanbase using the sympathy from this incident on the Internet, he suddenly began appearing on Raw again, jumping over the barricade and attacking Edge, then being carried out by security while screaming things like, "I thought you were my friend, Johnny Ace!" (a reference to WWE executive John "Johnny Ace" Laurinaitis). Soon enough, the truth came out; Matt had been re-hired, and plans were in place for a storyline based on the problems between Matt and Edge (even though this meant retconning a year's worth of storylines in which Lita was Kane's wife). To this day, fans still debate whether the infidelity that started the whole thing was work, or shoot. Realistically, there's little question it was initially a shoot - WWE didn't talk about it, and you know that WWE.com would have been full of stories about it if it was a work. Note that the second Matt showed back up on Raw and bragged about it being "a shoot" on his blog, any illusion that he was acting independently was broken. | |
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| Worked Shoot / int_419deacd | comment |
In the build-up to Wrestlemania 34, Roman Reigns cut several promos on his opponent Brock Lesnar, calling him out for several issues fans and other wrestlers have had with him (having no passion for the business or respect for the fans, working a part time schedule, only caring about getting paid, being protected by the management). The fact that it's coming from Reigns, whose X-Pac Heat far exceeds Lesnar's, is no small irony. | |
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| Worked Shoot / int_4225fe54 | comment |
A few weeks before Summerslam '18, Carmella delivered a heartfelt, emotional speech to Becky Lynch about how the latter always helped her out in NXT and that it was an honor to wrestle against her at the PPV. She then offered a handshake... just before James Ellsworth's music played and Carmella blasted a distracted Becky with the title belt. | |
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| Worked Shoot / int_481d55f7 | comment |
WCW once attempted to save an angle with a worked shoot. Dustin Runnels' new character, Seven, was hyped in a series of creepy vignettes that left the unfortunate impression that he was a child abductor. Turner Standards and Practices axed the gimmick, and in an attempt to get some use out of Seven's elaborate entrance and costume, had Dustin interrupt his own debut, rant about how Goldust had caused him to be stuck in silly gimmick characters, and swear vengeance on WCW for firing his father, Dusty Rhodes. | |
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| Worked Shoot / int_52d824e7 | comment |
One example that helped catapult wrestling into pop culture was the "Gold Record Incident" in February 1985, where Roddy Piper interrupted an award ceremony on MTV with Lou Albano and Cyndi Lauper, smashed Albano's commemorative record over his head and then body slammed Lauper's manager David Wolff. The whole thing was so realistic that a NY cop rushed into the ring and tried to stop Piper, which made him mess up his slam and actually hurt Wolff. The whole thing was a setup for the "War to Settle the Score" special, which itself was a setup for the original WrestleMania. | |
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The WWE Brawl for All was made out to be legitimate shoot fighting where nothing was scripted, but behind the scenes, "Dr. Death" Steve Williams was "scripted" to win, and there were accusations leveled about the judges fudging the scores to favor Williams in his matches. Whether this is true or notnote And it probably is seeing as how they were so confident in Williams winning that they paid him the winner's purse before the tournament started, the plan was derailed by Bart Gunn, who defeated Williams by KO and disrupted the entire planned work. Bart Gunn proceeded to win the Brawl For All Tournament, and was in turn set up in a match against professional boxer Butterbean at WrestleMania. Accounts differ as to whether this was a punishment for winning when he wasn't supposed to, or whether booker Vince Russo actually expected Gunn to win. Gunn would be KO'd in less than a minute, and was fired as soon as he made it back to the locker room. | |
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| Worked Shoot / int_5ae097aa | comment |
On June 1, 2022, MJF, with it publicly known that he's unhappy with his contract, cuts a worked shoot promo on AEW Dynamite trashing most of the roster (throwing particular shade to AEW executive VPs The Young Bucks) and concluding by telling AEW owner Tony Khan "FIRE ME! FIRE ME, YOU FUCKING MARK!" before his mic is cut. He didn't return to TV for three months, and Khan "No comment"-ed every time he was asked, leading many to believe this was just a plain shoot rather than a worked one. It was finally confirmed as a worked shoot — or possibly a shoot that became worked — at All Out on September 4, when he won the Casino Ladder Match as the masked "Joker" (thanks to massive outside interference) to guarantee a future shot at the AEW World Championship. After CM Punk defeated Jon Moxley to reclaim the world title, The Joker took off his mask in a video, revealing himself as MJF, who then came out live on stage to stare down Punk and gesture that the belt would soon be hisnote Though with Punk being injured during that match, and suspended for what happened after the match, MJF had to settle for beating Moxley for the belt. As it turned out, MJF's absence conveniently coincided with filming for The Iron Claw, an upcoming biopic of the Von Erich family focusing mainly on Kevin, with MJF playing Lance Von Erich, briefly a kayfabe-only member of the family. |
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| Worked Shoot / int_5ae0b268 | comment |
At TNA Turning Point 2007, Samoa Joe was supposed to team up with Kevin Nash & Scott Hall in a match against AJ Styles, Tomko & Kurt Angle. However, Hall no-showed the event. Joe was asked before the match to go out and cut a promo to announce their replacement for Hall, Eric Young. However, Joe used the opportunity to bury Hall and voice his frustrations against the company for not properly using the younger talent and giving more breaks to the older, more established stars, frequently shooting nasty looks at his partner Kevin Nash and his opponent Kurt Angle while talking. Kevin Nash was shown to be visibly upset by Joe's words, as was TNA President Dixie Carter, who was sitting in the front row. Towards the end of his promo, Joe looked down into the crowd where Dixie was sitting, noticed she wasn't happy and said "Are you mad? No, go ahead, fire me. I don't care." After the match, Joe and Nash had an argument backstage that nearly became physical and the next day, Joe apologized to the TNA locker room for his comments. Not everyone in the crowd was sympathetic to Joe: Karen Angle (Kurt's then-wife) was close enough to the microphone that the words "Shut up! Stop being a crybaby!" made it over the air. Of course, Kurt was one of the people to whom Joe was referring, so Karen wasn't exactly unbiased in the matter. Reportedly, Joe was only supposed to take a shot at Hall and bring out Eric Young as Hall's replacement, but realized midway through that he'd been handed a live mic on a TNA PPV and decided to air some grievances as well. |
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In WSU, there was Tina San Antonio's absence from a show being explained as her faking an injury to tryout for WWE, leaving her tag team partner Marti Belle to fend for herself. | |
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When the World Wrestling League was starting up, the World Wrestling Council's Facebook page started filling up with criticism of the newer promotion. Then Carlito Colón, one of WWC's three owners, became a WWL regular and later still the two companies became affiliates. | |
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It was finally confirmed as a worked shoot — or possibly a shoot that became worked — at All Out on September 4, when he won the Casino Ladder Match as the masked "Joker" (thanks to massive outside interference) to guarantee a future shot at the AEW World Championship. After CM Punk defeated Jon Moxley to reclaim the world title, The Joker took off his mask in a video, revealing himself as MJF, who then came out live on stage to stare down Punk and gesture that the belt would soon be hisnote Though with Punk being injured during that match, and suspended for what happened after the match, MJF had to settle for beating Moxley for the belt. As it turned out, MJF's absence conveniently coincided with filming for The Iron Claw, an upcoming biopic of the Von Erich family focusing mainly on Kevin, with MJF playing Lance Von Erich, briefly a kayfabe-only member of the family. | |
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| Worked Shoot / int_6e657b27 | comment |
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 kicking Sullivan's ass in match after match, along with fighting his way through Sullivan's Power Stable the Dungeon of Doom, culminating in Benoit defeating Sullivan in a "Career vs. Career" match at WCW Bash at the Beach 97. Sullivan was replaced as booker in early 1999 by Kevin Nash shortly after the Fingerpoke Of Doom and roughly 8 months of terrible booking, which was then followed by the much worse booking of Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara in October 1999. Benoit left the company in January 2000 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. To Sullivan's credit, Benoit said on the Hard Knocks DVD that for all the animosity he held toward Benoit, Sullivan remained a consummate professional in the ring and never tried to hurt Benoit in any of their matches. | |
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| Worked Shoot / int_7d39d1aa | comment |
When AJ Styles won the #1 contender's match for the WWE World Championship held by Bray Wyatt, Randy Orton, who betrayed Wyatt a week ago, set out to challenge Wyatt as the winner of the Royal Rumble. Ultimately, Styles and Orton had a match to determine the true contender, which AJ lost. Frustrated, he lashed out backstage at Shane McMahon, going as far as driving him head first into his car's window. For that, he was "fired" by the GM Daniel Bryan, and AJ's profile was moved to the "Alumni" section of WWE.com. After that, Shane challenged AJ to a match at WrestleMania 33, "reinstating" him as an active superstar. | |
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Worked Shoot | |
| Worked Shoot / int_81bbe24 | comment |
Not all worked shoots are full of hate and violence: Stan "Uncle Elmer" Frazier's wedding to Joyce Stazko on a 1985 broadcast of Saturday Night's Main Event, was the real thing; Roddy Piper's attempt at disrupting the ceremony and Jesse Ventura's snide commentary were kayfabe, but the couple remained married until Frazier's death in 1992. | |
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Worked Shoot | |
| Worked Shoot / int_84a52c39 | comment |
Scott Hall's first pro wrestling appearance after no showing several TNA and WWC events was for Juggalo Championship Wrestling, where he was a founding member of the "juggalo World order". Hall challenged the jWo to go "on the road" and invade either WWE, ROH, TNA or UFC. They decided to start with TNA, by buying front row tickets to the "Turning Point" event. TNA officials actually thought JCW was actually threatening to interfere with the show and even Samoa Joe was worried because he thought they might have been there on behalf of Hall, who he had dissed. Sheik Abdull Bashir thought the jWo was a welcome part of the show and started to "fight" with 2 Tuff Tony, which security interfered with and had the jWo expelled. The "invasions" of the other three companies never got past the planning stages. | |
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In Yoshihiro Tajiri's SMASH, there was "The World Famous" Kana writing a manifesto on how to save Joshi pro wrestling. This somewhat backfired, as most fans either wondered why she had gone off on this tangent or just equated it to all the heel promos she had already cut in 2010. Other pro wrestlers and promoters were the people most upset, to the point it actually set back her bookings for a couple years and led to flanderization of Kana being a sneaky, manipulative, arrogant megalomaniac for the next half decade. | |
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At one point during The Miz and Dolph Ziggler's 2016 feud for the Intercontinental Championship, Dolph threatened to leave WWE if he couldn't beat The Miz for the title at No Mercy. Ziggler, being no stranger to working fans himself, later tweeted that after No Mercy he would accept bookings through an outside agency. Between this and The Miz's repeated potshots at Ziggler's entire in-ring career, including his time in the Spirit Squad and near-forgotten stint as Kerwin White's caddy, this seemed to imply that his exit from WWE was legitimate. It wasn't. | |
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It is believed to have been 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 Kaufman and Lawler 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. This was revisited during the filming of Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon, with Lawler and Jim Carrey getting into a fistfight on-set. As the story was told, Carrey had gone into method-actor mode, would only answer to "Andy" on the set, and started picking fights with Lawler in order to get into Kaufman's head. This didn't spill over into the wrestling ring, unlike most worked shoots, but it did get a lot of airtime on WWE programming. While Carrey was doing publicity for Man on the Moon, he was visited by Tony Clifton, resulting in a fight and Clifton actually urinating on scene with a gag penis. The journalists gathered seemed to realize that it was a worked shoot, however. Seen here. Finally, most of Kaufman's career consisted of worked shoots, like faking a British accent and reading The Great Gatsby instead of performing his comedy routine because he was "sick of your lowbrow American humor." The night he hosted Fridays was another such moment, and he was so infamous for this behavior that even tabloids refused to believe he actually had cancer. | |
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On the Raw following The Undertaker's shocking defeat by Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania XXX, Paul Heyman decided to "shoot from the hip," and talked about Taker's legitimate concussion during the match as well as Vince McMahon leaving the WrestleMania set to make sure he was alright. While the whole promo was very obviously a work, it involved a lot of events that would normally be kept out of kayfabe. | |
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Worked Shoot | |
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Jim Cornette banning Low Ki for life from Ring of Honor. It worked because Low Ki does have a history of leaving promotions when he doesn't get his way, being hard to deal with or being too stiff, the reason his banning was for supposedly giving Cornette an injury. In fact, it might have worked a bit too well, as people started to hate Cornette and ROH personally for it. And not in the "come to the show on the off chance someone might beat Cornette" way. | |
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At the G1 Supercard, co-produced by New Japan Pro-Wrestling and Ring of Honor, the indie wrestlers formerly known as Enzo and Cass jumped the guardrail and stormed the ring. There was actually some genuine confusion in the moment as to whether it was a work or a shoot, as the camera cut away immediately and they were quickly removed by security like they were genuine intruders, rather than them being allowed to cut a promo, milk the crowd or attack the match participants. The next day ROH announced that it was a work and that the pair had signed with the promotion as "nZo" and "Big Ca$", despite both men being mired in personal and legal issues that should preclude working with any major company. This drew scorn from the fans, especially when it was revealed that ROH had not informed NJPW of the plan ahead of time. They were released without ever working a single match for ROH. | |
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A rare non-wrestling example: on Celebrity Deathmatch, George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg try to stage a fake deathmatch for the purposes of gambling fraud, even though they were close friends in real life. This backfires when Paul Newman and Robert Redford notice how phony their 'fight' is and challenge them to a real one. Newman and Redford win. | |
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The worst-ever Worked Shoot for WCW was when the company started shooting on itself, complete with the user of insider terms during the show.note For example, when Kevin Nash and Goldberg cut "shoot" promos and the commentators acted like it's a shoot. There was also rather explicit mentions of predetermined match finishes on purpose while the cameras are still rolling during the show. Unsurprisingly, this came at a time when Vince Russo was writing for WCW. The stupidity culminated at the wretched New Blood Rising show, where WCW promoted a match between Goldberg, Kevin Nash and Scott Steiner who were going to have a "real fight". Midway through the match, Goldberg "stopped co-operating" and walked out on the match, with the announcers criticizing his lack of professionalism. Nash and Steiner then proceeded to "improvise" a finish, with the announcers praising how professional they were. Soon after, they ran Fall Brawl promos talking about how Goldberg "refused to follow the script". This was one of the factors that led to WCW going out of business less than a year later. | |
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After Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff's hostile takeover, Hulk Hogan cut a promo about ending kayfabe and how everything anyone other than himself had done up to that point was worthless and fake. | |
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Following Over the Edge 1998, Undertaker came to the ring in street clothes and delivered a promo where he seemingly aired Mark Calaway’s legitimate grievances with the company and Vince McMahon such as his short title reigns. He then segued into complaining that Vince was exploiting his “family troubles” for storyline purposes, trying to push the idea that Mark and Glenn really were half-brothers with a lot of bad blood between them, even if their characters were fake. | |
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In 1957, the NWA ran an angle where several member promotions took different sides in a dispute over whether Lou Thesz or Édouard Carpentier had won a match for the World Heavyweight Title. This was supposed to be building to a big match but then Montreal promoter Eddie Quinn left the alliance, leading to NWA President Sam Muchnick declaring Thesz the official winner, ending the "dispute". | |
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An example of a worked shoot gone awry is the "Loose Cannon" gimmick Brian Pillman did in WCW. Pillman said and did things that seemed specifically designed to tweak the noses of management, such as when he ended a PPV match (an "I Respect You" match against booker Kevin Sullivan) about a minute in by shouting, "I respect you, booker man!" Subsequently, he was "fired", and he convinced WCW to really release him from his contract in order to make the illusion complete; then, freed from contractual obligations, he went to ECW instead of finishing the storyline. | |
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Gabe Sapolsky burying Chris Hero on commentary when he made his first appearance for Ring of Honor, leading Hero to call Sapolsky an ungrateful bastard and boast that his match drew more than any that ROH ever did with Kenta Kobashi. This led to a serious escalation in the CZW feud. | |
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This quote, taken verbatim from a 2000 WCW broadcast, from Tony Schiavone, of course, "We do not wrestle in WCW." Note that the company's name was World Championship Wrestling. For those wondering, the quote was from a Hulk Hogan-Billy Kidman backstage brawl that ended with the Hulkster throwing Kidman into a dumpster and then ramming it with a Hummer. | |
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The phrase was also applied to what is more popularly known as "shoot wrestling", a Japanese wrestling style reminiscent of MMA (in fact, many early UFC participants like Ken Shamrock or Dan Severn were veterans of groups employing this style). Although outcomes were predetermined (the "worked" part), holds and strikes were generally applied in a realistic manner (the "shoot" part). Many of these later became full-shoot MMA organizations. Worked shoots 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.note Ali was under the understanding that the match would be a work, and only found out 15 minutes before bell time that Inoki had planned on fighting for real - the rules were then cobbled together in that 15 minutes before the match started. One of them was that Inoki could only throw kicks if one knee was in contact with the ground, leading to a surreal fight where Inoki laid on his back and kicked Ali's legs a lot.) 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 Universal Wrestling Federation, 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 Minoru Suzuki 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 MMA PPV phenomenon.)* technically Sayama's Shooto was the first MMA company, formed because he didn't want to play politics, which is to say he didn't want to share the money he felt was his right as the most popular wrestler. But Shooto failed because, as Sayama soon discovered, real fighters were just as capable of playing politics as any pro wrestler. |
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The ECW One Night Stand 2005 pay-per-view plays it straight with one promo and subverts it with some commentary later on. The first instance was a Rob Van Dam promo where he claims he's shooting and talks about how important the night was and how, to him, missing it is worse than missing WrestleMania. The subverted part is during Joey Styles' infamous remarks about Mike Awesome (calling him a "Judas" for the way he left ECW for WCW while still champ, and wishing that a Suicide Splash had actually killed him). Mick Foley points out it's a shoot (which, as mentioned above, is typically a sign that it's a work), but Joey really did get in trouble for his comments after the show. And let's not forget Paul Heyman's promo on the Raw and Smackdown wrestlers sitting in the private box, where he makes reference to the Edge/Lita/Hardy stuff mentioned above ("Hide your wives, it's Edge!") and tells JBL that he only got a world title run "because Triple H didn't want to work Tuesdays." | |
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In fact, his experience for works came from when he was a Pro Wrestler, it was at Fujiwara Gumi shoot-wrestling promotion where he met future Pancrase founders Funaki and Minoru Suzuki. After he found success at the UFC representing "shootfighting" (Pancrase-style fighting), a former Fujiwara Gumi alumni Bart Vale used a worked victory over Shamrock to hype himself up as an All American shootfightingnote In fact, he copyrighted the term "shootfighting" and founded the International Shootfighting Association) (ISFA), which prevented independent people from promoting the combat sport and MMA legend back in the United States. His actual MMA record is a pitiful 1-2. | |
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One of the most famous worked shoots was a interview made by Cactus Jack, known as the "Cane Dewey" promo, during his time in ECW. The promo was inspired by a sign Cactus Jack saw during a match against Terry Funk, which read "Cane Dewey".note Dewey, Mick Foley's son, was 5 years old at the time. Cactus Jack became somewhat disillusioned with the wrestling business at this time and, at the advisement of ECW promoter and booker Paul Heyman, channeled that into his feud with Tommy Dreamer, which had Cactus Jack, then a heel, being against the "Hardcore" wrestling style, and attempting to get Dreamer, who had a hardcore gimmick, to leave ECW for Ted Turner's WCW.note Which was at that time reviled by ECW fans. | |
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They tried to turn the obviously scripted stage collapse accident on McMahon in 2008 into a worked shoot. He can be heard saying "Paul, I can't feel my legs." (Paul is the real first name of McMahon's son-in-law, Triple H, and he generally refuses to let anyone use it.) Then they pretty much just forgot about it. | |
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