Reality shows are faker than wrestling
AEW's All Access took us behind the curtain... inside a drapery shop.
In 2001, Mick Foley published his second autobiography, Foley is Good, which chronicled the tail end of his run as a full-time wrestler and the success of his first book, which led to his breakthrough into the mainstream. For those who weren’t around then (and I’m so old now I mean that literally you may not have existed at this time), WWE was in the midst of some pretty nasty PR battles, some legitimate, some not.
WWE’s biggest enemy at the time was the Parents Television Council, a right-wing Christian media advocacy group that wanted to control what forms of entertainment you were allowed to enjoy. Good thing nothing like that exists in 2023, right? Anyhoo, the PTC (parodied on WWE television as the RTC) made WWE public enemy #1 and the media took the bait. This was also during the time when ECW and hardcore wrestling were at their peak, but it all got lumped in as “WWE” because WWE had firmly cemented their spot as the industry leader. To the grown-ups who run media companies, all wrestling is “WWE” like all video games are “Nintendos” and all tissues are “Kleenex.” And to be fair, that’s what Vince McMahon always wanted - to be King Turd of Shit Mountain, but that’s another rant for another day.
This came to a head in an interview Mick Foley did with Diane Sawyer on 20/20 where they showed Mick a clip of some kids having fun backyard wrestling and he said something to the effect of “that looks like kids having a good time.” Then they showed him a clip of kids hitting each other with light tubes and barbed wire baseball bats and he said something like “kids absolutely should not be doing that at home and it’s incredibly dangerous.” What made it to air though? They showed the clip of the kids putting each other through barbed wire flaming tables but deceptively edited-in Foley’s quote of “that looks like kids having a good time.” Hence the full title of the book: Foley Is Good: And the Real World Is Faker Than Wrestling.
One of the stranger media shifts of the last 25 years has been reality TV weaving itself into all facets of pop culture. Someone much smarter than me can probably articulate it better than I can, but the general formula has been reality TV + social media = everything is “reality” now. The most amusing part of this equation to folks like us is everything wrestling now - and wrestling still gets no respect!
Look at our politics, TV news, the rise of “influencers,” gaming, everything on Netflix in the last five years - it’s all wrestling. People adopt personas, which are usually an amplified versions of themselves, and work their audience into the desired reaction to make the most money. Am I talking about MJF, Tucker Carlson, or this season’s villain on The Bachelor? What we call “hot takes” now are just cheap heat and we have become a culture of cheap heat playing to the lowest common denominator.
I come from broadcasting, specifically radio, and this is the same format your local Morning Zoo has been running for years: The Dick, The Dear, and The Dork. You got your main guy who has the hot takes (The Dick), the girl who is just flabbergasted by these shenanigans or pretends what The Dick says is actually funny (The Dear), and the stunt boy who they make walk on Legos in the break room or roll a bowling ball into his nutsack (The Dork). Cheap heat + shenanigans = marks spend more time listening which = you make more money.
This is why reality shows about wrestling make my brain short circuit. The reality show formula makes sense to me because it’s applying wrestling logic (or “kayfabe”) to other forms of media. But what happens when you kayfabe what is already kayfabe? Reality shows about wrestling are reality shows about something that’s fake but actually more real than most reality shows… including reality shows about wrestling. So it’s a fake show about a fake show that’s faker than the fake show it covers.
Last night’s premiere of AEW All Access did not break the formula. While I found it far more watchable than your standard reality TV fare, that was probably because I’m far more interested in the subject matter than your standard reality TV fare. It was still a very fake reality show about a fake sport show that actually has very real drama that they completely avoided. The Young Bucks with their “aw shucks” image rehab were acting like they’d been blackballed from wrestling for the last five years but never once talked about the elephant in the room.
While I’m sure this show has been in the works since before CM Punk’s explosion at the All Out press conference (please don’t make me type the word ‘scrum’), to do a show called All Access that began filming in the wake of those events without actually talking about it felt weak. I know there are probably legal issues at play here, but this all illustrates the larger point of this post: reality shows are faker than wrestling.
Does anyone really buy that Adam Cole thought there was even a snowball’s chance in hell he’d be cleared for Full Gear when he just returned last night, nearly five months after this was shot? Does anyone really buy that there are all these people out there trash talking Britt Baker, who by all accounts seems like a well-liked person and the unofficial fifth pillar of the company? I’m even doubting some of that alleged heat on Thunder Rosa now since they showed short clips of her confessional segments this season.
I find it a little too coincidental that the “Brawl Out” stuff heated up online again just days before this show premiered. I’m not saying it was a work, I’m not even saying it’s a shoot that turned into a work, and I’m not saying I think CM Punk is coming back to AEW (even though he should), but AEW is well aware of who their audience is and they know how to work them in order to make money.
I’m not even mad about it! I know “worked shoots” get a bad rap because of Vince Russo, but that’s not because worked shoots are inherently bad, that was because Vince Russo was inherently bad. The funniest part about a show like this is even though it’s faker than the show it chronicles, this kind of blurred line between reality and fiction is where wrestling thrives best.
As I navigate my own rekindled love of professional wrestling, I want to get lost in the story. I prefer to watch wrestling as a fan invested in the characters and stories, rather than critical analysis or “star ratings.” I still prioritize the wrestling itself above all else, but this isn’t 1985 anymore - even today’s “bad” wrestlers are still really good wrestlers. It’s more than just having a good match, but a good match is one where you care about the wrestlers and the stories, and a wrestling match is usually the best avenue to tell that story in wrestling. I know, wrestling matches telling wrestling stories in a wrestling ring for a wrestling audience. What a concept.
As a nearly 40 year-old adult who wants to get lost in a story but not have their intelligence insulted with “good guys vs. bad guys” stories for children, blurring the line is an effective tool to achieve that. I appreciate a fake reality show making my fake wrestling more real.