Name: Pro wrestling is an art form
Uploaded: 2018-12-26T03:16:40.000Z
Duration: 6 min 24 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

But wait, Kane gets his hand on Bryan's
throat!!!

Daniel Bryan might be exaggerating here, but
there's no way those moves don't require serious

And anyways, that's not really even the point.

The world's largest professional wrestling
organization, World Wrestling Entertainment,

or the WWE, they have the second most viewed
Channel on YouTube.

And a lot of those fans, they're not watching
for the pile drivers and the bodyslams.

If you look at the top WWE video on YouTube,
it has 90 million views, and the wrestling,

it doesn't even start until more than halfway
through.

Pro wrestling isn't fun to watch for the fighting,
it's fun to because of the storytelling that

A legit sport where two guys fought in a ring
to pin each other down.

The problem was, this wasn't that exciting
to watch.

So over time wrestling turned into a sort
of staged athletic performance where competitors

would help each other pull off more impressive
moves.

Still, regardless of who was wrestling, crowds
came to see people fight.

That started in the 1950's with a wrestler
whose name was Gorgeous George.

He was a wrestler known for his larger than
life performances that were built around his

His thing was being fancy with bleach blond
hair, fancy costumes, he even had a butler

who would come into the ring and spray perfume
before he came in.

And Gorgeous George he drew huge crows, turning
wrestling from a sport into a performance

Wait, so, can I come up with a character?

What you need to understand about wrestling
characters is that they fit into pre-set archetypes.

And there are villains, who are called heels.

And that means you cheat, use dirty tactics,
you're evil, you're full of yourself.

Perfect, I just wanna sew the seeds of chaos.

I just wanna like f*** up everything in my
sight.

Like Gorgeous George and his fancy taste,
wrestlers usually have a gimmick that helps

As pro wrestling evolved, gimmicks got more
and more creative as storytelling became a

The focus had shifted so much that by the
1990's the World Wrestling Federation, they

invented a new phrase to promote what they
were doing.

Even though we call ourselves sports entertainment,
because of the athleticism involved, the key

More entertainment meant more characters,
and there's so many to choose from.

If you want to figure out a wrestler's gimmick,
all you have to do is look at their entrance.

There are costumes, set pieces, and even vehicles.

Like The Undertaker's, a wrestler known as
The Deadman because of his dark connection

He enters to the sound of a bell ringing before
they play his theme which is based on Chopin's

Like characters in a play, the entrance is
a big opportunity for storytelling.

"Wrestlemania will no longer define who I
am".

Wrestling is like one big play, and the ring
is like the stage?

You mean they stay in character all the time?

They even have a word for it, it's called
"kayfabe," which is code for maintaining the

So it isn't just about making the wrestling
look authentic, it's about sticking to the

Most wrestlers, they try to never break kayfabe.

You can't always tell what's real and what's
not.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Pro wrestling is an art form

authentic

stick

phrase

illusion