British Professional Freestyle Wrestling

I guess only the wrestlers themselves really know for certain, and if it is fake they're hardly going to tell us are they?

Wrestling in the 1960s and 1970s was very popular in Britain. Some wrestling fans enjoyed watching clever wrestling and others (perhaps the majority) liked to see a good scrap. The promoters needed to provide what audiences wanted to see. Much of the sport became a villains verses the good guys show. It was full of colourful characters that the crowd loved to hate. Many of the so called wrestlers would just beat the living daylights out of each other rather than wrestle with any real skill. The crowd loved it and the wrestlers and the promoters made their money. Blood was sometimes spilled, limbs were occasionally dislocated. Wrestlers did get hurt.

The two most extreme views are;
1. Everything was choreographed and is is total fake.
2. Everything was completely genuine.

The second view is not very often spoken and I certainly don't agree with it either. However I have heard the first view many times and I disagree with that view too.

I'm sure many of the fight results were decided before the wrestlers entered the ring, but I can't believe that every move was written in advance. I also believe that there were a lot of genuine wrestling bouts, especially among the lightweights.