The natural extension of this worked shoot nonsense:
— Ronda Rousey (@RondaRousey) March 9, 2019
The best part is she could be talking about any number of people, from fans to fellow wrestlers who have taken umbrage at her comments. It still doesn’t make the story work, of course, but I suppose it’s a nice crutch for the performers to lean on when they need to explain all this away.
Because, yes, it is a work, and if you’re legitimately angry at her saying these things you are, indeed, being worked. You’re the mark because you are the target of said work and your response is the expected result of the work. You will, then, in theory, spend money to see Rousey be defeated by the wrestler you respect in all this, Becky Lynch.
That very arrangement is what pro wrestling is all about.
The problem, of course, is that, well, there are legitimate questions as to how well this is going to work out on a long enough timeline. Pro wrestling is often compared to sports, which is way off, and film, which is much closer. But it’s far closer to being like a magic show. You don’t pay money to have the magician tell you it’s all bullshit and they can’t actually make things disappear into thin air, you pay to watch them do it while maintaining the act — that’s the performance — that they can. You know they can’t, and they know you know, but the unspoken agreement is you are willing to go along with it as long as the magician is good enough at performing it.
Sure, you want to know how the trick is done, but it loses much of its appeal just as soon as you are made aware of it. It loses even more appeal if the magician spends some of his performance telling you how dumb you are for buying what he’s selling.
Then again, they can always just say it was all part of the work and I’m a mark for pointing all this out. It’s a vicious cycle, and one that will likely never end.