10 Times WWE Leaked Top Secret Information

There aren't many secrets left in WWE, a publicly traded juggernaut that formally abandoned the thin pretence of kayfabe in 1989.

Everybody has known since the very early 20th century that pro wrestling is an obvious sham. Everybody knows that the small razor blades are used to shed blood. They are small pieces of sharp metal that draw only a shallow, cosmetic cut, and yet Vince McMahon finds them more morally reprehensible than repackaging an adult Japanese performer in a schoolgirl-adjacent outfit. Or another adult female as a childlike figure wearing pigtails who dry humps Randy Orton. It's a good job the FBI gives less of a sh*t about WWE than the media.

The tables are nearly sawn in half; the ladders that explode are made of wood; the thumbtacks are real, because wrestlers are crackers and "It's OK, they're spread across a large surface area aren't they" is an explanation that won't really horrify you if you've been trapped in this demented bubble for long enough.

There are few if any working secrets to reveal - though there are certain bits of information WWE absolutely does not want made public.

Vince McMahon is hardly out there voluntarily offering up what exactly he asked Mustafa Ali to do - but the minutiae is often so fascinating, and the disillusionment so rife, that the lips are loose across all corridors of Titan Towers...

WWE and Dave Meltzer used to enjoy a cordial relationship - cordial enough, bizarrely, for WWE to drop the carny act and casually reveal the truth behind one of its most blustering falsehoods.

For years, WWE insisted that 93,000 fans were drawn to the Pontiac Silverdome in Detroit to watch Hulk Hogan body slam André The Giant, after which, of course, the 650 pound or half-tonne André passed on days later as Hogan recovered from the feat having torn every muscle in his back.

"It took a lot to see him off, but brother, I just about did it, God rest his soul."

It's a typical WWE embellishment: RAW is the longest-running weekly episodic show in TV history, Survivor Series is the one night a year that the stars of RAW and SmackDown compete head-to-head, Randy Orton is an in-ring legend.

But an embellishment it is, as Dave Meltzer clarified.

Meltzer was first alerted to WWE's lie by Zane Bresloff, who worked on the local promotion. Any suggestion that Bresloff had played down the figure, given his later defection to WCW, was brushed aside by WWE itself, who confirmed the real number of 78,000.

This itself has been disputed, in a very interesting piece by David Bixenspan, but WWE all but said they were bullsh*tters to, of all people, Dave Meltzer.