10 Times WWE Purposefully Lied To Fans

Wrestling fans should know by now to be just that little bit discerning with the word of WWE. After all, theirs is an industry built entirely on lies.

Once over, the biggest myth the company perpetuated was that the whole spectacle was a legitimate contest, that the matches weren't pre-determined, and that The Undertaker really was an un-dead mortician.

Some - many - didn't buy it, and eventually the business had to come clean and accept itself as a scripted form of entertainment like any other. The pre-ordained contests were no longer acts of deceit, but theatrical expressions, an act which everybody was in on.

However, an increase in fans' perspicacity didn't water down the massive fibs coming out of Stamford, and though we're no longer expected to believe what we're seeing is real, we are expected to believe a whole cavalcade of other nonsense coming from the company as incontrovertible fact.

Take Emmalina's protracted 'debut'. For months now, we've been guaranteed the Australian is ripe to make her debut, only to be disappointed when it doesn't transpire. It's an angle, sure, but it's also a calculated lie, devised to trick the audience into tuning in on the off-chance it's not !*$%.

These acts of deceit are not uncommon. Over and over again, WWE have intentionally fooled their fans to sell tickets, aggrandise the brand, or simply because it's pathological.

Here's just ten.

Some lies are so intrinsic to the wrestling industry that they've become part of its tradition, and inflated attendance figures are just one of the many fibs which fans accept as a given, such that whenever crowd figures are announced, they can be assured they've been exaggerated by at least 10%.

WrestleMania III's 93,173 attendance figure is one of the most well-known and well-repeated in the business. But what's even more well-known is that it is a big fat whopper. Most people took the figure at face value until veteran reporter Dave Meltzer incited debate by revealing a conversation with Zane Bresloff putting the figure closer to 78,000.

Whilst there isn't much concrete evidence to support Meltzer's specific claim, WWE's unashamed inflation of subsequent attendance figures have lent it considerable credence. The company reported a mammoth 101,763 crowd for last year's WrestleMania 32, though the actual number was somewhat closer to 97,000, with the promotion fudging the figure so as not to 'disappoint fans'. Bluffing to their followers is one thing, though reporting the same doctored numbers to shareholders is probably a bit naughty. Apparently the altered stats are for 'entertainment purposes'. How... entertaining.

The true attendance of WrestleMania III is harder to pinpoint - somewhere just above 80,000 seems the most realistic assumption. 91,173 though? It seems just too much of a coincidence that the number just happened to beat those records set in the same arena by The Rolling Stones and the Pope.