10 Wildest Wrestling Hoaxes Fans Actually Fell For
Sex, lies, and Coliseum videotape.
Wrestling fans get worked as a matter of course.
When Darby Allin smashed himself through a pane of glass at AEW Revolution 2024, the spot was so viscerally disturbing that the expected uproar threatened to overshadow Sting’s last stand - until it was revealed that the stunt was just that: a stunt, one that had been carefully planned in advance with the use of sugar glass, with the idea that Darby would in the best case scenario only suffer superficial cuts that maximise the visual effect of significant blood loss. AEW, in responding to the worst bad faith critics, made sure to tell everybody that the spot was far safer than it looked. Cool.
You should want to get worked. That’s the old carny magic of pro wrestling. If AEW knew that Darby was OK and in all likelihood was going to be OK, they should have let people get worked. It’s more difficult than ever to accomplish that.
Everybody has seen everything and even the sophisticated “meta” works - like Dax Harwood allegedly collaborating with the AEW socials team to create the impression that he was leaving in 2022 - are treated with scepticism.
Then again, based on the following hoaxes that somehow gained purchase, it’s little wonder that the average pro wrestler considers you a mark…
10. The WCW Reboot
How did this rumour make it as far as it did?
How, for that matter, did this rumour make it past one person?
If it wasn’t clear enough, WWE has owned the WCW intellectual property since 2001. When they bought it. And, while WWE has tended to treat WCW as toilet paper, it is ultimately theirs to do with it as they wish.
In December 2020 - a time when a lot of people were desperate for good news - a total fantasist going by @WCW_2021 claimed that, with the backing of ‘SkyStorm Productions’, the long-defunct league was set for a “Rebirth”. The scam artist even went as far to claim that the promotion would be taping out of Florida from October 2021. Great job, genius: pretend you’re running the one state that had had its fill of pro wrestling at a time when nobody else had the opportunity to go out and watch it.
Then again…is that not the very, impossibly dumb spirit with which WCW was founded?
A lot of people will believe anything, provided it’s what they want to hear.