10 Precise Moments Kayfabe Ended
8. Vince McMahon Formally Drops The Pretence
Nobody of discerning age, who ever watched professional wrestling through a TV screen, ever thought of it as real. The jig was up decades before that.
The promoters who best cast the spell made the most money, and it was felt, by the magicians who felt they might as well have sawn themselves in half, for how much it hurt, that betraying the tenet publicly was the ultimate disrespect. They didn't endure the torment, only to be told that they didn't. It was an insult, and it was counterintuitive.
If the pain didn't hurt, to quote Dalton, why would anybody care?
Vince McMahon felt otherwise in 1989. He deemed the classification of pro wrestling as a real sport counterintuitive to maximising his profits. Feeling that regulation was a glorified tax grab that diluted his revenue, McMahon informed the New Jersey State Senate in 1989 that his WWF was "an activity in which participants struggle hand-in-hand primarily for the purpose of providing entertainment to spectators rather than conducting a bona fide athletic contest."
The deregulation bill successfully passed through the Senate, and Vince better monetised the WWF's presence in a state adjacent to its home base of New York.
Since Akeem, the Honky Tonk Man, and Brutus Beefcake were all on the books at the time, it was hardly a shock to the public.