History Main / WorkedShoot

* An example of a worked shoot gone awry is the "Loose Cannon" gimmick Brian Pillman did in Wrestling/{{WCW}}. Pillman said and did things that seemed specifically designed to tweak the noses of management, such as when he ended a PPV match (an [[GimmickMatches "I Respect You" match]] against booker Wrestling/KevinSullivan) about a minute in by shouting, "I respect you, booker man!" Subsequently, he was "fired", and he convinced WCW to really release him from his contract in order to make the illusion complete; then, freed from contractual obligations, he went to ECW instead of finishing the storyline.

** {{Worked Shoot}}s were somewhat endemic to Japanese professional wrestling. First, there was Antonio Inoki, who won a series of (fake) shoot fights with fighters of various martial arts disciplines (and drew a real fight with Muhammad Ali, doing serious damage to Ali's legs in the process despite goofy restrictions on his side.[[note]]The original plan was a worked finish, with Inoki winning in a way that would make both of them look good. Either Inoki planned on a double cross, or Ali had an attack of conscience, and refused to throw a fight, turning the event into a shoot. The rules were then cobbled together about 15 minutes before the match started. One of them was that Inoki could only throw kicks if one knee was in contact with the ground, leading to a surreal fight where Inoki lied on his back and kicked Ali's legs a lot.[[/note]]) Then in the 1980s, several wrestlers in Inoki's New Japan promotion with real martial arts backgrounds felt that they were being forced to lose to inferior opponents. Two of them (Satoru "Tiger Mask" Sayama and Akira Maeda) formed the UWF, which was the first shootwrestling promotion. The shootwrestlers eventually made their way back to the mainstream promotions, and New Japan to this day still has a heavy emphasis on matwork and submissions due to their influence (and almost all major promotions in Japan go to clean finishes for the same reason). Several promotions down the line, shootwrestlers such as Masakatsu Funaki and Ken Shamrock felt they were being forced to lose to inferior opponents, and formed Pancrase, which did away with the whole predetermined outcome thing, and set the stage for Japan's next cultural fad (and America's MMA PPV phenomenon.)

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* Vince Russo has continued to do Worked Shoots in TNA. One particularly atrocious Worked Shoot was the scene where Mick Foley goes backstage and meets Vince Russo and the writers. Foley tells them that they're doing a great job, and asks if they can write a scene where Dixie Carter returns his phone calls. Foley was clearly not happy about having to break the fourth wall in this fashion.

[[folder: Trope Maker ]]

*** While Carrey was doing publicity for ''Film/ManOnTheMoon'', he was visited by Tony Clifton, resulting in a fight and Clifton actually urinating on scene with a [[GagPenis gag penis]]. The journalists gathered seemed to [[GenreSavvy realize that it was a worked shoot, however.]] [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAi08eAMG6E Seen here.]]

* The ECW One Night Stand 2005 Pay-Per-View plays it straight with one promo and subverts it with some commentary later on. The first instance was a Wrestling/RobVanDam promo where he claims he's shooting and talks about how important the night was and how to him, missing it is worse than missing Wrestlemania. The subverted part is during Wrestling/JoeyStyles' infamous remarks about Mike Awesome (calling him a "Judas" for the way he left ECW for WCW while still champ, and wishing that a [[FunnyAneurysmMoment Suicide Splash had actually killed him]]). Wrestling/MickFoley points out it's a shoot (which, as mentioned above, is typically a sign that it's a work), but Joey really did get in trouble for his comments after the show.

An alternate definition is a wrestler taking the planned storyline and using it to express his real feelings -- thus shooting during a work, for a Worked Shoot.

A worked shoot plays off of a wrestler's [[RealLifeWritesThePlot real life]], and it breaks many pro wrestling conventions, in an attempt to convince the viewer it's totally different from anything else that's going on, that it's totally real. Since a Worked Shoot so often borrows from real-life elements, it can be difficult to tell where the shoot ends and the work begins.

Worked shoots may be a reaction from pro-wrestling bookers to the apparent death of kayfabe and the "outing" of pro-wrestling as scripted; they're an attempt to put that genie back in the bottle, to make fans think it's real again, just for a second. Of course, they must eventually spill over into wrestling storylines, but until then...

*** While Carrey was doing publicity for ''Film/ManOnTheMoon'', he was visited by Tony Clifton, resulting in a fight and Clifton actually urinating on scene with a GagPenis. The journalists gathered seemed to [[GenreSavvy realize that it was a worked shoot, however.]] [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAi08eAMG6E Seen Here.]]

* Arguably originated by Wrestling/JerryLawler, Wrestling/JimmyHart, and Creator/AndyKaufman, with the long-running Lawler/Kaufman feud. Qualifies as a worked shoot because some of the stunts Kaufman and Lawler pulled (like getting into a fight on the set of David Letterman's show) managed to convince a lot of people who weren't usually fooled into believing {{Kayfabe}}.

*** While Carrey was doing publicity for ''Film/ManOnTheMoon'', he was visited by Tony Clifton, resulting in a fight and Tony actually urinating on scene with a GagPenis. The journalists gathered seemed to [[GenreSavvy realize that it was a Worked Shoot, however.]] [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAi08eAMG6E Seen Here.]]
** Really, most of Kaufman's career consisted of Worked Shoots, like faking a British accent and reading ''The Great Gatsby'' instead of performing his comedy routine because he was "sick of your lowbrow American humor." The [[http://andykaufman.jvlnet.com/fridays.htm night he hosted]] ''Fridays'' was another such moment.

* Arguably originated by Wrestling/JerryLawler, Wrestling/JimmyHart, and Creator/AndyKaufman, with the long-running Lawler/Kaufman feud. Qualifies as a Worked Shoot because some of the stunts Andy and Jerry pulled (like getting into a fight on the set of David Letterman's show) managed to convince a lot of people who weren't usually fooled into believing {{Kayfabe}}.

In [[ProfessionalWrestling professional wrestling]] parlance, a "work" is anything scripted, anything that's part of {{kayfabe}}, while a "shoot" is anything "real"; i.e. not scripted. Put them together and you have the worked shoot; something that is definitely part of the act, but attempts to trick the viewer into thinking (if only for a second) that it's real.

* Arguably originated by Wrestling/JerryLawler, Jimmy Hart, and Creator/AndyKaufman, with the long-running Lawler/Kaufman feud. Qualifies as a Worked Shoot because some of the stunts Andy and Jerry pulled (like getting into a fight on the set of David Letterman's show) managed to convince a lot of people who weren't usually fooled into believing {{Kayfabe}}.

** They also tried to turn the obviously scripted stage collapse accident on Vince in 2008 into a worked shoot. He can be heard saying "Paul, (The real first name of his son-in-law Wrestling/TripleH) I can't feel my legs." Then they pretty much just forgot about it.

*** While Carrey was doing publicity for ''Film/ManOnTheMoon'', he was visited by Tony Clifton, resulting in a fight and Tony actually urinating on scene with a GagPenis. The journalists gathered seemed to [[GenreSavvy realize that it was a Work Shoot, however.]] [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAi08eAMG6E Seen Here.]]

** The stupidity culminated (?) at the wretched New Blood Rising show, where - and apologies in advance if this doesn't make any sense, but blame the source material - WCW promoted a match between {{Goldberg}}, Kevin Nash and ScottSteiner were going to have a "real fight". Which logically meant all other matches were fake, but ignore that for the moment because Everything Else You're Watching Except What's On TV Right Now Is Fake is certainly a Russo Trope. Anyway, midway through the match (which, you'll recall, was supposed to be real), Goldberg "stopped co-operating" (... um...) and walked out on the match, with the announcers criticizing his lack of professionalism. Kevin Nash and Scott Steiner then proceeded to "improvise" a finish, with the announcers praising how professional they were. Soon after, they ran Fall Brawl promos talking about how Goldberg [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cZtuwjdPJU "refused to follow the script"]]. And you wonder why WCW was out of business less than a year later.

* Arguably originated by Wrestling/JerryLawler, JimmyHart, and Creator/AndyKaufman, with the long-running Lawler/Kaufman feud. Qualifies as a Worked Shoot because some of the stunts Andy and Jerry pulled (like getting into a fight on the set of David Letterman's show) managed to convince a lot of people who weren't usually fooled into believing {{Kayfabe}}.

* Is he using "insider" language such as Wrestling/{{face}}, Wrestling/{{heel}}, mark, Wrestling/{{smark}} or booker?

--> --'''StockPhrase of a wrestler delivering a Worked Shoot'''.

In ProfessionalWrestling parlance, a "Work" is anything scripted, anything that's part of {{Kayfabe}}. A "Shoot" is anything "real"; i.e. not scripted. Put them together and you have the Worked Shoot; something that is definitely part of the act, but attempts to trick the viewer into thinking -- if only for a second -- that it's real.

A Worked Shoot plays off of a wrestler's [[RealLifeWritesThePlot real life]], and it breaks many pro wrestling conventions, in an attempt to convince the viewer it's totally different from anything else that's going on, that it's totally real. Since a Worked Shoot so often borrows from real-life elements, it can be difficult to tell where the shoot ends and the work begins.

{{Worked Shoot}}s may be a reaction from pro-wrestling bookers to the apparent death of {{Kayfabe}} and the "outing" of pro-wrestling as scripted; they're an attempt to put that genie back in the bottle, to make fans think it's real again, just for a second. Of course, they must eventually spill over into wrestling storylines, but until then...

When trying to figure out if something is a Worked Shoot, ask yourself the following questions:

* Is he using "insider" language such as {{face}}, {{heel}}, mark, {{smark}} or booker?

* The tendency for WCW staff not to be informed of plot developments lead to some hilarious situations where, when something genuinely unexpected happen, the staff would assume it had been planned and just not told them. Most notably, a fan dressed as Wrestler/{{Sting}} jumped a barricade and started to interfere with a match and the commentators, so used to not being told about changes, assumed it was meant to be the real Sting.

* WCW saw another Worked Shoot backfire when wrestler/booker Kevin Sullivan put together a storyline that had his (on-screen and real-life) wife, Nancy "Woman" Sullivan, sleeping with his rival, Wrestling/ChrisBenoit. Sullivan was from wrestling's old school, and he made sure that Woman and Benoit traveled together, were spotted entering each others' hotel rooms, and otherwise spent a lot of time together in public, just to drive the angle home. The problem? After spending all that time together, Nancy fell in love with Benoit, and left Kevin for real to marry him. This led to Woman being moved into a non-speaking role as a valet for Wrestling/RicFlair, and Benoit kicking Sullivan's ass in match after match, along with fighting his way through Sullivan's PowerStable the Wrestling/DungeonOfDoom, culminating in Benoit defeating Sullivan in a "Career vs. Career" match at ''WCW Bash at the Beach 97''. Sullivan was replaced as booker in late 1998 by Wrestling/KevinNash, who gave the world the FingerpokeOfDoom and roughly a year of terrible booking. and was himself replaced by Wrestling/VinceRusso and Ed Ferrara in October 1999. Benoit left the company in January 2000 when Sullivan re-gained the head booker position, as Benoit feared that Sullivan was still holding a grudge. Worse yet for WCW, his friends Perry Saturn, Dean Malenko, and EddieGuerrero all left for fear of becoming collateral damage; the quartet formed The Radicalz in the [=WWE=], where Benoit and Guerrero became ''huge'' stars.

* Wrestling/CMPunk's on-screen feud with Wrestling/JohnCena and off-screen contract squabbles in the summer of 2011 were turned into one giant worked shoot. After declaring he was leaving WWE on TV, he then cut a promo where he bashed WWE for being MerchandiseDriven and firing his friends like Wrestling/ColtCabana[[hottip:*:Cabana had had a brief, unsuccesful run as Scotty Goldman]]; he was promptly "suspended" for his words, only to be reinstated the following week at Cena's request. (WWE actually announced the reinstatement five days earlier, possibly to suggest further that the suspension was real). Punk then beat Cena at Money in the Bank and ran out with the WWE Championship, only to keep popping up at WWE promotional events, inciting smarks in the area and daring new WWE head Triple H to hire him back. Sure enough, once the WWE appointed a "new" WWE Champion, a re-hired Punk appeared on Raw to challenge with the old belt.

** {{Worked Shoot}}s were somewhat endemic to Japanese professional wrestling. First, there was Antonio Inoki, who won a series of (fake) shoot fights with fighters of various martial arts disciplines (and drew a real fight with Muhammad Ali, doing serious damage to Ali's legs in the process despite goofy restrictions on his side.[[hottip:*:The original plan was a worked finish, with Inoki winning in a way that would make both of them look good. Either Inoki planned on a double cross, or Ali had an attack of conscience, and refused to throw a fight, turning the event into a shoot. The rules were then cobbled together about 15 minutes before the match started. One of them was that Inoki could only throw kicks if one knee was in contact with the ground, leading to a surreal fight where Inoki lied on his back and kicked Ali's legs a lot.]]) Then in the 1980s, several wrestlers in Inoki's New Japan promotion with real martial arts backgrounds felt that they were being forced to lose to inferior opponents. Two of them (Satoru "Tiger Mask" Sayama and Akira Maeda) formed the UWF, which was the first shootwrestling promotion. The shootwrestlers eventually made their way back to the mainstream promotions, and New Japan to this day still has a heavy emphasis on matwork and submissions due to their influence (and almost all major promotions in Japan go to clean finishes for the same reason). Several promotions down the line, shootwrestlers such as Masakatsu Funaki and Ken Shamrock felt they were being forced to lose to inferior opponents, and formed Pancrase, which did away with the whole predetermined outcome thing, and set the stage for Japan's next cultural fad (and America's MMA PPV phenomenon.)

[[folder: Wrestling/WWE ]]

* The on-screen [[NeverFoundTheBody apparent death]] of Wrestling/{{WWE}} chairman [[[Wrestling/VinceMcMahon Vince [=McMahon=]]] may have been an unintentional Worked Shoot -- WWE was very up-front about the fact that it's only the ''character'' "Mr. [=McMahon=]" that died, and the ''real'' Vince is alive and well, but that didn't stop some news outlets from running the story as real within a couple of days after it happened, and it hasn't stopped some finance columnists from [[http://www.cnbc.com/id/19330600 all but accusing the WWE of securities fraud for faking the death of the chairman]]. The storyline was scrapped, however, when the Wrestling/ChrisBenoit incident happened, forcing [=McMahon=] out of "death" to address it.

* The worst-ever Worked Shoot for WCW though was when the ''company itself starting shooting on itself'', complete with the user of insider terms during the show, example Kevin Nash and [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GN5dRWyoOaU Bill Goldberg cutting "shoot" promos ]] and the commentators acting like it's a shoot, or rather explicit mentions of predetermined match finishes ''on purpose while the cameras are still rolling during the show''.

** A similar event happened with Donald Trump "buying" RAW, despite the fact that RAW is a TV show, not a corporate subsidiary. Unfortunately, due to some official press releases from the company's headquarters in Stamford that seemed to imply the whole thing ''wasn't'' an angle, WWE stock dropped significantly the next day. Any long term plans for this arc were scrapped on next week's show with Vince "buying RAW back" for twice what he was originally paid.

* Arguably originated by JerryLawler, JimmyHart, and AndyKaufman, with the long-running Lawler/Kaufman feud. Qualifies as a Worked Shoot because some of the stunts Andy and Jerry pulled (like getting into a fight on the set of David Letterman's show) managed to convince a lot of people who weren't usually fooled into believing {{Kayfabe}}.
** This was revisited during the filming of Kaufman biopic ''Man on the Moon'', with Lawler and JimCarrey getting into a fistfight on-set. As the story was told, Carrey had gone into method-actor mode, would only answer to "Andy" on the set, and started picking fights with Lawler in order to get into Kaufman's head. This didn't spill over into the wrestling ring, unlike most worked shoots, but it did get a lot of airtime on Wrestling/{{WWE}} programming.
*** While Carrey was doing publicity for ''ManOnTheMoon'', he was visited by Tony Clifton, resulting in a fight and Tony actually urinating on scene with a GagPenis. The journalists gathered seemed to [[GenreSavvy realize that it was a Work Shoot, however.]] [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAi08eAMG6E Seen Here.]]

* An example of a worked shoot gone awry is the "Loose Cannon" gimmick Brian Pillman did in {{WCW}}. Pillman said and did things that seemed specifically designed to tweak the noses of management, such as when he ended a PPV match (an [[GimmickMatches "I Respect You" match]] against booker KevinSullivan) about a minute in by shouting, "I respect you, booker man!" Subsequently, he was "fired", and he convinced WCW to really release him from his contract in order to make the illusion complete; then, freed from contractual obligations, he went to ECW instead of finishing the storyline.
* WCW saw another Worked Shoot backfire when wrestler/booker Kevin Sullivan put together a storyline that had his (on-screen and real-life) wife, Nancy "Woman" Sullivan, sleeping with his rival, Chris Benoit. Sullivan was from wrestling's old school, and he made sure that Woman and Benoit traveled together, were spotted entering each others' hotel rooms, and otherwise spent a lot of time together in public, just to drive the angle home. The problem? After spending all that time together, Nancy fell in love with Benoit, and left Kevin for real to marry him. This led to Woman being moved into a non-speaking role as a valet for RicFlair, and Benoit getting [[SquashMatch squashed]] repeatedly by Sullivan in the most brutal matches he could come up with, until Sullivan was eventually replaced as booker. Benoit left the company when Sullivan re-gained the head booker position, as Benoit feared that Sullivan was still holding a grudge. Worse yet for WCW, his friends Perry Saturn, Dean Malenko, and EddieGuerrero all left for fear of becoming collateral damage; the quartet formed The Radicalz in the [=WWE=], where Benoit and Guerrero became ''huge'' stars.

* One of the most famous classic worked shoots was a interview made by MickFoley known as the "Cane Dewey" promo, during his time in {{ECW}}. The promotional interview was inspired by a sign Mick saw during a match against Terry Funk, with which read "Cane Dewey" - Dewey Foley being Mick's 5-year-old son. Mick became somewhat disillusioned with the wrestling business at this time and, at the advisement of ECW promoter and booker Paul Heyman, channeled that into his feud with Tommy Dreamer, which had Foley, then a {{heel}} being against the "Hardcore" wrestling style, and attempting to get Dreamer, who had a Hardcore gimmick, to leave ECW for Ted Turner's WCW - which was at that time reviled by ECW fans.

* At {{TNA}} Turning Point 2007, SamoaJoe was supposed to team up with Kevin Nash & ScottHall in a match against AJStyles, Tomko & Kurt Angle. However, Hall no-showed the event. Joe was asked before the match to go out and cut a promo to announce their replacement for Hall, Eric Young. However, Joe used the opportunity to bury Hall and voice his frustrations against the company for not properly using the younger talent and giving more breaks to the older, more established stars, frequently shooting nasty looks at his partner Kevin Nash and his opponent KurtAngle while talking. Kevin Nash was shown to be visibly upset by Joe's words, as was TNA President Dixie Carter, who was sitting in the front row. Towards the end of his promo, Joe looked down into the crowd where Dixie was sitting, noticed she wasn't happy and said "Are you mad? No, go ahead, fire me. I don't care." After the match, Joe and Nash had an argument backstage that nearly became physical and the next day, Joe apologized to the TNA locker room for his comments.

-->''"This is a shoot, dammit!"''

* Arguably originated by JerryLawler, Jimmy Hart, and Andy Kaufman, with the long-running Lawler/Kaufman feud. Qualifies as a Worked Shoot because some of the stunts Andy and Jerry pulled (like getting into a fight on the set of David Letterman's show) managed to convince a lot of people who weren't usually fooled into believing {{Kayfabe}}.

* Also in WWE, Wrestling/MattHardy discovered that his girlfriend [[Wrestling/{{Lita}} Amy "Lita" Dumas]] was cheating on him with fellow wrestler [[Wrestling/{{Edge}} Adam "Edge" Copeland]], and when he started to talk publicly about it, he was unceremoniously fired. After he slowly built a rabid fanbase using the sympathy from this incident on the internet, he suddenly began appearing on WWE RAW again, jumping over the barricade and attacking Edge, then being carried out by security while screaming things like, "I thought you were my friend, Johnny Ace!" (a reference to WWE executive John "Johnny Ace" Laurinaitis). Soon enough, the truth came out; Matt had been re-hired, and plans were in place for a storyline based on the problems between Matt and Edge (even though this meant {{Ret Con}}ning a year's worth of storylines in which Lita was Wrestling/{{Kane}}'s wife). To this day, fans still debate whether the infidelity that started the whole thing was work, or shoot. Realistically there's little question it was initially a shoot - WWE didn't talk about it, and you know that WWE.com would have been full of stories about it if it was a work. Note that the ''second'' MattHardy showed back up on Raw and bragged about it being "a shoot" on his blog, any illusion that he was acting independently was broken.

* Chaz Warrington was allowed to drop his horrible Beaver Cleavage gimmick via worked shoot. While pretending to cry to his mother because he didn't want to wrestle "some guy named Meat", he abruptly said "I can't do this" and walked off screen. Marianna yelled "Chaz, we're live!" and then the feed cut abruptly to JimRoss and JerryLawler, who apologized for the "creative differences" and said the match wouldn't take place.

* An example of a worked shoot gone awry is the "Loose Cannon" gimmick Brian Pillman did in {{WCW}}. Pillman said and did things that seemed specifically designed to tweak the noses of management, such as when he ended a PPV match (an [[GimmickMatches "I Respect You" match]] against booker Kevin Sullivan) about a minute in by shouting, "I respect you, bookerman!" Subsequently, he was "fired", and he convinced WCW to really release him from his contract in order to make the illusion complete; then, freed from contractual obligations, he went to ECW instead of finishing the storyline.
* WCW saw another WorkedShoot backfire when wrestler/booker Kevin Sullivan put together a storyline that had his (on-screen and real-life) wife, Nancy "Woman" Sullivan, sleeping with his rival, ChrisBenoit. Sullivan was from wrestling's old school, and he made sure that Woman and Benoit traveled together, were spotted entering each others' hotel rooms, and otherwise spent a lot of time together in public, just to drive the angle home. The problem? After spending all that time together, Nancy fell in love with Benoit, and left Kevin for real to marry him. This led to Woman being moved into a non-speaking role as a valet for RicFlair, and Benoit getting [[SquashMatch squashed]] repeatedly by Sullivan in the most brutal matches he could come up with, until Sullivan was eventually replaced as booker. Benoit left the company when Sullivan re-gained the head booker position, as Benoit feared that Sullivan was still holding a grudge. Worse yet for WCW, his friends Perry Saturn, Dean Malenko, and EddieGuerrero all left for fear of becoming collateral damage; the quartet formed The Radicalz in the [=WWE=], where Benoit and Guerrero became ''huge'' stars.

* The worst-ever WorkedShoot for WCW though was when the ''company itself starting shooting on itself'', complete with the user of insider terms during the show, example KevinNash and [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GN5dRWyoOaU Bill Goldberg cutting "shoot" promos ]] and the commentators acting like it's a shoot, or rather explicit mentions of predetermined match finishes ''on purpose while the cameras are still rolling during the show''.

** The stupidity culminated (?) at the wretched New Blood Rising show, where - and apologies in advance if this doesn't make any sense, but blame the source material - WCW promoted a match between {{Goldberg}}, KevinNash and ScottSteiner were going to have a "real fight". Which logically meant all other matches were fake, but ignore that for the moment because Everything Else You're Watching Except What's On TV Right Now Is Fake is certainly a Russo Trope. Anyway, midway through the match (which, you'll recall, was supposed to be real), Goldberg "stopped co-operating" (... um...) and walked out on the match, with the announcers criticizing his lack of professionalism. KevinNash and ScottSteiner then proceeded to "improvise" a finish, with the announcers praising how professional they were. Soon after, they ran Fall Brawl promos talking about how Goldberg [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cZtuwjdPJU "refused to follow the script"]]. And you wonder why WCW was out of business less than a year later.
*** As if anyone would believe that ''ScottSteiner'' was any more professional than Bill Goldberg.
* Almost as bad was the HulkHogan / JeffJarrett title match at Bash at the Beach 2000. After Hogan [[ProtectionFromEditors pulled his creative control card]] to win the match and stay on WCW TV, the two came out to the ring with VinceRusso, and Jarrett laid down with Russo throwing the belt in the ring. All sides have claimed this part was a work, but they didn't tell the announcers - one actually said ''on the air'' "This is not part of the script!" Afterward, Russo came back out by himself and revealed everything that went on backstage to the fans just so he could nullify Hogan's win and put the belt back on Jarrett. Hogan has since said ''that'' was a shoot and the reason he eventually sued Russo, but the lawsuit was dismissed in 2002.

* The tendency for WCW staff not to be informed of plot developments lead to some hilarious situations where, when something genuinely unexpected happen, the staff would assume it had been planned and just not told them. Most notably, a fan dressed as Wrestler/{{Sting}} jumped a barricade and started to interfere with a match and the commentators, so used to not being told about about changes, assumed it was meant to be the real Sting.

* This quote, taken verbatim from a 2000 WCW broadcast, from Tony Schiavone, of course, "We do not wrestle in WCW." Note that the company's name was World Championship Wrestling. For those wondering, the quote was from a Hulk Hogan-Billy Kidman backstage brawl that ended with the Hulkster throwing Kidman into a dumpster and then ramming it with a hummer.

* VinceRusso has continued to do Worked Shoots in TNA. One particularly atrocious Worked Shoot was the scene where MickFoley goes backstage and meets VinceRusso and the writers. Foley tells them that they're doing a great job, and asks if they can write a scene where Dixie Carter returns his phone calls. Foley was clearly not happy about having to break the fourth wall in this fashion.
* At {{TNA}} Turning Point 2007, SamoaJoe was supposed to team up with KevinNash & ScottHall in a match against AJStyles, Tomko & KurtAngle. However, Hall no-showed the event. Joe was asked before the match to go out and cut a promo to announce their replacement for Hall, Eric Young. However, Joe used the opportunity to bury Hall and voice his frustrations against the company for not properly using the younger talent and giving more breaks to the older, more established stars, frequently shooting nasty looks at his partner KevinNash and his opponent KurtAngle while talking. KevinNash was shown to be visibly upset by Joe's words, as was TNA President Dixie Carter, who was sitting in the front row. Towards the end of his promo, Joe looked down into the crowd where Dixie was sitting, noticed she wasn't happy and said "Are you mad? No, go ahead, fire me. I don't care." After the match, Joe and Nash had an argument backstage that nearly became physical and the next day, Joe apologized to the TNA locker room for his comments.

** {{WorkedShoot}}s were somewhat endemic to Japanese professional wrestling. First, there was Antonio Inoki, who won a series of (fake) shoot fights with fighters of various martial arts disciplines (and drew a real fight with Muhammad Ali, doing serious damage to Ali's legs in the process despite goofy restrictions on his side.[[hottip:*:The original plan was a worked finish, with Inoki winning in a way that would make both of them look good. Either Inoki planned on a double cross, or Ali had an attack of conscience, and refused to throw a fight, turning the event into a shoot. The rules were then cobbled together about 15 minutes before the match started. One of them was that Inoki could only throw kicks if one knee was in contact with the ground, leading to a surreal fight where Inoki lied on his back and kicked Ali's legs a lot.]]) Then in the 1980s, several wrestlers in Inoki's New Japan promotion with real martial arts backgrounds felt that they were being forced to lose to inferior opponents. Two of them (Satoru "Tiger Mask" Sayama and Akira Maeda) formed the UWF, which was the first shootwrestling promotion. The shootwrestlers eventually made their way back to the mainstream promotions, and New Japan to this day still has a heavy emphasis on matwork and submissions due to their influence (and almost all major promotions in Japan go to clean finishes for the same reason). Several promotions down the line, shootwrestlers such as Masakatsu Funaki and Ken Shamrock felt they were being forced to lose to inferior opponents, and formed Pancrase, which did away with the whole predetermined outcome thing, and set the stage for Japan's next cultural fad (and America's MMA PPV phenomenon.)

----

--> --'''StockPhrase of a wrestler delivering a WorkedShoot'''.

In ProfessionalWrestling parlance, a "Work" is anything scripted, anything that's part of {{Kayfabe}}. A "Shoot" is anything "real"; i.e. not scripted. Put them together and you have the WorkedShoot; something that is definitely part of the act, but attempts to trick the viewer into thinking -- if only for a second -- that it's real.

A WorkedShoot plays off of a wrestler's [[RealLifeWritesThePlot real life]], and it breaks many pro wrestling conventions, in an attempt to convince the viewer it's totally different from anything else that's going on, that it's totally real. Since a WorkedShoot so often borrows from real-life elements, it can be difficult to tell where the shoot ends and the work begins.

When trying to figure out if something is a WorkedShoot, ask yourself the following questions:

* Arguably originated by JerryLawler, Jimmy Hart, and Andy Kaufman, with the long-running Lawler/Kaufman feud. Qualifies as a WorkedShoot because some of the stunts Andy and Jerry pulled (like getting into a fight on the set of David Letterman's show) managed to convince a lot of people who weren't usually fooled into believing {{Kayfabe}}.

* The on-screen [[NeverFoundTheBody apparent death]] of Wrestling/{{WWE}} chairman [[[Wrestling/VinceMcMahon Vince [=McMahon=]]] may have been an unintentional WorkedShoot -- WWE was very up-front about the fact that it's only the ''character'' "Mr. [=McMahon=]" that died, and the ''real'' Vince is alive and well, but that didn't stop some news outlets from running the story as real within a couple of days after it happened, and it hasn't stopped some finance columnists from [[http://www.cnbc.com/id/19330600 all but accusing the WWE of securities fraud for faking the death of the chairman]]. The storyline was scrapped, however, when the Wrestling/ChrisBenoit incident happened, forcing [=McMahon=] out of "death" to address it.

* Wrestling/TheMiz actually did several of these throughout 2010 during his reign as the United States and later WWE Champion. He referred to the real life bullying he suffered in the lockerroom at the hands of [[Wrestling/JohnBradshawLayfield JBL]].

* VinceRusso has continued to do WorkedShoots in TNA. One particularly atrocious WorkedShoot was the scene where MickFoley goes backstage and meets VinceRusso and the writers. Foley tells them that they're doing a great job, and asks if they can write a scene where Dixie Carter returns his phone calls. Foley was clearly not happy about having to break the fourth wall in this fashion.