History Main / WorkedShoot

* Do they spend time in fully locked submissions doing nothing more than TheatricsOfPain only to revert it afterwards, instead of searching the escape or the reversion ''before'' the locking?

* 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 Vince Russo, 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 Death of WCW'' claims that what happened there, was that it was a worked shoot turned half-work half-shoot. Russo was set to cut a worked shoot promo against Hogan, but he went completely overboard, calling Hogan a "big bald son of a bitch." It also didn't help that Russo (according to him in a later interview) promised Hogan he would call him the following day and then didn't because TNT president Brad Siegel told him not to, at the same time Hogan was reading claims from fans online that Russo had finally "put him in his place." Enraged, Hogan legitimately refused to continue working for WCW (which was what Russo supposedly wanted anyway, according to Hogan's 2002 autobiography) and sued Russo for defamation of character. Technically Hogan was under WCW contract all along, but he really was refusing to work.

* Do they spend time in fully locked submissions doing nothing more than TheatricsOfPain, instead of immediately searching the escape?

* Wrestling/AJLee was allowed a shoot promo during her run as the Diva's champion, and she used it to great effect, tearing apart the 'plastic, interchangeable' TotalDivas women who hadn't earned their spots on the roster like she had. Despite supposedly being a heel, it just got her over even further.

The same trope can be applied to entire matches and promotions. Japanese wrestling once had a tradition to stage "shoot fights", but most of them were actually worked matches with many degrees of realism. Years after, the promotions who followed the "shoot-style" movement featured matches designed to look like UsefulNotes/MixedMartialArts bouts, and many of them put actual MMA fights into their cards to blur the lines between kayfabe and reality. Even outside of Japan, the [[Wrestling/{{WWE}} WorldWrestlingFederation]] had a similar system of real fights called Brawl for All.

* Are they taking nonchalantly strikes which could be easily avoided or parried?
* Are they fighting in a slow, meditated pace with innocuous rest holds and pauses, instead of a fast and instintive rush? Similarly, do they spend time in fully locked submissions doing nothing more than TheatricsOfPain, instead of immediately searching the escape?
* Are they using a recognizable WrestlingPsychology which would be weird or improbable in a real fight?
* And lastly, are they having an ending relatively clean (no blood, no visible damage, perfect picture executed moves)?

* Are they claiming that [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial this is a shoot, or that "this is not a work"]]?

* Are members of staff nowhere in sight or making no attempt to stop them?

** {{Worked Shoot}}s were somewhat endemic to Japanese professional wrestling. First, there was Wrestling/AntonioInoki, 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]]Ali was under the understanding that the match would be a work, and only found out 15 minutes before bell time that Inoki had planned on fighting for real - the rules were then cobbled together in that 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 ([[Wrestling/SatoruSayama Satoru "Tiger Mask" Sayama]] and Wrestling/AkiraMaeda) 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 Wrestling/MasakatsuFunaki and Wrestling/KenShamrock 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.)

* Wrestling/JoeyStyles's rant on sports entertainment before "quitting" the commentating job on Raw was a working shoot. This became more obvious as he later became the commentator for the WWE revival for ECW and there was no way in Hell Vince [=McMahon=] would have let him on TV if he legitimately bashed him and his whole company off the cuff on live TV.

* While The Undertaker was leading the Ministry of Darkness, the idea that Mark Calloway (the man behind the gimmick) was beginning to really believe in the Satanic Cultist stuff was floated a couple of times. Most notably when Ken Shamrock cut a promo in the ring where he called "Mark" out and threatened to beat a sense of reality into him.
* On the ''[[Wrestling/WWERaw Raw]]'' following Wrestling/TheUndertaker's shocking defeat by Wrestling/BrockLesnar at Wresting/{{WrestleMania}} XXX, Wrestling/PaulHeyman decided to "''shoot'' from the hip," and talked about Taker's legitimate concussion during the match as well as Wrestling/VinceMcMahon leaving the [=WrestleMania=] set to make sure he was alright. While the whole promo was very obviously a work, it involved a lot of events that would normally be kept out of kayfabe.

* On the [[Wrestling/WWERaw Raw]] following Wrestling/TheUndertaker's shocking defeat by Wrestling/BrockLesnar at Wresting/{{WrestleMania}} XXX, Wrestling/PaulHeyman decided to "''shoot'' from the hip," and talked about Taker's legitimate concussion during the match as well as Wrestling/VinceMcMahon leaving the [=WrestleMania=] set to make sure he was alright. While the whole promo was very obviously a work, it involved a lot of events that would normally be kept out of kayfabe.

* 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 (though for at least a few hours WWE.com claimed that Vince was "presumed dead"), 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 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 Wrestling/MikeAwesome (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.

* On the [[Wrestling/WWERaw Raw]] following Wrestling/TheUndertaker's shocking defeat by Wrestling/BrockLesnar at Wresting/{{WrestleMania}} XXX, Wrestling/PaulHeyman decided to "''shoot'' from the hip," and talked about Taker's legitimate concussion during the match as well as Wrestling/VinceMcMahon leaving the Wrestlemania set to make sure he was alright. While the whole promo was very obviously a work, it involved a lot of events that would normally be kept out of kayfabe.

*** RingOfHell takes it one step further: Sullivan knew that his feud with Benoit would be his last (Bischoff didn't want his at-the-time head booker as an active wrestler) and wanted to keep it going as long as possible until the blowoff. The real reason behind Benoit's career stagnation in WCW is that the top guys didn't want ANYONE new getting over (because that might threaten their own position, and their considerable salary).

** ''The Death of WCW'' claims that what happened there, was that it was a worked shoot turned half-work half-shoot. Russo was set to cut a worked shoot promo against Hogan, but he went completely overboard, calling Hogan a "big bald son of a bitch." It also didn't help that Russo (according to him in a later interview) promised Hogan he would call him the following day and then didn't because TNT president Brad Siegel told him not to, at the same time Hogan was reading claims from fans online that Russo had finally "put him in his place." Hogan, enraged, legitimately refused to continue working for WCW (which was what Russo supposedly wanted anyway, according to Hogan's 2002 autobiography) and sued Russo for defamation of character. Technically Hogan was under WCW contract all along, but he really was refusing to work.

* 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 Death of WCW'' claims that what happened there, was that it was a worked shoot turned half-work half-shoot. Russo was set to cut a worked shoot promo against Hogan, but he went completely overboard, calling Hogan a "big bald son of a bitch". Hogan, enraged, legitimately refused to continue working for WCW (which was what Russo wanted anyway) and sued Russo for defamation of character. Technically Hogan was under WCW contract all along, but he really was refusing to work.

* On the [[Wrestling/WWERaw Raw]] following [[spoiler: Wrestling/TheUndertaker's shocking defeat by Wrestling/BrockLesnar]] at Wresting/{{WrestleMania}} XXX, Wrestling/PaulHeyman decided to "''shoot'' from the hip," and talked about Taker's legitimate concussion during the match as well as Wrestling/VinceMcMahon leaving the Wrestlemania set to make sure he was alright. While the whole promo was very obviously a work, it involved a lot of events that would normally be kept out of kayfabe.

** {{Worked Shoot}}s were somewhat endemic to Japanese professional wrestling. First, there was Wrestling/AntonioInoki, 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 ([[Wrestling/SatoruSayama Satoru "Tiger Mask" Sayama]] and Wrestling/AkiraMaeda) 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 Wrestling/MasakatsuFunaki and Wrestling/KenShamrock 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.)

* In 1997, Wrestling/ShawnMichaels engaged in a series of "unscripted" incidents, including an entire tirade against Wrestling/TheUndertaker that was edited out of a later RAW broadcast. Rumors flew left and right that Michaels was trying to get himself fired in order to go to rival WCW and join his friends Wrestling/ScottHall and Wrestling/KevinNash in the [[Wrestling/NewWorldOrder nWo]]; in fact, the entire thing was a set-up to the birth of Wrestling/{{DGenerationX}}.
** This particular incident arose first as a dare by a fellow wrestler (and real life friend of Taker), and then Shawn decided to have some fun. The guy conducting the interview, Wrestling/JimRoss, was none too happy about it, but Undertaker took it better.

* Not all worked shoots are full of hate and violence: Stan "Uncle Elmer" Frazier's wedding to Joyce Stazko on a 1985 broadcast of Saturday Night's Main Event, was the real thing; Roddy Piper's attempt at disrupting the ceremony and Wrestling/JesseVentura's snide commentary were kayfabe, but the couple remained married until Frazier's death in 1992.
* In 1997, Wrestling/{{WWE}}'s Wrestling/ShawnMichaels engaged in a series of "unscripted" incidents, including an entire tirade against Wrestling/TheUndertaker that was edited out of a later RAW broadcast. Rumors flew left and right that Michaels was trying to get himself fired in order to go to rival WCW and join his friends Wrestling/ScottHall and Wrestling/KevinNash in the [[Wrestling/NewWorldOrder nWo]]; in fact, the entire thing was a set-up to the birth of Wrestling/{{DGenerationX}}.

* 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.

** 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 USA Network that seemed to imply the whole thing ''wasn't'' an angle (not to mention the press conferences held by Vince and Trump reiterating the storyline), and, with the apparent prospect of a person with no wrestling experience apparently going to be running half of the company's programming, 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.

* 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[[note]]Cabana had had a brief, unsuccesful run as Scotty Goldman[[/note]]; 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.
* One example that helped catapult wrestling into pop culture was the "Gold Record Incident" in Feb. 1985, where Roddy Piper interrupted an award ceremony on MTV with Lou Albano and Cyndi Lauper, smashed Albano's commemorative record over his head and then body slammed Lauper's manager David Wolff. The whole thing was so realistic that a NY cop rushed into the ring and tried to stop Piper, which made him mess up his slam and actually hurt Wolff. The whole thing was a setup for the "War to Settle the Score" special, which itself was a setup for the first Wrestlemania.

* Are the cameras focusing on him?
* Has he claimed that [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial this is a shoot, or that "this is not a work"]]?
* Is he using "insider" language such as {{face}}, {{heel}}, mark, {{smark}} or booker?
* Was his entrance music cued?
* Are members of staff nowhere in sight or making no attempt to stop him?
* Do his actions make sense in the context of a storyline (e.g. crazy man rebelling against the company or out for revenge)?
* Is his vocabulary roughly equivalent to his usual, scripted speaking pattern?
* Are highlights of his actions shown, mentioned or otherwise recapped by ''anybody'' else on the program?

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...

In [[ProfessionalWrestling professional wrestling]] parlance, a "work" is anything scripted; i.e. 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.

** Ironically enough, Shamrock was involved in a number of worked matches in Pancrase. He did a job to Masakatsu Funaki to drop the Pancrase title (before facing NWA champion Dan Severn in a UFC bout; since the NWA was "fake" wrestling, Pancrase would have lost face if Shamrock lost), and it's believed that he dropped a match to Minoru Suzuki when fans needed to believe a Japanese guy could hang with him. He also tanked a match to avoid an injury before facing Royce Gracie in a rematch, and "carried" several other opponents to more exciting finishes than would have happened in a pure shoot.

** {{Worked Shoot}}s were somewhat endemic to Japanese professional wrestling. First, there was Wrestling/AntonioInoki, 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 ([[Wrestling/SatoruSayama Satoru "Tiger Mask" Sayama]] and Wrestling/AkiraMaeda) 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.)

** Ironically enough, Shamrock was involved in a number of worked matches in Pancrase. He did a job to Masakatsu Funaki to drop the Pancrase title (before facing NWA champion Dan Severn in a UFC bout; since the NWA was "fake" wrestling, Pancrase would have lost face if Shamrock lost), and dropped a match to Minoru Suzuki when fans needed to believe a Japanese guy could hang with him. He also tanked a match to avoid an injury before facing Royce Gracie in a rematch, and "carried" several other opponents to more exciting finishes than would have happened in a pure shoot.

** {{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 ([[Wrestling/SatoruSayama 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.)

* When Ken Shamrock was new in WWF they booked a Pancrase-style match between Shamrock and one of his students from the Lion's Den, Vernon White. The match was billed as an exhibition, but during the match, White supposedly "tried to turn it into something it wasn't supposed to be" and shoot kicked Shamrock, which caused Shamrock to snap and ground n' pound White unconscious. The match was a work from top to bottom, though.

* 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.