Learning curve

Scott–

To the best of my minimally researched understanding, references to wrestling being fake/fixed began cropping up at least as early as the 1940s, although it appears they didn’t pick up much in the way of traction until a few decades later. To that end, prior to, say, the late 70s or thereabout, did the average person who attempted to break into the business understand going in that it was a work? If not, at what point were they formally "smartened up?"

​Typically they "knew", but then the old guys would spend a few weeks beating them into submission to make them quit, and if they got through THAT, then they’d be smartened up and taught to work instead of wrestle. Essentially the trainers would treat it like a shoot to weed out people who weren’t serious about continuing with it as a career. It was somewhere around the mid-80s, when Vince started importing monsters and freaks, where that aspect of the business dropped off almost completely. By the time you get to where we are in the Flashbacks, with guys like Van Hammer coming in pretty much untrained, all pretense of it being "real" is long gone. ​