Dave Meltzer wrote this week about the David Schultz/John Stossel incident, and I thought these sections were particularly significant. Iâve bolded a few key parts.
[In 1984] 20/20 and [John] Stossel went to do a piece on pro wrestling. With Cyndi Lauper, who was on fire selling records that year doing an angle with Lou Albano and Roddy Piper, the popularity of pro wrestling got national attention. Pro wrestling had been very hot in certain places for years [...] But nobody noticed. The promoters wanted to generally stay away from the media, because the media would always bring with it and question of whether wrestling was real or not, a question promoters of that era didnât want to deal with.
[Jim] Wilson and [Eddy] Mansfield were part of exposes in Georgia and an award winning piece by Ray Didinger in Philadelphia. Wrestlers who were willing to talk for the record that pro wrestling wasnât real was exactly what 20/20 was looking for.
Wilson and Mansfieldâs story was about how badly the promoters treated the talent, but in doing so, had to explain that pro wrestling wasnât real.
Wilsonâs description of pro wrestling was largely accurate, as was Mansfield. But their hopes of exposing the way promoters often abused talent and underpaid them ended up being a very distant third to what ABC wanted, which was wrestlers on camera saying pro wrestling wasnât real, and in the case of Mansfield, explaining how wrestlers bladed and doing so on camera. While it got a lot of attention and talk at the time, those in wrestlingâs fear that the piece would kill the business proved inaccurate.
Pro wrestling actually had a huge 1985 after the show aired. It made no difference whatsoever. Fans knew in the 80s. As the Danno OâMahoney story [related in the April 13, 2020 Wrestling Observer] showed, they knew in the 30s and didnât care. Newspapers were describing wrestling matches as not real in the late 1800s.
It is true that the Dick Shikat shooting on Danno OâMahoney hurt the business badly in the Northeast, but it wasnât that people found out wrestling wasnât real. The newspapers in that era gave wrestling coverage equivalent to its interest level. Big crowds and gates meant big coverage. But they, for their own credibility, made it clear wrestling wasnât real. In Boston, where OâMahoney was king, there were stories giving away finishes, and that OâMahoney was a creation, and they drew bigger crowds than anywhere in the country. But they did want their top babyfaces to be real-life tough guys. OâMahoney crying out begging Shikat to stop hurting him, and then the court case where it was public that Shikat was selling the belt to the highest bidder absolutely hurt the business. They knew it was rigged, but what they didnât know was how sleazy it was.
Itâs worth considering that Schultz slapping Stossel did very little to âprotect the business,â but by keeping the focus on the âfakeâ question it did a lot to distract the media from the corruption inside the business.
