In the midst of all the fakeness surrounding professional wrestling, it's important to give credit where it's due and learn what is real about pro wrestling. The moves the wrestlers do to each other don't hurt as badly as they pretend, but they're still no picnic. And the wrestlers really are, to varying degrees, athletes who are performing difficult stunts. Of course, there are some steroid beasts who just wander around the ring looking dangerous, but most of the wrestlers are incredibly acrobatic and talented at what they do.

Though the results are always predetermined, what happens in the match is not always perfectly scripted ahead of time. Good wrestlers can improvise most of what happens during the match. Some matches are choreographed and practiced move by move ahead of time, but most just have the outcome and some of the major happenings decided in advance. For example, two wrestlers might go into a match knowing which of them will win, who will start out dominant, who will interfere in the match, and what move will finish off the loser. The wrestlers will make up the rest of the match as they go along, in accordance with their skills and how the match is going. The wrestlers will often whisper moves to each other during the match, and they generally cooperate to make the match look good.

It is also real when wrestlers bleed. They rarely use fake blood in matches (there are obvious exceptions, such as Gangrel's "blood baths," in which his opponents have gallons of blood-like substance dumped on them). The most common way for wrestlers to make themselves bleed is to keep a razor blade taped up on their wrists, hands, or fingertips, which is then exposed when it's time for them to cut themselves. When a wrestler cuts himself it is called blading, and when he then bleeds it is called juicing. These occur when a wrestler's opponent has landed a supposedly devastating move on him. He will quickly cut himself across the forehead, which will produce enough blood to give him a convincingly battered appearance. They almost never cut themselves anywhere else, as doing so would be extremely dangerous. Wrestlers also, occasionally, bleed from actual contact. They try to pull their punches, but they really do hit each other, and accidents happen. This way of bleeding is known as hardway, and we're pretty sure it's less than popular among the wrestlers.

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