ABSTRACT

This chapter examines hardcore-style wrestling as a form that troubles even the seemingly neat considerations of form and content. Indeed, hardcore-style professional wrestling is taken up as perhaps the ideal site in which to examine the conceit that professional wrestling is “predetermined, not fake.” Hardcore wrestling style exemplifies an aesthetic of what can be called “extreme authenticity,” which stages a form of violence that echoes and reverberates with both reality television and some forms of performance art. The bloody and overtly painful acts of hardcore wrestling stage the real potential of the performers’ wage labor as they struggle and bleed in a predetermined, theatrical competition. The chapter thus investigates the differences between theatrical and performed violence and the possible political implications of performing such bloody spectacles as those found in hardcore wrestling.