Despite the stereotypes, wrestling isn’t an easy sport to categorize — and professional wrestlers like it that way. Suspended somewhere between athleticism, artistry, and performance, wrestlers enter the ring embodying larger-than-life personas, acting out a slow burn of conflict and drama that eventually (hopefully) leads to an explosive, roar-inducing conclusion. For audience members, the show is an emotional roller coaster, one so rife with violence it can lead people to cringe, cover their eyes, and ask: Is this actually real?

In Wrestlers, the new documentary series chronicling the ups and downs of Ohio Valley Wrestling in Louisville, Kentucky, audiences get a behind-the-scenes look at how professional wrestlers bring a level of shocking physicality to their craft — and there’s no doubt it can get ugly. But while storylines are predetermined and tension between fighters is carefully designed over the course of days or weeks, the physical toll of what each wrestler endures is anything but artificial.

“There’s a difference between injured and hurt,” Al Snow, the CEO and unflappable creative engine behind Ohio Valley Wrestling, tells Tudum. “Injured means you can’t perform and you can’t work — but if you do this, you’re going to be hurt every day of your life.”

The difference between injured and hurt, Snow explains, requires building an incredibly unique skill set, including but not limited to: falling from the ropes onto the floor, taking a hit from a folding chair, bouncing off ring cables, being thrown across the ring by an opponent, and giving and receiving countless punches, kicks, pile drivers, and clotheslines. And that’s all while simultaneously working a bloodthirsty crowd.

For talent, it’s a constant tightrope walk — one with safety standards, but no guarantees. Luckily, Snow is just the man to learn from. Before he stepped into his leadership role at OVW, he was a professional wrestler himself. His experience is so extensive that one could say he wrote the book on how to be a wrestler — both figuratively and literally. 

“I wrote the syllabuses for the beginner, the intermediate, and the advanced class,” he says of the wrestling school he runs at OVW. “The very first thing they need to learn is how to physically control themselves, and what I mean by that is they learn to ‘take a bump.’ They learn how to land on the mat, either forward or backwards.”

Anyone who’s watched a live match knows just how hard it looks — and sounds — for a wrestler to fall at full speed, often from the top of the ropes. As Snow explains, the key to preventing injury while landing on the mat is to make the body flat, thereby creating the largest amount of surface area possible. People typically attempt to break their falls by putting out an arm or a leg, which is much more likely to end poorly — Snow says taking a bump is roughly equivalent to feeling the impact of a car crash while moving at 25 miles per hour.

“And of course, that goes up when you’re bigger, or when somebody’s with you and you add their weight and momentum,” he explains. “But that’s all quite real.”

And even the most experienced wrestlers can find themselves on the receiving end of a serious injury. For all the training that’s necessary to minimize injury, there’s no foolproof way to ensure that things don’t go awry. Marks are missed, bad falls occur, and some moves simply can’t be engineered to reduce impact. In one episode of Wrestlers, for example, cast member Mahabali Shera dislocates his shoulder while battling James Storm to retain his OVW Heavyweight Championship belt. Shera’s fellow OVW wrestlers say that this kind of injury is always a risk — it’s how you handle it in the ring that matters. 

“You’re not taught, ‘You do this when this happens, or this when this happens,’” OVW fan favorite Ca$h Flo says about how wrestlers are trained. “That’s not what this is about. This is wrestling. You’re taught to be tough, and you’re taught to suck it up, and eventually it becomes like a callus. That’s how we live our lives, in a perpetual state of callus.” 

With everything at stake, it’s understandable that most wrestlers have an aversion to the notion that what they do is inauthentic — some even going so far as to refrain from even uttering the word “fake” in regards to what they do, opting for “the f-word” instead. It’s true that the sport involves choreography and rehearsal — during matches Snow and other producers watch the action unfold backstage, prompting the referees via earpiece to slow down, speed up, build tension, and let it rip.

“My job is to create a story that creates conflict, that then has to have a resolution within a match,” he says.

But the physical requirement of carrying out that story is 100 percent authentic, and there’s also a great deal of improvisation that happens in the ring — especially when there are props involved. Take, for example, the folding chair —as it turns out, there’s no sleight of hand involved in that classic wrestling maneuver. Wrestlers simply have to know how to move their bodies into exactly the right place, at exactly the right time to take the hit. 

“Back in the day, if somebody hit you in the head with a chair, they would hit you in the head with a chair,” Snow says. “We’ve now found out all the information about concussions and things like that, so I don’t let anybody hit each other on the head with a chair anymore.”

These days, chair slams at OVW are restricted to below the neck.

For all the training that’s necessary to minimize injury, there’s no foolproof way to ensure that things don’t go awry. Marks are missed, bad falls occur, and some moves simply can’t be engineered to reduce impact. And of course, there are death matches — the brutal, ultraviolent battle for good and evil where injury isn’t avoidable: It’s the point. 

In the fifth episode of Wrestlers, wrestler Maria James (known in the ring as Amazing Maria) talks about her affinity for death matches, a more hardcore form of wrestling that dispenses with most formalities in order to create the bloodiest brawl possible.

 “There’s no preparation for it,” James saysof these violent fights, which can involve weapons ranging from barbed wire to baseball bats. “You’ve just got to be insane.” 

In the series, James and her daughter, HollyHood Haley J, eventually partner up for a death match at OVW, despite Snow’s resistance to the idea. No spoilers on the outcome, but needless to say the fight is brutal and emotionally charged enough to make even seasoned fans squirm. 

“I wanted to have a death match with her,” Haley recalled of the bloody mother-daughter therapy session. “It’ll be my first, only ever, and last.” 

Watching the match unfold, it immediately becomes painfully obvious that every single thing that appears to be happening onscreen is actually happening inside the ring. Among the weapons the mother-daughter pair unleash on each other are studded baseball bats and thumbtacks. “I wanted a pane of glass, but [Al] said no. I wanted [Haley] to put me through glass,” adds James. “Panes of glass are easy. Doors are easy. Thumbtacks are my favorite because they look like they make such a huge impact, but it’s really a little [pin]prick.”

“It hurts. She’s lying,” Haley interjects. “It sent a whole shock through my body. It hurts.”

Bad falls, drop kicks and death matches aside, Snow says that for most fans, the question of “Is wrestling fake or not?” isn’t top of mind. Instead, it’s the subconscious knowing that what they’re seeing is a byproduct of extensive training and intricate (and yes, sometimes painful) choreography — and still believing that it’s all completely organic anyways. 

“People have known that professional wrestling is predetermined for decades. The reason that they have paid and continue to pay by the thousands to see the events is because the performers are so good at convincing them,” Snow says. “You’ve never hit the ropes or got back-dropped or drop-kicked, but you know a person like that, or you want to be a person like that. And when they win, you win, too. That’s the fun.” 

Wrestlers Declare a Thumb War!Who will become Tudum’s Thumb Wrestling Paperweight Champion?