I'm not sure if anyone has seen any of this stuff before but it is absolutely insane. All of the punches and kicks thrown are totally and utterly fake but as soon as they finish with the fake stuff they start hitting each other with barbed wire baseball bats, smashing lighting tubes over each and throw shirtless guys through glass windows.

Here is an example but don't watch it if you are squeamish or under 18. (its a youtube link though so how bad could it be) http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ulTRgDCp4ZE&feature=related

I am really confused with the fact that it looks very fake but everyone gets really hurt. I don't understand the motivation for this or how people are able to endure it.

Any thoughts?

My thoughts are its totally fake!

Even the bits with the glass you can see its that fake glass thats designed to break into tons of tiny pieces (the kind you use in films!)

I would say these guys were actors/stunt men more than anything, I could be wrong but I doubt they suffered anything other than a few bruises.

Okay, this is the decades old tradition of "extreme" or "hardcore" pro wrestling. I was a proprietor for the UK's first extreme pro wrestling promotion, Extreme World Warfare, from 1998 to 2001. The style has its roots in Japan, where some American wrestlers and future WWE superstars Mick Foley (Cactus Jack/Mankind etc) and Terry Funk went out to make their names. It then came to America and made it to mainstream success via Extreme Championship Wrestling, which also introduced adult-orientated storylines, and was eventually bought out and assimilated into the WWF/WWE. CZW (Combat Zone Wrestling) is perhaps the most famous of the independent extreme/hardcore wrestling promotions.

All matches are obviously fixed (c'mon guys is not news, it's a game the pro wrestling community has been playing since the 1950s and came completely out of the closet with in the 1990s), but the danger is very real. For example, you get whacked full force in the head with a metal chair - no faking that. The chair is relatively light/thin and the impact area is the hardest part of the head and you know when it is coming - that's all your concessions. The barbed wire is real. I know I got thrown into some on a few occasions. C4 explosives are real. Glass - certainly in our case - was sugar glass, but the bleeding - as is the case in all pro wrestling - be it extreme or otherwise - is real. The practice is known as blading. If you read books like Simon Garfield's "The Wrestling" you find out all about this.

The extreme pro wrestling has been the subject of Louie Thoroux's "Wild Weekends" and also a Ruby Wax "Investigation". Neither presenter was a wrestling fan by any stretch of the imagination and gave no quarter regarding its fake side; however, both were shocked by what was actually real in the extreme stuff. Everyone thinks they know the truth about pro wrestling, but few really do and sometimes that even includes people in the business

Bizarrely, my sage seven year old daughter was asking me, if I knew some wrestling was fake when I tucked her in for bed last night.

Thanks Jamie, a very interesting insight there.

Funny enough I was pondering the whole WWF wrestling thing the other day when it was on in the background in a pub (not very martialedge of me I know!). Does anyone know how they actually decide who is going to win? It must be a bit of an odd one to work out as surely whichever wrestler wins will get tons of publicity (and ultimately more cash one way or another)... how is this sort of thing decided?

Is it a case of names in a hat!?

Funny enough I was pondering the whole WWF wrestling thing the other day when it was on in the background in a pub (not very martialedge of me I know!). Does anyone know how they actually decide who is going to win? It must be a bit of an odd one to work out as surely whichever wrestler wins will get tons of publicity (and ultimately more cash one way or another)... how is this sort of thing decided?

Is it a case of names in a hat!?

Stop thinking sport and start thinking physical theatre or, more specifically, soap opera Do you think David Prowse got paid more for beating Alec Guiness in Star Wars? Pro Wrestling is all about "angles" - their slang term for storylines. They have "bookers" who set up the various storylines, which determine the outcome of the matches. There are traditions like a retiring wrestler is supposed to lose his final match and there is an obvious hierarchy depending on who is the biggest draw or who is in the main event. However, the big picture is that everything is about setting things up for biggers shows. Independent shows are a little more self-contained, but even they aspire to this - I know we were often credited for doing this and were perhaps overly ambitious in that our storylines would stretch from venue to venue across the UK.