Wade Keller
speaker
1,255 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2025
last heard 20 Dec
Wade Keller’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Dec 2025 with 1.
Appearances
That said, it's been a very gradual process, Jason, and we watched it happen as fans.
where wrestlers went from trying to keep up the facade that it was a real competition to knowing and having wrestlers kind of be like, yeah, yeah, it's a performance.
But the old-time wrestlers, they had a culture that they inherited from the previous generation, which was to draw money, we need people to think these are real fights, and you protect that secret, and that's why the world champion's
Up until really the early 80s, there was pressure on the world champions to be legitimately tough shooters.
So in case somebody did shoot on them.
they could protect the integrity of the title.
There was some controversy for Ric Flair, whether he was a tough enough guy in real life and had enough legit credentials to follow in the footsteps of Harley Race and Jack Briscoe and Dory Funk and Terry Funk and on and on.
The wrestlers who had legit credentials who, at least up against a neighborhood tough guy, could defend themselves and not be humiliated while holding that title.
And I think Buddy Rogers went through that as well.
It must be a nature boy thing.
It really was Vince McMahon and the WWF and the expansion and them just taking kind of the cartoonish approach to it.
They still didn't want to pull back the curtain completely, but what was the court hearing where they kind of forced their hand, do you recall?
Well, it was the New Jersey Athletic hearing.
where Vince McMahon admitted, you know, in an official basis that they were predetermined.
And it was like headline news.
It was like, oh, big scandal, pro wrestling promoters finally admit it.
But in reality, I mean, when that came out, I think it was kind of seen as a story blown a little out of proportion by the mainstream media people who looked at it as this big revelation.
Because I think up until then, it was pretty accepted that wrestling was –
not on the up-and-up, and Vince McMahon had kind of admitted that in other ways before in some of the rare interviews he did.
But that was kind of that watershed moment where it was somebody in an official capacity telling the New Jersey State Athletic Commission, in order to avoid regulation and taxes, we're not a sport, quit treating us like one.
Showing 701–720 of 1,255 · page 36 of 63
← Previous
Next →