Blading, Booking and Getting Over: Wrestling Terminology 101

While most of the professional wrestling on television is worked, some of what you see is legitimate. This can include announcements or communications from a company’s owner, real-life relationships playing out on the screen or even in rare instances, a wrestling match that escalates or gets out of hand.

These events are referred to as shoots, which is a reference to legitimate, full contact shoot wrestling. Numerous wrestling storylines have their origins in shoot occurrences, including the infamous Montreal Screwjob and Lita leaving Matt Hardy for Edge. Starting in the late 1990s, worked shoots became popular, where wrestling writers would attempt to trick in-the-know fans into thinking that what they were seeing was legitimate, while it was, in-fact, still scripted.