12/03/2025
I wrote an article about the similarities between larp and pro wrestling. Feel free to add other similarities in the comments. 🙂
I have worked in larp since 1988, as a full time professional in the hobby\industry since around 1992. I have also been a fan of professional wrestling since the late 70's, started training in the industry in 2017, and created a professional wrestling promotion in 2022. There are a huge amount of similarities between the 2 activities, which I will describe here.
In both interests, participants take on a persona which isn't exactly the same as themselves. Many larps include mock combat (though this can be political or social conflict rather than physical)between two or more of the participants. At a basic level, they both feature people, pretending to be other people, those other people are pretending to have a fight.
Both include storylines, heroes and villains, with the battle between good (in wrestling, known as "Faces" - short for "baby faces" - occasionally referred to as "blue eyes") and evil (again, in wrestling, known as "Heels"). In the vast majority of Larps, this same dichotomy is recreated with players verses the NPCs or Monsters, whilst in wrestling the audience wants to see good triumph over evil.
The heroes in larp will use their skills, strength, courage or might to save the realm, banish the dark forces, win the day and celebrate. Whilst in wrestling the "face" must use their smarts, strength, courage and tenacity to win the match, beat the heel, save the day and celebrate.
Both use storylines (or fueds) that play out over a day, a month or even several years, building on established narratives from previous event
Looking at larp that contains combat, there are even more similarities. Both art forms rely on physical story telling. With larp the audience and the actors are the same but with wrestling the audience takes on a more traditional passive role, though with both forms crowd work and reacting to your audience is critical to being considered a success.
Wrestlers are for the most part incredibly accomplished semi professional or full time professional stunt performers. They train for years to perfect their art, so that they can be reliable and safe during a show. It takes a huge amount of time to be considered safe or good enough to perform on wrestling show. Fitness and physical conditioning are far more important than they are at a larp.
Wrestling employs a large amount of "slight of hand" and deception, to make the action look as real as possible within the realms of safety. Serious accidents aren't as common as they're perceived by the audience. There is a small reliance on the suspension of disbelief to make the combat seem real.
The combat at a larp is less reliant on seeming “real” and relies more greatly on the suspension of disbelief. There are far more safety measures in larp due to the fact most larpers have little or no training with the weapons and armour they use. This also results in a quite alow occurance of serious harm occuring. With the majority of injuries being due to trips or falls in wilderness environment.The people witnessing a larp fight are expected to buy into the combat being real despite safety measures and lack of professional stunt training often making the combat seem far from realistic, it often looks very bad in videos.
There is a strong parallel between various special calls at larp and a wrestlers "finisher" (or finishing\signature move).
There is a social contract that certain larp calls need to be reacted to in a bigger or fancier manner than a usual hit.
In wrestling this is mimicked by an audience “believing” that a finishing move is far more deadly or strong than a similar move that isn't a wrestlers finishing move.
You could almost put wrestling moves into tier lists like abilities in larp. Lesser, greater, exalted. An NPC in larp may use a higher tier power to establish themselves quickly as a serious threat.
Costumes, props and music are important parts of both art forms. They are used in both wrestling and larp to help establish the environment.
In both wrestling and larp.
Different larp genres and events have different dress codes and standards. You couldn't wear a high fantasy elf outfit to a post apocalyptic game, and a post apocalyptic raider outfit wouldn't be acceptable in a Jane Austin inspired period larp. Wrestling uses costume and props to help portray the feel of a match. Costume and makeup in wrestling are utilised to make a match seem more impressive, to make bloody seem gorier, to make the "big bad" (a term that equally applies to both wrestling or larp), seem bigger and badder.
Pre battle speeches and wrestlers pre fight rants are also pretty similar.
Independent wrestling promotions and larp events are both very very reliant on part time or volunteer staff. Very very few people can genuinely say they make a full time living doing either.For both it's almost entirely a passion project by social groups of highly obsessive and passionate individuals.
There's a lot of parallels between putting on a small wrestling show and putting on a larp.There's not much profit in either, the venue space can take around 50% of your income, often the “business owners” struggle to break even, but it rarely stops them. Most wrestlers earn a very small amount of money for the effort and risk involved. The same way most larp crew do it for the price of their food and a bunk for the weekend. Taking part and living the fantasy is more than enough reward for most people involved with either industry.
Equally there are a very small number of highly trained professional artists that create costumes and props for the industries. There are a tiny amount of wrestling costumers or belt makers. Similarly how there are very few people making larp kit full time.
Both art forms involve incredibly passionate people, people who build their entire lifestyle around larp or wrestling. This coupled with the niche status means when expectations are not met or unfortunate circumstances happen, it's easy to get black listed from the communities or to see modern day witch hunts on social media. Accusations can be tried in the court of opinion based on nothing more than hearsay and gossiping, rumours running rampant in minutes with no real proof or cause. Occasionally people can even escalate to illegal courses of actions due to set backs and insults within the various communities.
A few years ago, I ran a Larp focused event, where a series of pro wrestling matches also took place. I asked a very experienced larpers friend to be involved, so exposing him more to the behind the scenes aspect of the event. This is what he took from the experience:
"I haven't seen a lot of wrestling and don't really see the appeal, I think music and tabletop were more in my life than computer games and wrestling growing up.
Anyway, there was lots about it that was cool. I have no desire to see more wrestling, but it made me think about larp fighting a lot.
My dislike of larp fighting is the lack of roleplay. People try to win the fight using their stats and their "hardskills" (real world ability). There is often not much characterisation which means insults and banter comes off as tokenism.
Effectively many people roleplay their characters up until the fight, then they play to win the fight keeping within the rules, then they go back to roleplay.
It's the disconnect that gets me.
The wrestlers were only roleplaying during the fight. Back stage they were not in character and generally talking about costume and how cold it was. So, all their characterisation was during the fight or their entrance to the ring.
The characters were predictable tropes, and very one dimensional... but that's not the point. They were throwing insults at each other, fighting in the style of their character, taking a fall because it was better for the narrative, and making sure that everything they did was about the story and the spectacle.
I'm not saying we prearrange larp battles (although it would be interesting, albeit it a different game than the one we play)
But it has made me think about it. To worry more about my roleplay than winning.
So, next larp battle I take part in this will be my win condition.
1) To think about my face and how I portray wounds
2) To fight in my character's style even if that disadvantages me
3) To have insulted my opponent
4) To have shouted in character encouragement to an ally
5) To not care about the outcome and reckon I will get as much game from losing as winning
So, thanks for inviting the wrestling because, although "it's not larp", maybe the wrestlers multitask roleplaying and combat better than larpers do."
With thanks to Amber Laufey and Dave Younger for their contributions
