When is a wanker not a wanker? Hey, he's always a wanker! But don't call a professional wanker wrestler that to his face - unless you're a real wrestler. And then it might be very, very funny.
Hey, it's a living, OK? And someone has to do it... maybe.
They call themselves professional wrestlers. That has always seemed to me to be an insult to every genuine athlete in the world. They're not wrestlers. They're not even cheats, although they pretend to be that too. They're actors, and not very good ones at that. They may even be better wrestlers than they are actors. It's not saying much.
Sumo wrestlers, on the other hand, are professional wrestlers, and there are a couple of other places in the world where real people really wrestle professionally too. It may not be your cup of tea, it may not even be terribly good for the health of the participants (and there are a couple of other professional sports like that too, notably but not only boxing, read Andre Agassi's autobiography before you take up professional tennis for your health and you won't). But it's real professional wrestling. And then there's this staged spectacle, invented in the USA and now popular in Japan and {blush) Australia that has somehow hijacked the term professional wrestling.
They make money, and in America that covers a multitude of sins. They probably do far more damage to society than porn does or ever could, but somehow they get away with it. Role models? Yeah, right. What's next? Oh, yeah, that's right, Rollerball.
There's a perennial debate at Wikipedia about what to call them. Wrestlers? Umm, that's not really accurate. Ummm, come to think of it, it's not even remotely accurate. And Wikipedia does, on its day, care a lot about accuracy. Professional wrestlers? That's worse. Pretend wrestlers? That was my suggestion, but I had little hope for it. It's POV. It's accurate, but most people who write about them don't call them that, and in Wikipedia the majority is always right. We're not a democracy. We just act like one. If it acts like a duck...
Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How's that again? I missed something.
(Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love)
But I kinda like the phrase pro wrestlers. I wonder do they wear mascara to bed, or just in the ring? Better not to ask them. Unless you're a real wrestler. And then, again, it might be very, very funny. (;->
Or even better, professional wankers. If the shoe fits...
Rules? In a knife fight? No ru... oooohhhh...
(Harvey, dialogue from the film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid)