Smart (professional wrestling)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A smart in the sense of professional wrestling was, historically, a person who was fully aware that professional wrestling was entertainment and was scripted ("booking" is used) in order to increase fan enjoyment and excitement. This is in contrast to those who believed the matches and events surrounding them were real, who were referred to as marks, a knowing reference to the confidence game.
In recent years, as pro wrestling has dropped the pretense of being an unscripted event, smart has evolved into a specific reference to people with first-hand, inside knowledge of the wrestling business. The term smark has been coined to describe a substantial group of fans who do not have direct inside knowledge, but are fully aware of the worked nature of the business, and still enjoy the entertainment aspects of pro wrestling.
[edit] Criticism
The smarts sometimes have the reputation of being a bit arrogant because they complain about the entertainment angles in the WWE (such as the RAW diva search) even though they are fully aware that the WWE is a sports entertainment company and that there are other wrestling organisations that offer a pure wrestling product they choose to watch it and complain about these angles even though it is what the WWE are all about. Also if a non-smart indicates that he/she enjoys the entertainment side over the actual wrestling side of the WWE they are looked down upon by the smart community as either inferior or crazy.
Also it is possible that when smarts don't like entertainment such as the diva search on the internet community forums they tend to get abusive towards the participants for no apparent reason. They complain that the time could be used for more or longer wrestling matches space in the show.
