THE NORTH RIDING PROJECT

The wrestlers’ adherence to the big lie, the insistence that the unreal is real – the rule that you have to play your character all the time, even outside the ring, to make sure you don’t ruin it for anyone.  For decades, this was the abiding dogma of the pro wrestling industry.  The term is thought to be an old carny term – perhaps a slangy, bastardized form of “be fake” – borrowed in wrestling’s embryonic stages on the sideshow.

Shoemaker/Circle