A 300-pound man is charging at me, arms flailing. His voice carries through the gymnasium and I am up against the turnbuckle in the corner of the ring, out of breath, awaiting his crushing blow.

The crowd of just over a three dozen watches expectantly. They want a fight. It is what they paid for, after all. The year is 2019 and I am Spartacus, the professional wrestler. Not a grappler from the world’s oldest competitive that you see in the Olympics, but the over-the-top kind of wrestler dressed shirtless with skin tight briefs that kids watch on TV.

In the Olympics, I might be trying to use my strength, speed, agility and smarts to win the match. But in professional wrestling — the theatrical sport that made Andre the Giant, John Cena and Ric Flair famous — my job is to put on a performance and in this world, we perform assigned roles.

Down in the padded corner, I — as the face, or hero, of this match — have the advantage: I am who the crowd wants to win the match so the crowd cheers as I jump up, landing to stand on the second rope in the corner. I am about to launch myself to dive in the air for a "crossbody splash," at my opponent, but he pushes me back and I am awkwardly back on the turnbuckle.

In the midst of this, we discreetly improvised a plan: I will fall from the top rope of the ring and land outside of it, on the cold, hard, thinly padded linoleum ringside floor. As professionals, we both know that I will make it look painful. That is the plan, anyway.

So he pushes me and I throw myself sideways and begin my fall from eight feet up. Instead of grabbing the top rope with my hand to control my fall, I come down hard. Landing first on the back of my neck on the ring apron, a portion of the ring extends just outside the ring ropes, before I fold over myself to crash hard onto the ringside floor, staring up at the blinding fluorescent gymnasium lights.

Their shock is that the illusion, the fake danger, has been broken, leaving me in obviously real pain.

I try to get up and the fingers in my right hand are numb. The audience gasps. I can’t move them at all.

From the first fall in a match to the last, wrestlers need to get very good at taking a spill, both to wow viewers and to be safe. One bad fall can mean a serious injury, or the end of a career and even a life of pain.

That is part of why wrestlers have developed crucial language and training around the ways to do a preemptive fall, also known as a “bump.” It is the most important move in professional wrestling, according to wrestling trainers like Reno Anoa’i, the head coach of Knokx Pro Wrestling Academy in Van Nuys, California.

“I always tell my students that it is their bread and butter to survive in this business,” said Anoa’i. “You got to be able to bump because you got to be able to break these falls. Then you gotta do it over and over and over again. And if you don't do it correctly the first time, then it's gonna hurt. And if you don’t do it right, you have no longevity in this business.”

A spate of serious injuries in recent 30 years suggests that falling has become more dangerous.

Mistakes happen, as “Stone Cold” Steven Austin learned. For his part in a maneuver called the "piledriver," when a wrestler grabs their opponent, turns them upside-down, and drops into a sitting or kneeling position, driving the opponent head-first into the mat, Austin suffered a broken neck in 1997.

In 2001, Sycho Sid landed wrong from jumping off the second rope and snapped his shin in half. In 2015, AJ Lee fell wrong when taking a slam from a wrestler by jumping too early and landed on the top of her head, resulting in three discs in her back being so compacted that it shuts off a nerve where her hands just go numb randomly to this day. In 2022, Big E. Langston broke his neck, taking a fall wrong, ending his career as a professional wrestler.

“I've never had more impact and injuries on my body than this sport,” said Andre Hudson, a professional MMA fighter, former Marine, rugby player, and football player, better known as “AJ Mana” as a professional wrestler.

According to multiple WWE wrestlers like Al Snow, Diamond Dallas Page and even smaller company working professional wrestlers like AJ Mana say that each professional wrestling match is equal to a car crash.

“I know we call it entertainment, but wrestling is still wrestling,” explains Mana. “I was a winger in rugby. It was literally my job to sweep around and tackle folks and hit hard. I've been hit harder here and in the middle of this ring than any sport that I've done.”

It all raises a question: why would a theatrical sport like wrestling become more dangerous?

This starts with the mechanics of the moves themselves.

The "suplex," a maneuver where a wrestler lifts and throws an opponent to slam them on their back, has become normalized in professional wrestling matches today.

This was not always the case.

In the 1950s, a lot of the falls or bumps were simple. And when it was big, like a finishing blow to end a match, it was a suplex.

But as professional wrestling has evolved, so has its moveset. The fall in the ring from a suplex pales in comparison. With the spectacle of possibly life-ending falls, the execution of these moves and spectacles has their downfalls.

One of the injuries Mana suffered was when he fell in the ring.

“When I first started [wrestling], I had a bad habit of not slowing down. I still have that habit,” said Hudson. “When things are explained to me, I'm just like, ‘I got it, I got it, I got it.’”

One day, there was a miscommunication. Mid maneuver, Mana realized he was falling wrong and tried to correct himself at the last moment, resulting in him landing on his shoulder that separated his shoulder.

The bodies of professional wrestlers get worn down from repeated falling in the ring, similar to acrobats at a circus, this is often due to having multiple matches in a single week. Despite this, like with other live entertainment environments, the show must go on.

From taking place underneath a spotlight in a sweaty arena for only the spectacle of screaming crowds to cable televised wrestling today, professional wrestling has changed to adapt with its audience.

pro wrestling timeline by Spartacus Smith

In the first golden era of professional wrestling, from the 1950s to the early 1980s, wrestlers like Gorgeous George wrestled in rings similar to those for boxing. The rings were hardwood floor boards underneath and little or no foam padding buffering the thin fabric on the ring’s floor. Which meant that falling against the mat could be painful.

Comparison between the wrestling rings of the 1950s and 2024.

Under the ring name of Count of California’s “Black Pearl” since 2002, Reno Anoa'i is from the Samoan Dynasty Family. “In order for us to survive and be relevant in this business, we have to be the biggest bad guys. So in order to be the biggest bad guys, you gotta take all the falls and all the bumps. And they knew they couldn't do this shit six days a week,” said Anoa’i.

“I always tell my students that it is their bread and butter to survive in this business,” said Anoa’i. “You got to be able to bump because you got to be able to break these falls. Then you gotta do it over and over and over again. And if you don't do it correctly the first time, then it's gonna hurt. And if you don’t do it right, you have no longevity in this business.”

Anoa’i’s family of professional wrestlers worked to perfect the fall to avoid injuries thus creating a form of longevity in the grueling career of professional wrestling.

A notable member of the Samoan Dynasty who began this was Peter Maivia, a WWE Hall of Famer who debuted in the 1960s, holding championship gold in the 1970s. Ultimately retiring in 1982, it was Maivia’s way of falling that helped enrich his thirty year career in wrestling.

This skill was passed to his wrestling family and WWE Hall of Famers, “The Wild Samoans” of Afa and Sika Anoa’i, changing what falling meant in terms of safety in the ring.

“If you're not bumping and falling down as the bad guy, the people cannot react when you're getting your ass whooped,” said Anoa’i. “If you're a wrestler who got punched and you just fall down, then it is like, 'yeah, you just got punched and fell.' But if you bump, the ring will give this loud shotgun like 'boom' and people will see that you really got your ass whooped because your legs are up and you land on your back. That's what people want to see; they want to see wrestlers get their asses whooped and believe it.”

But with wrestlers falling more, and in ever-more dramatic fashion, they were taking more risks. How could they avoid getting hurt?

The fall of a professional wrestler is actually a chain of movements.

Hudson described it as similar to slipping on a banana peel. “I'm standing in a vertical position, and I kick one leg out, as though I've just slipped, without changing the level at which I'm standing,” said Hudson. “I'm still standing vertical, but I'm falling directly backwards and slapping the mat as I kick my heels and toes pointed to the sky.”

If you continue scrolling, you will see the three steps for a fall in wrestling.