Working Girls: Or How Mick Foley Proved Wrestling Fans Were Smarter Than Most Feminist Bloggers

The professional wrestling term “working” has hundreds of vague definitions, but perhaps the most accurate is “attempting to convince people that the scripted actions they’re seeing are legitimate.” So when a wrestler grimaces in pain at a punch that went absolutely nowhere near his face, he’s working. When Jerry “The King” Lawler and Andy Kaufmann brawled on the David Letterman Show in the early 80s, they were working. In the late 80s, The Iron Sheik and “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan were arrested for drug possession. They were fired from the WWF not for this crime, but because they acted as if they were co-workers when speaking to the police, rather than feuding rivals. They were not fired for committing a felony, but because they weren’t working.