As an on-again off-again pro-wrestling fan, I find indie wrestling very bizzare.
I really dislike when the performers itself treat it like a joke or don't take it seriously. We all know it's a story and not a real athletic competition, but watching all the fourth-wall breaking, winking, nudging and general silliness that goes on with a lot of indie stuff truly leaves me be-wildered. Even if the performers treat it as a joke, it's still incredibly dangerous and taxing on the body. So you have performers making no effort to suspend our disbelief while in reality they're injuring themselves just the same.
I'm not a fan of any kind of wrestling, but I do love fourth-wall breaking stuff in many mediums. Comedians talking about their jokes not landing, author's making up books-within-books, films that play with conventions and cliches.
I'm generally impressed with how, if done correctly, you can maintain the emotional connection that is often referred to as "suspension of disbelief" while making the unreality explicit.
I suppose I can enjoy it in much the same way I can get invested in an episode of say, the original star trek from the 1960s. I mean sure, I could sit there and point out how the computers are silly, the physics are un-realisitic, the special effects suck and the alien planets are clearly earth with props. Or even classical theatre. I mean theatre is objectively far more flake or unrealistic than anything pro-wrestling does (wait a minute, they're not in a castle!) But if a story - in any medium - engages me enough I'm willing to look over a lot.
Wrestling has its own set of "in-universe" realities that we the audience are conditioned too. If they're adhered too, and everything makes sense in the logic of that framework, I find it easy to suspend disbelief... provided of course I care about the conflict.
I dunno, I find some of the less-serious indies to be the most entertaining. Example, in Chikara, Eddie Kingston had a move called Backfist to the Future that he used on Archibald Peck that, in-story, sent him back in time to return later with a new gimmick. That sort of silliness would never fly in the more 'serious' promotions, but it was funny as hell and really differentiates them from the indies like Ring of Honor that focus more on technical wrestling.
Somehow I ran across a wrestling team called "The Osirian Portal" searching for something totally unrelated. I'm not a wrestling fan, but that shit is hilarious. I think wrestling is way funnier when it isn't trying to be serious.
I really dislike when the performers itself treat it like a joke or don't take it seriously. We all know it's a story and not a real athletic competition, but watching all the fourth-wall breaking, winking, nudging and general silliness that goes on with a lot of indie stuff truly leaves me be-wildered. Even if the performers treat it as a joke, it's still incredibly dangerous and taxing on the body. So you have performers making no effort to suspend our disbelief while in reality they're injuring themselves just the same.