I’ve loved wrestling ever since I was a kid as well. I thought it was real until my dad pointed out that the a first person introduced always lost. That’s shattered my innocence but I started enjoying it more as I grew older because I could enjoy it as a joke/performance.
I watched it when it was called the WWF and stopped watching it just before it got renamed to the WWE so I’m less familiar with all the newer wrestlers from the last 20 years but I’ve seen the greats live, like Rick Flair. Being able to “woooooo!” with the entire arena was fun as hell even though we all know it wasn’t a real competitive event.