Hasn't it always been acknowledged to be a sort of performance art though, with at least some willing suspension of disbelief?
Kind of like how everyone knows that the Harlem Globetrotters aren't playing "real" basketball, but that isn't what they're going to a Globetrotters game for?
Tl;dr: No
Long story:
Pro-wrestling started as part of the carnivals at the end of the 19th century. A strongman would take on all new comers and if someone would last in the ring with the strongman for a certain amount of time than a given amount of money would be given to the lucky winner, and all they had to do was put up a small, tiny and almost insignificant stake to step in the ring and win the big prize. Most of the matches as there were ended quickly, as professional strongman with grappling skills would make mince meat out of anyone without submission avoidance training. There was nothing fake or fixed about it, but at times the guys running the carny show would have a hard time getting rubes to get in the ring to get pummeled, so they came up with a ringer, a babyfaced youngster who would mill about the show and look wholly not threatening, when the challenge would come and people would be reticent to get in the ring, the babyface would get in the ring and proceed to have a choreographed wrestling match (fake) and almost go the distance, losing in the end, but making the bigger fellas in the crowd think, "Well, Hell, if that little fella could go toe to toe with that mug, I got this!" And they'd go in and get beaten into next Sunday.
There were several problems with this business plan, which forced the evolution to the next stage. One, the strongmen were still vulnerable and in some of the rougher town, it could go bad. After all, anyone could lose. One slip, one fall, one unlucky break and you'd be down a strongman and the purse prize. Two, there were ringers who would specifically target strongmen. There were trained grapplers who at the turn of the century made a living staking out certain carnivals and waiting for a chance to rip a strongman to shreds because they would have better submission skills than them and walk away with the prize (the wrestling equivalent of poker sharks who target small casinos). Three, there were no honor among thieves and rival promoters would sometimes send their strongmen into the crowd to challenge the strongman of the carnival in town and kill their business to drum up theirs.
Once again, with the exception of the aforementioned babyfaced ringer vs. strongman routine, all was real at this point. And, some of the carnival stuff continued in United States until well into World War II. In the UK, some of it went on until the 1970s (Steven Regal wrestled all comers when he was coming up as a teenager).
Now, where this turned into professional wrestling is that syndicates of carnivals started forming, to survive. Carnival business is by its nature seasonal. And although out in the West, summer year round was possible and business could be had, such was not of most carnies for most of the year. In the lean years, and lean times, when the rubes were not willing to get their heads broke in a ring by professionals and pay for the privilege of it, there were strongman vs. strongman matches. They started off real enough. Stakes were placed. Tough men fought each other for the right to be known as the hardest of the lot. And the public took a shine to these spectacles and bet on the matches. The quaint carnival business started being supplanted as US urban centers developed with these strongman vs. strongman matches.
But this too posed a problem. Breaking a fella's arm was the quickest way to win, but it was also the quickest way to put him on the shelf and prevent further paydays. You can't get many return matches from a man with a bum wing and there goes your future payday. There was also the spectacle of the thing to consider. Grappling matches between professionals were often stalemates. Not predetermined per-se, but just two guys would size up each other in the ring and go, "Geez, if I go in quick and hard, like I do with the rubes, I'm liable to get hurt bad, better play it safe." And the other man would think the same and you started seeing informal gentlemen's draws develop without one word said. Just two professionals knowing they can keep it nice and safe and get more matches, or try to shoot for a win and risk an injury. You can still see this in major boxing bouts today. Watch Oscar De La Hoya vs. Floyd Mayweather Jr. if you want to see a fine example of it.
All of this was still messy, informal and dangerous. Sometimes someone would get the idea they were Samson reborn and go in and try to put a hurt as much as possible on their opponent, leading to brutal and quick fight. Some were mad men. Others did not care about future pay days and wanted just to win and get the one pay day they were about to get. It was not fixed. It was real, and doing good business. Just not good enough.
Since the public cared about wins and losses and wanted to see unbeatable men fight, wrestling borrowed a page from the book of boxing: tomato cans. You build up a champion strongman by having him plow through muscled Adonises that look good on a placard but don't know a wristlock from a wristwatch. But this too presented a problem, because anything can happen in a real fight, one slip on the mat, one wrong move, one bad tangle and you end up with a permanently injured strongman you were building up for better thing and are a stuck with a winner who bumbled his way to a victory and whom you can't use in any other real match because nobody could be that lucky twice in a row.
It was only a matter of time until wise men, being good carnival barkers and even better scum of the Earth, hit upon the notion of fixing matches. Not all of them of course. The goal was not to have a paper champion, your lad had to be tough, but some of these tomato cans perhaps. After all, the babyfaced ringer was used before. Now it was used on a grander stage. From there it was only a matter of time until someone said, "Why not fix the big fights as well?" After all, the money to be had from wrestling prior to the 1930s was from two sources: ticket receipts and bets.
The carnies took the show on the road, building up tomato can exhibitions in small towns around the state, to build to a big gate in the biggest town for strongman vs. strongman, with the winner agreed upon beforehand. This way, you build up the tickets sold and fix the fight and know upon whom to place all your bets.
This system continued on and off without a truly major hitch into the 1930s, and wrestling became wholly fixed, but treated as a sport. There were some problems, but by and large they were covered up with money and while here and there disgruntled strongmen with wounded egos over being told to lose or misused by carnival owners who treated them with the same tender care as pimps did to their stables of the ladies of the night. All was hushed up because no one cared. There was too much money at stake. And those who spoke out were minor fish or living in a podunk town and talking nonsense to small papers. The money kept rolling. Attendance figures were smashed, some of them standing well until the 2000s. Some still not broken.
Did people know it was not on the level? Those on the inside, yes. But those on the outside, to a remarkable degree did not. The matches were specifically done to be such as to be realistic. All the men involved at the high level were strongmen with real grappling and fighting skills. Remember, these were thieves banding together to separate a fool from his wallet. They did not trust each other. Each watched out for the double crosses and so they stayed on their toes and made the matches look and feel real. Until one double cross damn near wrecked the whole thing.
The biggest bone of contention, which fueled the double cross which nearly killing pro-wrestling, soon became the notion of having champions. Like it's cousin boxing, wrestling had to have titles because it made folks more excited to know they were seeing a championship fight. That the championship was made up and had a lineage as false as everyone's claim to have Cherokee princess grandmother didn't seem to matter, people wanted champions and they got them. It did not take long for everyone to figure out that the match between a man claiming to be champion of the world and a challenger would draw more money and allow more betting and tickets at the gate than a regular match. So, being good con men, the carnies started calling everyone world champion to drum up more business. At this point, the state athletic commissions intervened feeling you can't have three world champions in a single state under their watches, and so it came to pass that we were down to only one world champion per state. The good folks in Massachusetts ensured there was only one champion there. As did New York. But since there was no Federal commission over sports in the United States, that is about as organized as we got. But it proved embarrassing and so the carny syndicates once more put their heads together and decided there should be only one world champion, or at least one provable one for the papers and the rubes. Enter danger.
Being a world champion meant now a bigger gate of rubes coming to see you and that meant a bigger paycheck since wrestlers were paid a percentage of the house, which mean the strongman cooperating with the champion to make him look good to get a nice return now had a bit incentive to fight for real and really beat the champ and take the belt. For this reason the champions were made the strongest of the strongmen, to ward off danger and prevent unplanned title changes. Except no matter how tough you are, somewhere out there is bound to be tougher.
In the 1930s, Danno O'Mahoney was vowing them at the box office. An Irish lad from Ireland, who was an amateur wrestling champion of the Irish Army (which may or may not be true), he was a nice looking boy the good Irish-Americans loved to come to cheer. He was making everyone money (especially in Boston), and so he got made the champ to make everyone even more money. But word got out, Danno was not a true shooter. He was good at the amateur stuff, but the dirty mat game was not his forte. He could take you down within the confines of Greco-Roman rules, but in the catch-as-catch-can wild style of American wrestling with true submission artists, he was not top shelf. Two nights in a row in February of 1936, two different men tried to shoot on Danno in their matches with him. In New Orleans, he hung on long enough to make the match look realistic to be bailed out by the ref who disqualified his opponent or did a quick-count when Danno managed to get his opponents shoulders to the mat (the record is murky). Next night same thing happened in Houston. Two days later, fearing another double cross in Galveston, Danno hightailed it out of the ring and left town in a huff, with his manager in tow. The word got out. Danno could be had. But to the folks in the crowd it did not look too unusual, Danno either won, or did a disputed finish. And this was Texas, and the big money was back East.
On March 2, 1936, Danno O'Mahoney was booked to fight Dick Shikat in Madison Square Garden. Back East. In the most famous arena in the world. And Shikat was a shooter. He was a runty looking fella and no one's idea of a crowd pleasing champ, or box office gold. But he was a shooter. And, in the middle of MSG, with the eyes of the press of Eastern papers, Shikat took Danno apart, piece by piece and toyed with him the way a cat would toy with a mouse after having a fine meal. The ref could do nothing without making the whole sordid thing look fake, the one cardinal sin of wrestling. After 19 minutes, the ref told Danno to quit, since it was only getting worse and Danno could do nothing and so he did.
Now, Danno was booked to win matches up and down the coast and in any town with more than 10% of the population being Irish-Americans. He was booked strong. He would beat all comers, be they tomato cans or strongman who made him look good. He was a winner and here was made to look like a putz. The papers had questions and it was not Texas. It was New York City. Danno's manager claimed Danno was sick. But Danno's Boston promoter - Bowser (real name) - said Danno collapsed in the ring and that is why Shikat won, disputing eye witness testimony of the many present, including reporters. Then it got worse.
Shikat said he would be fine to drop the belt for $50,000 to anyone in the nation. Bowser refused to pay, but one of the New York wrestling syndicates ponied up the cash. But to stop the whole thing, Bowser (who owned Shikat's contract), booked Shikat without his knowledge in many places and then when Shikat no-showed, had his state athletic license suspended, preventing Shikat from wrestling and therefore dropping the title. Then it got somehow even worse.
To get his license back, Shikat went to court, and that is how the whole thing came to be known, from start to finish, in court testimony between all parties, with the press following everything and absolutely hating on the wrestling promoters for using them to peddle Danno and lying to them for decades.
As a result of wrestling being exposed as fixed, there was almost no pro-wrestling in New York City at an organized level for the next thirty years. One expose nearly killed the business for good and made MSG a ghost town for wrestling until the 1960s. The McMahon family did not run wrestling in MSG in the mean time, they ran boxing in the mean time and their business was centered around Washington, DC and other places south of NYC.
The stink was so bad, that when Gorgeous George became a wrestling draw in Los Angeles thanks to TV after the War and a bona fide star, and he went to MSG to do an event, the local press called it phony Hollywood wrestling (still smarting over the Mahoney thing), said the whole thing was fake and he couldn't draw a crowd.
Wrestling in New York City had to be rehabilitated over the course of three decades, and only recovered thanks to emigre and ethnic newspapers aimed at the crowds who never heard of Danno and were not Irish-Americans and just wanted to see some fights. Bruno Sammartino, the man who sold out MSG more than anyone, did not become a draw in MSG in the '60s until he was a draw in Canada and Pittsburgh, and thanks to the Italian-American fans and papers building him up.
Now, that is the effect of one expose in 1936 over one double cross.
The effect in 1975 would have been devastating to the business. Remember, we are talking about wrestling being on the cusp of being the most profitable content provider to TBS, the first cable super station beaming sights and sounds of the mat game across the nation. Take that away, and you take away the mega boom and with it put a real hurt on wrestling in the south and other places as well.