Then, in 2012, Lesnar returned to the W.W.E.: a real, proven fighter back in the world of the unreal fight. Lesnar announced (threatened?) that he had come back to bring some ‘‘legitimacy’’ to the exercise, creating an electric uncertainty among the fans in the arena: Where was he going with this? How far could he stretch the already considerable suspension of disbelief wrestling requires of its audience? But rather than cracking the whole enterprise apart, Lesnar has become one of wrestling’s biggest draws, a performer whose every appearance is a must-see event.

Lesnar’s entire persona is based around the implied threat that he might collide the real with the scripted, demolishing the only constant in the pro wrestling universe: that the violence is fake. While some wrestlers have abused that tacit understanding between performer and audience, whiffing open-fisted punches, leaving too much daylight in their headlocks, Lesnar exudes danger in the ring. His jabs and hooks look for all the world as if they’re landing, hard. His holds and reversals have an Olympian fluidity. Of course, Lesnar would never actually attempt to injure another performer. He’s a skilled stage fighter, whose style harks back to wrestling’s carnival roots, when the matches were a con rather than a show and verisimilitude was a business necessity. In this sense, Lesnar’s appeal lies in his skill not just as a fighter, but also as an actor — in his ability to hoodwink even the most jaded audience in sports.

At last year’s WrestleMania, Lesnar faced the Undertaker, an unassailable veteran who hadn’t lost a match at the event in 21 appearances — his unbeaten streak was the centerpiece of the annual megashow. The question for fans was never if he would win, but how. His matches had become a comforting ritual, a chance to cheer on a living legend. But then he stood face to face with Lesnar, who, 25 minutes later, pinned him in the center of the ring. In the stands, grown men and women held their heads or covered their mouths in disbelief. Images of the stunned fans’ responses went viral. Online, people seemed to think these rubes didn’t understand they’d just seen a scripted event. Of course they did, but that didn’t make the match’s finish any less shocking — once again, Lesnar had blown up wrestling’s narrative rules.

Lesnar’s performances give audiences that naïve but unusual pleasure of not always knowing the difference between the real and the fake, replenishing their capacity to be fooled, shocked, even — yes — conned. Like Houdini, he’s a magician who tells his audience there’s nothing supernatural involved in what he does, but still wraps his body in padlocked chains and throws himself into the Charles River. No matter how much we know, or think we know, about a coming show, when Lesnar appears on camera, he brings with him the most precious of commodities in our spoiler-filled culture — the spectacular possibility of real surprise.