Professional wrestling, a unique blend of athleticism and theatrical performance, has captivated audiences for decades. At the heart of this spectacle lies a concept known as "kayfabe."
What is Kayfabe?
Kayfabe is the portrayal of staged elements within professional wrestling (such as characters, rivalries, and storylines) as legitimate or real. It is a shorthand term that involves acknowledging the staged, scripted nature of professional wrestling, as opposed to a competitive sport, despite being presented as authentic.
Kayfabe is often described as the suspension of disbelief essential to creating and maintaining the non-wrestling aspects of the industry, similar to other fictional entertainment; a wrestler breaking kayfabe is analogous to an actor breaking character.
Initially, people "in the business" (either wrestlers or those working behind the scenes) used the term kayfabe as a code among those in the wrestling profession, discussing matters in public without revealing the scripted nature.
As a concept, kayfabe involves both the fact that matches are scripted and that wrestlers portray characters for their shows. Unlike actors who portray their characters only when on set or on stage, professional wrestlers often stay "in character" outside the shows, especially when interacting with fans, trying to preserve the illusion of professional wrestling.
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The term kayfabe was often used as a warning to other wrestlers that someone who was not "in the know" was in the vicinity.
Kayfabe was fiercely maintained for decades with the intent to deceive fans, and the lack of a conventional fourth wall often led to wrestlers being expected to maintain their characters even when living their everyday lives. With the advent of the Internet and the sports entertainment movement, the wrestling industry has become less concerned with protecting its secrets and typically maintains kayfabe only during live events and the filming of television shows.
Kayfabe: The Secret Code
The Evolution of Wrestling and Kayfabe
Professional wrestling has been staged from the time it was a sideshow attraction; the scripted nature of the performances has been hinted at over time. Although the scripted nature of professional wrestling was an open secret, it was not generally acknowledged by people in the business. Often wrestlers and promoters would make sure that on-screen rivals were not seen eating or traveling together between shows and so on.
There were a few occasional mistakes at the time, such as an incident in 1987 in which police arrested The Iron Sheik and Hacksaw Jim Duggan, supposed rivals in an upcoming match at Madison Square Garden, together in a car drinking and carrying cocaine.
The first public acknowledgment by a major insider of the staged nature of professional wrestling came in 1989 when World Wrestling Federation owner Vince McMahon testified before the New Jersey State Senate that wrestling was not a competitive sport.
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Coinciding with the American Civil War, three styles of wrestling became dominant and proved important to the formation of modern pro wrestling.
- Irish Collar and Elbow wrestling starts in a hold position where opponents grappled the collar and elbow.
- Greco-Roman favored larger physiques with a higher center of gravity.
- Catch-as-Catch-Can Wrestling, better known as Catch Wrestling had roots in Lancashire wrestling in England.
Important to the story of the evolution of wrestling from legitimate matches to fixed ones is where people commonly wrestled: namely, mostly in one of two places: in the city inside bars and theaters, and in the country as part of touring carnivals.
On this note, if you want to trace when wrestling started becoming “fake” the best place to start is the carnival.
Starting in the 1920’s, promoters took control of the industry by controlling the booking of wrestlers and champions. Most noteworthy to the topic at hand, they took the idea of hippodroming and elevated it on a national level.
By controlling the bookings of champions, they controlled the titles and kept them in territories they controlled as part of a trust. Rivals within the trust usually schemed to take control of the whole trust or break it completely.
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With the worked era, the concept of “heel” and “babyface” were also introduced to clearly show audiences who they were supposed to boo and who they were supposed to cheer.
With TV, announcers were brought in to walk the audiences through the match and contribute to the story telling and spectacle.
Faces, Heels, and Tweener
In wrestling, characters are broadly divided into two categories: faces and heels.
- Faces, short for "babyfaces", are hero-type characters whose personalities are crafted to elicit the support of the audience through traits such as humility, patriotism, a hard-working nature, determination, and reciprocal love of the crowd.
- Heels are villainous or antagonistic characters, whose personalities are crafted to elicit a negative response from the audience. They often embrace traditionally negative traits such as narcissism, egomania, unprompted rage, sadism, and general bitterness.
Another angle of a heel could be approached from a position of authority, such as: Big Boss Man, a corrections officer; Mike Rotunda as Irwin R. Schyster, a federal tax collector; Jacques Rougeau wearing RCMP-inspired dress as The Mountie; and Glenn Jacobs (who would later become famous as Kane) as Isaac Yankem, a dentist. Heels can also be other characters held in low esteem by the public, such as a repossession agent (a role played by Barry Darsow as Repo Man).
A wrestler can change from face to heel (or vice versa) in an event known as a turn, or gradually transition from one to the other over the course of a long storyline.
Matches are usually organized between a heel and a face, but the distinction between the two types can be blurred as a given character's storyline reaches a peak or becomes more complicated. In recent years, several wrestlers became characters that were neither faces nor heels, but somewhere in between (or alternating between both), earning them the designation "tweener", reflecting the rise in popular culture of the concept of the antihero; such characters often display the underhand tactics and aggression of a traditional heel, but do so in ways sympathetic to the audience, or within the confines of some internal code, such as only fighting obvious heel characters, criticizing authority figures.
Despite the wrestlers' character settings, the crowd may not react accordingly. This can be due to booking issues or a particular crowd's tendency to react positively to heels, and negatively (or at least in an indifferent manner) to faces.
Kayfabe Beyond Wrestling
Kayfabe, while not referred to as such, has existed in other areas of show business, especially in feuds. For instance, the feuds between comedians Jack Benny and Fred Allen, and comedian/actor Bob Hope and singer/actor Bing Crosby were totally fake; in real life, Benny and Allen were best friends while Hope and Crosby were also close friends. A more recent example is the satirical feud between talk show host Jimmy Kimmel and actor Matt Damon, which has been a running joke on Jimmy Kimmel Live! for many years and was even referenced when Kimmel hosted the 89th Academy Awards.
It has long been claimed that kayfabe has been used in American politics, especially in election campaigns, Congress, and the White House.
Kayfabe concepts have also been incorporated into competition TV series in which contestants interact with paid actors who remain in character throughout. In the case of the late-2000s The Joe Schmo Show, the basic premise was the contestants were unaware they were surrounded by actors (with the actors intentionally breaking kayfabe at the conclusion and, sometimes, unintentionally during production.
Writing for Wired, Cecilia D'Anastasio describes VTubing as "digital kayfabe".
The fictional conglomerate Vought International from the Amazon Prime TV series The Boys appears on several social media platforms, posting in-universe content as newscasters from the show.
Examples of Kayfabe
In the WWE Universe era, the crowd also can be spontaneously used, mostly as a heel, either to distract promo, build more heat to heels, or used to distract referees on their count-outs to force a result, even when they have no physical power or rights to fight the wrestlers. Wrestlers can only react by shooting on them, either as scripted or as an improvisation.
At WrestleMania 34, a 10-year-old boy named "Nicholas" was hand-picked by Braun Strowman as his tag-team partner for the WWE Tag Team title match.
Exposed! Pro Wrestling's Greatest Secrets is a 1998 television special about professional wrestling. It was first aired on NBC television on November 1, 1998, and released on VHS on September 22, 1999. The stars of Exposed! Pro Wrestling's Greatest Secrets are eight real-life professional wrestlers who wear masks and work under pseudonyms to conceal their true identities. The reason given is that, by explaining wrestling's secrets (known as "breaking kayfabe" within the industry), their livelihood was at risk.
One former participant, Michael Modest, claimed that the wrestlers had been initially misled into the nature of the show, and only discovered the true nature once they had signed their contracts.
A review published by the Canadian Online Explorer was heavily critical of the special and wrote that it revealed nothing that fans didn't already know and that wrestling crowds willingly suspend disbelief.
The Enduring Appeal
All of this has led to the carnival and turn of the century origins of the sport being felt to this day, as men, and now women, play larger than life characters meant to entertain as they pretend to battle in the ring. While compared to many other professional sports where such rampant outcome fixing would likely kill the leagues, in this case, all the way back to the beginning of these fixed matches, nobody seems to care and simply enjoy being entertained and watching the outcomes of the stories the promoters and athletes come up with.
Is professional wrestling fake or real? It’s fake enough that wrestlers rehearse moves before matches. It’s real enough that they get hurt, sometimes seriously.
Here's a table summarizing the key aspects of kayfabe in professional wrestling:
| Aspect | Description |
|---|---|
| Definition | The portrayal of staged elements as legitimate or real. |
| Purpose | To maintain the illusion of a competitive sport and entertain the audience. |
| Characters | Faces (heroes) and Heels (villains) who engage in scripted rivalries. |
| Evolution | From a closely guarded secret to a more openly acknowledged aspect of the industry. |
| Beyond Wrestling | Found in other forms of entertainment and even politics. |