Professional wrestling is bizarre. People compare the medium to theatre, which is fair because fans flood wrestling halls and arenas every week to watch as grown men and women pretend to fight.
But the theatre comparison fails because everyone knows the people on stage are acting and once the play ends, the mask lifts. The actors become their real selves. Wrestling pretends as though its members are participating in a real sport. It wants you to invest so heavily in every match that you cannot help but cheer or boo when your favourite wrestler wins or loses.
Does anyone remember what happened at Wrestlemania 39? After a series of epic showdowns, Cody Rhodes was set to finally dethrone Roman Reigns, becoming the undisputed WWE champion. WWE had spent months telegraphing Cody’s eventual win. But then he lost, and the fans went crazy. Think about what that means.
They know wrestling is fake. They know the ending is predetermined. And yet, they spent the better part of 2024 crying about Cody’s defeat. Some of them threw outright tantrums on camera. Others threatened to boycott WWE because their investment in this fake product was all-consuming.
Therein lies the magic of professional wrestling. Once you sit down to watch a wrestling match, you cannot help but suspend your disbelief. That part of your brain that knows every move is scripted beforehand, shuts down. This allows the rest of you to fully invest in the outcome of the match.
At its core, ‘Kayfabe’ is designed to maintain that illusion. The term is pig Latin for ‘Be Fake,’ and it refers to a wrestler’s obligation to maintain the mystery of the product. This is where the differences between theatre and wrestling emerge. With wrestling, you don’t know where reality ends and fiction starts.
Think back to Dominic Mysterio’s interview with Logan Paul on the ‘Impaulsive Podcast.’ That was not Dominic the human. That was Dominic the wrestler, making a deliberate effort to answer every question through the lens of the beloved villain persona he normally portrays in the ring.
In times past, wrestlers were expected to protect the reality of wrestling at all times. By that I mean, wrestlers who pretended to hate each other in the ring had to maintain that energy in the real world.
They were prohibited from dropping their guard and being friendly towards one another out in public because doing so would ruin the illusion they had created in the ring. Audiences would have a difficult time buying into their supposed hostility towards one another in a grudge match when they had seen those same wrestlers sharing a milkshake at a restaurant.
The rules have relaxed significantly since those early days. Today, everyone knows that wrestling is fake. Most wrestlers make regular appearances on mainstream platforms where they endeavor to separate their real and professional personalities.
That said, even with all the daily wrestling podcasts that routinely unravel the mysteries of this industry, an air of KayFabe persists. The average consumer does not know how the sausage is made, which is why some industry experts have rebuked WWE for making WWE: Unreal.
The five-episode Netflix documentary aired a few days ago, and it takes viewers behind the scenes, showing them how storylines are plotted, how matches are choreographed, how producers direct events in the ring in real-time, etc.
Critics of the documentary think that WWE is essentially ruining the magic of wrestling. By revealing the industry’s secrets, the company is breaking audience immersion. However, others have argued that showing viewers the intricacies of an average wrestling show will make new fans out of skeptics who typically dismiss wrestling as clown work. Only time will tell whether either of these parties is correct.
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