Kayfabe[a] is the portrayal of staged elements withinprofessional wrestling (such ascharacters,rivalries, andstorylines) as legitimate or real. Although it remains primarily a wrestling term, it has evolved into a code word for maintaining the pretense of "reality" in front of an audience.[1]
Kayfabe is often described as thesuspension 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 actorbreaking character. Since wrestling is performed in front of a live audience whose interaction with the show itself is crucial to its success, kayfabe can be compared to thefourth wall in acting, as little to no conventional fourth wall exists in wrestling to begin with.
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 thesports 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 is even broken during shows on occasion, usually when paying tribute to deceased and retired wrestlers or when a serious injury genuinely occurs during a match.
Kayfabe is a shorthand term that involves acknowledging the staged, scripted nature ofprofessional wrestling, as opposed to a competitive sport, despite being presented as authentic. Initially, people "in the business" (either wrestlers or those working behind the scenes) used the termkayfabe as a code among those in the wrestling profession, discussing matters in public without revealing the scripted nature.[2] 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. In contrast, something that is not kayfabe, be it a fight or a statement, is referred to as a "shoot".[2]
I remember the guy who would bring our jackets back to the dressing room. Every time he did, someone would yell "Kayfabe." ... Then one night, the guy decided to stand up for himself and told the whole dressing room: "I don't mind the yelling, but I want to let you know that my name is not Kayfabe. It's Mark." ... What he didn't know is that wrestlers called people outside of the business "marks"—that's why we were yelling kayfabe in the first place.
— Pat Patterson, describing his interaction with a ring attendant in thePacific Northwest Wrestling territory during the early 1960s.[3]
The termkayfabe was often used as a warning to other wrestlers that someone who was not "in the know" was in the vicinity. This could include wrestlers' family members who had not been clued into the scripted nature of professional wrestling.[3] An example of kayfabe being kept even from family members was illustrated in an article describing how in the 1970s, the wife of James Harris (known under thering nameKamala) was celebrating that her husband had just won a $5,000 prize (equivalent to $29,000 in 2024) as he won abattle royal, not realizing that the prize money was simply a storyline or kayfabe.[4]
The termkayfabe itself can be used in a variety of contexts, as an adjective, for instance, when referring to a "kayfabe interview", where the person being interviewed remains "in character", or when describing someone as a "kayfabe girlfriend", implying that she is playing a role, but is not actually romantically involved with that particular person.[2] A person can also be said to be "kayfabing" someone, by presenting storylines and rivalries as real.[2]
According to theOxford English Dictionary, the earliest known written evidence of the word "kayfabe" is from theWrestling Observer Newsletter Yearbook for 1988, although the term is believed to be much older. Though the origin is not known with certainty, varied sources offer some possibilities.[citation needed]
According to theMerriam-Webster Dictionary kayfabe could also becarny-speak for "be fake" which is supported byChael Sonnen, or the phrase could be theLatincavēre for "to keep cave" which is slang for "to keep care" or "beware" and also the origin for the French termqui vive to be vigilant before battle.[5][6] The phrase "keep cavey" was also used by Jews inEast London betweenWorld War I andWorld War II which could have been corrupted to the current form by US promoters and wrestlers at that time.[2]
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. In 1934 a show held atWrigley Field in Chicago billed one of the matches as "the last great shooting match", subtly disclosing that the other matches were kayfabe (in reality, even the "shooting" match was scripted).[2] The amendments to theCommunications Act of 1934, passed following thequiz show scandals in 1960, prohibited the televising of scripted contests but specifically only prohibited the rigging of games of chance orintellectual skill or knowledge, and thus rigged athletic competitions were still arguably legal to televise.[7]
Although the scripted nature of professional wrestling was anopen 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 arrestedThe Iron Sheik andHacksaw Jim Duggan, supposed rivals in an upcoming match atMadison Square Garden, together in a car drinking and carryingcocaine.[8] The first public acknowledgment by a major insider of the staged nature of professional wrestling came in 1989 whenWorld Wrestling Federation ownerVince McMahon testified before theNew Jersey State Senate that wrestling was not a competitive sport. The admission on McMahon's part was to avoid interference from state athletic commissions and to avoid paying the taxation some states placed on income from athletic events held in that state, as well as to avoid the need to meet the requirement of having to employ medical professionals standing by, as was generally mandatory for legitimatecontact sports involving substantial possibility of injury.[9] The era of professional wrestling since then has been described byAbraham Josephine Riesman as "neokayfabe", in which storylines can become real life and vice versa, thus blurring the distinction between fact and fiction and giving the audience complicity in creating the spectacle.[10]
There are two broad categories of wrestler characters:faces andheels.
Faces, short for "babyfaces", arehero-type characters whose personalities are crafted to elicit the support of the audience through traits such ashumility,patriotism, a hard-working nature, determination, and reciprocal love of the crowd. Faces usually win their matches on the basis of their technical skills and are sometimes portrayed asunderdogs to enhance the story.[citation needed]
Heels are villainous orantagonistic characters, whose personalities are crafted to elicit a negative response from the audience. They often embrace traditionally negative traits such asnarcissism,egomania, unprompted rage,sadism, and general bitterness. Though not as prevalent today, xenophobic ethnic and racial stereotypes, in particular, those inspired by theAxis powers of World War II and Communist countries during theCold War era, were commonly used in North American wrestling as heel-defining traits. Another angle of a heel could be approached from a position of authority; examples includeBig Boss Man, a corrections officer;Mike Rotunda as Irwin R. Schyster, a federal tax collector;Jacques Rougeau wearingRCMP-inspired dress as The Mountie; andGlenn Jacobs (who would later become famous asKane) as Isaac Yankem, adentist. Heels can also be other characters held in low esteem by the public such as arepossession agent (a role played byBarry Darsow as Repo Man). Heels typically inspireboos from the audience and often employ underhanded tactics, such as cheating and exploiting technicalities in their fighting strategies, or using overly aggressive styles to cause (the perception of) excess pain or injury to their opponents.[citation needed]
A wrestler may change from face to heel (or vice versa) in an event known as aturn, or gradually transition from one to the other over the course of a long storyline. Wrestlers likeAndré the Giant,Roddy Piper,Hulk Hogan, and "Macho Man"Randy Savage could work across the entire spectrum and often gain new fans as a result of each "turn".[citation needed]
Matches are usually organized between a heel and a face, but the distinction between the two types may 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 term "tweener", reflecting the rise in popular culture of the concept of theantihero; 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 e.g. only fighting obvious heel characters, criticizing authority figures. Particularly successful tweeners can find over time that they are enthusiastically adopted as "faces" by the audience without changing their tweener or antihero characterization e.g.Stone Cold Steve Austin andShawn Michaels.[citation needed]
Despite the wrestlers' character settings, the crowd may not react accordingly. This may 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. A strong audience reaction against the original push of a character can occasionally lead to booking a "turn" where the character begins to act in line with the audience's reaction; this can help reset a character with an audience, as occurred when the audience widely rejected a traditional "face" character, Rocky Maivia, who transitioned the character with huge success to a "heel" asThe Rock.[citation needed]
The divide can also be separated by fan demographics: where older male fans may tend to cheer for heels and boo the faces, kids and female fans may cheer for faces and boo the heels, as it happened with wrestlers likeJohn Cena andRoman Reigns.[11][12]
Kayfabe, while not referred to as such, has existed in other areas of show business, especially in feuds. For instance, the feuds between comediansJack Benny andFred Allen, and comedian/actorBob Hope and singer/actorBing 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 thesatirical feud between talk show hostJimmy Kimmel and actorMatt Damon, which has been arunning joke onJimmy Kimmel Live! for many years and was even referenced when Kimmel hosted the89th Academy Awards. Other examples of kayfabe rivalries include that betweenDwayne Johnson andKevin Hart,[13] and that ofHugh Jackman andRyan Reynolds.[14]
It has long been claimed that kayfabe has been used in American politics, especially in election campaigns, Congress, and the White House. In interviews asGovernor of Minnesota, former wrestlerJesse Ventura often likened Washington to wrestling when he said that politicians "pretend to hate each other in public, then go out to dinner together".[citation needed] In 2023, Abraham Josephine Riesman's bookRingmaster: Vince McMahon and the Unmaking of America argued that strategies of theRepublican party closest toDonald Trump can be explained by kayfabe.[10][15]
An example of kayfabe being broken outside of professional wrestling was in 2004, during theI Love Bees alternative reality game used to promoteHalo 2, when one of the calltakers who voiced the AI that had hacked the website in the game's storyline broke character to tell a caller to run to safety since he was in the middle ofHurricane Ivan.[16]
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-2000sThe 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.[17]). A mystery-themed competition series from 2001,Murder in Small Town X saw contestants roaming around a real-life town in Maine as part of an ongoing storyline, interacting with actors who maintained kayfabe throughout.[citation needed]
Writing forWired, Cecilia D'Anastasio describesVTubing as "digitalkayfabe".Brennan Williams, who wrestled under WWE as Mace at the time of the interview, and who also streams as the VTuber JiBo, opined that wrestling personas and VTuber avatars are "literally the same thing".[18]
The fictional conglomerate Vought International from theAmazon Prime TV seriesThe Boys appears on several social media platforms, posting in-universe content as newscasters from the show. Like the show, the accounts parody current political and cultural events, such as U.S. PresidentDonald Trump's McDonald's visit in Pennsylvania, the Spotify viral marketing campaignSpotify Wrapped and theSuper Bowl.[19] Many comments on Vought International posts are from fans of the show participating in kayfabe, posting about the main characters as if they themselves are civilians in the show.[20]
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.[21] Wrestlers can only react by shooting on them, either as scripted or as an improvisation. AtWrestleMania 34, a 10-year-old boy named "Nicholas" was hand-picked byBraun Strowman as his tag-team partner for the WWE Tag Team title match. Strowman and Nicholas won the Tag-Team title, but it was later revealed that Nicholas is the son of the match referee,John Cone.[22]
The dictionary definition ofkayfabe at Wiktionary
