What Is Kayfabe?

[DCAllAmerican]

I have ALWAYS wanted to know, but I never figured it out on my own

[Dan Poutsma]

The term kayfabe refers to the perception of wrestling as "real" sport. It's not like in TV or in the movies where an actor plays a character, but when they're out on the street they're themselves. Kayfabe means a wrestler is in character 24 hrs day, 365 days a year. If your charater is so and so, you have to play that role all the time to preserve the image of wrestling being legit, meaning you don't socialize in public with other wrestlers who are on the opposite end of the spectrum (i.e. if babyfaces don't get along with heels on the show, so why should they get along anywhere else?), you never reveal that the outcomes are predetermined, that you produce blood by using a razor blade, or do anything that would expose the business as being "fake". I'm far from an expert on wrestling in Japan so I don't know how it is over there, but kayfabe is dead in the United States and has been for a long time. Over here, everybody knows that it's strictly entertainment and there's no longer an attempt to hide it.

[Tradewynd]

It gets applied in other ways too. It can be a verb, so if you're "kayfabing" someone then they're not telling them the whole shootin' truth. It is sometimes (not as much by fans) used to describe the era before Vince broke kayfabe. Cornette cites breaking kayfabe as the reason for the business going down. However, both the 80s boom and the 98-00 boom, which were the biggest booms the business ever had in America, came after breaking kayfabe. Furthermore, people still bought into Hogan, Rock and Austin as mega stars knowing that wrestling was "fake." Personally, I don't buy into the argument that breaking kayfabe hurt the business at all, since I loved wrestling a lot more after I learned the business side of it.

In Japan people know that wrestling is a work, but the media tends to treat it as though it were a "real" sport. Many periodicals have one section dedicated to puroresu, boxing and MMA and treat wrestling as being just as legit as the other two. The weekly magazines treat wrestling as though it were real. Japan has an online smart mark community as well, which treats wrestling as being about as real as it is from what I understand.

[HORRORSHOW]

You mean....wrestling's...a work!?!? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

[Rizzob]

No Way!!! Its Gotta Be Real!!!!

[MARTYEWR]

It's real in Mexico. Just ask Homer Simpson.