Wrestling for Non-Fans: Kayfabe Broken

Twenty-five years ago, the WWE did the unthinkable:  They admitted that wrestling was fake. Well, they didn't use that word--the proper term is pre-determined.

One could make the argument that the characters of the 80s had finally broken credulity, with Elvis impersonators and Ugandan giants and warriors in made-up face paint. How much longer could they pretend that these were real people who were out in the world when not settling scores in the squared circle?

But the real reason was more practical:  The WWE was tired of paying athletic commission fees. The status quo involved a lot of cutting red tape and cutting checks, all to maintain an illusion that no one over thirteen believed.

It's called the end of the kayfabe era. Kayfabe is carny-talk for "fake." Before the WWE made its announcement, fans were led to believe that the wrestlers were their characters and their feuds were real. When a performer was injured in a storyline, he wore a cast in his daily life, too.

The consolidation of the news media made it harder and harder to maintain the facade. In the 70s, a plane carrying future superstar Ric Flair crashed, carrying a mix of heels (bad guys) and babyfaces (good guys). In the interest of keeping kayfabe, the heels were listed under their real names rather than their wrestling handles. Closer to the reveal, the Iron Sheik and Jim Duggan, who were engaged in a feud at the time, were arrested together on marijuana charges--this peek behind the curtain was better publicized.

It was only a matter of time before kayfabe was shattered on its own, so the WWE decided to get ahead of the curve, leaving rival promotions gasping in horror and surprise. For a time, the rivals tried to pretend that, yeah, WWE wrestling was fake, but we're the real deal.

It didn't last because their gimmicks were just as ridiculous as the WWE's. More interesting is how they tried to handle the expanded palette they were given, like this pathetic mini-movie setting up a feud:

But it was only a matter of time before the dynamics came together. The following are three stories from the worked-shoot era, in which real events (shoots) are turned into in-ring gimmicks (works).

Brian Pillman

As always, the story behind Pillman's double-cross/brilliant maneuver is full of speculation and rumor. But the general story is this:  Pillman, knowing his injuries were coming faster and more debilitating, knew that his days in wrestling were coming to an end, before he'd gotten a big payday. He concocted a scheme developed somewhat in conjunction with booker (head writer, of a sort) Kevin Sullivan at WCW.

Pillman started behaving erratically, both on-screen and in the locker room. He developed a reputation as a "loose cannon," making both fans and his own co-workers unsure of his motivations. In the most famous incident, he and Sullivan were engaged in a storyline feud that was to be settled in a strap match. The two wrestlers were to be attached to the same strap, so that they were always close, and battle until one gave up by professing "I respect you."

Before the match could even begin, Pillman flew into the ring and began beating Sullivan. When others intervened and Pillman could finally take hold of the strap, he grabbed the microphone and said, "I respect you, bookerman," and walked out of the building.

Everyone was confused. Had Pillman just bombed the storyline and ruined the match? The fans--more importantly, the other wrestlers--didn't know what was going on. Had Pillman gone off the deep end?

Sullivan was excited by the prospect of fooling even wrestling insiders, as we'll see, so he encouraged Pillman's act. But Pillman had a plan. He convinced WCW that, if they wanted the work to look real, they should release him from his contract, citing his erratic behavior.

They agreed and Pillman promptly took his high profile to WWE, where he signed a fat contract and entered wrestling history.

Kevin Sullivan's Love Triangle

This one would have been funny if it didn't eventually end in tragedy.

Kevin Sullivan, it's said, was amazed at the success Brian Pillman had pulling a work over the locker room. He wanted to do it himself, so he booked an angle in which young wrestler Chris Benoit was having an affair with Sullivan's wife Nancy, known as Woman.

Sullivan wanted the locker room to believe in the affair so much that he began scheduling Nancy and Benoit to travel and room together on the road. After a while, the inevitable happened:  the staged affair became real. Nancy and Sullivan split up and the locker room joked that Sullivan had "booked his own divorce."

As you might have figured out, though, it was Nancy who Benoit murdered, along with their son, nearly a decade ago.

Mr. McMahon

The "Montreal Screwjob" is a subject for another day (and covered in the film Wrestling With Shadows) but here it is in a nutshell:  Long-time top WWE wrestler Bret "The Hitman" Hart was leaving for WCW. However, he was holding the championship belt as his contract expired. Vince McMahon wanted Hart to drop the belt at a pay-per-view event in Montreal. The problem was, Hart was a Canadian hero--he refused to lose the match in his home country. He offered to give up the championship the next night on television but that didn't fit in with McMahon's plans.

What happened next is wrestling's version of the Kennedy assassination but the facts are that Hart and contender Shawn Michaels went through their routine. At one point Michaels had Hart in a submission hold. McMahon ran out to the ring and demanded that the bell ending the match be rung, effectively saying that Hart had submitted and lost the match. There's no denying that all the players, referee Earl Hebner included, looked confused and upset. It appeared that Hart had the belt stolen from him.

There was an uproar among the wrestlers and the fans so the next night, McMahon appeared on the Monday night show to address their concerns. Hart had gotten so upset backstage that he punched McMahon and a black eye was visible as the promoter announced that he hadn't double-crossed Bret, "Bret screwed Bret."

McMahon's previous appearances on-screen were as an announcer, not the owner. Having earned the animosity of the fans, McMahon now had heel heat--fans were willing to pay good money to see his face rubbed in the dirt.

McMahon was now a character, Mr. McMahon, an evil billionaire who loved to toy with his wrestlers, torturing them, making them kiss his ass (literally) and yelling, "You're fi-ired!" He became a big enough heel to launch one of wrestling's greatest stars, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin. It was the beginning of the WWE's most successful epoch, the "Attitude Era."