T w e n t y S i d e d
Depending on when and where you grew up professional wrestling had some impact on your life, it just depends how much. The “sport” has grown and shrunken in popularity several times over the years due to many reasons that I’m not smart enough to properly speculate on. Wrestling has affected politics in Japan and Mexico. Wrestling has affected legislation of law regarding workers’ rights, steroid use, and many other avenues of import. Wrestling has launched careers in other industries such as music and acting. And unfortunately, wrestling has graced this world with some of the least tolerable human beings alive reaching the pinnacle of success and wealth. It gives and it takes. However there’s one thing that you may or may not be aware of that the wrestling industry has brought to us. Those goof-asses in tights have graced us with lots of lingo that you may or may not be using effectively. Well, today I’m going to enrich your vocabulary.
The two biggest and most important terms that everyone should know are “heel” and “face.” A “heel” is a villain. A heel will say and do anything to win and thinks he’s above everyone he encounters. A heel is arrogant, mean, and basically evil. However a heel can still be fun and interesting. He just cannot be the good guy or the one you want to root for.
On the other side of the spectrum there’s the “face.” The term “face” is derived from the word “babyface.” Babyface referring to the clean-cut white bread hero that faces off against the villain. Over the years the definition has shifted to anyone who is seen as the good guy. Sometimes that “good guy” is a prick with a heart of gold. Think of Stone Cold Steve Austin back in the day. He yelled in your face, chugged beers in the ring by dumping ¾ of the can all over his face, and flipped everyone off. He is and was awesome but hardly what most would typically call a heroic character. Basically “face” now refers to anyone who is meant to draw cheers from the crowd.
Now what practical use do those words have? Honestly the most useful application of them is in conjunction with another term that doesn’t necessarily have its origin in wrestling but has heavy usage in the wrestling business. The “turn.” A heel turn or face turn is defined by an action that announces the change in a person’s moral alignment. An obvious and accessible example of a solid face turn is Darth Vader at the end of the original “Star Wars” saga. He made a face turn and saved his son, thereby saving the galaxy as well. Now, there were factors leading up to that decision but the turn is the decisive action that brings the character’s new morals into view. He didn’t have long left to live but he spent his last minutes protecting his son and spending time with him.
Sticking with the same character, you could see most of Anakin Skywalker’s actions leading up to the crescendo of the final prequel movie as justifiable. Violent and at times murderous, but still justifiable as the actions of an antihero who has strayed from the path a bit. When he sealed the fate of Mace Windu during Windu’s fight with Palpatine, that was the heel turn. He showed his loyalty and the path ahead of him that he had decided. We were given no doubt that he had now taken the final steps towards his transformation into Darth Vader. It was over for him.
Another big one is the “push.” Pushing a character is showing them in the best way possible to try to gain appeal for that character. Pushes can be obvious and obnoxious if done poorly, but if done properly it can accelerate a character’s development into a star or the face of a franchise without wasting time. Pushes can happen for any character, too, not just babyfaces. The Night King in “Game of Thrones” was pushed for several seasons. He appeared in very scary scenes of the tactical dismantling of the armies of man showing his cunning and power. Before we even saw him personally take any actions you got the feeling that he was a very smart and very scary guy. We won’t get into what happened after all that finely crafted foreboding push. Also, if you know anything about American football you’ll have experienced the Kelce brothers and the Chiefs being pushed down our throats last year. And I’d say since nobody can stomach them anymore, it was a push gone very very wrong.
And last but certainly not least, my absolute favorite: the “burial.” Burying a character is the process of actively making a character look like a joke. Not strong, not cool, not fun. Just a waste of space. Burials can come from multiple sources as well. In the wrestling world burials can come from many angles. The guys in charge can bury talent that they don’t like or want to go away. Wrestlers can bury each other for personal differences or professional jealousy. Famously Hulk Hogan absolutely buried anyone and everyone if it meant that he might get a little bit ahead. But it definitely applies to other media.
Team Rocket in the Pokemon show and movies are constantly treated as a joke. Any time it looks like they may be an actual threat it isn’t long before they get put back in their place as a group of silly clown characters there to be slapped around. In most TV shows and movie franchises, though, it tends to just look like a character literally getting killed off. Like Susan, George’s wife, in “Seinfeld.” They didn’t like writing for her so they just decided it’d be easier to kill her. So they did. Another sitcom burial happened in the show “Roseanne” for similar reasons. Roseanne Barr said some… things on Twitter and it was made clear to the show runners that it wasn’t going to work out with her. Thus the decision was made to axe her character off-screen and change the name of the series to “The Conners.”
There’s more wrestling terms out there that have some decent usage outside of the wrestling industry, but those are the most important and foundational if you ask me. I personally love the ridiculous pageantry of wrestling, though I don’t watch hardly any nowadays. But you really don’t need to have any love for the industry to understand and use the language that comes from it. If you enjoyed this I’d be happy to write a sequel article. And if you didn’t enjoy this you likely won’t enjoy the sequel article I write just to spite you.
Now go enrich yourselves and watch the “Cream of the Crop” promo by Macho Man Randy Savage on YouTube. It’s fun. It’s dumb. It’s great.
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I used to watch wrestling as a little kid and was completely enchanted by it. Then in my early teens I found out everything was scripted and I lost all desire to watch further. :P
Honestly I enjoy it as a cheesy action show mixed with high levels of athleticism. I have a hard time enjoying the weekly shows but I catch the odd PPV here and there with my dad for some fun. Also wrestlers that are good at talking can give you excellent one-liners as jokes or even a cool phrase to slip into a D&D campaign. I’ve thrown around “I’m 6ft of corded steel and sex appeal,” at times. It usually gets a good chuckle.
You are talking like any of this is up to the wrestlers themselves and anything that happens in the ring is anything other than scripted and practiced.
This is (to put it mildly) not the case.
Especially something like “burial”. Someone gets buried or there’s a turn, because there was a negotiation beforehand. Maybe the negotiation was “We think Hogan beating you will end with us getting more money, so you go in that ring and you get beaten”, but it’s *never* *real*, it’s acting.
That generally also applies to what they say and do outside the ring. Or eventually their character gets buried.
Unpleasant individuals? You mean unpleasant characters, which they act as.
Sometimes the person becomes the character, so that can bleed over. But you don’t think of the actors playing Darth Vader as being unpleasant individuals, so why wrestlers?
No reasonable human being thinks wrestling isn’t scripted. It’s basically a soap opera stapled to an action show. Heels are just characters played by normal people. At no point in my article did I imply any different. I apologize if I wasn’t clear but I do know what I’m talking about regarding wrestling. I’ve been a fan most of my life.
And as far as burials go, they aren’t just making a character lose a match. A burial is done by creative or by individual wrestlers to ruin someone’s character and sometimes career. Not everything in wrestling is scripted and that includes promos. So sometimes wrestlers take it upon themselves to jab at other people in the industry they don’t like. Hulk Hogan was infamous in the industry for refusing to put over younger guys and talent he deemed inferior to himself. He had creative control built into his contracts so he had freedom to do it too.
Edit: Sorry if this comes off confrontational. It’s not meant to be. I’ve just had this conversation a lot.
I really think you need to read the post more carefully. Ethan clearly understands that what happens in the ring is fiction. But that doesn’t mean that e.g. Hulk Hogan didn’t really aggressively “bury” people — for example, it can mean that he used his popularity and clout as a tool in the “negotiations” that led to the actual act on stage. Your objection here makes no more sense than if you argued that Susan in Seinfeld wasn’t actually killed off because her actor is still alive.
I’m also not sure why you’re harping on the phrase “unpleasant individuals,” which doesn’t appear anywhere in the post. But again: it’s very clear that Ethan is fully aware of the distinction between the characters and the real people, and is simply pointing out that the money and fame of pro wrestling gave a lot of money, fame, and power to “some of the least tolerable human beings alive.”
And let’s be frank: this is plainly true to any objective observer. The pro-wrestling world has its share of murderers, domestic abusers, and sex offenders, including multiple pedophiles. It also, by all reports, has more than its share of bullies and a-holes backstage. So, again… the problem here isn’t what Ethan said, but the fact that you need to read more carefully and think a little harder before commenting.
Hope that cleared things up!
The original post said “some of the least tolerable human beings alive”. I assume that “unpleasant individuals” would cover that, though I was more understated than people seem to want to be these days.
I was more referring to public menaces like Hulk Hogan, Jimmy Snuka, Logan Paul, Vince McMahon himself, and other literal criminals. I’d say, much like everywhere else in life, most people are kind and doing their best to be a good person. There’s always a few assholes to try to ruin it but you can’t judge things based on that.
If I wasn’t clear on that I apologize.
“Heel” to mean a villain has much older roots than wrestling (which probably co-opted the term), and is occasionally used around here in that context.
Having lived in many other parts of the world (both English-speaking and not), I think you over-estimate the influence wrestling has had on culture outside North America!
I totally agree that “heel” was already a term that referred to the “bad guy” prior to its use in wrestling, but its use is significant enough and specific enough within wrestling that it feels like a fair inclusion.
Also wrestling may have more of an impact than you think. Lots of wrestlers and wrestling company executives have been elected to political office partially due in part to their wrestling careers. There are lots of examples in the US, Mexico, and Japan. The most obvious example of which in America is Linda McMahon. She’s the Secretary of Education because of her and her husband’s ties to Trump through the WWE.
US and Mexico are both North America, and Japan has far more cultural influence from the US than any other country I’ve lived in, due to the large numbers of US military who have been stationed there over the last 70 years. For instance, wrestling has not been a regular broadcast on TV anywhere I’ve lived, even the English-speaking ones. I only knew about it as a kid because I knew Americans.
It’s probably comparable to the impact of cricket in the US. :P
Related to all of this, there’s a fantastic 6 part series on the podcast ‘Behind the Bastards’ that discusses Vince McMahon and his role in making this particular form of performance worse for everyone involved, from the performers to the audience.
The early part of the series does discuss the evolution of wrestling as a form of entertainment, going from its circus/carny days to the point it’s at when McMahon’s father enters the industry. It’s always been a bit of a stage trick.
There’s also the short film/documentary ‘Wrestling isn’t Wrestling’ by Max Landis, which discusses the entire storyline of Triple H, but all of the performances are gender reversed (any male wrestlers are played by women, the few female wrestlers are played by dudes) which helps get the idea of wrestling as a soap opera of people beating each other up across pretty well.
Wrestling isn’t Wrestling is amazing. Great recommendation for those who haven’t seen it.
I’ll definitely check out “Behind the Bastards.” That sounds super interesting.
The host is one of the old crew from Cracked, Robert Evans, they discuss historical pieces of crap of various types in a fairly familiar ‘I have a script I’m reading to my guest’ format. 6 parts is the most they’ve done on just about any single person. For comparison, Vince McMahon got the same number of episodes as Henry Kissenger.
I’m someone who doesn’t really follow wrestling, but the term that’s always stuck with me is “kayfabe”. Its the idea that holds professional wrestling together, the illusion of reality they project wouldn’t work if everyone involved didn’t keep acting like it really is a sport and not just a show put on for entertainment. Also, as a fan of Vtubers it’s easy to describe the personalities those particular streamers often put on as kayfabe.
I love “kayfabe” but couldn’t think of a valid comparison. VTubers who stick to their lore are an excellent parallel. I’ll be stealing that if I do end up doing a sequel article! Thanks :D
Hmm yes a friend of mine talks as if I should know american entertainment-wrestling terminology and that it is common parlance. I think TotalBiscuit used it a fair amount too being such a fan of it. I do take some issue with the use of heel as if it is a wrestling term, not just one that wrestling happens to use to mean the same thing, and the use of the term heel-turn to mean something specific in wrestling, which is rather similar to the existing meaning to turn about-face (pun intended), in a metaphorical way at least. That’s funny and somewhat perverse – a heel-turn in WWE etc. being a personality heel-turn haha. In fact come to think of it, it’s quite the clever turn of phrase, I wonder if wrestling is the first instance of that pun. A heel-turn being a personality 180 (or heel-turn) into becoming a heel. I’m just not a fan of people then knowing it from Wrestling only and thinking that is the primary context for it. “A: He made a heel-turn. B: You mean he turned about-face? A: No it wasn’t a face turn, he turned heel. B: If he turned heel he must have turned face as well. Both: What the hell are you talking about?!” Kayfabe is a fascinating word, I always forget what it means.
I must admit I’ve been watching WWF/WWE clips and matches on YouTube recently, there’s something comforting about them somehow, it’s all a load of harmless fun. Except from the bodily harm of all that ridiculous acrobatics! The insane feats of strength are just fascinating.
Burial is an interesting one, I thought you were talking about when they ‘bury’ people alive. Was that just Paul Bearer? :D
Sorry that looks a bit antagonistic, didn’t mean it that way! Interesting post :)