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.

Ethan Rodgers