{"id":59766,"date":"2025-11-29T00:01:51","date_gmt":"2025-11-29T05:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=59766"},"modified":"2025-11-28T23:23:59","modified_gmt":"2025-11-29T04:23:59","slug":"wrestling-vocabulary-that-you-should-know-and-use","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=59766","title":{"rendered":"Wrestling Vocabulary That You Should Know and Use"},"content":{"rendered":"

Depending on when and where you grew up professional wrestling had some impact on your life, it just depends how much. The \u201csport\u201d has grown and shrunken in popularity several times over the years due to many reasons that I\u2019m not smart enough to properly speculate on. Wrestling has affected politics in Japan and Mexico. Wrestling has affected legislation of law regarding workers\u2019 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\u2019s 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\u2019m going to enrich your vocabulary.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The two biggest and most important terms that everyone should know are \u201cheel\u201d and \u201cface.\u201d A \u201cheel\u201d is a villain. A heel will say and do anything to win and thinks he\u2019s above everyone he encounters. A heel is arrogant, mean, and basically evil. <\/span>However a heel can still be fun and interesting. He just cannot be the good guy or the one you want to root for.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the other side of the spectrum there\u2019s the \u201cface.\u201d The term \u201cface\u201d is derived from the word \u201cbabyface.\u201d 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 \u201cgood guy\u201d 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 \u00be 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 \u201cface\u201d now refers to anyone who is meant to draw cheers from the crowd.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now <\/span>what practical use do those words have<\/span>? <\/span>Honestly the most useful application of them is in conjunction with another term that doesn\u2019t necessarily have its origin in wrestling but has heavy usage in the wrestling business. The \u201cturn.\u201d A heel turn or face turn is defined by an action that announces the change in a person\u2019s moral alignment. An <\/span>obvious and accessible<\/span> example of a solid face turn is Darth Vader at the end of the original \u201cStar Wars\u201d saga. He made a face turn <\/span>and saved<\/span> his son, thereby saving <\/span>the galaxy as well.<\/span> Now, there were factors leading up to that decision but the turn is the decisive action that brings the character\u2019s new morals into view. <\/span>He didn\u2019t have long left to live but he spent his last minutes protecting his son and spending time with him.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sticking with the same character, you could see most of Anakin Skywalker\u2019s actions leading up to the crescendo of the final prequel movie as justifiable. <\/span>Violent and <\/span>at times<\/span> 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 <\/span>during Windu\u2019s fight with Palpatine<\/span>, 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another big one is the \u201cpush.\u201d 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\u2019s 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 \u201cGame of Thrones\u201d 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\u2019t get into what happened after all that finely crafted foreboding push. Also, if you know anything about American football you\u2019ll have experienced the Kelce brothers and the Chiefs being pushed down our throats last year. And I\u2019d say since nobody can stomach them anymore, it was a push gone very very wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n

And last but certainly not least, my absolute favorite: the \u201cburial.\u201d 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\u2019t 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. <\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2019s wife, in \u201cSeinfeld.\u201d They didn\u2019t like writing for her so they just decided it\u2019d be easier to kill her. So they did. Another sitcom burial happened in the show \u201cRoseanne\u201d for similar reasons. Roseanne Barr said some\u2026 things on Twitter and it was made clear to the show runners that it wasn\u2019t 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 \u201cThe Conners.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s 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\u2019t watch hardly any nowadays. But you really don\u2019t need to have any love for the industry to understand and use the language that comes from it. If you enjoyed this I\u2019d be happy to write a sequel article. And if you didn\u2019t enjoy this you likely won\u2019t enjoy the sequel article I write just to spite you.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now go enrich yourselves and watch the \u201cCream of the Crop<\/a>\u201d promo by Macho Man Randy Savage on YouTube. It\u2019s fun. It\u2019s dumb. It\u2019s great.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Depending on when and where you grew up professional wrestling had some impact on your life, it just depends how much. The \u201csport\u201d has grown and shrunken in popularity several times over the years due to many reasons that I\u2019m not smart enough to properly speculate on. Wrestling has affected politics in Japan and Mexico. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[640],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ethanirl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=59766"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59770,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59766\/revisions\/59770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=59766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=59766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=59766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}