Your wrestling HOT TAKES

[supremebve]

59 minutes ago, Technico Support said:

If you mean “stay in character and act like it’s real, outside the context of the show,” then absolutely not.  That’s stupid and needs to go.  Nobody believes that and it just makes wrestling look bad.

 

Sorry, but the memes of The Undertaker showing up in his full wrestling gear to give out a championship belt to the Cleveland Cavaliers easily disproves this notion.

[Godfrey]

Taker is a good example. As the 90s went on he knew he couldn't be a zombie 24/7 so his version of kayfabe was that he was a wrestler so into his character that even he didn't know what was real and what wasn't. It was a great limbo act

Taker also never totally broke and only spoke about kayfabe after he was fully retired, I think that's a great template

I disagree that staying in character makes wrestling look bad these days unless the gimmick is embarrassing in the first place. We're through the looking glass on kayfabe and everyone knows wrestlers are athletes and performers so to me it's just a matter of professionalism to not pull the curtain back. Leave a little mystery, it's more fun and it makes the matches more enjoyable. I've seen guys like MJF, Darby, Drew, Punk, and Cody ride this line very well in the past so I know it's possible

[Curt McGirt]

This is probably where I should say the book Kayfabe by Patrick W. Reed is really good and you should probably read it. 

[odessasteps]

I think it’s less jarring when they are breaking kayfabe/acting like real people when they are totally not around wrestling.  I would call doing talk shows as still being on the clock, since you are promoting something.  Maybe UUDD is the most frequent example, but even then, if I was a super heavy heel, I dont know if i would have to appear normal to talk about playing Super Mario 3 as a kid or something like that.  For example, I don’t need to see Jacob Fatu on UUDD yet. It was funny seeing Woods and Kofi back on UUDD last week, just being themselves again, away from being the heel New Day. 

[tbarrie]

8 hours ago, Godfrey said:

Kayfabe, is it necessary or even wanted in modern wrestling? To me yes, blurring the line between real and fake is what makes wrestling enjoyable. I don't see it as a con although I hear the arguments for that especially historically and from a labour perspective it's exploitive to demand a worker be working whenever they're in public. But if we treat it as a performance art then I think keeping kayfabe is part of the art of pro wrestling and maybe even most of it. This is also why certain in-ring styles don't appeal to me.

Tbarrie says at no point do they need to believe Infinity War or Game of Thrones is real to enjoy it and I think this is where we come at it differently. I don't enjoy those movies/shows because no matter how good the stories are I find the fake worlds completely uninteresting after an hour, I watch sports because I like seeing real world action. I love pro wrestling when it rides that line (a fake sport in the real world) and the kind of kayfabe I'm talking about is a key ingredient of good pro wrestling storytelling. Again, I don't ever think the matches are real and I don't think that should be the goal, but believing that the wrestlers are really who they say they are and even hate who they say they hate helps with the immersion. When it works I think that's what makes wrestling special.

I think there's an argument to be made that wrestling physics is just as fantastic as anything in Game of Thrones or the MCU.:)

More pertinently, I did mention those shows, but I believe I also threw out Mad Men as an example in one of my other posts. I did that because I wanted to be clear that fantastic vs realistic isn't the important distinction for what I'm saying, it's fiction vs reality. When watching a story about Don Draper, I don't particularly want to hear him reference something that actually happened to Jon Hamm, nor do I think his doing so would add anything. Nor, if I happen to be watching a talk show where Jon Hamm is a guest, do I want or expect him to pretend to be Don Draper in that context.

3 hours ago, Technico Support said:

To ask this question, you need to specify what you mean by “kayfabe.”

Absolutely! Especially since some responses I've seen are kind of tangential to what I meant when I brought the subject up.

When I say I'd like to see a stake driven into the heart of kayfabe, what I mean is that I'd like to see everybody - fans, wrestlers, promoters, whoever - clearly distinguish between what's fictional and what's real. I don't want to see elements of a wrestler's real life be brought into the storylines, especially if it's discordant with their fictional character. (Like Darby Allin talking about how the House of Black's resident monster used to bunk on Darby's couch, or something.) I don't want to read a quote a wrestler gave to a real media outlet and have to guess whether they were staying in character. I really don't want to have to worry that a wrestler might be really injured when they're selling; it would be nice if I could trust the performers and the promoters to stop the damn match in case of a real injury and make it clear to the audience that the show is on pause, because then I could enjoy the matches more. But I can't, not necessarily because the performers and promoters consciously want to maintain kayfabe, but because some things have always been done a certain way in wrestling and nobody wants to change it.

In short, my thesis is that wrestling is a form of fiction and should be treated that way. I'd even go so far as to say I don't see any other sane way to engage with it in a post-kayfabe world. But there are a lot of wrestling traditions that don't make sense post-kayfabe and don't contribute to the show, and the business seems reluctant to give them up.

[username]

Screw this luke warm take, I got an actual hot one: Kayfabe isn't dead, they know they can't make you believe 100% in their in-ring characters anymore but the smart ones have adapted to get you to believe in the "this is who I really am" personality they portray off the shows/on social media. People only think they know them so much better than they used to, but I'd wager it is the usual "the best wrestling character is a portion of yourself turned up to 10" deal way more often than people would like to think.

[Technico Support]

16 hours ago, tbarrie said:

Like Darby Allin talking about how the House of Black's resident monster used to bunk on Darby's couch, or something.

I don't even mind stuff like that, as long as it doesn't go against anything happening in the story or go against the characters.  While a member of the House of Black, Brody had to actually come from somewhere.  It's not like Malakai Black summoned him from the depths of the sea.  "We knew eachother coming up" is perfectly fine and adds to the story. 

Stuff like showing your egotisitcal heel getting an award from an outside party, and then he doesn't immediately throw the plaque in the trash, is worse.

[Curt McGirt]

 *Bret Hart voice* Who are you to doubt Brody King came from the depths of the sea? Maybe the Purple Haze was his dad.

[supremebve]

36 minutes ago, Curt McGirt said:

 *Bret Hart voice* Who are you to doubt Brody King came from the depths of the sea? Maybe the Purple Haze was his dad.

Was he neighbors with Snoop Dogg?

[username]

Yeah, I am team "Brody King rose from the depth of the sea" is the better origin.

[zendragon]

Let's split the difference and assume that Darby's house is located in Bikini Bottom

[Technico Support]

20 hours ago, supremebve said:

Was he neighbors with Snoop Dogg?

Brody has yet to go solo on that ass

[FourPostMassacre]

Darby’s roommate was Puff the magic dragon so Brody lived by the sea just didn’t come right out of it. 

[J.H.]

12 hours ago, zendragon said:

Let's split the difference and assume that Darby's house is located in Bikini Bottom

This just makes me wish Clancy Brown was his manager, doing Mister Krabbs voice on promos!

James

[odessasteps]

22 minutes ago, J.H. said:

This just makes me wish Clancy Brown was his manager, doing Mister Krabbs voice on promos!

James

Darby and the Kurgan is quite the pairing. 

[tbarrie]

On 2/25/2025 at 12:17 PM, Technico Support said:

I don't even mind stuff like that, as long as it doesn't go against anything happening in the story or go against the characters.  While a member of the House of Black, Brody had to actually come from somewhere.  It's not like Malakai Black summoned him from the depths of the sea.  "We knew eachother coming up" is perfectly fine and adds to the story. 

Fair enough, but I think humanizing Brody too much is a mistake for his character. Or it was before Malakai left and the rest of House of Black turned face.

Also worth noting that Brody and Darby had faced off multiple times before with no indication they were old friends or anything.

[RazorbladeKiss87]

Here's my hot take: I like The Young Stallions. 

[tbarrie]

That reminds me of something I should have asked when this thread was new: what exactly is a "hot take"? I know it's some slang term the kiddos use these days, but what does it mean?

I have a vague idea, but somebody a little back referred to a "lukewarm take" and I'm unclear how to interpret that without a better understanding of the original term.

[J.H.]

2 hours ago, RazorbladeKiss87 said:

Here's my hot take: I like The Young Stallions. 

There's nothing wrong with that. To paraphrase We Hate Movies "It's OK to like a wrestler". It really seemed like they were going to get their well-deserved push based on the first Survivor Series but then it was back to being job boys for Roma abd Powers after that

James

Edited February 28 by J.H.

[twiztor]

1 hour ago, tbarrie said:

That reminds me of something I should have asked when this thread was new: what exactly is a "hot take"? I know it's some slang term the kiddos use these days, but what does it mean?

I have a vague idea, but somebody a little back referred to a "lukewarm take" and I'm unclear how to interpret that without a better understanding of the original term.

"hot take" really just means unpopular opinion, stated to generate a response. I don't know the exact origins, but the "hot" part of it is because people get heated from your statement.

[Ramo2653]

1 hour ago, tbarrie said:

That reminds me of something I should have asked when this thread was new: what exactly is a "hot take"? I know it's some slang term the kiddos use these days, but what does it mean?

I have a vague idea, but somebody a little back referred to a "lukewarm take" and I'm unclear how to interpret that without a better understanding of the original term.

Hot Take as a term really came from the morning sports talking head shows since they spend the entire shows arguing (I'm sure you're aware of this, but their production meetings are pretty much everyone trying to figure out what position to take and then how to defend it, even if everyone actually agrees with each other).

But it's just having an opinion that's so out there from the general consensus, everyone is would be shocked. An example might be 'Tom Mahgee was actually an underrated wrestler"

[RazorbladeKiss87]

1 hour ago, J.H. said:

There's nothing wrong with that. To paraphrase We Hate Movies "It's OK to like a wrestler". It really seemed like they were going to get their well-deserved push based on the first Survivor Series but then it was back to being job boys for Roma abd Piwes after that

James

The first wrestling vhs I had was High Flyers of the WWF and it featured them, the Rockers and the Jumping Bomb Angels. I watched that sucker so much and just thought the world of those teams. 

[Technico Support]

8 hours ago, RazorbladeKiss87 said:

Here's my hot take: I like The Young Stallions. 

They, in turn, love girls in cars.

[Technico Support]

6 hours ago, Ramo2653 said:

Hot Take as a term really came from the morning sports talking head shows since they spend the entire shows arguing (I'm sure you're aware of this, but their production meetings are pretty much everyone trying to figure out what position to take and then how to defend it, even if everyone actually agrees with each other).

But it's just having an opinion that's so out there from the general consensus, everyone is would be shocked. An example might be 'Tom Mahgee was actually an underrated wrestler"

It’s so shitty that networks like ESPN have gone in my lifetime from halfway decent sports reporting to just endless phony carny argument shows.  
 

Also a distinct lack of Bodyshaping, Kiana’s Flex Appeal, etc.  

[zendragon]

9 hours ago, tbarrie said:

That reminds me of something I should have asked when this thread was new: what exactly is a "hot take"? I know it's some slang term the kiddos use these days, but what does it mean?

I have a vague idea, but somebody a little back referred to a "lukewarm take" and I'm unclear how to interpret that without a better understanding of the original term.

This thread is more unpopular/unusual opinions often a hot take is someone being obnoxiously contrary