Read on Twitter
We really need to get rid of this prospect that kayfabe needs to be maintained. Or that “what’s wrong with the business” is that kayfabe isn’t “respected.” It’s out of the box you can’t put it back in.
The one thing Lucha Underground, Chikara or WSX got right was treat wrestling like a TV show, like a spectacle, build up the characters through stories use the lenses of drama, sci-fi, fantasy, and horror to present the overall product.
Wrestling is not “legitimate sport” it is legitimate athletes, talented showman, presenting outstanding acts of physical achievement, art and spectacle no different than Broadway theatre, Cirque de Soliel, the Harlem Globetrotters or Disney on Ice
Kayfabe is dead, it was the secret of kayfabe that made wrestling great, it was great storytelling and charcters. Now that the secret is out you can’t necessarily tell stories the same way, but there’s nothing to stop us from making them more fantastical
Marvel movies and The Walking Dead are grounded in an air of realism but are meshed with over the top fantasy, wrestling can be presented in the same fashion and garner the same massive draw that it has in past boom periods.
Peoples hate, for lack of a better word, for “fake wrestling” is rooted in wrestling’s continued want to insult the intelligence of its audience. This carny culture and rhetoric needs to go away
We can be heralded for doing the things that Broadway actors, Pro Athletes, Hollywood stars and stuntmen, acrobats, ballet dancers and pro fighters do, but we do it in one package at one time, in front of a live audience with no safety net, often unrehearsed and without a script.
But to hit that mark, to receive that praise and this accolades it needs to be opened up, less of the old and more of a combination of what worked once and what doesn’t attempt to play/con the audience. Allow our art form to grow.
