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Yukari Clepsydra Vice Captain
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 Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2010 2:38 am
To the uninitiated, wrestling fans can sound downright unintelligible at times. Brush up on your wrestling lingo to figure out what the balls those guys are talking about.
Face
Even people who don’t watch wrestling know that every promotion has its clearly defined heroes and villains (though wrestlers frequently switch roles, of course). What more casual fans might not realize is that wrestling has its own specific terms to refer to the good guys and the bad guys.
In professional wrestling, the heroes are referred to as babyfaces, or more commonly these days, just faces. This name is a throwback to the old days, when crowds would typically only cheer for well-behaved, good-looking competitors oftentimes with, you guessed it, a babyface. Today, faces come in all shapes and sizes, and include Jeff Hardy, John Cena, Rey Mysterio and others.
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Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2010 2:39 am
Heel
Professional wrestling’s villains have a special word to refer to them as well. While it’s pretty universally true these days that the bad guys in wrestling are more interesting than the heroes, the name for the villains is considerably more straightforward.
The villains in wrestling are called heels, which is a term held over from the days when people would use the word non-ironically to call someone a jerk. There are a number of different types of heels: Monster heels like Abyss, arrogant heels like The Miz and even heel announcers like wrestling legend Jesse “The Body” Ventura.
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Yukari Clepsydra Vice Captain
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Yukari Clepsydra Vice Captain
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Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2010 2:40 am
Work
Brace yourself: Wrestling isn’t exactly a sporting competition. The best way to describe this unique form of entertainment is “fixed, not fake,” as wrestlers feel every punch, kick, bump and chair shot, but generally speaking, most of what you see on television is scripted out, at least in broad strokes.
The term for something – a match, a promo, a backstage interaction, etc. – that was planned ahead of time is a work, which comes from the carnival days when performers would work a crowd. Similarly, a worker is anyone who “performs” professional wrestling, including the wrestlers themselves as well as managers, valets and referees. Someone who is considered a good worker is a wrestler that is exceptional at their craft with a good workrate, which refers to their technical performance inside the ring.
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Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2010 2:41 am
Shoot
While most of the professional wrestling on television is worked, some of what you see is legitimate. This can include announcements or communications from a company’s owner, real-life relationships playing out on the screen or even in rare instances, a wrestling match that escalates or gets out of hand.
These events are referred to as shoots, which is a reference to legitimate, full contact shoot wrestling. Numerous wrestling storylines have their origins in shoot occurrences, including the infamous Montreal Screwjob and Lita leaving Matt Hardy for Edge. Starting in the late 1990s, worked shoots became popular, where wrestling writers would attempt to trick in-the-know fans into thinking that what they were seeing was legitimate, while it was, in-fact, still scripted.
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Yukari Clepsydra Vice Captain
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Yukari Clepsydra Vice Captain
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Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2010 2:42 am
Kayfabe
Though it is less common today, wrestlers used to go to extreme lengths to protect the business, which meant keeping up the illusion that everything fans saw was real. There are even stories about The Original Sheik growling and throwing fireballs at people on the streets of his native Michigan.
The term used to refer to this illusion is kayfabe, which some say comes from the Pig Latin pronunciation of the work fake (ake-fay). The term can be used in the sense of keeping kayfabe, or even spoken by a wrestler as a signal to other workers that they should stop talking and protect the business.
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Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2010 2:43 am
Sell
Wrestling is like a really violent improv session, so while the punches, kicks, chops and slams you see are real, the recipients know they are coming and are thus able to brace themselves properly. To keep up the illusion of an actual fight, wrestlers have to be able to act like they are in excruciating, agonizing pain, even if what they’re feeling isn’t quite that horrific.
The word for acting like you are feeling the effect of another wrestler’s moves is called selling. In wrestling, knowing how to sell is as important as offering up convincing offense, as more than anything else, it is what helps convince the audience that they are seeing a real fight.
Some wrestlers are known for no-selling other wrestler’s moves. This can be for storyline purposes, such as Hulk Hogan hulking up during his matches, or simply one wrestler trying to send a message to another. On the other extreme are wrestlers who over-sell. Again, wrestlers can do this for storyline purposes such as a pre-existing injury, or it can be part of one wrestler mocking his opponent, or the way the match is supposed to play out.
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Yukari Clepsydra Vice Captain
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Yukari Clepsydra Vice Captain
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Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2010 2:44 am
Over
To be a successful wrestler, you not only have to be able to perform well in the ring, you also must have a connection with the fans. This is as true of faces, who need the audience to root for them, as it is for heels, who are only effective when the fans truly hate them.
The degree to which any given wrestler is able to get a fan response is how over they are. For faces, this means that audiences will cheer for them and laugh at their jokes, while for heels it means that they will be booed relentlessly. Good wrestlers are able to get over both on the microphone, as well as in the ring as a result of how they wrestle. Since winning a match usually makes a wrestler look good, the victor is therefore referred to as going over. Similarly, someone who allows another wrestler to beat them, or even just make them look like a credible threat, is said to have put him/her over.
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Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2010 2:45 am
Job
As mentioned earlier, professional wrestling is a semi-scripted improv, which means that individual wrestlers must go along with their opponent’s actions – even when it involves losing a match. Everyone – even a promotion’s top stars – have to lose sometime, however.
That’s why losing a match is called doing the job or jobbing out – it might not be fun, and it might not make you look good, but it’s part of being a wrestler. Similarly, a jobber is someone who loses matches frequently, while a jobber to the stars is a mid-card wrestler that jobs to upper-card wrestlers, but still ekes out wins over true jobbers.
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Yukari Clepsydra Vice Captain
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Yukari Clepsydra Vice Captain
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Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2010 2:47 am
Bury
Ideally, every wrestler in a promotion would either be over, or in the process of getting over. Unfortunately, that just can’t happen as someone has to be there to lose all those matches, and more often than not, it’s a better use of resources to push all the losses on a few specific wrestlers than to sully the reputations of everyone in the locker room.
A wrestler who has been scheduled to lose a series of matches in such a way that makes him look terrible has been buried. Sometimes this is done intentionally to punish a wrestler for infractions backstage or for a failure to have gotten over. Other times, it is simply a result of a bad gimmick or a wrestler not being used very much on television.
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Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2010 2:48 am
Blade
Wrestling matches are always pretty intense, but sometimes things escalate to a point where blood is spilt. Wrestlers can get busted open either on accident, as a result of an attack from another wrestler, called busted open the hard way, or because they have intentionally and discretely cut themselves, usually on the forehead (now disallowed in WWE).
When wrestlers cut themselves in order to spill blood and sell the severity of their opponent’s attack, it is called blading or juicing. The device used to do the damage can be referred to simply as a blade or a gig. Related terms are showing color and the proverbial crimson mask, both of which refer to a wrestler having blood on their face.
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Yukari Clepsydra Vice Captain
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Yukari Clepsydra Vice Captain
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Posted: Fri Aug 27, 2010 2:50 am
Booking
Wrestling matches, angles, promos and backstage interactions are all planned ahead as on any scripted television series. The writing of a wrestling show is referred to as booking. Traditionally, promotions would have one or two individuals who would act as the organization’s booker, deciding who would win and lose matches, and which feuds would be pushed.
These days, some smaller promotions still have individual bookers making the call, but larger companies tend to have writing teams devoted to planning out storylines. At WWE the creative team is led by Stephanie McMahon, with oversight from her father, Mr. McMahon, while at TNA the booking is handled by a team including Hulk Hogan, Eric Bischoff and others.
Similar to a booker is a promotion’s road agents, or simply just agents, who help wrestlers plan the specifics of their matches and are usually former wrestlers themselves. TNA’s agents include D-Lo Brown, Al Snow and others, while WWE employs Arn Anderson, Pat Patterson and more, referring to them as producers.
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