The Long Con Falling for Kayfabe
If you aren’t a fan of professional wrestling, what is the first word that comes to mind when I ask you to think of it?
“Fake.”
That’s what it is, isn’t it? Or maybe it’s “scripted”? Or “theater”? Anything synonymous with the word “fake.”
However, over one billion people worldwide would disagree with you. They would say the first thing is “EWE,” or “Brooks Taylor,” or maybe “Amos Rafferty.”
Despite their protests, pro wrestling continues to get a bad rap because, to the uninitiated, it’s perceived as manufactured rather than a legitimate sport. And I get it—I used to think the same thing.
“I don’t understand why anyone would want to waste their time or money watching grown men prance around in tights, pretending to hit each other,” I said to my editor when I was assigned this story.
Hell, I’ve probably said as much a handful of times to my best friend, too, and she’s a lifelong fan of the subject.
While she never had a response, my editor did: “Why would they spend their hard-earned money to watch them prance around in tights and throw a deflated-looking sphere one hundred yards?”
And that’s how I ended up writing a puff piece for the fortieth anniversary of the biggest company in the pro wrestling business: Elite Wrestling Entertainment (EWE).
My editor wanted a commemorative article that touched on EWE’s major milestones and cultural impact, culminating in a glowing review of the spectacle that turned suplexes into a billion-dollar brand.
I didn’t have a leg to stand on for why I couldn’t write the article, so I started with the obvious:
Elite Wrestling Entertainment is run by the elusive billionaire Amos Rafferty, who purchased the failing company in 1981 from Ford Declan and successfully transformed it into the mega corporation we see today.
There isn’t much else known about the company.
Many articles have been written, but they all say the same thing.
They go over the same five talking points emailed over from Amos Rafferty’s assistant—the same ones I received when I reached out to them for an interview.
But to me, that wasn’t good enough. I decided that instead of writing the same story, I was going to write the one that no one else had.
I was going to pull the skeletons out of the closet. ..
I’m not talking about the typical workplace exposés saying “[she] didn’t get paid enough,” “[he] was difficult to work with,” the work/life balance was terrible, or the health insurance was inadequate.
Those are all things anyone could look up.
I wanted the real skeletons in the closet—the ones Amos Rafferty never wanted to see the light of day.
..But you want to know something? There weren’t any.
You’re probably wondering how that’s even possible.
At a company as big as Elite Wrestling Entertainment, surely there’s something they don’t want getting out.
..There’s not. I was just as shocked as you are right now.
I was the metaphorical fly on the wall, waiting for that smoking gun, only for it to never come.
The EWE machine is exactly what you think it is: corporate and calculated.
Sure, there are gripes amongst the talent: creative decisions, travel, contract negotiations, and fatigue.
But what about those is shocking or scandalous?
Walk into the break room at your nine-to-five, and you’re bound to hear the same thing.
The biggest secret Elite Wrestling Entertainment has to keep is the same one they’ve protected for as long as the business has been around: kayfabe.
Kayfabe is the practice of maintaining the illusion that staged events, characters, and rivalries are genuine.
To put it simply: you’re treating fiction like reality.
In more recent years, the company and its wrestlers have been a little more forthcoming with some of the secrets of the trade.
Take, for example, the rivalry between Brooks Taylor and Brody Wilder in 2007, or Savvy Skye and Rae Rose in 2012.
Each one told a compelling story of betrayal and hurt.
Some of the best matches in their entire careers have come from those rivalries.
And why? Because while they might have been enemies inside the ring, they are best friends outside of it.
At the time, the audience had no idea Brooks and Brody were more like brothers who’d climbed the ranks together, or that Savvy and Rae were best friends who joined the EWE developmental program at the same time.
Those relationships allowed them to take risks they may not have taken with other opponents.
The rivalries were rooted in their deep trust of each other, and they delivered emotionally charged, high-intensity performances that are still talked about today.
However, in the past, it was an unwritten rule that you defended the secrecy of the business no matter what. And if you didn’t? You were beaten and ostracized.
Although it can seem extreme to punish people so harshly for “breaking kayfabe,” you have to understand that kayfabe is what keeps this business alive.
It allows the audience to become emotionally invested and immersed in the narrative, suspending disbelief for a few hours each week.
Kayfabe is the magic, and Amos Rafferty is the infamous man behind its curtain.
I spent an entire week trying to figure out how I’d get a look behind that curtain—a chance to see the real inner workings of EWE—before an opportunity fell into my lap, and it couldn’t have come at a better time.
I had three weeks before this story was due to The Baller for publication.
Three weeks to uncover the truth and dismantle kayfabe once and for all. ..
The first show I attended was Monday Night Rage in Phoenix, Arizona, on July 12, 2021, and it was my first glimpse behind the scenes.
I witnessed a small amount of the rehearsal before the show and quickly realized it was nothing more than a pre-game warm-up.
Like a quarterback warming up his arm before a game, the EWE wrestlers used this time to prepare mentally and physically for the night ahead.
This helps a wrestler ensure the safety of not only themselves, but also their match partner.
One of the first things I learned about EWE is that one misstep can mean injury.
That night, I witnessed the return of Grady Chandler.
His character is known for his wild and unpredictable behavior both in and out of the ring, and is even nicknamed “The Lunatic.” Dressed from head to toe in black, Chandler arrived unexpectedly to attack the newly crowned number-one contender for the EWE Championship: Wolf Bennett.
He went for Bennett’s previously injured leg—and would continue to do so throughout their showdowns—and while I later learned the storyline was using this former injury as a prop, the pain Bennett experienced was real.
I saw it time and time again with numerous EWE wrestlers.
From former injuries resurfacing to swollen knees, stiffened shoulders, and sore backs, the (mostly) predetermined endings of these matches didn’t mean the road to get there was painless.
I would quickly learn that this business is built on trust and protection.
Trust between opponents. Between wrestlers and producers. Between the wrestlers and the audience.
Every week the fans pour in, decked out in merchandise: T-shirts, hats, wrist bands, jewelry, replica belts—you name it, they probably have it.
They pack the house, ready to see what’s going to happen next.
And the longer I was around, the more I caught myself slipping into the narrative.
In the back of my mind, I knew the results were scripted, but I was still invested in the story that had been plotted out weeks earlier in a conference room at EWE Headquarters in Houston, Texas.
That’s kayfabe—an unspoken pact between the audience and the wrestlers to maintain the narrative, despite the knowledge that it is, dare I say, fake.
And you know what? I think it’s worth it.
During my time with EWE, I outlined three different articles.
The first was the story I wanted to tell.
The second was the fortieth anniversary piece I was assigned.
And the third is the story you’re currently reading.
This is the one I think so many people needed to hear—the one about why this thing that appears so taboo to the outside world is so cherished and beloved by its fanbase.
Professional wrestling is scripted. That is not an earth-shattering revelation.
What surprised me instead is how much is unscripted.
Those split-second decisions and adjustments based on crowd reactions or when things go awry.
The blood, sweat, and tears that go into every match.
The pain and injuries. The emotions behind every title win and loss.
But most of all, the trust between wrestlers.
The amount of faith you must possess to leap backward from the top turnbuckle toward the ground, knowing your match partner will be there to catch you.
During my time with EWE, I had the rare opportunity to sit down and talk with the owner of the company, Amos Rafferty.
“I’m an open book,” Amos said, walking beside me down a corridor at EWE Headquarters.
At first, I thought he was kidding, but nothing was hidden from me that day.
At the time, he didn’t know who I was—I’d hidden my identity as a reporter from him—but I think he suspected.
We spent close to forty minutes together, and I walked away from the conversation with a newfound appreciation for not only the wrestling business, but for him.
While he might be the most feared man in the room, he is just as equally respected and admired.
It would be easy to paint him as a puppet master, the one pulling all the strings behind the green curtain, but after our conversation, that feels too simple.
He spoke about storylines the way a novelist speaks about their latest work.
“Every time [a wrestler] walks through that curtain, they’re telling a story.
Every match, every promo, every interview, it’s all meant to cultivate a story and entertain.
..because at the end of the day, our fans watch our product for an escape,” he said when I questioned the validity of his work.
And, in that moment, I realized the real art of EWE isn’t in the mechanics—not in endless hours of training or rehearsals—but in the on-the-spot timing and precision that makes the audience forget to look for the wires.
The illusion alone isn’t enough—everyone involved has to believe in it.
You can write all the betrayals you want, rehearse every fall to perfection, or map out a championship run months in advance, but at the end of the day, without that emotional impact, the whole structure collapses.
Kayfabe is the bridge between the two, and that’s where the magic happens.
The magic isn’t in the pretend, it’s in making it feel real.
There was one other thing Amos said on our walk through headquarters that has stuck with me: “Every wrestler is an athlete, but not every athlete can be a wrestler.”
And now, looking back on my three weeks with Elite Wrestling Entertainment, I think I finally understand what he meant, and I agree.
Most professional athletes aren’t required to travel over 280 days a year.
Professional wrestlers don’t have off-seasons.
They work 50 to 51 weeks each year, and their only guaranteed week off is Christmas.
Matches might be planned, and moves rehearsed, but that doesn’t make the physical demands of showing up that consistently any easier.
Similar to other professional athletes, professional wrestlers put their hearts and souls into everything they do and leave it all on the mat every night.
On the flip side, I found several cases where a professional athlete from another sport attempted to step into the ring and failed miserably.
A great example is Bronson Vale’s attempted transition into wrestling in 2002.
He lasted barely three weeks in EWE’s training facilities before returning to the football field.
I tried my own hand at a few moves alongside some of the biggest names in the industry, and I can honestly say it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. My body was sore in places I didn’t know it could be sore, and if I hadn’t already gained respect for this sport, I did that night.
For all of its pageantry and glamour, the business of professional wrestling truly runs on one simple thing: love.
I don’t mean the sentimental kind of love, but the connective kind.
The kind of love that unites strangers when a near fall (that moment when someone kicks out in the split second before the referee hits the three count) makes sixty thousand people gasp at the same time.
The kind of love that binds opponents who trust one another to catch them when they fall.
The kind of love that brings fans back year after year.
Professional wrestling is sustained by the magic and love of the shared experience known as kayfabe, and that shared profound feeling in a room full of strangers.
I was there to stand on the sidelines and observe, to unearth the con and expose EWE for what I thought it really was.
Instead, somewhere along the way, I fell in love with this shared experience.
I fell in love with the company and the way it operates.
I fell in love with the anticipation that grew inside me whenever I’d sit down to watch a show.
I fell in love with the community built every week in each individual arena.
I fell in love with the way something so meticulously constructed could feel spontaneous and natural.
I fell in love...And I finally understood why this crazy, chaotic, “fake” display of athleticism continues to endure the test of time.