Professional wrestling is more of a narrative medium than it is a sport. It may be debatable whether wrestlers are performance artists like one would say of an actor from Broadway, but it is undeniable that both share a stark similarity in one of their key aspects, that being storytelling. When Heath Ledger goes on a monologue about how he hates society, he doesn’t really hate society, he is only pretending to be a character that hates it in order to create a story. In a similar light, when a wrestler gives a heated promo on how much he can’t stand another wrestler, what’s actually happening is a real person bringing a fictional character to life, and in turn progressing a story.

Where the two forms of storytelling ultimately diverge is the presentation of it. A movie exists within the confines of its own reality, presented with a clear start and an end. In wrestling however, we are presented with a fictional story set in the real world, with everything happening in real-time as if it wasn’t fiction. While movies tell us to suspend our disbelieve that something is possible within the fictional reality of the movie, wrestling asks us to suspend our disbelieve and accept that what we are witnessing are real life events. The technical term for it is Kayfabe, and because of Kayfabe, wrestling works in a unique way where fiction and reality blend together.

This is why wrestling as a storytelling medium has an ability unique to it that other fictional media do not possess. A wrestler like Sting, for example, is not just a fictional character to us, he is also a real person. He ages along with us, and his existence is tangible. This is the specialty that wrestling possesses that no other medium does: a fiction that is tangible.

A tangible, larger-than-life character

This tangibility leads to a kind of potential exclusive only to the world of professional wrestling, in terms of fictional storytelling. These kinds of stories can only be found elsewhere in unscripted manners, such as the life of an actual athlete. But in sports injuries, rivalries and ambitions cannot be meticulously created in the same way that a movie can create a story. Real life is chaotic and unfocused, but wrestling isn’t “real”. This is why the argument that wrestling being “fake” is supposed to be a bad thing is completely wrong. Arguably wrestling’s biggest strength is that it is not real, much like in the case for movies or novels.

In recent years, I’ve seen wrestling companies use this tangible fiction/reality in ways that are amazing and shocking, and also in ways where it completely fails. The latter of which is mostly the reason why present-day WWE is failing in terms of storytelling compared to its past eras. You see, in WWE time and reality works in an almost “Saturday-morning cartoon” way. When an episode of Raw ends, it is almost as if the wrestler’s fictional life went on pause. One Raw we see a wrestler thirsting for the blood of another wrestler because of some absurd revenge plot, but in the next episode a week later it is as if for that wrestler only one day had passed. In the six days that went on without an episode of Raw, the wrestler’s desire for revenge seemingly stops along with the cameras. And when the next episode of Raw hits, suddenly the wrestler resumes what they were doing once again, which they avoided doing off-air for some reason (for example getting married). Also, just like in a non-story driven cartoon, characters in WWE would forget what happened in past episodes whenever a new storyline started. Let me give an example of this exact “phenomenon”.

Wait, that’s illegal

Here we see a clip of “the Viper” Randy Orton burn down Bray Wyatt’s house, along with Sister Abigail’s grave, on SmackDown. A camera seems to be magically floating in air and recording it live from multiple angles while Bray and the audience watch a man commit arson. Bray Wyatt is devastated (he’s apparently the villain in this story), and then the show ends. The next few days pass, neither is Orton arrested nor does Bray exact revenge on Orton immediately, instead waiting for the next live event before taking action on the man who destroyed his home. WrestleMania arrives, we see a supposedly homeless Bray Wyatt take on Randy Orton in a match, lose his belt, then in the next week get moved to Raw in a “superstar shake-up”.

The problem with this for me is, believe it or not, not the absurd story or the logic, but the idea that once the story is “over” Bray no longer has any bad blood with Orton, and just casually moves on to his next “feud”. This can be repeatedly seen on WWE where wrestlers reset every time a feud ends and apparently forgets any past history they had with another wrestler. In WWE, history stops existing after a month on average for each wrestler. There is usually no character development or long-term storytelling. The most recent examples of long-term storytelling in WWE happens to be Kofimania and the Yes Movement, both of which are stories that only happened because fans remembered the wrestler’s history and forced WWE to make it happen. So, now that we have established what bad Kayfabe looks like, let’s take a look at when it’s actually used right.

New Japan Pro Wrestling: The Aftermath of Styles vs Nakamura

In my opinion, one of the best promotions in the world in terms of long-term storytelling and character building right now is NJPW. New Japan is the anti-thesis to WWE in many ways than one. In New Japan, a wrestler often portrays an exaggerated or fictionalized version of themselves, in the same manner that Larry David does on Curb Your Enthusiasm. The characters exist even after the show ends, they also exist before the next show starts. NJPW presents itself just like a real-life sport would, but the difference is that it is still scripted. There’s never any convoluted plot or out-of-nowhere occurrence to manufacture conflict and story. On the contrary, the story creates itself naturally because NJPW acknowledges a wrestler’s past, similar to how sports fans would when a legend is entering his last World Cup but has never won the cup before. The story simply writes itself.

Katsuyori Shibata finally winning the New Japan Cup

Here’s a good example. In 2009, Kenny Omega and Kota Ibushi forms the tag team, the Golden Lovers, in DDT. They stay tag team partners for a long time until 2014 when Kenny Omega signs a full-time contract with NJPW and departs DDT. Upon arrival, Omega contradicts with his previous claims that he would never join the villainous stable Bullet Club, now aligning with them and quickly climbing the ranks of the company with the Junior Heavyweight belt around his waist. With his new “Cleaner” persona, Bullet Club completely changes Kenny who now becomes the person dishing out the assaults and doing match interference instead of being the one on the receiving end of it. But this new personality of Omega gets shattered at Invasion Attack 2015 when he is called ringside by Bullet Club leader AJ Styles for Styles’ IWGP Heavyweight championship defense against none other than Omega’s former partner Ibushi.

Both Ibushi and Styles fight a grueling match. At the end of the match when Ibushi climbs the turnbuckle to deliver a potentially match-winning splash onto Styles, Kenny gets onto the ring apron to seemingly interfere and help Styles, as expected of a Bullet Club member, but for a few seconds he just stands there hesitantly, unable to attack his former partner. The momentary distraction however turns out to be enough for AJ Styles to capitalize with his fatal finisher, the Styles Clash, and retain the belt. Bullet Club begins celebrating as all the members enter the ring, each of them with big smiles on their face except for one member. Over the next year Kenny ascends further up in the ranks of Bullet Club, ultimately disposing Styles and becoming the new leader himself in 2016. In the 2017 G1 finals, a devastated Omega finds himself on the losing end to Tetsuya Naito. Backstage he encounters a sympathetic Ibushi who tries to comfort him, but Omega rejects his consolation out of guilt and regret for his past actions. With Kenny still the leader, the reign of Bullet Club continues into 2018, with the memory of Ibushi pushed aside for the time being.

Momentary distraction

The new year starts strong for Bullet Club, but underneath, cracks begin to form. Members are slowly beginning to become displeased with the state of things under Omega as tension rises within the faction. During the New Beginning in Sapporo PPV, Kenny loses his US title to the up-and-coming young talent, “Swtchblade” Jay White. After the match Bullet Club members Hangman Page and Cody attempt to attack Jay White, but Kenny stops them and allows Jay to have his moment. This does not go well with them and they proceed to attack Omega when his back is turned. But right before Cody is about to hit Omega with a chair, Ibushi rushes in to save him. Bullet Club flees the ring, leaving only the two former friends to finally face each other. But Omega cannot bring himself to rekindle their old friendship; a lot had happened and he just cannot undo them. What happens next is one of the most powerful moments in NJPW, as we witness Ibushi and Omega finally embrace in a tearful and heartfelt reconciliation. The Golden Lovers have at last reunited.

I’m not crying, you are

The storyline described above was NOT planned all the way back in 2014; not every event that transpired in it was done intentionally with the motive of reaching this exact moment in the future. Instead what NJPW did was very simple, they acknowledged and incorporated a wrestler’s past, whether Kayfabe such as joining Bullet Club, or real events such as leaving DDT, into their real-time story events. The booking never glosses over the history between two wrestlers, even if their previous stories happened in a completely different company.

There’s more of this than just the Golden Lover’s saga. There’s the story of Naito, who got rejected by the company and the fans as the shuyaku (top star), only for him to finally achieve the championship and fan adoration once he turned his back on them, transforming from the naive, struggling “Stardust Genius” into the rowdy, uncaring “El Ingobernable”. This would not have happened if NJPW had ignored the fan’s organic negative response like WWE did with Cena and Reigns. NJPW does not ignore unplanned developments. Instead they become a part of the narrative, just like it is a a part of SANADA’s character arc/story that he failed to make the cut for New Japan’s Young Lions system when he first became a wrestler. It is part of the narrative that Hiromu and Dragon Lee have a long-running rivalry all the way back since Hiromu’s time in Mexico on excursion. Just like real life, there is a sequence of events through-out the years that all weave together into a coherent story spanning years or even decades. This is why NJPW’s stories feel tangible and genuinely impactful, while modern WWE’s does not.

Naito throwing away his championship belt and rejecting NJPW

With the recent emergence of AEW, we are beginning to see a similar style of storytelling surface on American TV. In AEW, wrestlers don’t come packaged with a new gimmick specially made for the company and its current storyline (which may get retconned at any moment if it were WWE). Almost all of the wrestlers in AEW have retained the past identities of their characters, even the ones that used to exist in the indie wrestling scenes. Their stories did not just come into existence with the signing of their AEW contracts, they had a life and story even before that, and that story is still continuing. There’s talent like Kris Statlander, Jon Moxley (formerly WWE star Dean Ambrose), and Orange Cassidy, all of whom are still acting out their characters that had their journeys started all the way since the indies. We have guys like Hangman Page, Dusty Rhodes and Darby Allin playing fictionalized versions of themselves. Even those with new gimmicks, like the Dark Order, have kept up narrative consistency ever since their new characters were born.

All Elite Wrestling: The Bloody Aftermath of Cody Rhodes vs Dustin Rhodes

In recent weeks, the Dark Order storyline has been slowly gaining tension, and it isn’t portrayed by AEW as if it’s something that is contained within a short feud and will be promptly forgotten next week. The story has been overarching through multiple feuds, with narrative developments made in the past that actually carry over to the next storyline. Everything is coherent and seamless, different feuds overlap and intersect with each other instead of being completely parallel and isolated, and plot occurrences are even implied to have occurred over the week off-air, some of which can be seen in the vlog-styled YouTube Channel, Being the Elite.

What we are seeing is a reemergence of the credibility of Kayfabe in the US. Not credible in the way that there are no longer wrestlers pretending to be supernatural dead men or dinosaurs (there still are), but credible in the way that fans can once again be allowed to be immersed in the story, and feel like there’s a real progression of time unfolding before them. AEW is still a new company, and it is just getting started, which is why in the next few years we may see the pay-offs to some of the best wrestling storylines in a long time.