In WWE, 2025 was the year kayfabe got weirder

Does kayfabe still apply in modern WWE? I know – it’s the kind of cliché topic that wrestling forum types can debate for hours. But after the year we’ve just seen, we have to ask ourselves where reality and fiction begin and end in Triple H’s WWE.

Obviously, the fundamental laws of kayfabe will never change. Professional wrestling remains a staged product and requires the viewer to suspend disbelief — whether that’s pretending that matches are truly contradictory or accepting things that are wilder around the edges (like the idea that “SmackDown” tag team champions have supernatural powers).

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The more difficult question, at least under WWE’s current management, is determining exactly where the limits of kayfabe end. We’ve seen some pretty notorious examples this year of the concept being taken to the extreme to cover up things that would have previously been considered off-limits: namely Seth Rollins’ fake injury and the whole R-Truth “fake” shooting.

But while WWE has pushed the boundaries of what constitutes fair game for counterfeiting, this administration has also become much more open than before in talking about the scripted side of things. Remember Triple H bragging after Money in the Bank about how R-Truth’s shot was supposed to be “part of the show”, or Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson openly talking about his WWE “character” like it was another superhero role?

On their own, these sorts of things may seem like isolated quirks. But when we look at what we’ve seen over the past year, including on “WWE Unreal,” a consistent theme begins to emerge. The scripted nature of wrestling became a pawn for one of Triple H’s creative obsessions, which is taking over the audience.

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We saw this with the second half of “Unreal,” which essentially became a victory lap over John Cena’s whole heel turn. The gist of the WWE tricks argument was basically, “Isn’t it great that no one saw this coming?” ” – it all builds up until you remember how they failed to live up to the expectations of that first shock.

Ditto when you have big surprises like Rollins’ Money In The Bank heist, which rely on the kind of twists that most of us previously thought were forbidden – that is, pretending that a wrestler suffered a real injury, to the extent that his colleagues in the locker room were fooled into thinking he was having a real operation.

Is this really taking the public the wrong way when the twist is based on such a departure from the usual rules? When you read an Agatha Christie murder mystery, for example, you usually start with the assumption that the twist is related to something in the existing narrative. You wouldn’t expect to find out that they’re actually aliens, vampire squids or something.

The other problem with these kinds of rug twists is that they really only work once. Once you introduce the precedent that things like injuries or personnel decisions are fair, you’ll soon see fans questioning every legitimate news story looking for the next twist.

We saw this with Karrion Kross’ exit after SummerSlam. There were two wrestlers (Kross and Scarlett) who had parted ways with the company they had spent much of their adult lives working for and had probably gotten pretty beat up about it. But instead we had people wondering if this was all a work – and not without reason.

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Clearly, there is a place for guesswork in wrestling. But wouldn’t it be better to have your viewers share their fan theories about real-life storylines – like what’s really going on with Paul Heyman and Brock Lesnar, for example – rather than encouraging them to start looking into personnel decisions or digging through the dirt for behind-the-scenes gossip?

What makes the situation even more frustrating is the pride WWE seems to take in its new creative strategy, going so far as to speak openly about decisions once they’ve been made – something that overturns decades of professional wrestling wisdom. Take for example the recent Saturday Night Main Event post-show, where Triple H spoke openly about why he made John Cena lose as if he were a showrunner explaining the season finale.

TKO board member The Rock takes a similar approach. Remember his appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show” less than 48 hours after WrestleMania 41 to give us a post-mortem preview of the main event? Not only did he talk openly about wrestling as a scripted product, but he told us exactly how they scripted it. (But if you criticize him, he’ll tell you to “enjoy the show.”)

Where does this all lead in Kayfabe? After all the twists and turns we have experienced in 2025, the situation must surely be very different from that of a year ago. Who knows, maybe this will all turn out to be an improvement in the long run. Although what we’ve seen so far doesn’t really give cause for optimism.