Do you remember when you first found out professional wrestling was “fake”? Did it take some of the magic out of the world, like finding out Santa’s not real? Well, prepare to have the business further demystified with the WWE: Unreal teaser, in which Paul “Triple H” Levesque declares that “it’s time” to drop the concept of kayfabe for good.
The ten-episode series is set to premiere sometime in summer 2025. A synopsis from Netflix reads, “For the first time ever, step into the WWE writer’s room and outside the ring with your favorite WWE Superstars, where the drama is just as intense offstage as it is under the spotlight.” As Triple H—a former performer and current WWE chief content officer—puts it in the WWE: Unreal teaser, “Seven days a week, 365 days a year. This is a calculated, coordinated production. It’s time. We’re gonna lift the curtain.”
It’s unclear what about the current moment indicates that it’s “time” to drop kayfabe, besides the fact that WWE has a Netflix partnership now and the content mill always demands more. Doing so may be controversial within the world of wrestling, where maintaining the illusion of reality has long been a part of the business model. Abraham Josephine Riesman, author of the book Ringmaster: Vince McMahon And The Unmaking Of America, argues that former CEO Vince McMahon was the one who began dismantling that illusion, terming it “neyokayfabe.” “After Vince made it a part of public record that wrestling was fake, that led to sort of the end of the illusion that wrestling was a legitimate, unplanned competition in the sporting realm,” Riesman told CNN last year. “Neokayfabe is when you operate not on the assumption of telling the audience, ‘Hey, everything you’re about to see is real.’ You start by giving them the assumption, ‘Hey, everything you’re about to see is fake — except the parts that you think are real.'”
McMahon’s tenure as the WWE’s ringleader was overshadowed by controversy when he was accused of sexual misconduct and various other abuses of leadership. Late last year, six former WWE writers sued McMahon and the company over accusations of fostering a hostile work environment.
