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Historically, wrestlers upheld kayfabe—the suggestion that professional wrestling was real without contrived storylines, fictional personas, or predetermined outcomes for matches. However, kayfabe eroded over the time. Vince McMahon publicly acknowledged that not everything was on the up and up in the early days of running his company to work around state athletic commission regulations.
Years later, the advent of the Internet caused the limited sphere dirt sheets to go from something only the most hardcore fans and insiders paid attention to, to expand to any old fan who wanted to Google wrestling news and rumours. Tell-all books, documentaries, and podcasts have pulled the curtain back even further.
Despite the evolution of the business and far less effort to suggest kayfabe is a reality, there are those wrestling stars who have held fast over the years. These are people who fiercely protected their characters and the faux integrity of the business, often going to extremes in order to do so. This article looks at five such wrestlers.
#5 The Undertaker
The Undertaker may be the last man standing when it comes to protecting his kayfabe persona long after WWE stopped suggesting all of its characters are on the up and up. To add a dimension to his commitment, he wasn’t just acting like any old persona was real, but more often than not upholding the persona of the "Undead Ghoul".
The extremes to which The Undertaker has gone have included skipping sitting in the audience for Hall of Fame ceremonies and waiting until the television broadcast had ended before coming out and paying tribute to Ric Flair during his retirement promo on Monday Night Raw in 2008.
To be fair, The Dead Man has now made a handful of appearances for WWE documentaries, for example breaking kayfabe to speak about working with Triple H for the Thy Kingdom Come documentary. Maybe now that he looks to be retired we’ll see him come out of his shell a bit more in breaking character.
#4 Arn Anderson
Arn Anderson came up in the business working for the National Wrestling Alliance and most famously for Jim Crockett Promotions and then WCW. He played a roughneck heel who usually backed Ric Flair as part of the Four Horsemen. While he made one stopover during his active wrestling career to work for a year with WWE, he largely played the same character -- a stone-faced, serious wrestler.
It’s notable that Anderson has held onto kayfabe fiercely. In particular, he was called on to speak for several documentary projects over the last decade. Particularly in recounting the history of the Four Horsemen, he’s spoken carefully to avoid revealing the business. Instead, he kept on referencing the group as if they actually were both a band of violent thugs and an elite squad of in-ring technicians.
Anderson stood out amidst interviews with other personalities who did shoot for these documentary projects, and the question became if no one had clued "The Enforcer" into the style of the interview that is being done, or if he were just old school enough to still protect kayfabe that seriously.
#3 The Big Boss Man
Through a combination of killer timing and a unique combination of size, power, and speed, The Big Boss Man became an icon for WWE. He first thrived during the Hulkamania era as a monster heel and then an upper mid-card babyface. Later, after a middling run with WCW, he came back to play Mr. McMahon’s heel enforcer in the Corporation, and a memorable heel upper mid carder in general during the Attitude Era.
Through it all, Boss Man didn’t break character and passed away before it became en vogue for so many wrestlers to openly shoot about the business. In a moment that exemplified his career and his commitment, though Jim Cornette has shared a story about Boss Man from his younger days, working under the moniker Big Bubba Rogers.
The trunk door of a car was accidentally slammed down on his fingers after he was loading his bags. Knowing that there were fans presenting and watching, he no-sold the agony of his badly injured fingers to continue presenting a tough guy image in front of a crowd.
#2 Brian Pillman
Brian Pillman rose to fame as the face of WCW’s Light Heavyweight division in the 1990s. As age and injuries caught up to him, however, he needed to reinvent his image to stay relevant when he could no longer fly around the ring. The result was the Loose Cannon gimmick—playing crazy and constantly working not only fans but his colleagues as to whether he was playing a character or he had actually lost his mind in real life.
The character reached new heights when Pillman conspired with Eric Bischoff to get his release from WCW, and take the Loose Cannon on the road and build upon his legend across ECW and WWE. Theories and accounts vary as to whether the end game was always for Pillman to come back to WCW a bigger star and make more money, or if Pillman were playing Bischoff.
Regardless, he was a character who consistently walked the line of making fans wonder whether he was playing a character or being his crazy self, including attacking Bobby Heenan on air, calling Kevin Sullivan “booker man” in a match, or later shooting the “Pillman Has a Gun” angle with Steve Austin on Raw.
#1 David Schultz
There was a period, shortly after Vince McMahon took over WWE from his father when “Dr D” David Schultz was positioned as one of the top heels in the company and a rival to Hulk Hogan. In an unusual circumstance, Schultz would protect kayfabe a little too fiercely, and wind up losing his job for it.
The issue came up when Schultz was interviewed by ABC’s John Stossel. Stossel asked if wrestling weas fixed, and Schultz responded by hitting him to the floor twice. Schultz’s actions reflected an old school mentality of protecting the business. Schultz would go so far as to claim later that WWE management had instructed him to get physical if the veracity of pro wrestling were challenged.
It seems not everyone was on the same page, though, as WWE ultimately released him for his violent actions against a civilian, in front of a national television audience, which they felt reflected poorly on the company.
