A Glossary of Pro Wrestling Terms
Professional wrestling built its own private language over more than a century. Most of it started as carny slang that performers used to talk shop in front of paying customers without giving the game away, and a lot of it is still in daily use backstage. This glossary defines 83 pro wrestling terms in plain English, grouped by where you are most likely to hear them, with an example wherever one helps. If you have ever wondered what kayfabe means, why commentators say a wrestler is blown up, or what on earth a schmoz is, start here.
Jump to a section: in the ring, booking and storyline, crowd and reaction, match types, business and backstage, or old-school carny terms.
In the ring
Spot
A planned move, sequence or moment inside a match. Wrestlers agree on spots beforehand and string them together into a story. A match that is nothing but disconnected spots with no build between them is usually criticized as a spotfest.
High spot
A big, high-risk, high-impact move designed to get a reaction, such as a dive to the floor or a move off the top rope. High spots are saved for peak moments because they cost the performer physically and cannot be repeated all night.
Bump
The act of taking a fall, whether flat on the mat, over the top rope or through a table. Taking bumps properly, by distributing the impact across the back and shoulders, is the first thing a trainee learns.
Selling
Reacting to an opponent's offense so it looks like it hurt. Good selling is the single biggest factor in whether a match feels real. A wrestler who limps on the same leg for the rest of the match is selling the damage.
No-sell
To deliberately show no effect from a move, usually to make a character look superhuman. The Undertaker sitting straight up after a beating is the most famous no-sell in wrestling. Overused, no-selling makes an opponent's offense look worthless.
Stiff
Strikes or moves delivered with real force. Some styles, especially Japanese strong style, are intentionally stiff. Calling a wrestler stiff can be a compliment about believability or a complaint that they hurt their opponents unnecessarily.
Potato
An accidental blow that legitimately connects and hurts, as in "he potatoed him with that elbow." Unlike a deliberately stiff strike, a potato is a mistake. The traditional response is a receipt, an equally hard shot given back.
Botch
A mistake: a missed move, a slip, a blown spot or a fumbled line. Botches range from invisible to match-ending. Experienced wrestlers cover for them by improvising, which is why the audience often never notices.
Blown up
Exhausted and out of breath during a match, as in "he is blown up five minutes in." Cardio is the hardest part of wrestling to fake, and a blown-up wrestler is why you see more rest holds late in a long match.
Rest hold
A slow, low-effort hold such as a chinlock or headlock used to let both wrestlers catch their breath and talk through the rest of the match. Fans often complain about them, but they are how long matches are made possible.
Hot tag
The moment in a tag team match when the wrestler who has been taking a beating finally reaches his fresh partner, who charges in and cleans house. The hot tag is the emotional payoff that tag team formula is built around.
Finisher
A wrestler's signature match-ending move, protected so that it almost always gets the pin. The Stunner, the Rock Bottom, the Tombstone and the Sweet Chin Music are all finishers, and kicking out of one is itself a major story beat.
False finish
A near-fall staged to make the crowd believe the match is over: a finisher lands, the referee counts, and the opponent kicks out at the last instant. Stacking false finishes is how modern main events build to their peak.
Near fall
A pin attempt broken up at two and a fraction, just before the three count. Near falls are the basic currency of match drama; the closer the count, the bigger the crowd reaction.
Work rate
A measure of how much effort, athleticism and quality a wrestler puts into a match. High work rate describes someone who consistently delivers physically demanding, well-executed matches rather than coasting on charisma.
Spot monkey
A dismissive term for a wrestler who chains together flashy high spots without telling a story, selling damage or building to anything. The criticism is about structure, not athleticism.
Spotfest
A match built almost entirely out of big moves with little selling or story between them. Spotfests can be enormously fun live and are often criticized on rewatch, because nothing in them is given time to matter.
Five-star match
A perfect score in the rating system popularized by Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter. The scale originally topped out at five stars; Meltzer has since gone beyond it, which is why fans argue about six- and seven-star matches.
Strong style
A Japanese wrestling style built on stiff strikes, realistic submissions and a fighting-contest presentation, associated with New Japan Pro-Wrestling. It treats the match as a fight to be won rather than a performance to be enjoyed.
Green
Inexperienced. A green wrestler may have the athletic tools but not yet the timing, ring awareness or psychology, and it usually shows in hesitation between moves. Every wrestler is green at some point; the insult lies in staying that way.
Hardway
Real blood drawn by an actual blow rather than by blading, as in "he got busted open hardway." Because it is unintentional, hardway juice is unpredictable and can force a match to be cut short.
Booking and storyline
Kayfabe
The industry-wide agreement to present scripted wrestling as a real competition. For most of the twentieth century kayfabe was protected absolutely: rivals would not be seen together in public, and wrestlers stayed in character everywhere. Today it survives as a storytelling convention rather than a secret.
Work
Anything planned. A match is a work, a feud is a work, an injury angle is a work. It is the opposite of a shoot, and it is the most fundamental distinction in the entire vocabulary.
Shoot
Anything real or unscripted. A shoot promo is one where the performer says something genuinely off-script, and a shoot fight is a real fight. Fans use the word constantly, usually about moments that are actually works.
Worked shoot
A scripted segment deliberately designed to feel unscripted, usually by mixing in real names, real backstage grievances and real business details. CM Punk's 2011 pipe bomb promo is the most famous modern example.
Angle
A storyline. An angle is the plot that gives matches a reason to happen: a betrayal, a contract signing gone wrong, a stolen championship. Angles are measured by whether they make people want to buy the eventual match.
Program
An extended feud between two wrestlers or teams, usually running several weeks or months across television and multiple matches. Being in a program with a top star is how a mid-card wrestler gets elevated.
Booking
The process of deciding who wins, who loses, who feuds with whom and in what order. The person doing it is the booker. Almost every fan complaint about a wrestling show is, at bottom, a complaint about booking.
Push
A sustained effort by the company to raise a wrestler's status through wins, television time, championships and presentation. A push can be a strong push, a mid-card push, or the dreaded push that stops halfway.
Bury
To book a wrestler in a way that damages their credibility, usually with repeated losses, embarrassing segments or squash defeats. The opposite of a push, and one of the most overused words in fan discussion.
Job / jobber
To job is to lose a match, especially by design to help the other wrestler. A jobber is a wrestler who loses routinely to make stars look strong. The polite modern term is enhancement talent.
Put over
To make an opponent look strong, most often by losing to them cleanly, but also by praising them in a promo or on commentary. Veterans putting over younger wrestlers is how the business passes stardom down.
Turn
A change of alignment. A heel turn makes a hero into a villain; a face turn does the reverse. A well-timed turn is one of the most reliable ways to make a stale act interesting again.
Swerve
An unexpected twist, usually a betrayal or a surprise reveal at the end of a segment. Used well, a swerve reframes a story; used constantly, it trains the audience not to believe anything they are shown.
Screwjob
A finish where a wrestler loses through outside interference, a crooked referee or an outright violation of the rules. The Montreal Screwjob at Survivor Series 1997, where Bret Hart lost the WWF Championship without agreeing to it, is the real-life version.
Dusty finish
A finish where one wrestler appears to win a championship, only for the decision to be reversed moments later on a technicality. Named for booker Dusty Rhodes, who used the device so often in the NWA that fans stopped trusting title changes.
Schmoz
A chaotic, crowded brawl, usually at the end of a match, in which multiple wrestlers run in and the bout collapses into a mess with no clean winner. Often spelled schmozz. It is a standard way to set up a multi-man match without giving anyone a decisive loss.
Run-in
When a wrestler who is not in the match interferes in it. Run-ins protect the loser, advance a feud or set up the next match, and they are the usual ingredient in a schmoz.
Transitional champion
A wrestler given a short title reign purely to move the championship from one major star to another, so the intended winner does not have to beat the previous champion directly. The reign is a bridge, not a coronation.
Stable
A group of wrestlers allied on screen, usually with a shared name, look and cause. The Four Horsemen, D-Generation X, the nWo and The Bloodline are all stables, and the best ones make every member more valuable than they were alone.
Crowd and reaction
Over
Getting a strong, genuine reaction from the crowd. A wrestler who is over matters to the audience, whether they are cheered or booed. Being over is the single most important thing in wrestling, and it cannot be faked by a scriptwriter.
Pop
A loud, positive crowd reaction, usually for a hero's entrance, a comeback or a returning star. The biggest pops in history tend to be surprise returns rather than anything planned in a match.
Heat
Negative crowd reaction aimed at a villain, as in "he has serious heat." The word also means real backstage tension between people, so context matters: go-away heat is the bad kind, where fans dislike an act instead of the character.
Cheap heat
Booing earned by shortcuts that have nothing to do with the story, most commonly insulting the host city or its sports teams. It works instantly, which is exactly why veterans consider it lazy.
Face / babyface
The hero a crowd is meant to cheer. Babyface is the full term and comes from carnival slang. A face is defined less by being nice than by fighting the fights the audience wants fought.
Heel
The villain a crowd is meant to boo. A heel's job is to make the babyface worth cheering by cheating, stalling, running away and generally behaving in ways that make people want to see them lose.
Tweener
A wrestler positioned between hero and villain who draws mixed reactions, either by design or by accident. Steve Austin and Roman Reigns both spent long stretches as tweeners while audiences decided how to feel about them.
Mark
Originally carny slang for a customer who believed the show was real. Today it is used loosely and often self-deprecatingly: marking out means getting so caught up in a moment that you forget to analyze it.
Smark
A smart mark: a fan who follows booking decisions, backstage news and industry insiders, and who watches with that knowledge in mind. Smark crowds cheer workrate and boo predictable booking, sometimes at the same time.
Promo
An interview or speech used to advance a storyline and sell the next match. Promos can be cut in the ring, backstage or on the microphone during a segment, and the ability to cut a great one is what separates stars from good wrestlers.
Match types
Main event
The featured, top-billed match on a card, traditionally wrestled last. Being in the main event is the clearest signal of where a wrestler sits in the pecking order, which is why main-eventing a major show is such a milestone.
Squash
A one-sided match that exists purely to make one wrestler look dominant, often over in a minute or two. Squashes are how monster heels and returning stars are established before they are put in a real match.
Battle royal
A multi-wrestler match where everyone starts in the ring at once and eliminations happen by being thrown over the top rope to the floor. The last wrestler standing wins.
Royal Rumble match
WWE's signature 30-competitor over-the-top-rope elimination match, with new entrants arriving at timed intervals. The winner traditionally earns a world championship match at WrestleMania. An elimination only counts when both feet touch the arena floor, which is the source of countless near-eliminations.
Ladder match
A match with a championship or contract suspended above the ring, won by climbing a ladder and retrieving it. Variants include Money in the Bank and TLC, which adds tables and chairs.
Cage match
A match contested inside a steel structure, won by pinfall, submission or escape depending on the rules. Hell in a Cell and WarGames are elaborate variants built around the same idea of trapping a feud in one place.
Hardcore match
A no-disqualification match where weapons, brawling outside the ring and falls anywhere are legal. ECW built its identity on the style in the 1990s. See our guide to signature match types for more.
Iron Man match
A match with a set time limit, usually 30 or 60 minutes, won by whoever scores the most falls before time expires. The 1996 WrestleMania XII bout between Shawn Michaels and Bret Hart is the best-known example.
Handicap match
A match where one wrestler faces two or more opponents at the same time. It is normally used to make a dominant star look unstoppable or to put a babyface in an unfair spot that fuels the next story.
Business and backstage
Draw
A wrestler whose presence reliably sells tickets, pay-per-views and merchandise. Drawing power is measured in money, not applause, and it is the harshest and most honest statistic in the business.
Territory
One of the regional promotions that divided up North America before national expansion, each with its own champions and television. The all-time greats of the 1960s and 1970s built their reputations touring them.
Indie
Short for independent: any promotion operating outside the major national companies. The indies are where most wrestlers learn the job, and where several of the last two decades' biggest stars were discovered.
House show
A live event that is not televised, also called a live event or a non-televised show. House shows are looser, storylines rarely advance, and wrestlers often use them to try things out.
Card
The full lineup of matches for an event. The card order runs from the opener up to the main event, and where a match is placed on the card tells you how the company values it.
Go-home show
The final television episode before a major event, built to close every storyline loop and convince viewers to buy or tune in. If a go-home show does not make you want to see the pay-per-view, it has failed.
Dark match
A match at a television taping that is not broadcast, usually either a warm-up to get the crowd going before the show or a tryout for a developmental wrestler.
Gorilla position
The staging area just behind the entrance curtain where wrestlers wait, producers give final instructions and the show is called. Named after Gorilla Monsoon, who ran it for years.
Enhancement talent
The modern, polite term for a jobber: a wrestler hired to lose convincingly and make the featured performer look good. Good enhancement talent is a genuine skill and quietly valuable to a roster.
Valet
A manager, usually a woman, who accompanies a wrestler to the ring, handles interference and adds character to the act without necessarily wrestling. Miss Elizabeth and Sherri Martel are the archetypes, and plenty of valets went on to wrestle themselves.
Mouthpiece
A manager who talks for a wrestler who is not a strong promo, whether because of a language barrier, an accent or a character built on silence. Bobby Heenan and Paul Heyman are the archetypes.
Rib
A practical joke played among wrestlers on the road. Ribs range from harmless to career-threatening, and locker rooms have long treated them as part of the culture. Many of the most repeated stories in wrestling memoirs are ribs that got badly out of hand.
Old-school carny terms
Carny
The carnival slang that pro wrestling inherited, and by extension the deliberately vague, self-serving way old-school wrestling people talk about their business. Calling someone carny means they are working you in conversation.
Gimmick
A wrestler's character, look and hook, from the carnival word for a prop or an angle. Gimmick also refers to a foreign object hidden in trunks or tights, which is why a blade is sometimes called a gimmick.
Juice / blade
Blood, and the act of producing it. Blading means cutting yourself with a small concealed blade to draw blood at a planned moment; getting juice means bleeding. The practice is heavily restricted in modern WWE for health reasons.
Jabroni
A loser or a nobody, taken from Memphis and Italian-American slang and made famous worldwide by The Rock. Calling someone a jabroni is an insult aimed at their standing in the business, not their ability.
Hoss
A very large, powerful wrestler who works a heavy, hard-hitting style. A hoss fight is two of them colliding, which fans either love unreservedly or skip entirely. Vader and Bruiser Brody are the classic examples.
Broadway
An old term for a match that goes to a time-limit draw, typically the full 60 minutes. Territory-era world champions worked Broadways constantly, because a draw let the local hero look good without losing the title.
Paper the house
To give away free tickets so an arena looks full on television and the crowd sounds hot. Papering inflates attendance and hides a weak advance sale, which is why announced attendance figures are treated skeptically.
Sandbagging
Deliberately making yourself dead weight so an opponent cannot lift or throw you, making them look weak. It is one of the rudest things one wrestler can do to another, and it is usually a message.
Receipt
A hard, deliberate shot given back to someone who hit you too stiff, as payback. Receipts are settled inside the match, which is why a suddenly very physical exchange sometimes means something real happened.
Hooker
A wrestler with genuine submission skill who could legitimately hurt an opponent with a hold. Lou Thesz was the most famous hooker to hold a world championship, and the credibility it gave him was part of his drawing power.
Policeman
A legitimately tough wrestler kept on a roster to handle anyone who tried to go into business for himself, such as refusing to lose. Also called an enforcer. The role largely disappeared with the territories.
Strap
Slang for a championship belt, as in "he is carrying the strap." Related terms include strap match, a completely different thing in which two wrestlers are tied together with a leather strap.
Frequently asked questions
What does kayfabe mean?
Kayfabe is the presentation of scripted wrestling storylines and rivalries as though they were real. For most of the twentieth century the industry protected kayfabe completely, keeping rivals apart in public and never admitting matches were planned. Today wrestling openly acknowledges it is scripted, and kayfabe survives as the shared convention that makes the stories work.
What is a heel in wrestling?
A heel is the villain, the wrestler the audience is meant to boo. Heels cheat, stall, taunt the crowd and take shortcuts, all to make the babyface hero worth cheering. When a wrestler switches from hero to villain it is called a heel turn, and it is one of the oldest tools in wrestling storytelling.
What does blown up mean in wrestling?
Blown up means exhausted and out of breath during a match. Wrestling cardio is brutal and cannot be faked, so a blown-up wrestler slows down noticeably. It is also why long matches include rest holds such as chinlocks, which let both performers recover while the match keeps moving.
What is a schmoz in wrestling?
A schmoz, also spelled schmozz, is a chaotic brawl in which several wrestlers run in and the match falls apart with no clean finish. It is a booking device: nobody takes a decisive loss, the feud escalates, and a bigger multi-wrestler match is set up for the next show.
Once you have the vocabulary, wrestling stops being a series of moves and starts being a craft you can read: you can see why a wrestler sold a knee for ten minutes, why a booker put someone over clean, and why a crowd turned on a main event. Take the next step with our guide to the greatest pro wrestlers of all time or our breakdown of the Attitude Era, then test yourself with the question archive or jump straight in and play Wrestling Trivia.
