Al Snow Feels Kayfabe Is Still Alive, Recalls Being Nervous About Netflix OVW Series

Al Snow doesn’t believe that kayfabe is dead, and says he was nervous about pulling back the curtain for Netflix’s Wrestlers docuseries. Snow spoke with Wrestling Inc promoting the new series, which premiered on Thursday, and you can see some highlights below:

On being worried about pulling back the curtain with the series: “Yeah, of course. I’ve used this as an example of … It’s like The Wizard of Oz. When you watched The Wizard of Oz and everything was magic and exciting and colorful and then you get to the end and you find out it was just some stumpy old man when you pulled the curtain back pulling knobs and twisting the levers and pushing the dials and buttons and pulling chains, basically orchestrating everything, and then the magic was gone. And I feel like sometimes our quest to really know things backstage that we really don’t need to know to enjoy the show breeds familiarity and familiarity breeds contempt and it takes away a little bit of the joy of just being a fan.

“Some fans, I think they become so passionate about whatever they are watching … that they feel like they have to know more so that they don’t feel like they’re a fan, that they’re actually a part of a business or an industry that they’re not really a part of, which then now develops into becoming a critic of that business or industry that they once just loved for the pure love of it … now they have certain evaluations that have to be met.”

On the notion of kayfabe being dead: “I personally feel like kayfabe is still alive. Kayfabe, a lot of people misunderstand the term. It was a very non sequitur word that allowed us to just simply make sure that somebody that was in our midst was not smartened up or made aware of or had the curtain pulled back on him, and it was also a respect and it was an unspoken agreement.

“Contrary to popular belief, here in the United States alone since the 1940s, people have known that wrestling is predetermined and really as far as it being fake, the only thing that’s fake about wrestling is just the outcome. That’s it,” Snow continued. “Everything we do in the ring is quite real. Everything physically, and it’s just our intent that you want to believe in, and that’s the one thing we’re selling you, is our intent.”