Kayfabe: Or, How I Discovered My Family Had Been Running a Seventy-Seven-Year Wrestling Promotion and I Was the Mark

By Michael Kelman Portney

Professional wrestling has a term for the collective lie that makes the whole enterprise possible.

It is called kayfabe.

Kayfabe is the agreement to behave as though something staged is real. Everyone inside the promotion understands the outcomes are predetermined. The rivalries are written. The betrayals are scheduled weeks in advance. The violence is choreographed with professional care.

The audience is not supposed to know this.

The audience is called the marks.

The mark’s job is simple. He is supposed to believe. He is supposed to react. He is supposed to feel outrage, hope, betrayal, and vindication on cue. He is not supposed to ask how the match was booked, who owns the promotion, or where the money goes.

I once wrote a book about professional wrestling psychology and how it applies to business and persuasion. I thought I was extracting lessons from entertainment and applying them elsewhere.

It took me eighteen years to realize I had misunderstood my role.

I was not an analyst.

I was the mark.

The Promotion

Every wrestling promotion has a promoter. This is the person who actually controls reality. They decide who wins, who loses, who gets a push, who is written out, and who gets portrayed as unstable when they stop cooperating.

My family had one too.

My grandfather ran gambling operations in Montana for decades under the banner of legitimate amusement distribution. Jukeboxes. Pinball machines. Video gambling terminals. Cash-heavy businesses with flexible accounting and durable relationships.

He understood something essential. He understood that if outcomes are controlled, the illusion of fairness matters more than fairness itself. Gamblers will keep playing a rigged game if they believe they have a chance. Audiences will keep watching a fixed match if the performers sell it well.

That understanding did not retire when he did.

The promotion continued.

The Gimmicks

Wrestling lives and dies on character work. Everyone has a gimmick. Not a personality. A role. A function within the narrative.

Looking back, my family’s booking was meticulous.

The Promoter:
My mother. The authority figure. The one who speaks in moral language while controlling the money. She sets the terms, rewrites history, and insists that whatever happens was inevitable, unfortunate, and handled appropriately. Promoters never appear to get their hands dirty. They just “make decisions.”

The Legal Manager:
The family attorney. The fellow who handles contracts, suppresses inconvenient paperwork, and speaks on behalf of others while pretending not to interfere. In wrestling, this character stands on the apron in a cheap suit, shouting legalese while the referee looks the other way. He had already been sanctioned once for hiding estate documents. That is called heat.

The Enforcer:
My uncle. A convicted felon for tampering with public records. The muscle. The one who sends messages that are just vague enough to be deniable and just specific enough to land. “Bang bang Rufus,” he texted me the day before I was scheduled to collect evidence. Wrestling people call this cutting a promo. Everyone else calls it intimidation.

The Enhancement Talent:
Various relatives and associates whose job is to nod, repeat the storyline, and take the fall if necessary. They are not booked to win. They are booked to make the winners look legitimate.

The Crazy One:
That was my gimmick.

Every promotion needs one.

The Storyline

Here was the official narrative.

My aunt died without a will. The estate passed by intestacy. Everything was handled properly. There was nothing for the grandchildren. These things happen.

Here was the untelevised segment.

On April 6, 2007, I watched my aunt sign her Last Will and Testament in my grandfather’s office. I watched the attorney present it. I watched my mother observe it. I watched the document leave the room.

After my aunt’s death, the will disappeared.

When I asked about it, I was met not with explanation but with performance. Shock. Indignation. Moral outrage that I would even ask such a thing.

That is not denial. That is selling.

The mark is supposed to feel embarrassed for questioning the script.

The Mark’s Function

The mark exists to absorb losses without noticing the pattern.

He is promised inheritance someday. He is promised a future role in the business. He is told to be patient. To be grateful. To stop asking questions. To trust the system.

He is not supposed to notice that the companies are restructured without him. That verbal agreements evaporate. That documents vanish. That assets migrate.

Most importantly, he is not supposed to notice that his role never changes.

I noticed.

The Break

In the mid-1990s, several wrestlers broke character in the ring at Madison Square Garden, embracing despite being scripted enemies. The moment became infamous because it exposed the business. The audience saw, briefly, that the hatred was performed and the rivalries were fake.

Once the curtain is pulled back, it does not go back.

I pulled mine.

What I found was not a single bad act, but a pattern. Text messages acknowledging routine reneging on promises. Admissions that suppressing a will would not be out of character. Financial records using a fictitious identity, a deceased dog listed as a living person, to obscure assets. A coordinated effort to have me declared unwell once I began asking questions.

This was not improvisation.

This was booking.

The Worked Shoot

When a mark starts to see the script, promotions do not panic. They adapt.

Wrestling has a move for this. It is called a worked shoot. You acknowledge the criticism in a controlled way and fold it into the storyline. You do not deny reality. You reframe it.

My family’s worked shoot was elegant.

They did not say nothing was wrong.

They said I was wrong.

Obsessive. Unstable. Dangerous. In need of intervention.

Seeing the pattern became proof that I was unfit. Questioning the script became evidence of illness. The gimmick escalated from “ungrateful” to “unwell.”

This only works if the wider world plays along. Judges. Doctors. Police. Institutions willing to treat the promotion’s narrative as neutral truth.

Institutions become less cooperative when shown receipts.

Why This Is Not Wrestling

In wrestling, the audience consents. They understand, at least tacitly, that they are watching a performance.

In fraud, the mark does not consent. He is lied to, gaslit, and punished for noticing.

That is the difference.

Going Into Business for Yourself

When a wrestler leaves a promotion, the hardest part is not the money. It is the identity. Everything about him was defined by the role he played. The crazy one. The traitor. The screw-up.

When he stops cooperating, the promotion smears him. Buries him. Warns others not to work with him.

That is where I am now.

I am no longer playing the gimmick I was assigned.

The Finish

Wrestling matches have predetermined finishes.

This does not.

Wednesday is the deadline. Thursday is the filing.

For seventy-seven years, this promotion ran on kayfabe. On controlled outcomes. On marks who believed the script.

The work only functions if the mark believes.

I do not.

Let us see how they sell that.