Job (professional Wrestling)

Job (professional Wrestling)

In professional wrestling slang, the term job describes a losing performance in a wrestling match. It is derived from the euphemism "doing one's job", which was employed to protect kayfabe. The term can be used a number of ways. When a wrestler is booked, or scripted, to lose a match it is described as "a job." The act itself is described with the verb jobbing, while the act of booking (rather than being booked) to job is called jobbing out. To lose a match fairly (meaning without any kayfabe rules being broken) is to job cleanly. Wrestlers who routinely lose matches are known as jobbers.

A high-profile loss might signify certain behind-the-scenes events that have real-life implications on a wrestler. A job may mark the end of a push, a departure from the company, or a loss of faith in the wrestler as a marketable commodity. As a result, it may also mark a downward slide in a wrestler's career. This is especially the case when the wrestler is beaten very easily, or squashed. However, it can also be orchestrated by the wrestler himself, as was the case with David Sammartino (son of the legendary champion Bruno Sammartino) in the late 1980s when he purposely lost in a squash match to jobber Ron Shaw as a protest against his treatment as a competitor by Vince McMahon, the chairman of the World Wrestling Federation. It later became evident that Shaw himself had no idea what Sammartino had concocted, the latter having called for the referee to stop the bout after Shaw caught him in a bear hug that Sammartino could easily have broken. Shaw was awarded the victory after a brief match in which Sammartino did not even register a single blow. Though he was not ousted from the WWF, Sammartino was then given a series of insignificant matches that were not designed to give him a shot at the championship title, and he soon left the circuit of his own accord, his career essentially ruined.