A Look Into The History Of Professional Wrestling

By Vicki Diaz


Many historians trace wrestling to the early 3000 BC. The popularity of this game is said to have started with the Babylonians down to the Romans, though the Greeks promoted it the most. The history of professional wrestling, on the other hand dates back to the early 1900s.

Wrestling is mainly categorized into two. There is the Greco-Roman type, which is considered the oldest and was the most practiced and the catch style (where some things which were initially prohibited in the rules of the game were allowed). For instance, catch style allowed the wrestler to grapple below the waist, a thing that was not permitted in the Greco-Roman style. Nonetheless, both of the styles were legit games where victory was earned.

As mentioned before, the sport was birthed in early 1900s, 1920s to be precise. It is during this time that another segment of catch fighting was developed. Through professional fighting, promoters could hire wrestlers and train them on how they should behave during the game. They even promoted the idea of tag teams to maximize entertainment. In a tag team match, the referee can be distracted to give the wrestlers the opportunity to weigh down on their opponent illegally.

By definition therefore, the sport is a stage-managed fight with known results. The trick is however to make the audience convinced that it is real through trained reactions to the predetermined loss or win. There are cases where professional wrestlers would display feuds just to make their performance against each other more thrilling. Mostly though, the fight would follow a storyline that resembles a real situation and thus maximize the entertainment.

The advent of Cable and television are seen as another turning point in the history of the sport. It was obvious in the 1950s and 1980s when the televisions and cable were introduced that there was a great boost in its popularity and acceptance. It is therefore referred to as the golden age of the game. Main promoters like the National Wrestling Alliance ((NWA) also got popular during this time.

These small disagreements lead to the formation of groups such as World Wide Wrestling Federation and American Wrestling Association based in New York and Minnesota respectively. Though the groups had some success in promoting their games, they could not match the success NWA had. In addition, they could not get a star figure with national popularity as Lou Thesz.

Since the sport was being introduced to the national audience, the promoters needed better scripting and storyline to survive. Both the AWA and the WWF also went down due to investigation into some of their performers who were thought to abuse steroids. All these matters contributed to the failure of the opposing promoters. Eventually, the NWA remained as the lead promoter of the sport on TV.

Though there were difficulties through the history of professional wrestling, it survived it all and grew in popularity. Its popularity also goes beyond borders. Countries like Australia, Japan and Mexico are just examples. People in these nations now love the sport and own it like their own.




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