Thursday, May 23, 2013

A Look Into The History Of Professional Wrestling

By Vicki Diaz


Wrestling has a history that can be traced back to about 3000 BC. In fact, the sport started during the Babylonian rule and existed from empire to empire. However, much credit is given t the Greeks who greatly promoted this sports. The history of professional wrestling can be traced to early 20th century.

The main categories of the sport are the Greco-Roman (named so because of its origin and popularity) and the catch method which allowed wrestlers to grapple. You should know that the Greco-Roman style did prohibit grappling below the waist. However, whichever the style one chose, it was a real fight without simulations or staging.

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 history of the sport as we know it today started at around 1980s after being boosted through the introduction of television in the early fifties and that of cable in the 80s. People could now watch the games live at home. The main player remained the National wrestling Alliance (NWA) though there were dissenting groups that thought they were being swallowed by this body unfairly.

Even though the NWA was popular and controlled the sport, there were groups that started their splinter organizations. Among such splinter groups were the World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWF) and the American Wrestling Association. These were based in New York and Minnesota in that order. However, their popularity was not to go far as they did not excel in building storyline and staging performances. They also lacked a popular national star one like Lou Thesz.

It is said that their main failure was in their inability to come up with convincing storyline. As the game was just getting national acceptance, people still though it was legitimate and thus a perfectly convincing plot and staging was necessary. Both WWF and AWA lacked or were not good in these. There were also claims of abuse of steroid by some of their performers.

Whereas there is more to the history of professional wrestling, it must be understood that the game is among the most watched in the world. It is also a top revenue earner for both the promoters and the performers. In addition, its acceptance is international as seen in countries like Australia, United Kingdom among others which have also embraced the game. It is watched by many and there are also a good number of upcoming wrestlers for the sport.




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