Up until the 1920s, professional wrestling in North America was viewed as a legitimate sport. This respectability did not endure as professional wrestling became identified with modern theatrics or admitted fakery ("kayfabe"), moving away from being a showcase for true competition. The scripted nature of the art have made critics consider it an illegitimate sport, particularly in comparison to boxing and amateur wrestling. Ironically, no major promoter or wrestler denies that modern professional wrestling has predetermined match outcomes, making such criticism a straw man.
Through the advent of television in the 1950s, and cable in the 1980s professional wrestling gained powerful media outlets, reaching peaks of viewership. The nature of professional wrestling was changed dramatically to better fit television, enhancing character traits and storylines. Television has also helped many wrestlers break into mainstream media, becoming influential celebrities and icons of popular culture. In the United States, in the First Golden Age of professional wrestling of the 1940s-1950s, Gorgeous George gained mainstream popularity, followed in the Second Golden Age of the 1980s-1990s by Hulk Hogan and Stone Cold Steve Austin. In Mexico and Japan, the 1940s-1950s was also a Golden Age for professional wrestling, with Santo becoming a Mexican folk hero through film roles and comic book characterization, and Rikidōzan achieving similar fame in Japan.
Origin
Professional wrestling, defined as wrestling between two professionals for payment, is a form of both entertainment and fighting. There is perhaps no sport more widely dispersed or older than wrestling; it has documented history in ancient Babylonian and Egyptian art from 3,000 BC, literary presence in the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, and has been known and practiced in ancient Chinese and Japanese civilizations. The Greeks are credited for popularizing it as a competitive, widely-practiced public spectacle of competitive athleticism in the Ancient Olympic Games. It has therefore been believed that the form of wrestling practiced through the ages, from the ancients onto the nineteenth century, has been what is now called the Greco-Roman style.
The modern style of professional wrestling, popularized by the United States and Great Britain during the late nineteenth century, is called the catch-as-catch can style. Originally thought of as unorthodox and more lax in style, catch wrestling differs from Greco-Roman in its allowed grapples; Greco-Roman strictly prohibits grabbing below the waist, while catch wrestling allows holds above and below the waist, including leg grips. Both catch wrestling and Greco-Roman were popular, and legitimate amateur and professional sports until the late 1800s, when catch wrestling changed slowly into the sport known worldwide as pro-wrestling, recognized more for its theatrical antics and entertainment than wrestling ability. Greco-Roman, however, did not change in the sense of competitiveness or legitimacy and remains a practiced Olympic sport to this day.
Beginnings (1860s to 1940s)
Carnival days
Professional wrestling, in the sense of traveling performers paid for mass entertainment in staged matches, began in the post-Civil War period in the late 1860s and 1870s. During this time, wrestlers were often athletes with amateur wrestling experience who competed at traveling carnivals with carnies working as their promoters and bookers. Grand circuses included wrestling exhibitions, quickly enhancing them through colorful costumes and fictional biographies for entertainment, disregarding their competitive nature. Wrestling exhibits during the late 1800s were also shown across the United States in countless "athletic shows" (or "at shows"), where experienced wrestlers offered open challenges to the audience. It was at these shows, often done for high-stakes gambling purposes, that the nature of the sport changed through the competing interests of three groups of people: the impresarios, the carnies, and the barnstormers.
Impresarios were the managers who chose how a wrestler could gain fame and interest among the fans, creating personas and improvising matches to make them more interesting. Carnies, who traveled and wrestled at these events, used tricks to protect their money and reputations during competitions, devising little-known and often dangerous wrestling moves, called "hooks." Hooks are illegal in conventional amateur wrestling but have high rates of success against even the most athletic and experienced of competitors, essentially removing rules from professional wrestling. In addition, some spectators capable of beating the carnies roamed the country to compete in open challenges, setting side bets to make money. The barnstormers competed as traveling wrestlers did and often cooperated with the carnies to stage the matches, providing enormous profits for both sides in betting. Through the interests of money-making among the three groups, wrestling became a business-oriented entertainment venue, distinguishing itself further and further from its authentic amateur wrestling background.
Wrestling performers were arranged in a pyramid hierarchy of fame and money, based strictly on athletic talent. The lowest were the journeymen, young performers with promise and some skill, but who relied mainly on showmanship to gain fans. The actual wrestlers, called "shooters" because of their ability to "shoot" or fight real matches competitively were more successful and less common. At the top were the elites, or the hookers, named for their ability to use arcane wrestling hooks to inflict damage and serious injury on the competition without much effort. Wrestlers also considered themselves among a select group and often kept the fact that their sport was commonly faked—to an extent—in high secrecy. They used a jargon of their own (often shared with carnies) to communicate so that the audience would not understand them, including the word "kayfabe."
"Farmer" Burns-Frank Gotch era
During the late 1800s-early 1900s, wrestling was dominated by Martin "Farmer" Burns and his pupil, Frank Gotch. Burns was renowned as a competitive wrestler, who, despite never weighing more than 160 pounds during his wrestling career, fought over 6,000 wrestlers (at a time when most were competitive contests) and lost fewer than 10 of them. He also gained a reputation for training some of the best wrestlers of the era, including Gotch, known as one of America's first sports superstars.
Gotch, regarded as "peerless" at his peak, was the first to actually claim the world's undisputed heavyweight championship by beating all contenders in North America and Europe. He was beloved by the news media and the public alike, allowing him to popularize professional wrestling in the early 1900s. He became the world's champion by beating European wrestling champion Georg Hackenschmidt, both in 1908 and 1911, seen by modern wrestling historians as two of the most significant matches in wrestling history.
The popularity of wrestling during the early 1900s was highest in the Midwest, where ethnic European communities, many of them German, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Greek, and Scandinavian in ancestry continued to carry on fighting styles practiced in their home nations. At this time, however, during the late 1800s, the majority of wrestling was still competitive, and it was immensely popular. In fact, wrestling's popularity was second only to baseball from 1900 to the early 1920s, launching trading cards and competitive wrestling programs in colleges, high schools, and athletic clubs, legacies that have endured to the present day.
Wrestling's popularity experienced a dramatic tailspin in 1915 to 1920, becoming distanced from the American public because of widespread doubt of its legitimacy and status as a competitive sport. Wrestlers during the time recount it as largely faked by the 1880s. It also waned because after Gotch's retirement in 1913, no new wrestling superstar emerged to captivate the public's eye.
Expansion (1920s to 1930s)
Following the retirement of Frank Gotch, professional wrestling (except in the Midwest) was losing popularity fast. Media attention focused on the fakery of wrestling instead of its athleticism, and without a superstar like Gotch, no major personality reached a wide fanbase. In response, three professional wrestlers, Ed Lewis, Billy Sandow, and Toots Mondt, joined to form their own promotion in the 1920s, spicing up their in-ring product to attract fans. The three were referred to as the "Gold Dust Trio" due to their financial success. Their promotion was the first to use time-limit matches, flashy new holds, and new finishing moves regularly. They also popularized tag team wrestling, introducing new tactics, such as distracting the referee, to make the matches more exciting.
The Trio's lasting legacy, and perhaps their greatest innovation to professional wrestling, was the use of wrestlers as stables for a packaged show. Rather than paying traveling wrestlers to perform on certain dates and combining wrestlers in match-ups when they were available, they decided to keep wrestlers for months and years at a time, allowing for long-term angles and feuds. This was the key to their success; they were able to keep wrestlers from their competition, and were able to have regular wrestling cards. Their business succeeded quickly, gaining popularity for its freshness and unique approach to wrestling; a traveling stable of wrestlers. The Trio gained great popularity nationwide during their best years, roughly 1920 to 1925, when they performed in the Eastern territory, stealing fans from the highly-exposed big cities.
The Trio was dealt an enormous double-cross by Stanislaus Zbyszko when he beat the prematurely-pushed rookie Wayne Munn, and stole their world heavyweight championship. Munn, who had been recruited to wrestling and pushed to champion in only a few months, was the Trio's new star and main attraction. Zbyszko was supposed to lose to Munn, but refused to follow along, beating Munn so decisively and thoroughly that the referee awarded him the title to prevent a riot. To add insult to injury, Zbyszko quickly dropped the title to Joe Stecher, a rival of Ed Lewis.
Stecher, although an able hooker, was afraid of losing his championship and refused to wrestle many contenders, making it impossible for the Trio to retrieve it. They responded by calling the Munn-Zbysko match illegitimate and reinstated Munn as champion, only to quickly drop it to Lewis. This left two champions, Ed Lewis and Joe Stecher, who were regarded as the dominant wrestlers of the period. Unfortunately, because Stecher refused to fight Lewis, an anticipated fight to determine decisively the better of the two was never done. Stecher and Lewis did agree to a unification match years later, in 1928, when Stecher gave in and lost the title to Lewis. By this time, the double-cross had already left irreparable damage, detracting from the Trio's dominance over the wrestling industry. In addition, the build-up of Munn followed by such a humiliating loss had devalued his title and credibility as a major wrestling superstar permanently.
Growth of wrestling promotions
In 1887, the first professional wrestling title, the American Catch-as-Catch Can Championship, was created. Soon, every wrestling promotion had created their own championship, which was considered each company's pride and glory. As promotions were attempting to become nationally-renowned, acquiring rival championships marked victory.
In the 1930s and 1940s, small wrestling promotions had fierce competition with each other, often stealing talents and "invading" enemy companies to win over fans. With interbrand matches occurring nationwide, the pride of each promotion, their world championships, were vying for dominance. In 1948, wrestling reached new heights after a loose confederation was formed between independent wrestling companies and was known as the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA). In the late 1940s to 1950s, the NWA chose Lou Thesz to unify the various world championships into a single "World Heavyweight" title. Thesz's task was not easy, as some promoters, reluctant to lose face, went so far as to shoot title matches to keep their own champions popular with the fans.
Television era (1950s to 1970s)
Following the advent of television, professional wrestling matches began to be aired nationally during the 1950s, reaching a larger fanbase than ever before. This was a time of enormous growth for professional wrestling, as soaring demand and national expansion made it a much more popular and lucrative form of entertainment than in decades previous—a "Golden Age"—for the wrestling industry. It was also a time of great change in both the character and professionalism of wrestlers as a result of the appeal of television. Wrestling fit naturally with television because it was easy to understand, had drama, comedy and colorful characters, and was inexpensive for production. From 1948 to 1955, each of the three major television networks were broadcasting wrestling shows; the largest supporter being the DuMont Television Network.
Outrageous characters
Gorgeous George became one of the biggest stars during this period, gaining media attention for his outrageous character, which was flamboyant and charismatic. Already popular among wrestling fans, he became renowned after comedian Bob Hope noticed his performance in the Hollywood Legion Stadium in 1945 and 1946, and began to use him for jokes on his radio station. The publicity brought many people into wrestling events, bringing his stardom to a high point when promoters and television stations alike were paying generously for his performances.
Gorgeous George's impact on wrestling has been interpreted in many ways, demonstrating how fast television changed the product from athletics to performance. His legacy was the enormous change in wrestling personas he inspired; before him, wrestlers imitated "ethnic terrors" (Nazis, Arabs, etc.), but he began a more individualistic and narcissist form of characters. He was also among the first to use entrance music and was the first ever wrestler to have a valet escort him to the ring, giving him the role of a celebrity.
Television also changed the on-screen product in many other ways. Originally, the impact of television was not planned for very well during this period. Promotional spots, which are now used as pre-match rants by wrestlers to warm up the crowds, were often poorly used at the time. Early promos were nothing more than simple greetings and welcomes to the local crowds, missing in-ring personality boosts and character skits. No one would discuss their promos before shooting them, and promoters usually would not spend time helping wrestlers in front of the camera.
Competitiveness compromised
Professional wrestlers themselves began to change. As popularity grew during the mid-1950s, many more wrestlers joined the ranks of the business, and the number of professional wrestlers reached easily over 2,000, far more than ever before. However, many new wrestlers began fresh without notions of athletic sportsmanship that was popular in competitive arenas; they began with dreams of becoming televised superstars. This proved especially true as the product began to lose talent, relying on blood and acrobatic performance.
Wrestling's competitiveness had been degraded forever by television, a fact regarded by many in the business as a natural effect of television over competition. The New York wrestling office soon became dominant, as it refused to use true, competitive wrestlers, and instead focused on attracting televised entertainment. Perhaps the first of the more ridiculous, comic-book characters known to professional wrestling today was Antonino Rocca. Notoriously weak in wrestling ability, his marketable personality and barefoot acrobatics attracted fans and made him a national superstar especially popular among Italian and Hispanic fans. The New York Wrestling office used him to revive their promotion on television and found him far easier to exploit than a "true wrestler", enabling them to negotiate wrestler contracts tremendously in their favor.
Moderate slowdown
By the late 1950s, professional wrestling had lost its high ratings, and producers, realizing that they had overexposed it, soon dropped most wrestling from their lineups. The remaining televised wrestling promoters had small, local syndicated shows, which network producers placed reluctantly as late-night filler. Promoters used localized television as a weapon for eliminating the competition by purchasing airtime from rival territories, effectively putting them out of business.
The NWA was the most dominant wrestling body in the 1950s and a large number of wrestling promotions had been under its leadership. Many promoters, however, viewed it as a crooked tyranny, holding back innovative changes in the sport. It was during this time that several promoters found reason to leave the organization, managing to find niches in the United States. The most prominent of these were the American Wrestling Association (AWA), which became the most popular wrestling promotion during the 1960s, and the New York-based World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF), renamed WWF in 1979.
As a top wrestler in the 1950s, Verne Gagne formed his own promotion in the NWA in 1957, which soon became the lead promotion with Gagne winning the World Heavyweight Championship of Omaha. However, after unsuccessfully lobbying for a title match with the NWA Champion, Gagne broke away from the NWA in 1960, renaming his promotion the American Wrestling Association, and making it the dominant organization of the 1960s. Named the AWA World Heavyweight Champion soon after, Gagne was the top wrestler, and engaged in many feuds with heel wrestlers, most notably Nick Bockwinkel, and was the AWA's top draw until his retirement in 1981.
Vincent J. McMahon also withdrew the Capitol Wrestling Corporation from the NWA in 1963, as the NWA Champion Lou Thesz was not a strong draw in the area, and renamed the company "World Wide Wrestling Federation" (WWWF). However, with wrestling's decline in the 1970s, the WWWF suffered a huge blow and had to rejoin the NWA in 1971. The WWWF, however, rebounded after André the Giant became the top superstar of the organization, as well as all of professional wrestling, after he joined the company in 1973. André became so popular that all NWA territories and the AWA used him, as well.
The AWA no longer was the top promotion after the WWWF rejoined the NWA. However, the AWA reached new heights after powerhouse wrestler Hulk Hogan gained nationwide attention from staring in Rocky III, and became a solid fan favorite. Despite Hogan being the AWA's top draw, Gagne would not let him be champion, believing technical wrestlers should be the focus of a wrestling company. Hogan left in 1983, irreparably damaging the AWA for the remainder of its years.
In spite of all this, the NWA altogether was still on top and gained huge dominance through Georgia Championship Wrestling (GCW), becoming the first nationally broadcast wrestling program as soon as TBS became a national cable network in 1979. By 1981, GCW became the most watched show on cable television.
Explosion (1980s – present)
1980s wrestling boom
The 1980s represented professional wrestling's greatest period of televised entertainment, reaching widespread popularity among American youth, as well as producing some of its most spectacular characters. In comparison to the declining support of media outlets during the 1960s and 1970s, professional wrestling, notably the emerging World Wrestling Federation (WWF; abridged from WWWF in 1979), received great exposure through its reappearance on network television. The WWF expanded nationally through the acquisition of talent from competing promotions and, because it was the only company to air televised wrestling nationally, became synonymous with the industry, monopolizing the industry and the fanbase. The WWF's owner Vince McMahon revolutionized the sport by coining the term "sports entertainment" to describe his on-screen product, admitting to its fakery as well as enhancing its appeal to children.
The WWF became the most colorful and well-known wrestling brand to children because of its child-oriented characters. Its wrestling product was unreal and noticeably fake, characterized by soap-opera dramaticism and cartoon-like personas. Most notable was the muscular Hulk Hogan, who marked the 1980s with his "all-American" persona. His sheer size, colorful character, and extravagance made his main events into excellent ratings draws. By January 1984, Hogan's legions of fans and his dominant role in the industry was termed "Hulkamania." Hogan sold out arenas all across the United States and earned the WWF millions of dollars, making it the number one entity in all of professional wrestling.
The "Rock 'n' Wrestling Connection" was a period of cooperation and cross-promotion between the WWF and elements of the music industry. The WWF attracting a degree of mainstream attention with Cyndi Lauper joining in 1984 and WWF personalities appeared in her music videos. Hogan gained mainstream popularity for appearing in the film Rocky III, reaching to an even greater level of celebrity. In 1985, Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n' Wrestling, an animated television series starring the character of Hogan, expanded Hogan's young fanbase.
Meanwhile, the NWA's renowned and highly successful territory system was slowly dying, with Jim Crockett Promotions (JCP) became the center of the entire NWA. While the WWF had their major stars at almost all of their shows, the NWA could only manage to have a few of its stars at one show at a time, so as to promote the product in every territory. The advent of nationwide television also weakened the system. Wrestlers could no longer travel to a new market and establish a new persona, since fans there already knew who they were. Meanwhile, McMahon took advantage of this phenomenon by purchasing promotions all over the continent, in order to produce a widely popular nationwide television program and make the WWF the only viewing choice.
To counter the NWA's primary supercard, Starrcade, the WWF created its flagship show, WrestleMania, available on 135 closed-circuit networks. The show was a huge success with Hogan, who won in the main event, going on to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated. After the swimsuit issue, it was the magazine's best seller. Professional wrestling began to become mainstream, thanks, in large part, to the appeal of Hulkamania among children. Large television networks took wrestling into their weekly programming, including Saturday Night's Main Event, premiering on NBC in 1985, the first wrestling show to air primetime since 1955. ESPN also began airing professional wrestling for the first time.
WrestleMania III, with a reported record attendance of 93,173 people, is widely considered to be the pinnacle of the period. The first episode of WWF The Main Event is the highest rated professional wrestling television show to date, with a 15.2 rating and 33 million viewers. Both had a main event featuring Hulk Hogan battling André the Giant for the WWF Championship. Following WrestleMania III, the WWF added to its franchise and created both the Survivor Series and the Royal Rumble pay-per-views.
Wrestling promotions across the United States feared being forced into bankruptcy by the WWF. They began to unify and conglomerate under more centralized leadership rather than continue independently. Competing promotions aired better talent and attempted to regain their audiences. To fight the WWF's control of the industry, JCP took the NWA's pay-per-view names and used its best talent to draw ratings. However, Crockett was unable to beat McMahon and this left him with no viable option other than selling out to media mogul Ted Turner, who renamed the promotion World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and continued to challenge McMahon's monopoly of the industry. Turner promised a more athletic approach to the product, making Ric Flair the promotion's marquee wrestler and giving young stars big storylines and championship opportunities.
Monday Night Wars (1990s)
During the early 1990s, the growing WWF was being hindered by competing brands and nagging legal troubles. The largest troubles came from WCW, which competed for fans and dominated the industry during the years of 1996 to 1998. The WWF was forced to change itself to overcome its competition, remodeling itself with added bloodshed, violence, and more profane, sexually-lewd characters. This new "Attitude Era" quickly dominated the style and nature of wrestling to become far more teen-oriented than ever before, and made the WWF regain its status as wrestling's top company.
The image of WCW changed when Eric Bischoff was appointed Executive Vice President of WCW in late 1993. He signed former WWF stars and departed from their focus on in-ring action in favor of the WWF's approach. The WWF began to suffer immediately and started building new stars. The Monday Night Wars began in 1995, when WCW started WCW Monday Nitro, a show that ran directly against WWF Monday Night RAW. While starting fairly even, the war escalated in 1996 with the formation of the heel stable, the New World Order. They helped WCW gain the upper hand when they became the most powerful group in professional wrestling. WCW also came up with more legitimate, edgy storylines and characters over the WWF's cartoon style.
Away from the WWF and WCW, a new breed of professional wrestling was beginning. NWA Eastern Championship Wrestling renamed itself "Extreme Championship Wrestling" (ECW) and left the NWA. ECW adapted a hardcore style of wrestling and exposed the audience to levels of violence rarely seen in wrestling. The unorthodox style of moves, controversial storylines, and intense bloodthirst of ECW made it intensely popular among many wrestling fans in the 18- to 25-year-old demographic. Its intense fanbase, albeit a small constituency, reached near-cultism in the late 1990s and inspired the "hardcore style" in other wrestling promotions, namely WWF and WCW.
In 1998, the WWF gained momentum with the start of their "Attitude Era". McMahon recast himself as the evil boss, known authoritatively as "Mr. McMahon". While an interesting character, it was McMahon's realistic feud with Stone Cold Steve Austin which made the company finally dominate its competition. This was probably among the best of McMahon's storylines, and it came at a time when Bischoff was losing his vigor in WCW's affairs. The WWF gained infamy for its more sexually-explicit, profane, and violent characters. Austin was the top superstar in the company, portraying an anti-hero tough guy who regularly defied his boss; The Rock became a star for his cocky persona, his many catchphrases and attractive charisma; Mankind gained popularity for enduring extreme pain, performing dangerous stunts renowned among the industry today, and; The stable D-Generation X was renowned for its adult themes. Through the collective success of these characters, the company had finally refocused itself in the 18-25 demographic.
By the start of 1999, both shows were consistently getting ratings of 5.0 or higher, and over ten million people tuned in to RAW and Nitro every week. Wrestling continued to grow, as wrestlers made the mainstream media. From November 1998, the momentum was in the WWF's favor for the remainder of the Wars, with RAW dominating Nitro in the ratings. WCW continued its decline as their main eventers were in their 40s or pushing 40 and younger talent were never given the chance to be elevated to main event status. Their attempts at improving failed to turn the ratings tide, with RAW getting double the amount by 2000.
WWF's dominance (2000s)
In 2001, the WWF (renamed "World Wrestling Entertainment" (WWE) in 2002) became the dominant company in the global professional wrestling industry with the end of its two leading competitors, WCW and ECW. ECW was in dire financial straits earlier that year and Heyman filed for bankruptcy on April 4, 2001. WCW continued to lose more money and finally ended on March 23, 2001 with McMahon buying out, after more than 15 years in business and as the biggest threat to the WWF to date. This left professional wrestling fans with no alternative to WWF programming and led to some leaving the sport.
With a demand remaining for Southern-style and cruiserweight wrestling that WWE was not fulfilling, new promotions attempted to offer an alternative to cater to this niche market. The most successful among these were Total Nonstop Action Wrestling and Ring of Honor, both started up in 2002. Other independent promotions also began to gain more exposure.
The quality of the WWE product began to subside with the company's frequent misuse of acquired talents from ECW and WCW. A general lack of creativity and innovation is seen as the primary weakness, with many wrestlers introduced only to be used in unsuccessful storylines and quickly dropped in rank. Backstage politics, notably with the McMahon family, is seen as a major reason for the thinning out of major main event superstars. By 2007, WWE has increased in exposure to five hours of weekly programming in addition to numerous pay-per-view events throughout the year. This led to criticism for their redundancy and excessiveness. Because of such a large presence on television, the wrestling product has been widely judged as bland and uncreative. Some viewers feel that the company now focuses mainly on profit, airing more shows with disregard to the desire for fresh, innovative programming.
Media criticism
The WWF was investigated by the Federal Government in 1991 for a steroid scandal where, reputedly, steroid use was rampant among wrestlers and in McMahon's World Bodybuilding Federation. Large names, including Hulk Hogan, gained infamy when news of their long-time steroid use was revealed. In addition, a civil lawsuit involving sexual misconduct on the part of Pat Patterson in 1993 further weakened the company. This gained great criticism to the WWF, weakening its once "family-oriented" programming.
WWE gained national media coverage in 2007 for the Chris Benoit murder-suicide, hypothesized to be related to steroids. Although this has been proven false, this incident, along with the death of Eddie Guerrero in 2005, made drug use and young deaths in the business a subject of intense controversy. The wrestling industry and the nature of the business were widely criticized for this and WWE was affected on the business-side, with the company's stock losing approximately $15 million in market value in the first week. Ratings have also suffered, with RAW dropping 10% in total viewers. Due to criticisms about the health and well beings of professional wrestlers, the United States Congress has decided that a congressional hearing on the industry will take place sometime in 2007.
Taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_professional_wrestling
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