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.

There are two main types of the game i. E. The Greco-Roman (which was the most common and widely practiced form of fight from the time of the Babylonians to the 19th century) and the catch style (which allows grapples below the waist). The major difference is that while the Greco/Roman type did not allow the players to grapple below the waist, catch allowed it. They were however, real and legitimate sports where winning was contested for and 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.

The game is a staged or scripted fighting with predetermined results. Interestingly, the winners or losers are trained to react to the results as near genuine as possible to ensure that the audience is well entertained. In some cases tag team fights do follow some form a storyline. There are times too when wrestlers stage feuds for long just to ensure that the crowd is charged enough.

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.

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.

Whereas the history of professional wrestling is long, the game has since developed into one of the most watched sports nationally and arguably among the top revenue earner. The sport is also practiced in other major countries. There is Japan, Mexico, Australia and the United Kingdom just to name a few.




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