Professional wrestling
Professional wrestling, often referred to as pro wrestling or simply wrestling, is a form of athletic theater centered around mock combat, with the premise that its performers are competitive wrestlers.
Authentic wrestling has never been popular enough in the United States to sustain a professional scene because the action is too slow-paced. In the late 19th century, wrestlers dealt with this by quietly fixing their matches so that they could display more entertaining action. Through improvisation and choreography, they could perform more spectacular moves that rarely, if ever, occurred in a real wrestling match. Thus they managed to draw sustainable audiences. Match fixing in sports was frowned upon then as much as it is now, so the wrestlers had to keep it a secret. Wrestling promoters scripted victories for their more charismatic wrestlers to please the fans. Since charisma mattered more than skill to a wrestler's success, wrestlers adopted personas and gimmicks to make themselves more entertaining. As promotions grew more sophisticated, they started writing dramatic stories for their wrestlers, pitting heroic "faces" against villainous "heels". Professional wrestlers were required to remain in character whenever they were in public; a policy known as "kayfabe". This requirement was relaxed in the 1990s as by then the public had become too aware of the scripted nature of wrestling.
Professional wrestling is performed around the world through various promotions, which are roughly analogous to production companies or sports leagues. Promotions vary considerably in size, scope, and creative approach, ranging from local shows on the independent circuit to internationally broadcast events at major arenas. The largest and most influential promotions are in the United States, Mexico, Japan, and Europe, which have each developed distinct styles, traditions, and subgenres within professional wrestling. Many professional wrestlers also perform as freelancers and make appearances for different promotions.
Professional wrestling has developed its own culture and community, including a unique glossary of terms. It has achieved mainstream success and influence within popular culture; many wrestling phrases, tropes, and concepts are now referenced in everyday language and in film, television, music, and video games. Numerous professional wrestlers have become national or international sports icons with recognition by the wider public, with some finding further fame and success through other endeavours such as acting and music.
Context
In the United States, authentic wrestling is generally practiced in an amateur context. There is no professional league for competitive wrestling in most Western countries due to a lack of popularity. A case in point is Real Pro Wrestling, an American professional league for freestyle wrestling that dissolved in 2007 after just two seasons.In numerous American states, professional wrestling is legally defined as a non-sport. For instance, the New York Athletic Commission defines professional wrestling thusly:
The state of Washington, by contrast, instead refers to professional wrestling as "theatrical wrestling".
In other countries such as Iran, India, Afghanistan, Turkey, and Egypt, legitimate wrestling enjoys widespread popularity, and the phrase "professional wrestling" thus carries a more literal meaning in those places. A notable example is India's Pro Wrestling League, which governs authentic competitive wrestling.
In the industry's slang, a fixed match is referred to as a worked match, derived from the slang word for manipulation, as in "working the crowd". A shoot match is a genuine contest where both wrestlers fight to win and are therefore "straight shooters", which comes from a carnival term for a shooting gallery gun whose sights were not deliberately misaligned. A fan who believes professional wrestling matches are real sport is referred to as a mark, whereas a fan who sees through the facade is a smart.
History in the United States
Wrestling in early America
Wrestling in early America was typically a localized affair. Wrestlers would fight opponents from the same town or nearby towns within walking distance. Wrestlers sometimes competed for money but the winnings were usually small, not enough to live on. Because the winnings were small and the wrestlers were usually from the same community, the wrestling styles they practiced emphasized subduing opponents without inflicting injury, allowing the wrestlers to go back to their regular jobs the next day and avoid making enemies. The most common styles of wrestling during the early 19th century were Greco-Roman, collar-and-elbow, and catch-as-catch-can.The transition to theater
Spectator sports grew increasingly popular in late 19th century America due to rising income levels, urbanization, railroads, mass transit, and mass media. Before this time, sports were mostly a hobby, but now a star athlete could make a living touring the country and playing before large paying crowds. But wrestlers who attempted professional careers faced a problem: most spectators found wrestling boring. The wrestlers spent a lot of time on the mat just shoving each other or locked in unchanging positions. Matches could drag on for hours if the wrestlers were evenly matched. Matches were typically decided when a wrestler placed his opponent in a submission hold. A submission hold is impossible to break and typically easy to establish if the opponent's defense is lax. In wrestling, the most successful attacks are often counterattacks, where a wrestler takes advantage of his opponent's aggression to create openings for his own offense. This motivated the wrestlers to fight defensively, which resulted in matches with little activity. This was in contrast to boxing, whose rules encouraged more dynamic and aggressive play.To solve this problem, wrestlers experimented with different styles and rules, but eventually they settled on quietly staging their matches. Through choreography and improvisation, the wrestlers could perform more spectacular moves and stunts. A wrestler might allow his opponent to perform a spectacular throw on him and put him in a hold, and seconds later his opponent would allow him to make a spectacular escape. The action flowed at a pace that pleased the audience. Fixed matches could also be kept short, which audiences preferred. Short matches were also easier to schedule and allowed wrestlers to perform more frequently. Audiences hated above all matches that ended in a draw, but fixed matches always produced a winner. Naturally, the "winner" had to be agreed upon in advance by the wrestlers.
This was not unique to America. Spectators in the United Kingdom also found legitimate wrestling too boring, and British professional wrestlers likewise were forced to "work" their bouts.
A second benefit of fixed matches was to reduce the risk of injury. Competitive wrestling matches, particularly the ones where large quantities of money were wagered, often ended with sprains or broken bones. A serious injury could prematurely end the career of a wrestler. Furthermore, around the start of the 20th century, the American public was increasingly disgusted by excessive violence in sports, which had led to bans on boxing in various parts of the country. In a fixed match, the wrestlers had no need to be so brutal. Unlike punches in boxing, wrestling holds can be faked convincingly without inflicting injury. Shorter matches also suited aging wrestlers who no longer had the stamina for a long fight. It allowed wrestlers to perform more frequently. In later decades, audience tastes shifted and professional wrestling became more brutal, but in those early years, there was a strong desire to minimize injury.
A major influence on professional wrestling was carnival culture. Some wrestlers in the late 19th century worked in carnival shows. For a fee, a visitor could challenge the wrestler to a quick match. If the challenger defeated the champion in a short time frame, usually 15 minutes, they won a prize. To encourage challenges, the carnival operators staged matches in which an accomplice posing as a visitor challenged the champion and won, giving the audience the impression that the champion was easy to beat. This practice taught wrestlers the art of staging matches and fostered a mentality that spectators were marks to be duped. The term kayfabe comes from carny slang.
By the start of the 20th century, nearly all professional wrestling matches were fixed, and the press had caught on.
In the 1910s, promotion cartels for professional wrestling emerged in the East Coast, outside its traditional heartland in the Midwest. These promoters made long-term plans with their wrestlers, and ensured their more charismatic and crowd-pleasing wrestlers received championships. This meant further suppression of legitimate matches, which by this point were largely limited to challenges by independent wrestlers. A wrestler could claim that the rules of their promotion did not allow them to fight independent challengers. In other cases promoters would respond to such challenges by requiring the challenger to first defeat a "policeman": a powerful wrestler employed not for their star power but their ability to defeat, and often seriously injure, outside challengers. As the promotions grew, there were fewer independent wrestlers to make such challenges anyway.
The cartels also suppressed double-crosses. A double-cross was when a wrestler broke his promise to throw a match and instead fought to win. At times a promoter had to award a victorious double-crosser the title of champion to preserve the facade of competition. However, promoters punished such wrestlers by blacklisting them, making it quite challenging for these troublemakers to find work. Double-crossers could also be sued for breach of contract, as Dick Shikat was in 1936.
Despite the growing awareness that fixed matches were pervasive, professional wrestlers did not publicly admit that it had become the norm. The public preferred the faked matches but wanted to believe they were honest. Some people even placed bets on the outcomes. Spectators would boo if they thought a match was faked.
In April 1930, the New York State Athletic Commission decreed that all professional wrestling matches held in the state had to be advertised as exhibitions unless certified as contests by the commission. This requirement did not apply to amateur wrestling, which the commission had no authority over. The Commission did, on very rare occasions, hand out such certifications, such as for a championship match between Jim Londos and Jim Browning in June 1934. The former wrestler William Muldoon was the chairman of the commission when this decree was made.
According to Lou Thesz, what few honest matches happened back in the 1930s tended to be either double-crosses or done to settle business disputes between rival wrestling groups.
In 1933, a wrestling promoter named Jack Pfefer divulged the inner workings of the industry with The New York Daily Mirror, maintaining no pretense that wrestling was legitimate and sharing planned results just before the matches took place. He exposed the truth to undermine his rival wrestling promoters when they excluded him from their cartels. Pfefer's promotion subsequently saw a decline in attendance, but so did those of his rivals, and all spectator sports suffered during the Great Depression, so it is uncertain to what extent his indiscretion cost him. His business did not collapse, however. In fact, Pfefer outlasted most of his rivals from the 1930s. Pfefer adapted by leaning in to the theatricality. He promoted "freakishly" ugly wrestlers such as The French Angel, wrote crazier storylines, and popularized novelties such as tag-teams, midget wrestlers, and women wrestlers. He wanted the public to appreciate professional wrestling as an art form, not a sport. Other promoters who did not agree maintained the facade of kayfabe.
Newspapers refused to cover professional wrestling as if it were a sport, so promoters resorted to publishing their own magazines in order to attain press coverage and communicate with fans. The first professional wrestling magazine, Wrestling As You Like It, printed its first issue in 1946. These magazines were faithful to kayfabe.
In the 1980s, Vince McMahon began discretely lobbying various state governments to recognize professional wrestling as a non-sport so that his promotion, the World Wrestling Federation, could be exempted from sports licensing fees and health-and-safety oversight. In 1985, McMahon rebranded the World Wrestling Federation as a "sports entertainment" company. In 1985, he testified in a lawsuit that professional wrestling is rigged. In 1989, McMahon testified before the New Jersey State legislature that professional wrestling is not a legitimate sport and therefore should be exempted from sports regulations and taxes. McMahon's testimonies were exposed in The New York Times and The New York Post. This was not the first time a promoter admitted in court that professional wrestling is all theater, but Vince McMahon controlled more than half of the industry in America by 1989, and The New York Times was one of the most important newspapers in the country if not the world. Consequently the revelation caused irreversible damage to the facade of professional wrestling. McMahon had only wanted to avoid taxes, not do away with kayfabe, and for a few years he kept punishing his wrestlers for violating it. In May 1996, during an untelevised wrestling match at Madison Square Garden, which was the final performances of Kevin Nash and Scott Hall for the WWF, the wrestlers all climbed into the ring and embraced each other, faces and heels together, to the confusion of the audience. McMahon fined each of these transgressors $2,500. But the incident further eroded kayfabe, and McMahon decided there was no going back. He was willing to reveal some truths to the public, but on his own terms. McMahon began incorporating actual backstage politics into WWF storylines using a new dramatic conceit called the "worked shoot", which was a performance that appeared to be wrestlers breaking character backstage but in fact was scripted.