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During the 19th century, professional wrestling was done in saloons for the amusement of gamblers, but during the 20th century it became a kind of muscular theater performed either live or on television. These latter productions were often hypocritical, greedy, ruthless, reactionary, homophobic, racist, and vulgar. However, the change simply reflected the desires of the paying customers, for, as former professional wrestler Robert "Kinji" Shibuya put it in 1999, "The meaner I acted in the ring, the richer I walked out of it" (Niiya, 2000, 136).

How this came about is a complicated story. Even the roots of the modern "all-in" style are complicated. For example, in 19th century Britain, professional wrestling was a gambling sport akin to boxing and horseracing. In the North of England and Scotland, the wrestling style most commonly used was Cumberland and Westmorland. In this style, the wrestlers locked hands behind each other's backs and then tried to throw one another to the ground without losing the grip. The judges at these events were known as "stycklers", a word that as "stickler" became a synonym for anyone who insisted on precise and exacting compliance with rules.

In the South of England, other styles were more popular. Cornish wrestlers, for example, wore short jackets, and gripped one another's sleeve and shoulders as in modern judo. A standard trick involved trapping the right arm and then backheel tripping. Devonshire wrestlers wore straw shinguards and clogs, and kicked one another in the shins. Otherwise, their techniques were similar to Cornish wrestlers. Unlike Cornish and Devonshire wrestlers, Lancashire wrestlers wore only underwear and the players started well apart with their knees bent and hands outstretched. While kicking, hair pulling, pinching, and the twisting of arms and fingers were prohibited, most anything else went, even the "Full Nelson" hold to the neck. (The name "Full Nelson" dates to the early 19th century, and refers to the enveloping tactics used by the famous admiral at the Battle of the Nile and Trafalgar.) Lancashire wrestling was also known as "catch-as-catch-can," and it is an ancestor of modern international (or Olympic) free-style.

In Ireland, popular styles included collar-and-elbow. The name referred to the initial stances taken, and in this style, most anything went, as the initial grips were intended as defenses against kicking, punching, and rushing. Collar-and-elbow wrestling became widely known in the Northern states during the American Civil War, and afterwards, it became one of the roots of the Amateur Athletic Union's American free-style wrestling. American free-style is another ancestor of international free-style.

In France, styles included Ar Gouren and La Lutte Française. Ar Gouren, or Breton wrestling, was a traditional style similar to Cornish wrestling. As for La Lutte Française, or French wrestling, it was a style developed in southern France during the 1830s and 1840s. In this style, which was practiced mostly in saloons, holds were permitted from the head to waist. The game involved forcing the opponent's shoulders to the ground without attacking his legs, or using head-butts, chokeholds, or joint-locks. This is mentioned in some detail because the rules of French wrestling provide the third major root of modern international Greco-Roman wrestling. For more on this, see Don Sayenga's article, "The Problem of Wrestling Styles in the Modern Olympic Games," in Citius, Altius, Fortius, 3:3, Autumn 1995. It can be read online by going to http://www.aafla.org/search/search_frmst.htm.

In Germany and the Low Countries, wrestling was associated with three groups. The first was professional entertainers who wrestled bears and each other in traveling circuses. The second was young men who wrestled for the honor of their trade guilds during Carnival and other festivals. And, after the 1790s, the third were patriots who built up their bodies for the Fatherland in gymnastic associations called Turnvereine. There were also some specifically German and Dutch wrestling systems, to include some all-in methods that bear a passing (but doubtless coincidental) resemblance to jujutsu. See, for example, Nicolaes Petter's Clear Instructions to the Excellent Art of Wrestling.

There was probably some influence from Native American wrestling styles, too. Into the early 19th century, both slaves and indentured servants often ran away to live with Woodland Indians, who used wrestling as a way of settling their personal disputes. To the horror of Protestant missionaries, Woodland Indian wrestling had no rules except prohibitions against pulling hair, and so it began to be suppressed after 1840. For an introduction to this, see Thomas Vennum's book, American Indian Lacrosse: Little Brother of War (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994).

Anyway, from these diverse roots developed a distinctively North American style that involved considerable eye gouging and ear biting, and a crowd that yelled for more. For more on this, see Elliott Gorn's article, "Gouge and Bite," which is reprinted at http://ejmas.com/jmanly/articles/2001/jmanlyart_gorn_0401.htm.

Standard venues for mid-19th century wrestling acts included music halls and saloons. The entertainment in the better clubs, such as Harry Hill's in New York, included dance revues, comedy acts, and wrestling matches. Raised roped rings were introduced to wrestling in these clubs, partly as a way of giving the audience a better view, and partly as a way of keeping drunks in the crowd from interfering too much.

During the last half of the 19th century, moralists grew increasingly concerned about matters such as chivalry and fair play. This led to new concerns about rules. Some early matches followed Greco-Roman rules, which were essentially those of La Lutte Française. (During the 1870s, La Lutte Française came to be known as Greco-Roman as that facilitated its spread through Europe.) However, Greco-Roman was not much appreciated in the English-speaking world: it was perhaps "productive of some excitement when witnessed by the uninitiated," sniffed Walter Armstrong and Percy Longhurst in the Encyclopædia of Sport & Games in 1912 (IV, 346-347). "But apart from that it may be asked, 'What useful purpose does it serve?' …For, instead of being the art of standing up against an adversary, it is simply the art of getting down in a certain position, so as to avoid being thrown in a backfall." Consequently, the style preferred in North America, Britain, and Australia during the 1890s was catch-as-catch-can.

Prominent late 19th century wrestlers and promoters included New York's William Muldoon, Germany's Karl Abs, England's Tom Cannon, and Scotland's Donald Dinnie. Ethnic acts were introduced, too. Early ethnic wrestlers included the Japanese Sorakichi Matsuda, the African American Viro Small, and assorted "Terrible Turks," most of whom were ethnically Bulgarian or Armenian. There were also novelty acts. Masked wrestling, for example, appeared in France as early as 1870, and in 1889, Masha Poddubnaya, wife of the Russian wrestler Ivan Poddubny, claimed the women's world wrestling championship.

As a rule, matches emphasizing ethnicity and nationalism drew better crowds than did the novelty acts. An early example of this occurred in 1869, when a Danish strongman named Frederik Safft defeated a German wrestler named Wilhelm Heygster in Copenhagen. As the Danes had recently lost a war to the Prussians, Safft's victory made him a Danish hero. This was not a fluke, and around the time of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), jujutsu acts were popular in the U.S., Europe, and Latin America. Noted jujutsuka included Katsukuma Higashi, Tokugoro Ito, Mitsuyo Maeda, Taro Miyake, and Yukio Tani. Similarly, during 1909-1910, the Bengali millionaire Sharat Kumar Mishra sent four Indian wrestlers (the Great Gama, Ahmed Bux, Imam Bux, and Gulam Mohiuddin) to Europe as part of a scheme to prove that Europeans could be beaten using traditional Indian methods.

At the beginning of the 20th century, popular European wrestlers included George Hackenschmidt, Paul Pons, and Stanislaus Zbyszko. These men worked in the music halls of Paris, London, and Vienna, and they took turns with partners, lifted weights, and accepted challenges from the crowd. The challengers were often shills. Why? Because by wrestling unknowns, champions had nothing to gain and everything to lose. Thus, the promotion soon came to involve matches that the crowds believed were real, but in which the results were actually prearranged. As Hackenschmidt put it in an article published in Health & Strength on March 20, 1909, "Wrestling is my business… [While] I am certainly very fond of the sporting element which enters into it, [I] should be absurdly careless if I allowed my tastes in that direction to interfere too seriously with my career in life."

In North America, wrestlers worked in saloons, Wild West shows and circuses, and vaudeville. Prominent turn-of-the century North American wrestlers included Martin "Farmer" Burns, Tom Jenkins, Frank Gotch, and Ben Roller. This was also the era of yellow journalism, and so, with the support of jingoistic sportswriters, there arose a clamor to see whether European or American wrestling was best. This in turn led to two well-publicized matches between North American champion Frank Gotch and European champion George Hackenschmidt. Gotch won both times, so the U.S. newspapers gave him the title of "Champion of the World."

With the retirements of Hackenschmidt and Gotch, professional wrestling went into decline. Part of the problem was World War I ruining the business in Europe. But scandals also played a part. For example, in March 1910, John C. Maybray and about 80 others (including Gotch's former manager Joe Carroll) pleaded guilty to Federal charges of using the U.S. mails to fix wrestling matches.

Toward reducing the appearance of corruption, after World War I the National Boxing Association began recognizing "official" wrestling championships, and it subsequently organized a National Wrestling Association. In practice, however, promoters continued doing business as they always had.

During the 1920s and 1930s, professional wrestlers earned their keep in various ways. Some wrestled for regional promoters such as Lou Daro in Los Angeles, Paul Bowser in Boston, Tom Packs in St. Louis, and Jack Pfefer in New York. In these promotions, the promoters told the wrestlers who would win and who would lose. Other wrestlers worked carnivals and Wild West shows. In the latter venues, shills were used to work the crowd. An example of a shill was actor Kirk Douglas, who worked his way through college taunting the Masked Marvel. The Marvel in this case was future New York assemblyman Hayward Plumadore. As Plumadore recalled it for Robert Crichton, occupational hazards of the carnival wrestler included drunken opponents who didn't know when they were hurt, challengers who introduced rocks or knives into what was supposed to be a wrestling match, and the occasional college wrestler who proved to be a terror. Pay could be good, however, especially when the locals paid the Marvel to be particularly hard on a local bully or especially kind to a popular foreman or labor leader. Finally, a few wrestlers continued hustling. Fred Grubmeier, for example, was legendary for dressing like a hick, losing matches to second-rate local wrestlers, and then "accidentally" defeating the regional champion once the big money was down.

Hustling was a hard life, and so most wrestlers and promoters sought something easier. One new product was "Slam Bang Western Style Wrestling," which combined the showiest moves of boxing, football, and Greco-Roman wrestling with the "old-time lumber camp fighting" seen in the Miller Brothers' 101 Ranch Wild West Show. Essentially film-style stunt work performed before live audiences, pioneers in this development included Joseph "Toots" Mondt, Billy Sandow, and Ed "Strangler" Lewis.

During the Depression, vaudeville theaters closed and circuses retrenched, and this led to financial difficulties for promoters, contract wrestlers, and hustlers alike. Meanwhile, as wrestling promoters had never adopted boxing promoters' practice of paying sportswriters to write favorable things about their stars, a spate of scandalous exposés appeared in the newspapers. For example, in 1936, heavyweight champion Danno O'Mahoney lost to Dick Shikat. This was apparently a doublecross, as Shikat had been scheduled to lose. The defeat cost O'Mahoney money, so his promoters took Shikat to court and the newspapers had a field day. Taken together, all this led to a sharp decline in business, and by the late 1930s, prestigious venues such as Madison Square Garden no longer booked wrestling shows.

But promoters are resourceful, and gimmicks introduced to draw crowds during this era included flying tackles and jumping kicks. Bronko Nagurski and "Jumping Joe" Savoldi, respectively, were famous practitioners of those techniques. Mud wrestling also dates to the 1930s. Here, Paul Boesch was a pioneer, and you can see footage from an early mud-wrestling match, promoted by Boesch and involving the Indian wrestler Ranjit Singh, at the British Pathe web site, http://www.britishpathe.com.

Nonetheless, the biggest draws continued to be matches that left the audience (known to the wrestlers, using carnival language, as the marks) believing that the wrestling was real rather than prearranged, or that featured ethnic rivalry. Sometimes, these two story lines were combined. A.J. Liebling described how this worked in the New Yorker on November 13, 1954:

During World War II, wrestlers often ended up in, or at least working for, the military. Here, wrestlers often found employment as hand-to-hand combat instructors. In the United States, examples included Kaimon Kudo and Lou Thesz, while in Britain, they included a Commando instructor appropriately named Bellringer.

Meanwhile, on the North American home front, women's wrestling became popular. Stars included Mildred Burke, Gladys Gillem, Clara Mortensen, Elvira Snodgrass, and Mae Young. The wartime audiences were about half men and about half women and school-age boys. The performers were working-class women who viewed wrestling as a way of earning good money (up to $100 a week for a champion, as opposed to $20 a week as a secretary) while staying physically fit. By 1944, Nazi propagandists had picked up on this, and were using stories about female wrestling to show German readers how corrupt and immoral the Americans had become under Roosevelt.

In 1948, five North American wrestling promoters organized the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA), the idea of which was to reduce competition between territories and thereby increase the promoters' share of the financial pie. There were problems, however, most notably that, in the words of the NWA champion Lou Thesz, most of the promoters were "thieves, and the one quality all of them shared was suspicion of each other." (Thesz, 1995, 107) Another problem was that every promoter wanted the world champion working for him, and soon there were nearly as many world champions as there were promoters. Nonetheless, by 1956, 38 promoters belonged to the NWA, and between them they controlled professional wrestling in North America, Mexico, and Japan. This led to another scandal, as the U.S. government eventually ruled that this represented an illegal restraint of trade.

Billy Robinson, an English wrestler who made his reputation in the USA and Japan during the 1970s.

To many wrestling fans, the period from the early 1950s to the late 1970s represents the Golden Age of wrestling. In part, this nostalgia is owed to the energy, or "heat," that a charismatic wrestler such as Lou Thesz, Buddy Rogers, or Killer Kowalski could generate from live audiences. Mostly, however, it was due to the new medium of television.

From a production standpoint, wrestling was perfect for television. After all, everything could be filmed by one camera, and the action was limited to a small, well-lit area. Furthermore, the matches sold razors, automobiles, and beer, so they were popular with advertisers. Finally, the act was undeniably popular with the audiences. Thus, in Japan, people stood by the thousands in the street to watch their hero Rikidozan beat Americans, while in California and Illinois, Americans congregated in bars to watch Americans do the same thing to Japanese American wrestlers called Tosh Togo and Mr. Moto.

Perhaps the most notorious of the new television wrestlers was Gorgeous George, a blonde dandy whose costumes, pomaded hair, and abrasive style the fans loved to hate. Television, with its close-ups, also increased the audience's desire for blood. (Literally – wrestlers such as Dangerous Danny McShane would nick themselves with a tiny piece of double-edged razor, and the fans would go wild.) And, finally, it encouraged acrobatic tricks such as Antonio Rocca's cartwheels. Both moralists and wrestlers were heard complaining about the blading and cartwheels, but the crowds grew, so what the wrestlers thought didn't matter. The moralists had political clout, however, and the stereotyped portrayals of ethnic groups offended the United States' burgeoning civil rights movement. Therefore, North American network television refused to syndicate wrestling. Consequently, promotions remained regional rather than national.

The end of the Golden Era was due to changing promotional methods. In 1963, there was a split in the National Wrestling Association, and out of the breakup emerged the World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF) led by Vince McMahon Sr. At first, the National Wrestling Association and the WWWF promotions were similar, and business continued as usual. Then, in 1983, McMahon relinquished control of the organization, now known as the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), to his son Vince Jr. About the same time, cable television networks started looking to fill niche markets. And, being young and ambitious, Vince McMahon, Jr. moved to fill those cable markets with WWF wrestling.

McMahon, Jr. started by raiding other territories for talent. This made for a strong WWF but quickly depleted other groups. He also told the New York media that wrestling was moribund, and that he and the WWF were going to revitalize it. Gullible reporters bought the line, and so promoted his story of "the amazing revival of wrestling."

Next, McMahon created "Hulkmania." This revolved about soap opera plots surrounding a wrestler called Hulk Hogan, many of which featured celebrities such as pop singer Cyndi Lauper and TV action star Mr. T.

Old-time fans hated the WWF methods, and vowed never to watch wrestling again. But, like alcoholics or drug addicts, few stuck to their promises of withdrawal, and in 1987, in the midst of a media blitz, the WWF champion Hulk Hogan beat Andre the Giant before a record 93,000 fans in Detroit.

This enormous financial success piqued the interest of the Atlanta-based cable network owner Ted Turner, who in 1988 decided to start his own wrestling show. To start his business, first Turner bought Jim Crockett Promotions, a mainstay of the now-shrunken NWA. Next, he named his new wrestling promotion World Championship Wrestling (WCW). Finally, he began raiding the WWF for talent.

Structurally, WCW attempted to portray an image similar to that of the wrestling seen during the Golden Age of Television. Thus many of the group's performers wrestled in Spartan attire of boots and trunks, and feuds and angles were reminiscent of the 1950s, where the wrestlers lost due to concern about their sick relatives. The WWF, however, lived on gimmicks -- wrestlers were reported involved with other wrestlers' wives; The Undertaker rose from the dead; women stripped almost naked in the ring; and one wrestler came within seconds of having his penis chopped off by an angry manager. (In a guest appearance, John Wayne Bobbitt, notorious for having his penis similarly severed during an argument with his wife, came to the wrestler's rescue.)

Although both WCW and WWF (today's WWE, or World Wrestling Entertainment) featured highly paid superstars, they had no farm system. Toward correcting this shortfall, wrestling schools run by former wrestlers such as Karl Gotch and Killer Kowalski emerged. Local independent promotions also developed. Known as "indies," they made little money for anyone but still provided wrestlers with crowd interaction and dreams of stardom.

And along the way, the public perception of wrestlers underwent another metamorphosis. In 1956, Rod Serling's award-winning teleplay, "Requiem for a Heavyweight," depicted an over-the-hill boxer suffering the worst fate imaginable for a once-proud athlete: he was forced to become a professional wrestler. As the character played by Jack Palance in the television production and Anthony Quinn in the movie begged his manager: "Maish, Maish don't make me… Maish, Maish I'll do anything for you but don't ask me to play a clown!" However, by the 1990s, successful performers in football, basketball, and boxing were gleefully taking the money offered by the cable companies. Thus, during the late 1990s and early 2000s, there were several ex-NFL players in professional wrestling, and boxer Mike Tyson and basketball stars Dennis Rodman and Karl Malone participated in professional wrestling angles and events.

Likewise, during the 1950s many an amateur wrestler would have chosen dismemberment to participation in professional wrestling. But that also changed. For example, Bob Backlund, a former NCAA wrestling champ, began a long-term relationship with the WWF in 1974, and Kurt Angle, a professional wrestler of the early 2000s, was an Olympic gold medallist in 1996.

Martial artists also changed their tunes, and early 21st century wrestlers included former world karate champion Ernest Miller and Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) champions Dan Severn and Ken Shamrock. Unlike Masahika Kimura, Gene LeBell, Willem Ruska, and other judoka who tried wrestling professionally during the 1950s and 1960s, they were well received by the fans and apparently considered the move a career decision rather than a letdown.

The audiences for cable television wrestling promotions were huge, and by the late 1980s, wrestling had become the third most popular spectator sport in North America. (American football and automobile racing were numbers one and two.) According to wrestler Adrian Adonis, this was because the "American people are sickos who love violence and the sight of blood." But then why wrestling's even greater popularity in Japan? Approaching the question from another tack, academics such as Theodore Kemper have claimed that watching wrestling releases testosterone in viewers, thereby giving them vicarious thrills that they don't get in their dead-end jobs (Kemper, 1990, 203-204, 214-217). But then how to explain the sales of wrestling action figures to children or market research showing wrestling's enormous popularity with female viewers? Finally, what about the opinions of academics such as Gerald Morton and George O'Brien who equate "rassling" with folk theater (Morton and O'Brien, 1985, 52-54, 63-64, 74-75)?

Is wrestling theater in a squared circle, the Shakespeare of sport? That is the most probable explanation. However, there is still no easy answer to explain why millions of people enjoy watching professional wrestling and yet dislike watching amateur wrestling.

Internet sites

• http://www.angelfire.com/wrestling3/thenandnow
• http://p216.ezboard.com/bdragonkingpressnewsletter
• http://www.1wrestlinglegends.com
• http://www.garywill.com/wrestling/index.htm
• http://www.puroresu.com
• http://www.wrestlingclassics.com/wawli/index.htm
• http://www.wrestlinghalloffame.org/history/wrestlinginusa.htm
• http://www.wrestlingmuseum.com/homeie.html

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