History of professional wrestling

The history of professional wrestling, as a performing art, started in the early 20th century, with predecessors in funfair and variety strongman and wrestling performances (which often involved match fixing) in the 19th century. Professional wrestling is a popular form of entertainment in Australia, North America, Latin America, Europe and Japan. Wrestling as a modern sport developed in the 19th century out of traditions of folk wrestling, emerging in the form of two styles of regulated competitive sport, "freestyle" and "Greco-Roman" wrestling (based on British and continental tradition, respectively), summarized under the term "amateur wrestling" by the beginning of the modern Olympics in 1896. The separation of "worked", i.e. purely performative, choreographed wrestling ("admitted fakery" or "kayfabe") from competitive sport began in the 1920s. Its popularity declined during World War II, but was revived in the late 1940s to 1960s, the First Golden Age of professional wrestling in the United States, during which Gorgeous George gained mainstream popularity. In Mexico and Japan, the 1940s–1960s was also a Golden Age for professional wrestling, with El Santo becoming a Mexican folk hero, and Rikidōzan achieving similar fame in Japan. There was a marked decline in public interest in the 1970s and early 1980s, but with the advent of cable television in the mid 1980s there followed a Second Golden Age as the United States experienced a professional-wrestling boom, with protagonists such as Hulk Hogan, André the Giant, "Macho Man" Randy Savage, Ric Flair and "Rowdy" Roddy Piper. 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. Wrestling's popularity boomed when independent enthusiasts unified and their media outlets grew in number, and became an international phenomenon in the 1980s with the expansion of the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now known as World Wrestling Entertainment, shortened to simply WWE).