Professional Wrestling: Sports Made for Television

Professional wrestling has long held a strange spot in the American cultural landscape Part sporting event, part soap opera, there really is nothing like what the leading professional wrestling organization calls "sports entertainment." It's hard to imagine this art form being produced anywhere except the U.S., and succeeding without the advantage of the television medium.



As its name implies, professional wrestling does in fact have its origin in the legitimate sport of wrestling, taught in high schools and competed in at the Olympics to this day. Although in modern times it clearly does not have the popularity of baseball, basketball, football, and other sports, wrestling was in fact a spectator sport many times throughout its history, such as in ancient Greece, where it developed. In the United States, professional wrestling as an athletic performance or "show" became part of the traveling circuses and other exhibitions that repeatedly crossed the country in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.



In the 1920s, the popularity of wrestling as an athletic performance was waning, so several performers joined together to promote the sport, introducing such now standard elements as time limits and tag teams (where a total of four wrestlers compete in two teams, "tagging" each other to switch partners back and forth). They also introduced the idea of having the same wrestlers perform for months or even years, giving fans a chance to know them—and love them or hate them.



Observers of professional wrestling generally agree that the advent of mass television in the 1950s turned this art form into what it is today. People were rapidly becoming used to television as a source of drama and novelty, and professional wrestling fit that bill on all grounds. However, the 1960s and 1970s were dominated by squabbles between regional professional wrestling promoters, making it difficult for one force in professional wrestling to emerge.



World Wrestling Entertainment, or WWE (formerly the WWF and WWWF), was in the right place at the right time. It was able to sell itself as the only true national professional wrestling organization, in the process establishing an unassailable presence on television. Aside from the organization's business savvy, the WWE had the good fortune of having "Hulk" Hogan on its staff, who quickly became a national superstar, especially in the fiercely nationalistic 1980s. The WWE tried to keep its "sports entertainment" fresh in this era through the introduction of characters designed to appeal to Americans' sense of patriotism, such as the Russian Nikolai Volkoff and the Iron Sheik.



While professional wrestling had its struggles in the 1990s, its appears to be thriving these days, although not expanding as much as it once was. Perhaps the biggest competition for professional wrestling these days comes in the form of "mixed martial arts" competition, which combine all of the athleticism of professional wrestling with a more true to life sport. However, it's unclear whether generations raised on television drama will ever be fully able to do without the antics of professional wrestlers.



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