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  NoDQ.com > Features > The history of Pro-wrestling as a performing art
Posted by Aaron Rift on 05/15/2006 at 01:26 PM

Originating in the days of traveling carnival shows, professional wrestling began as strongman feats, employing Greco-Roman wrestling, Lancashire wrestling, Catch wrestling, acrobatic performances and forms of national and regional wrestling and martial arts such as Pehlwani, Collar and elbow, Judo etc., which made money for promoters all over the world. In the earlier parts of the 20th Century, "professional wrestling" was at times just that, a professional contest of amateur-style wrestlers competing for a purse with a league structure similar to professional boxing. However, these contests disappeared from the sports world with the advent of television due to their extreme length and lack of drama. It was found over the years to be much more profitable when contests were arranged for both length and dramatic effect. For over a century, professional wrestling promoters and performers claimed that the competition was completely real and vehemently defended secrets of the trade (a situation known as kayfabe).

Chinks began to appear in the armor of kayfabe when, in the mid-1980s, Vince McMahon began to refer to his World Wrestling Federation (WWF) as "sports entertainment" in order to avoid the jurisdictions of most states' athletic commissions, as well as to secure lower insurance charges for his events and to avoid the tax on sports events shown on Pay Per View. As time went on, kayfabe was continually weakened in the WWF (and, by extension, the world of professional wrestling), leading up to a 1997 speech, televised on Monday Night RAW, in which McMahon promised to "stop insulting fans' intelligence" by keeping up the illusion of reality, and referred to RAW as an "action-adventure" series (McMahon also promised an end to wrestling's simple morality plays, to be replaced with deeper, more interesting characters and situations, a promise he has delivered on in many ways). He then added other shows such as Friday Night Smackdown! , Sunday Night Heat and Velocity. Perhaps the end of kayfabe's last vestiges came in 2002, when the WWF changed its name to World Wrestling Entertainment in response to a lawsuit from the World Wildlife Fund.

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