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ever watched professional wrestling on tv and asked how did we get here how did we get to
sword-wielding scottish warriors on one channel and jungle boy and his dinosaur friends on the
other love it or hate it the scripted nature of professional wrestling is a medium onto itself
with few sports like it boxing may get accused of being rigged from time to time and mixed martial
arts can give us larger than life characters with legitimate skills but seemingly no other genre of
sport intentionally marries drama and its athletes in the way the professional wrestling does
while wrestling has been a thing seemingly as long as humans have been human our story today starts
in america coinciding with the american civil war three styles of wrestling became dominant
and proved important to the formation of modern pro wrestling the first was introduced by irish
immigrants and quickly soared in popularity across the country with a particularly firm
base in new england irish collar and elbow wrestling collar and elbow wrestling starts
in a hold position where opponents grappled the collar and elbow unlike a lot of team sports the
barrier of entry to wrestling is easy all you need are two people and a little space the irish collar
in elbow wrestling was popular amongst immigrants for just that reason further matches actually
favored smaller wrestlers so the malnourished small frames of the era found it easy to compete
this style of wrestling was so popular that it was used by the union during the civil war to
blow off steam and give them a place to settle scores without fighting its brain is the most
popular style ended in the 1890s it has however survived in modern pro wrestling in the lock-ups
the civil war saw another emerging style what we today call greco-roman unlike collar and elbow
greco-roman favored larger physiques with a higher center of gravity this style of wrestling focused
on the upper half of the body with most grappling being forbidden below the midsection wrestlers
with bigger and larger physiques gained popularity over the smaller collar and elbow wrestlers but at
a trade-off greco-roman matches could last four hours as a result its slow pace spelled its end
in the early 1900s sports writer joe jaez once said it is as exciting as watching two sleepy
elephants leaning on each other the third style of wrestling was both an import and had american
roots catchers catch can wrestling better known as catch wrestling had roots in lancashire wrestling
in england the american style of the sport also had roots in an outlawed american folk
style called rough and tumble wrestling both had a freer set of rules than collar and alba
or greco-roman which allowed for holes below the belt and limited strikes rough and tumble
was however banned because the strikes usually maimed opponents and most dressers in that style
had missing eyes as a result catch wrestling was the safer of the two and more dynamic than collar
and elbow or greco-roman with its freer move set it also adapted holds and maneuvers from
other styles of grappling including freestyle wrestling jiu jitsu and indian wrestling unlike
the other stars catch wrestling was here to stay until the sport became more what it would be today
during the 1920s modern pro wrestling is still built on a catch wrestling foundation that
allows for flashy but harmless moves during the later eras important to the story of the
evolution of wrestling from legitimate matches to fixed ones is where people commonly wrestled
namely mostly in one of two places in the city inside bars and theaters and in the country
as part of touring carnivals wrestling in cities got the attention of the sports
press and this helped popularize the sport this helped wrestling become a nationwide
phenomenon and even an international one sports press helped broaden the reach by popularizing
certain wrestlers funding championships promoting matches and allowing wrestlers to post challenges
called cards no bigger luminaries watch wrestling in bars and theaters than thomas edison theodore
roosevelt and pt barnum all three men did their part to popularize wrestling with thomas edison
lighting up the venues he frequented with some of the first electric lights theodore roosevelt
promoted wrestling as a way for the nation to stay healthy and was a major enthusiast wrestler
himself often challenging people visiting the white house to matches as we've previously covered
on this channel significantly pt barnum included wrestling in touring circus and carnival acts
on this note if you want to trace when wrestling started becoming fake the best place to start
is the carnival carnival's hosted wrestling competitions between established wrestlers
but also hosted challenges between wrestlers and the public in these challenges a wrestler would
take on challengers from the audience and if a challenger either won or lasted a certain amount
of time in the bout he was awarded money the fakeness came in during these challenges where
a plant would volunteer first and either make the wrestler look weak or lose in such a way that it
encouraged the locals to think that they could do better in any event boxing and wrestling were
quite close at the time with a shared audience that dipped and bounced based on sport scandals
and regulations the two sports also had more in common thanks to the london rule set of boxing
under london rules boxers did not wear gloves unlike boxing of today boxers did not punch each
other in the face as that would lead to broken fingers instead london rules relied on body shots
and leaned on grappling techniques such as holds and throws to open up an opponent to body shots
like wrestling there were no time limits on london rules matches and they could often go on for
hours as well boxing saw a reformation with the introduction of marquis of queensberry rules the
new rule set introduced boxing gloves time limits and banned grappling altogether this brought
boxing more in line with the sport that we know it as today the new rules were published in 1867 but
were not widely accepted in america until around 1889. the introduction of the new rules divorced
wrestling and boxing for good although ultimately saw time limits added to wrestling while reactions
were mixed some fans were not pleased but worried that new time limits would open up wrestling to
more opportunities for hippodroming or fixing beyond gambling incentives if you fix a match
for a predetermined winner or fix a match for a certain finish the crowd can potentially be better
entertained if done well and thus more enticed to come back for future matches rematches were big
money at the time and could double or even triple the gates of the first bout on this entertainment
value the new time limits came at the right time because the emerging catch wrestling was faster
and more action-packed than greco-roman cat wrestling also focused on submission holds
that were considered more dangerous by the older greco-roman wrestlers a new generation of catch
wrestlers who specialized in these new hooks emerged and none was bigger in america than frank
got the poster boy for the new style who would ultimately help popularize the sport to a level
where it had never been before including at one point from 1908 to 1913 reigning as the world
heavyweight wrestling champion still one of the top 10 longest streaks for that in
wrestling history of course having one person dominate the sport so fully for so long can be
a double-edged sword both bringing fans in from their mastery while also making things become
a little boring when they simply win match after match with no one really able to compete at their
level in short if one person dominates too long matches are eventually not as exciting
with the outcome becoming predictable fresh competitive talent was important to building up
the sport and oftentimes enough talent couldn't be cultivated fast enough to take on a dominant champ
this happened with the likes of such legends as bill muldoon frank gotch gotcha's european rival
george hackenschmidt and many other champions and so it was that starting in the 1920s we enter the
worked era at this time promoters took control of the industry by controlling the booking of
wrestlers and champions promoters had ties to the carnivals and adopted many of the insider
terms and methods used in carnival wrestling most noteworthy to the topic at hand they took
the idea of hippodroming and elevated it on a national level wrestlers like toots mont and
managers like billy sandow helped design and spread a way of catch wrestling that is staged
or worked to make matches more exciting sandow used wrestlers like mont and ed strangler-lewis
to bring other wrestlers to heel into this new vision of wrestling both in the ring and in
the business practices that would define the era by controlling the bookings of champions they
controlled the titles and kept them in territories they controlled as part of a trust rivals within
the trust usually scheme to take control of the whole trust or break it completely we also get in
this period the first independent wrestlers who operated outside the control of the trust and
resisted the trust's influence but were targeted by enforcers like mont and lewis the trust was
based in the midwest under what is known as the gold dust trio made up of billy sandow toots monde
and ed strangler lewis who were often at war with other promoters like jack curly in new york and
jack feffer who had a major part to play in the development of worked wrestling especially in how
wrestling was promoted the rise of promoters not only previewed the business model of a wrestling
promotion like we will have in the tv era but also the ways in which the power in wrestling shifted
away from wrestlers and to the promoters promoters would eventually settle into territories with
their own championships in doing so they could now dictate terms like who wins and who loses matches
who is recruited into the business and gimmicks or personas that wrestlers take up while gimmicks
were not explicitly part of the business from early on characters and costumes played up by
wrestlers eventually paved the way for the idea wrestlers like muldoon and gotch always had a
foot in theater and a lot of the famous wrestlers up to this point had acting backgrounds in theater
and film in the beginning of the worked era the closest thing to gimmicks were ethnic backgrounds
invented for wrestlers to endear them to a specific locale for example if a match
was held in a jewish neighborhood the good guy or babyface would be played up as jewish even if the
wrestler wasn't foreign wrestlers would play on their foreigners even before the worked era
with many eastern europeans and middle easterners adopting titles such as terrible turk or japanese
wrestlers leaning on techniques derived from sumo and jujitsu the sports press played into rallying
locals against foreign wrestlers or establishing rivalries between local heroes and foreign
outsiders in the worked era gimmicks controlled by the promoters took precedence and was a
further layer of control promoters had over their wrestlers a factor that rings true today with the
worked era the concept of heel and baby face were also introduced to clearly show audience who they
were supposed to boo and who they were supposed to cheer younger fresh-faced and clean-cut wrestlers
were usually babyfaces and old and disfigured wrestlers played heels another trend familiar
with wrestling fans is a struggle between shifting the emphasis more on entertainment over skill on
this note as american football started gaining popularity and football stars started to emerge
as football players tended to have the type of physique appreciated in professional wrestling
many were recruited by wrestling promoters these football players were not exactly always talented
in the sport and were generally not as thoroughly trained in catch wrestling but this didn't matter
very much the trade-off is that they would bring attention to the sport and introduce
more striking techniques such as shoulder tackles the biggest of such crossover football stars was
gus sonenberg who played for several nfl teams in his tenure between 1923 and 1930. this trend of
recruiting football players continues to this day with the likes of bill goldberg roman reigns and
happy corbyn in wwe and moose in impact wrestling conversely wrestlers were recruited from
more technical wrestling backgrounds in catch and amateur styles to lend an air of legitimacy
this included olympian ed don george and catch wrestler lou these this trend would also continue
to this day with former olympians and amateur wrestlers like kurt angle and chad gable and
mixed martial art fighters like ronda rousey and cain velasquez the ring as we see it today was
introduced around the beginning of the worked era as the hardwood floors of a theater or
the grass of the carnival grounds took its toll on the poor wrestlers instead a ring kept a limit
to the action while providing wrestlers with springy floors covered by canvas which allowed
for more over-the-top moves the moves themselves were played up so people from far away could see
them leading to flashier takedowns and more over-the-top submission holds that would not
really work in a legitimate catch wrestling bout gimmick matches were also introduced at this time
from common staples and professional wrestling like tag team and women's matches to less common
stipulations like wrestling in a ring covered with fish mud or even metal shavings now at this point
you might be wondering did fans know that it was fake and the answer is seemingly for the most part
as with today yes on this note there were plenty of very public attempts to expose wrestling as
fake since the worked era yet each time the message would predominantly fall on deaf ears
as fans already knew and they were fine with it in fact promoters would even sometimes inform sports
press about the outcomes of rival promotions matches the night before to try and ruin the shows
thanks to the work of the gold dust trio these attempts at sabotage were eventually ended and
a code of silence was thereafter mostly maintained but either way it's clear that even early on fans
knew and accepted the reality of what wrestling had become that said with world war ii many older
and more skilled wrestlers returned to the ring while the younger wrestlers went off to fight
this return of these veteran wrestlers skewed the needle back towards a focus
on wrestling skill but things went the other way very quickly and to an even more extreme degree
after the war ended thanks to tv at this point we see pro wrestling really settle into the form
that we know it has today with tv announcers were brought in to walk the audiences through
the match and contribute to the storytelling and spectacle further with television the charismatic
entertainment aspect of wrestling could be played up even more such as with over-the-top interview
segments and the like which have been part of wrestling ever since all of this has led to
the carnival and turn of the century origins of the sport being felt to this day as men and now
women play larger than life characters meant to entertain as they pretend to battle in the ring
while compared to many other professional sports where such rampant outcome fixing would likely
kill the leagues in this case all the way back to the beginning of these fixed matches nobody seems
to care and they simply enjoy being entertained and watching the outcomes of the stories the
promoters and athletes come up with perhaps the biggest question in all of this then is why in
this particular sport even in the earliest days when things switch from legitimate to fake does
nobody seem to care that the whole thing is fixed whereas with so many other sports this transition
would likely have seen the end of the professional league who tried the same thing in their sport and
the answer to that is well nobody seems to know we'll leave it to you to discuss in the comments