Mid 20th Century
88-819: The IWGP U-30 Openweight Championship ( IWGP U-30無差別級王座 , IWGP Andā Sātī Musabetsu-kyū Ōza ) was a professional wrestling openweight championship in New Japan Pro-Wrestling for younger wrestlers who were under the age of 30. It was proposed as part of a tournament called the G2 U-30 Climax by Hiroshi Tanahashi , who ended up winning the tournament in April 2003. The U-30 Openweight Championship became officially recognized as an IWGP title in November 2004. Only two champions between three reigns were ever crowned over its three year existence,
176-435: A bona fide athletic contest or competition. Professional wrestling is not a combative sport. Wrestling constituting bona fide athletic contests and competitions, which may be professional or amateur combative sport, shall not be deemed professional wrestling under this Part. Professional wrestling as used in this Part shall not depend on whether the individual wrestlers are paid or have been paid for their performance in
264-415: A performing art evolved from the common practice of match-fixing among American wrestlers in the 19th century, who later sought to make matches shorter, more entertaining, and less physically taxing. As the public gradually realized and accepted that matches were predetermined, wrestlers responded by increasingly adding melodrama, gimmickry, and outlandish stunt work to their performances to further enhance
352-415: A professional wrestling exhibition. All engagements of professional wrestling shall be referred to as exhibitions, and not as matches. In the industry's slang, a fixed match is referred to as a worked match, derived from the slang word for manipulation, as in "working the crowd". A shoot match is a genuine contest where both wrestlers fight to win and are therefore "straight shooters", which comes from
440-413: A background in authentic wrestling no longer mattered. After this time, matches became more outlandish and gimmicky and any semblance professional wrestling had to catch wrestling faded. The personas of the wrestlers likewise grew more outlandish. Gorgeous George , who performed throughout the 1940s and 1950s, was the first wrestler whose entrance into the arena was accompanied by a theme song played over
528-532: A carny term for a shooting gallery gun whose sights were not deliberately misaligned. Wrestling in the United States blossomed in popularity after the Civil War , with catch wrestling eventually becoming the most popular style. At first, professional wrestlers were genuine competitive fighters, but they struggled to draw audiences because Americans did not find real wrestling to be very entertaining, so
616-519: A central authority. Nor could any of them stomach the idea of leaving the NWA themselves to compete directly with McMahon, for that would mean their territories would become fair game for the other NWA members. McMahon also had a creative flair for TV that his rivals lacked. For instance, the AWA's TV productions during the 1980s were amateurish, low-budget, and out-of-touch with contemporary culture, which lead to
704-585: A champion that Curley put forth: Dick Shikat . The National Wrestling Association shut down in 1980. In 1948, a number of promoters from across the country came together to form the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA). The NWA recognized one "world champion", voted on by its members, but allowed member promoters to crown their own local champions in their territories. If a member poached wrestlers from another member, or held matches in another member's territory, they risked being ejected from
792-428: A degree. Vince Russo, the boss of WCW in 2000, completely disregarded kayfabe by routinely discussing business matters and office politics in public, which alienated fans. I watch championship wrestling from Florida with wrestling commentator Gordon Solie . Is this all "fake"? If so, they deserve an Oscar . Sports league A sports league is a group of individual athletes, sports teams or clubs who form
880-404: A distinct vernacular . It has achieved mainstream success and influence within popular culture , with many terms, tropes , and concepts being referenced in everyday language as well as in film , music , television , and video games . Likewise, numerous professional wrestlers have become national or international icons with recognition by the broader public. In the United States, wrestling
968-410: A fee, a visitor could challenge the wrestler to a quick match. If the challenger defeated the champion in a short time frame, usually 15 minutes, he won a prize. To encourage challenges, the carnival operators staged rigged matches in which an accomplice posing as a visitor challenged the champion and won, giving the audience the impression that the champion was easy to beat. This practice taught wrestlers
SECTION 10
#17327919634811056-689: A group of leagues that are tied together in a hierarchical fashion by promotion and relegation, and to the individual leagues within the league system. For example, in English association football , the English Football League (EFL) is a league system, while the term "National League" refers both to the league immediately below the EFL in the English pyramid and to its associated league system . An alternate system of league organization which
1144-443: A league to compete against each other and gain points in a specific sport . At its simplest, it may be a local group of amateur athletes who form teams among themselves and compete periodically, at its most complex, it can be an international professional league making large amounts of money and involving dozens of teams and thousands of players. Many uses of the term league in sports and for sports organizations are misnomers as
1232-405: A legitimate sport. Firstly, wrestling was more entertaining when it was faked, whereas fakery did not make boxing any more entertaining. Secondly, in a rigged boxing match, the designated loser must take a real beating for his "defeat" to be convincing, but wrestling holds can be faked convincingly without inflicting injury. This meant that boxers were less willing to "take dives"; they wanted to have
1320-799: A match against Gus Sonnenberg in January 1929. Bowser then broke away from the trust to form his own cartel, the American Wrestling Association (AWA), in September 1930, and he declared Sonnenberg to be the AWA champion. This AWA should not be confused with Wally Kadbo's AWA founded in 1960. Curley reacted to this move by convincing the National Boxing Association to form the National Wrestling Association , which in turn crowned
1408-424: A more literal meaning in those places. A notable example is India's Pro Wrestling League . In numerous American states, professional wrestling is legally defined as a non-sport. For instance, New York defines professional wrestling as: Professional wrestling means an activity in which participants struggle hand-in-hand primarily for the purpose of providing entertainment to spectators and which does not comprise
1496-440: A new city, attendance was high because there was a waiting fanbase cultivated in advance by the cable TV shows. The NWA's traditional anti-competitive tricks were no match for this. The NWA attempted to centralize and create their own national cable television shows to counter McMahon's rogue promotion, but it failed in part because the members of the NWA, ever protective of their territories, could not stomach submitting themselves to
1584-484: A regular season in a league format, the top teams (possibly determined by conference or division) advance to the playoffs. In some such leagues having the best regular season record is relatively unimportant, though top-seeded teams in some leagues, such as the NFL , can gain byes to later rounds of the playoffs, and teams finishing with the best records usually have the advantage of playing the weakest teams that have advanced to
1672-399: A single competition or a related group of competitions. Many groups use promotion and relegation , where the best-ranked team(s) in the lower division are promoted to the higher division for the next season, and the worst-ranked team(s) in the higher division are relegated to the lower division for the next season. Under this system, "league" may refer both to a league system ,
1760-716: A small amount of interleague play , with the main AL-NL competition occurring between their champions in the World Series . Thus the two leagues played mostly separate competitions within the larger framework of MLB. Finally, until 2000, they were actually separate legal entities, unlike the conferences of other leagues. Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan has a similar history, with the Central League and Pacific League not founded together. Due to this naming custom, it
1848-503: A typical American household only received four national channels by antenna, and ten to twelve local channels via UHF broadcasting . But cable television could carry a much larger selection of channels and therefore had room for niche interests. The WWF started with a show called All-American Wrestling airing on the USA Network in September 1983. McMahon's TV shows made his wrestlers national celebrities, so when he held matches in
SECTION 20
#17327919634811936-586: A victory for all the pain to which they subjected themselves. In the 1910s, promotional cartels for professional wrestling emerged in the East Coast (outside its traditional heartland in the Midwest ). These promoters sought to make long-term plans with their wrestlers, and to ensure their more charismatic and crowd-pleasing wrestlers received championships, further entrenching the desire for worked matches. The primary rationale for shoot matches at this point
2024-436: Is a form of athletic theater that combines mock combat with drama , with the premise that the performers are competitive wrestlers. Professional wrestling is distinguished by its scripted outcomes and emphasis on entertainment and showmanship . The staged nature of matches is an open secret , with both wrestlers and spectators nonetheless maintaining the pretense that performances are bona fide competitions, which
2112-519: Is a major factor in many sports. When teams competing for a tournament championship do not play the same teams the same number of times, it is known as an unbalanced schedule. In such a set-up, the team with the best record becomes champion, based on either a strict win–loss–tie system or on a points system where a certain number of points are awarded for a win, loss, or tie, while bonus points might also be added for teams meeting various criteria. Many leagues also use playoffs , where after teams compete in
2200-487: Is a sports league where all the fixtures take place at the same venue, instead of rotating around the venues of the 'home' team, for each fixture. Several UK basketball leagues operate on this basis, intended to keep the costs of participation as low as possible, including: Many sports leagues also participate in a single-elimination tournament each year. In the United States, Mexico, and some other countries, these tournaments are commonly called "playoffs" and are played at
2288-509: Is a structure that allows teams or individuals to compete against each other in a nonrandom order on a set schedule, usually called a season , with the results of the individual competitions being used to name an overall champion. A league championship may be contested in a number of ways. Each team may play every other team a certain number of times in a round-robin tournament . Usually, teams play an equal number of games or matches at their own stadium and at other teams', because home advantage
2376-410: Is a true sport. Wrestlers would at all times flatly deny allegations that they fixed their matches, and they often remained in-character in public even when not performing. When in public, wrestlers would sometimes say the word kayfabe to each other as a coded signal that there were fans present and they needed to be in character. Professional wrestlers in the past strongly believed that if they admitted
2464-499: Is common to use slightly different terms to discuss MLB. Where someone might refer to "the best quarterback in the league" and be understood to mean the overall NFL, a similar mention of "the best outfielder in the league" is almost always a reference to the American or National League, while "in all of baseball" or similar is used to denote the larger status. Each of the major leagues also has its own set of awards to recognize
2552-559: Is especially common in individual sports, although the term "league" is sometimes used in amateur individual sports such as golf . The term "league" is also sometimes applicable to competitions that would more traditionally be called tournaments , such as the UEFA Champions League , which is organized with multiple small round-robin competitions followed by a single elimination tournament to choose an overall winner. "League" and its synonyms may be used to encompass either
2640-427: Is generally practiced in an amateur context. No professional league for competitive wrestling exists due to a lack of popularity. For example, Real Pro Wrestling , an American professional freestyle wrestling league, dissolved in 2007 after just two seasons. In other countries, such as Iran and India , wrestling enjoys widespread popularity as a genuine sport, and the phrase "professional wrestling" therefore has
2728-470: Is likened to the suspension of disbelief employed when engaging with fiction . Professional wrestlers perform as characters and usually maintain a " gimmick " consisting of a specific persona , stage name , entrance theme , and other distinguishing traits. Matches are the primary vehicle for advancing storylines, which typically center on interpersonal conflicts, or feuds , between heroic " faces " and villainous " heels ". A wrestling ring , akin to
IWGP U-30 Openweight Championship - Misplaced Pages Continue
2816-551: Is still used in many team sports around the world. One potential drawback of this simple double round-robin format is that the number of teams in the league determines the schedule. Larger leagues may not be able to play as many games as such a system would require, and smaller leagues may want more games. In addition, leagues whose teams are geographically spread out over a wide area (a common situation for leagues in North America) may face significant travel costs. One solution
2904-411: Is to allow teams to play each other whenever they see fit. In some sports, such as horse racing , the main goal of the entrants is to win individual purses , and there is little or no ranking or competition outside winning certain major races. A small amount of league organization may be imposed on these non-league sports by way of a series or tournament tying several individual events together, such as
2992-428: Is to play an unbalanced schedule, with some teams playing additional games against some other teams; this is the way Major League Soccer has traditionally been scheduled, with the additional games being played against local rivals. Some leagues also break the league into subunits, often known as divisions and conferences , each of which may itself play a balanced or unbalanced schedule. A "central venue league" (CVL)
3080-624: Is used primarily in Australia, Canada, and the United States is a closed model which always has the same teams playing, with occasional admission of expansion teams and relocation of existing teams . There is no team movement between the higher major league and the lower minor leagues . In many of these closed-model leagues in Canada and the United States, they are divided into subdivisions on historical or geographical lines. These may be referred to as conferences or divisions . For example,
3168-427: Is used similarly in the United States to describe baseball teams that play in leagues other than those sanctioned by Major League Baseball . These teams do play in leagues and should not be confused with barnstorming teams that play truly non-league schedules. Individual sports often use an alternative type of league organization where competitors are ranked against each other. In the simplest cases, such as boxing ,
3256-582: The American League (AL) and the older National League (NL). They are titled leagues rather than conferences for several reasons. The National League predates the American by 25 years and was considered a "major" league in comparison to its early competitors, and in a sense it simply extended this recognition to the AL, the only league of similar financial clout. In addition, the leagues played no interlocking schedule of any kind until 1995, and then added only
3344-845: The National Football League (NFL) is divided into the National Football Conference and American Football Conference ; the latter conference was formed largely from the remnants of the American Football League after it merged with the NFL , though it now contains three original NFL teams and three expansion teams. Both the National Basketball Association (NBA) and National Hockey League (NHL) are divided into Eastern and Western Conferences. The conferences in
3432-624: The New Jersey State Athletic Control Board that professional wrestling is not a real sport because its matches have predetermined outcomes. Shortly thereafter, New Jersey deregulated professional wrestling. The WWF then rebranded itself as a " sports entertainment " company. In the early years of the 20th century, the style of wrestling used in professional wrestling matches was catch wrestling . Promoters wanted their matches to look realistic and so preferred to recruit wrestlers with real grappling skills. In
3520-534: The Triple Crown . Even in team sports that normally use a traditional league format, some teams often exist outside any league; these teams are generally known as barnstorming teams and either schedule games against local professional or amateur competition or bring their own competition, such as the barnstorming Harlem Globetrotters did when they toured with the Washington Generals . As with
3608-557: The independent circuit , to internationally broadcast events at major arenas. The largest and most influential promotions are in the United States , Mexico , Japan , and northwest Europe (the United Kingdom , Germany/Austria and France ), which have each developed distinct styles, traditions, and subgenres within professional wrestling. Professional wrestling has developed its own culture and community , including
IWGP U-30 Openweight Championship - Misplaced Pages Continue
3696-431: The spectacle . By at least the early 20th century, professional wrestling had diverged from the competitive sport to become an artform and genre of sports entertainment . Professional wrestling is performed around the world through various " promotions ", which are roughly analogous to production companies or sports leagues . Promotions vary considerably in size, scope, and creative approach, ranging from local shows on
3784-584: The 1920s, a group of wrestlers and promoters known as the Gold Dust Trio introduced moves which have since become staples of the mock combat of professional wrestling, such as body slams, suplexes , punches, finishing moves, and out-of-ring count-outs. By the early 1930s, most wrestlers had adopted personas to generate public interest. These personas could broadly be characterized as either faces (likeable) or heels (villainous). Native Americans, cowboys, and English aristocrats were staple characters in
3872-400: The 1930s and 1940s. Before the age of television, some wrestlers played different personas depending on the region they were performing in. This eventually came to an end in the age of national television wrestling shows, which forced wrestlers to stick to one persona. Wrestlers also often used some sort of gimmick, such as a finishing move, eccentric mannerisms, or out-of-control behavior (in
3960-509: The 1990s, WCW became a credible rival to the WWF, but by end it suffered from a series of creative missteps that led to its failure and purchase by the WWF. One of its mistakes was that it diminished the glamor of its World Heavyweight Championship . Between January 2000 and March 2001, the title changed hands eighteen times, which sapped fan enthusiasm, particularly for the climactic pay-per-view matches. In professional wrestling, two factors decide
4048-653: The Atlantic Athletic Corporation (AAC). The AAC shut down in 1960. In 1958, Omaha promoter and NWA member Joe Dusek recognized Verne Gagne as the world champion without the approval of the NWA. Gagne asked for a match against the recognized NWA champion Pat O'Connor. The NWA refused to honor the request, so Gagne and Minneapolis promoter Wally Karbo established the American Wrestling Association in 1960. This AWA should not be confused with Paul Bowser's AWA, which ceased operations just two months prior. Gagne's AWA operated out of Minnesota . Unlike
4136-581: The Globetrotters, barnstorming teams sometimes emphasize spectacle over athletic competition. In Europe, the term "cup competition" is used to describe single elimination or knock-out tournaments, where the pairing of teams in each round is determined by a "draw" (see for example, the FA Cup in England), to distinguish it from league competition, in which every club in the league or division plays
4224-424: The NFL, NBA, and NHL are further divided into subsets, all of which are called divisions . These are geographically based, and teams play their divisional opponents more than any others, and then play the other clubs in their conference more than their non-conference opponents. Baseball has a unique nomenclature, with " Major League Baseball " (MLB) the name of the overall grouping of 30 teams in two "major leagues",
4312-408: The NWA, at which point his territory became fair game for everyone. The NWA would blacklist wrestlers who worked for independent promoters or who publicly criticized an NWA promoter or who did not throw a match on command. If an independent promoter tried to establish himself in a certain area, the NWA would send their star performers to perform for the local NWA promoter to draw the customers away from
4400-488: The NWA, which only allowed faces to be champions, Gagne occasionally allowed heels to win the AWA championship so that they could serve as foils for him. In August 1983, the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), a promotion in the north-east , withdrew from the NWA. Vince K. McMahon then took over as its boss. No longer bound by the territorial pact of the NWA, McMahon began expanding his promotion into
4488-401: The arena's loudspeakers, his being Pomp and Circumstance . He also wore a costume: a robe and hairnet, which he removed after getting in the ring. He also had a pre-match ritual where his "butler" would spray the ring with perfume. In the 1980s, Vince McMahon made entrance songs, costumes, and rituals standard for his star wrestlers. For instance, McMahon's top star Hulk Hogan would delight
SECTION 50
#17327919634814576-418: The art of staging rigged matches and fostered a mentality that spectators were marks to be duped. The term kayfabe comes from carny slang. By the turn of the 20th century, most professional wrestling matches were "worked" and some journalists exposed the practice: American wrestlers are notorious for the amount of faking they do. It is because of this fact that suspicion attaches to so many bouts that
4664-561: The audience by tearing his shirt off before each match. The first major promoter cartel emerged on the East Coast, although up to that point, wrestling's heartland had been in the Midwest. Notable members of this cartel included Jack Curley , Lou Daro, Paul Bowser and Tom and Tony Packs. The promoters colluded to solve a number of problems that hurt their profits. Firstly, they could force their wrestlers to perform for less money. As
4752-424: The cartel grew, there were fewer independent promoters where independent wrestlers could find work, and many were forced to sign a contract with the cartel to receive steady work. The contracts forbade them from performing at independent venues. A wrestler who refused to play by the cartel's rules was barred from performing at its venues. A second goal of the wrestling cartels was to establish an authority to decide who
4840-418: The case of heels). The matches could also be gimmicky sometimes, with wrestlers fighting in mud and piles of tomatoes and so forth. The most successful and enduring gimmick to emerge from the 1930s were tag-team matches. Promoters noticed that matches slowed down as the wrestlers in the ring tired, so they gave them partners to relieve them. It also gave heels another way to misbehave by double-teaming. Towards
4928-423: The character in shows must be considered fictional, wholly separate from the life of the performer. This is similar to other entertainers who perform with a persona that shares their own name. Some wrestlers also incorporate elements of their real-life personalities into their characters, even if they and their in-ring persona have different names. Kayfabe is the practice of pretending that professional wrestling
5016-512: The commission. The Commission did on very rare occasions hand out such authorizations, such as for a championship match between Jim Londos and Jim Browning in June 1934. This decree did not apply to amateur wrestling, which the commission had no authority over. Wrestling fans widely suspected that professional wrestling was fake, but they did not care as long as it entertained. In 1933, a wrestling promoter named Jack Pfefer started talking about
5104-482: The conference, as other sports leagues do, but the individual schools also schedule a certain number of "non-conference" games that are organized independently between two schools in different conferences, or between a conference team and a non-conference team. Also, national championships in some college sports are determined by a ranking or playoff system that is independent of the individual conferences. Most major team sports play some form of round-robin schedule, where
5192-540: The current fashion of wrestling is the universal discussion as to the honesty of the matches. And certainly the most interesting phrase of this discussion is the unanimous agreement: "Who cares if they're fixed or not—the show is good." Newspapers tended to shun professional wrestling, as journalists saw its theatrical pretense to being a legitimate sport as untruthful. Eventually promoters resorted to publishing their own magazines in order to get press coverage and communicate with fans. The first professional wrestling magazine
5280-405: The end of the 1930s, faced with declining revenues, promoters chose to focus on grooming charismatic wrestlers with no regard for their skill because it was charisma that drew the crowds, and wrestlers who were both skilled at grappling and charismatic were hard to come by. Since most of the public by this time knew and accepted that professional wrestling was fake, realism was no longer paramount and
5368-603: The facade of kayfabe as best as they could. In 1989, Vince McMahon testified before the New Jersey government that professional wrestling was not a true sport and therefore should be exempted from sports-related taxes. Many wrestlers and fans resented McMahon for this, but Lou Thesz accepted it as the smart move as it gave the industry more freedom to do as it pleased, and because by that point professional wrestling no longer attempted to appear real. The demise of WCW in 2001 provided some evidence that kayfabe still mattered to
SECTION 60
#17327919634815456-470: The first place. "Double-crosses", where a wrestler agreed to lose a match but nevertheless fought to win, remained a problem in the early cartel days. At times a promoter would even award a victorious double-crosser the title of champion to preserve the facade of sport. But promoters punished such wrestlers by blacklisting them, making it quite challenging to find work. Double-crossers could also be sued for breach of contract, such as Dick Shikat in 1936. In
5544-610: The game is not popular here. Nine out of ten bouts, it has been said, are pre-arranged affairs, and it would be no surprise if the ratio of fixed matches to honest ones was really so high. The wrestler Lou Thesz recalled that between 1915 and 1920, a series of exposés in the newspapers about the integrity of professional wrestling alienated a lot of fans, sending the industry "into a tailspin". But rather than perform more shoot matches, professional wrestlers instead committed themselves wholesale to fakery. Several reasons explain why professional wrestling became fake whereas boxing endured as
5632-570: The goal is for each team to play a relatively balanced schedule with each other team in the league or in its league subdivision. Within this structure, there are a few significant differences between leagues, a few of which are set forth below. The simplest way to organize a sports league, and still one of the most common, is in a double round-robin format where each team plays each other team twice, once at home and once away. This ensures that every team plays an equally difficult schedule and that no team has undue home field advantage . This organization
5720-460: The government. They pledged to stop allocating exclusive territories to its promoters, to stop blacklisting wrestlers who worked for outsider promoters, and to admit any promoter into the Alliance. The NWA would flout many of these promises, but its power was nonetheless weakened by the lawsuit. Paul Bowser's AWA joined the NWA in 1949. The AWA withdrew from the Alliance in 1957 and renamed itself
5808-731: The inaugural and two time champion Hiroshi Tanahashi, and Shinsuke Nakamura . As his 30th birthday began to approach (which would then make him ineligible to be the champion), Tanahashi vacated the title on June 7, 2006, to focus on the IWGP Heavyweight Championship , and soon afterwards the U-30 Openweight Championship was de-emphasized and soon deactivated. Professional wrestling 1970s and 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s and 2020s Professional wrestling (often referred to as pro wrestling , or simply, wrestling )
5896-473: The independent. By 1956, the NWA controlled 38 promotions within the United States, with more in Canada, Mexico, Australia and New Zealand. The NWA's monopolistic practices became so stifling that the independents appealed to the government for help. In October 1956 the US Attorney General's office filed an antitrust lawsuit against the NWA in an Iowa federal district court. The NWA settled with
5984-480: The industry was anything but a competitive sport. The first wrestling promoter to publicly admit to routinely fixing matches was Jack Pfefer . In 1933, he started talking about the industry's inner workings to the New York Daily Mirror , resulting in a huge exposé. The exposé neither surprised nor alienated most wrestling fans, although some promoters like Jack Curley were furious and tried to restore
6072-496: The industry's inner workings to the New York Daily Mirror , maintaining no pretense that wrestling was real and passing on planned results just before the matches took place. While fans were neither surprised nor alienated, traditionalists like Jack Curley were furious, and most promoters tried to maintain the facade of kayfabe as best they could. Not the least interesting of all the minor phenomena produced by
6160-498: The members of wrestling cartels as the champion drew big crowds wherever he performed, and this would occasionally lead to schisms. By 1925, this cartel had divided the country up into territories which were the exclusive domains of specific promoters. This system of territories endured until Vince McMahon drove the fragmented cartels out of the market in the 1980s. This cartel fractured in 1929 after one of its members, Paul Bowser , bribed Ed "Strangler" Lewis to lose his championship in
6248-463: The other teams a pre-determined number of times in a season, usually on a home and away basis. Further, in England, the term non-league football is used for historical reasons to describe association football teams that play in organized leagues, but not in the English Football League or Premier League , the two highest levels of competition in that sport in that country. Independent baseball
6336-437: The platform used in boxing , serves as the main stage ; additional scenes may be recorded for television in backstage areas of the venue, in a format similar to reality television . Performers generally integrate authentic wrestling techniques and fighting styles with choreography , stunts , improvisation , and dramatic conventions designed to maximize entertainment value and audience engagement. Professional wrestling as
6424-464: The playoffs. While round-robin and modified round-robin competitions are the most common form of league organization, there are a number of ways to organize a sporting competition, almost all of which may be described as a "league". Many sports organizations fall on a continuum between a total lack of organization, as in a pick-up game, and a formal league such as is common at the highest level of professional team sports. The simplest form of competition
6512-717: The promotion's closing in 1991. In the spring of 1984, the WWF purchased Georgia Championship Wrestling (GCW), which had been ailing for some time due to financial mismanagement and internal squabbles. In the deal, the WWF acquired the GCW's timeslot on TBS . McMahon agreed to keep showing Georgia wrestling matches in that timeslot, but he was unable to get his staff to Atlanta every Saturday to fulfill this obligation, so he sold GCW and its TBS timeslot to Jim Crockett Promotions (JCP). JCP started informally calling itself World Championship Wrestling (WCW). In 1988, Ted Turner bought JCP and formally renamed it World Championship Wrestling. During
6600-826: The rankings mean little and the major competition is to crown a champion in a title fight. In other sports, the rankings and leaderboards gain importance when they are used in seeding tournaments. In some sports, points are assigned to results at individual competitions, and the resulting points are used to generate a season rankings and determine the season champion. While not usually referred to as "leagues", but "tours" or "series", these season-long competitions with set events are very similar to league structures in team sports. Examples of this are motorsport , tennis , golf , skiing , beach volleyball and rugby sevens . American college sports are traditionally organized into groups of teams known as conferences . These conferences ordinarily keep league tables and crown champions within
6688-539: The separation between the two, which means there are two MVPs , two Cy Young Award winners, etc. Since its name is constructed differently—a description of the status of two leagues rather than the title of one—it is common to hear "MLB" without "the" attached to it, as in "the most home runs in MLB this year", since one would not say "the Major League Baseball". The common thread between all sports leagues
6776-440: The stamina for an hours-long fight. Audiences also preferred short matches. Worked matches also carried less risk of injury, which meant shorter recovery. Altogether, worked matches proved more profitable than shoots. By the end of the 19th century, nearly all professional wrestling matches were worked. A major influence on professional wrestling was carnival culture. Wrestlers in the late 19th century worked in carnival shows. For
6864-408: The term league relates specifically to the form of organization, requiring persons or bodies to be in league together. A sport competition owned and controlled other than by its participant players, teams or clubs is not a league. In many cases, organizations that function as leagues are described using a different term, such as association , conference , division , leaderboard , or series . This
6952-426: The territories of his former NWA peers, now his rivals. By the end of the 1980s, the WWF would become the sole national wrestling promotion in the U.S. This was in part made possible by the rapid spread of cable television in the 1980s. The national broadcast networks generally regarded professional wrestling as too niche an interest, and had not broadcast any national wrestling shows since the 1950s. Before cable TV,
7040-519: The trial, witnesses testified that most of the "big matches" and all of the championship bouts were fixed. By the 1930s, with the exception of the occasional double-cross or business dispute, shoot matches were essentially nonexistent. In April 1930, the New York State Athletic Commission decreed that all professional wrestling matches held in the state had to be advertised as exhibitions unless certified as contests by
7128-471: The truth, their audiences would desert them. Today's performers don't "protect" the industry like we did, but that's primarily because they've already exposed it by relying on silly or downright ludicrous characters and gimmicks to gain popularity with the fans. It was different in my day, when our product was presented as an authentic, competitive sport. We protected it because we believed it would collapse if we ever so much as implied publicly that it
7216-535: The way of proceedings: the "in-show" happenings, presented through the shows; and real-life happenings outside the work that have implications, such as performer contracts, legitimate injuries, etc. Because actual life events are often co-opted by writers for incorporation into storylines of performers, the lines between real life and fictional life are often blurred and become confused. Special discern must be taken with people who perform under their own name (such as Kurt Angle and his fictional persona ). The actions of
7304-420: The wrestlers quietly began faking their matches so that they could give their audiences a satisfying spectacle. Fixing matches was also convenient for scheduling. A real ("shoot") match could sometimes last hours, whereas a fixed ("worked") match can be made short, which was convenient for wrestlers on tour who needed to keep appointments or share venues. It also suited wrestlers who were aging and therefore lacked
7392-425: Was Wrestling As You Like It , which printed its first issue in 1946. These magazines were faithful to kayfabe . Before the advent of television, professional wrestling's fanbase largely consisted of children, the elderly, blue-collar workers and minorities. When television arose in the 1940s, professional wrestling got national exposure on prime-time television and gained widespread popularity. Professional wrestling
7480-488: Was challenges from independent wrestlers. But a cartelized wrestler, if challenged, could credibly use his contractual obligations to his promoter as an excuse to refuse the challenge. Promotions would sometimes respond to challenges with "policemen": powerful wrestlers who lacked the charisma to become stars, but could defeat and often seriously injure any challenger in a shoot match. As the industry trend continued, there were fewer independent wrestlers to make such challenges in
7568-650: Was previously considered a niche interest, but the TV networks at the time were short on content and thus were willing to try some wrestling shows. In the 1960s, however, the networks moved on to more mainstream interests such as baseball, and professional wrestling was dropped. The core audience then shrunk back to a profile similar to that of the 1930s. In 1989, Vince McMahon was looking to exempt his promotion (the World Wrestling Federation ) from sports licensing fees. To achieve this, he testified before
7656-415: Was something other than what it appeared to be. I'm not sure now the fear was ever justified given the fact that the industry is still in existence today, but the point is no one questioned the need then. "Protecting the business" in the face of criticism and skepticism was the first and most important rule a pro wrestler learned. No matter how aggressive or informed the questioner, you never admitted
7744-417: Was the "world champion". Before the cartels, there were multiple wrestlers in the U.S. simultaneously calling themselves the "world champion", and this sapped public enthusiasm for professional wrestling. Likewise, the cartel could agree on a common set of match rules that the fans could keep track of. The issue over who got to be the champion and who controlled said champion was a major point of contention among
#480519