Even into the 1800s professional wrestling was huge in its own grace. Back then the sport was in comparison quite popular. Maybe not as popular as now but definitely popular. There has always been something about us as people being able to watch people beat up on each other. The sport continued to gain extreme followers until around 1920 when the subject of fakery came into play. What fakery was in professional wrestling was the planning of the outcome of fights.
Promoters suddenly had to work very hard to keep sponsors helping them with funding. Many of the sponsors quickly dropped their support in fear of backlash of the so called fans. No one really knew how the supporters of many years would react to fakery. To the surprise of the sponsors and advertisers it really wasn't long before wrestling started becoming even more popular.
In the 1950s when televisions started becoming more popular professional wrestling started to blow up. Now that people could sit at their TVs and watch the action more interesting characters could be formed and as the characters became more interesting word of mouth had more and more viewers tuning in on a weekly basis. The explosion really hit in the 1980s when the big three started competing against one another.
At the time the World Wrestling Federation was the big one with World Championship Wrestling and Extreme Championship Wrestling falling close behind. While Extreme Championship Wrestling slowly fell out of grace The WWF (Now called WWE World Wrestling Entertainment) and the WCW traded back and forth when it came to holding the number one spot. Finally the time came when the WWE took over number one spot and never looked back.
These days professional wrestling has become a billion dollar business. The entertainment value is second to none with new story lines being created everyday. The stars are larger than life while the wrestlers not willing to put in the work slowly disappear out of the locker rooms of the WWE. With wrestling being a mixture of extreme athletics and great entertainment many other doors have opened for many of the seasoned wrestlers.
Many of the top notch stars of the WWE have moved on to build great careers in television and movies. Some of these superstars are Stone Cold Steve Austin, Roddy Piper, Hulk Hogan and perhaps the wrestler who built the biggest movie career has been The Rock. The stardom and great rising of wrestling even after so many years shows no sign of ever deflating. It seems professional wrestling is here to stay for a long time.
