Professional Wrestling - Scope and Influence

Scope and Influence

Show wrestling has become especially prominent in Japan and in Central and North America. In Brazil, there was a very popular wrestling television program from the 1960s to the early 1980s called Telecatch. High-profile figures in the sport have become celebrities or cultural icons in their native or adopted home countries.

Although professional wrestling started out as petty acts in sideshows, traveling circuses and carnivals, today it is a billion-dollar industry. Revenue is drawn from ticket sales, network television broadcasts, pay-per-view broadcasts, branded merchandise and home video. Pro wrestling was instrumental in making pay-per-view a viable method of content delivery. Annual shows such as WrestleMania and formerly Starrcade are among the highest-selling pay-per-view programming each year. In modern day, internet programming has been utilized by a number of companies to air web shows, internet pay per views (IPPVs) or on-demand content, helping to generate internet-related revenue earnings from the evolving World Wide Web.

Home video sales dominate the Billboard charts Recreational Sports DVD sales, with wrestling holding anywhere from 3 to 9 of the top 10 spots every week.

Due to its persistent cultural presence and to its novelty within the performing arts, wrestling constitutes a recurring topic in both academia and the media. Several documentaries have been produced looking at professional wrestling, most notably, Beyond the Mat directed by Barry W. Blaustein, and Wrestling with Shadows featuring wrestler Bret Hart and directed by Paul Jay. There have also been many fictional depictions of wrestling; the 2008 film The Wrestler received several Oscar nominations and began a career revival for star Mickey Rourke.

Currently, the largest professional wrestling company worldwide is the United States-based World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), which bought over many smaller regional companies in the late twentieth century, as well as its primary competitors in early 2001, World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW). The other prominent professional wrestling company worldwide is Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA). There is also a rising independent promotion called Ring Of Honor. In Mexico, the top promotions are Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre and Asistencia Asesoría y Administración. In Japan, it is New Japan Pro Wrestling, All Japan Pro Wrestling, and Pro Wrestling NOAH.