Backyard Wrestling

Backyard wrestling (BYW), also referred to as yarding or backyarding is a controversial underground hobby involving predominantly 12-30 year old males in usually untrained practices of professional-style wrestling in a typically low budget environment. The demand of maintaining any backyard wrestling federation which most partake in, however, isn't usually easy and requires having some sort of finance and putting in hard effort. Most people that take part in the practice are those merely emulating their inspirations from modern day wrestling, though a small percentage have experience from enrolling in wrestling school, or from referring to how-to guides on the web.

For years backyard wrestling has been a subject of opposition to pro wrestling personnel, and had its days of high popularity around 1996-2001 during the boom period of professional wrestling notorious as the Monday Night Wars, a time where pro wrestler Mick Foley engaged in hardcore stunts which led to the inspiration of many. Back in the late 1980s to early 1990s, before it was opposed, backyard wrestling was often a good-natured topic which appealed to media for coverage. But when it began showcasing reckless ultra-violence which worried parents and wrestling companies, the media jumped on covering it for the sake of story while companies like WWE started to issue advertisements stressing the dangers and urging and deterring their fanbase from duplicating the actions seen in their ring.

Backyard wrestling is a loose term that can occur anywhere from a park, field, warehouse, or an actual backyard and has become completely reliant on sharing home-filmed events, matches and videos via public-access television and the internet which are both an upgrade from distributing videos person-to-person retrospectively. Over the years, backyard wrestling has broken into media with several Best of Backyard Wrestling Volumes produced, two video games entitled Backyard Wrestling: Don't Try This at Home and Backyard Wrestling 2: There Goes the Neighborhood, and a critically acclaimed 2002 documentary entitled The Backyard, showcasing backyard wrestling under a more mainstream light as it follows several wrestlers and federations from all over the world, detailing the different styles and portrayals of backyard wrestling. In an interview, the director Paul Hough compared The Backyard to Beyond the Mat, but with yarders.