Everyone knows that wrestling as a televised sport is mostly fake, designed as a strange mixture between sport, performance art and soap opera. Matches are predetermined and choreographed, and everyone involved knows pretty much everything that’s going to happen. Still, the nature of an athletic performance is that the people involved can still get pretty messed up, either from making mistakes or sustaining damage from some of the things they are asked to do. Wrestlers are true athletes that put themselves in harm’s way on a regular basis in order to keep the fans coming and cheering them on every match.
The 80s and 90s were what some refer to as the ‘golden age’ of professional wrestling. This popularity led to fans deciding that they wanted to be able to do the same thing as their television heroes, which in turn spawned the ‘sport’ of backyard wrestling. The main people involved in the new phenomenon were young males - no doubt due to the fact that young men generally have little regard for their own health.
