Professional Wrestling

Download or read book Professional Wrestling written by Jeri Freedman and published by The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. This book was released on 2009-08-15 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the use of steroids in pro wrestling and its negative impact on wrestlers and their sport.

Download or read book Professional Wrestling and the Commercial Stage written by Eero Laine and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-11-14 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Professional Wrestling and the Commercial Stage examines professional wrestling as a century-old, theatrical form that spans from its local places of performance to circulate as a popular, global product. Professional wrestling has all the trappings of sport, but is, at its core, a theatrical event. This book acknowledges that professional wrestling shares many theatrical elements such as plot, character, scenic design, props, and spectacle. By assessing professional wrestling as a neglected but prototypical case study in the global business of theatre, Laine argues that it is an exemplary form of globalizing, commercial theatre. He asks what theatre scholars might learn from pro wrestling and how pro wrestling might contribute to conversations beyond the ring, by considering the laboring bodies of the wrestlers, and analyzing wrestling’s form and content. Of interest to scholars and students of theatre and performance, cultural studies, and sports studies, Professional Wrestling and the Commercial Stage delimits the edges of wrestling’s theatrical frame, critiques established understandings of corporate theatre, and offers key wrestling concepts as models for future study in other fields.

Download or read book Professional Wrestling written by Sharon Mazer and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2020-01-27 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Professional wrestling is one of the most popular performance practices in the United States and around the world, drawing millions of spectators to live events and televised broadcasts. The displays of violence, simulated and actual, may be the obvious appeal, but that is just the beginning. Fans debate performance choices with as much energy as they argue about their favorite wrestlers. The ongoing scenarios and presentations of manly and not-so-manly characters—from the flamboyantly feminine to the hypermasculine—simultaneously celebrate and critique, parody and affirm the American dream and the masculine ideal. Sharon Mazer looks at the world of professional wrestling from a fan’s-eye-view high in the stands and from ringside in the wrestlers’ gym. She investigates how performances are constructed and sold to spectators, both on a local level and in the “big leagues” of the WWF/E. She shares a close-up view of a group of wrestlers as they work out, get their faces pushed to the mat as part of their initiation into the fraternity of the ring, and dream of stardom. In later chapters, Mazer explores professional wrestling’s carnivalesque presentation of masculinities ranging from the cute to the brute, as well as the way in which the performances of women wrestlers often enter into the realm of pornographic. Finally, she explores the question of the “real” and the “fake” as the fans themselves confront it. First published in 1998, this new edition of Professional Wrestling: Sport and Spectacle both preserves the original’s snapshot of the wrestling scene of the 1980s and 1990s and features an up-to-date perspective on the current state of play.

Download or read book Professional Wrestling in the Pacific Northwest written by Steven Verrier and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2017-10-12 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduced in the Pacific Northwest in 1883, professional wrestling has a long and storied history in the region and has contributed significantly to Northwest culture. This entertaining account of the wrestling industry in Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia provides a detailed look at more than 130 years of events in the ring and behind the scenes. The author draws connections between developments in wrestling and the changing identity of the Pacific Northwest.

Download or read book Performance and Professional Wrestling written by Broderick Chow and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-08-12 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Performance and Professional Wrestling is the first edited volume to consider professional wrestling explicitly from the vantage point of theatre and performance studies. Moving beyond simply noting its performative qualities or reading it via other performance genres, this collection of essays offers a complete critical reassessment of the popular sport. Topics such as the suspension of disbelief, simulation, silence and speech, physical culture, and the performance of pain within the squared circle are explored in relation to professional wrestling, with work by both scholars and practitioners grouped into seven short sections: Audience Circulation Lucha Gender Queerness Bodies Race A significant re-reading of wrestling as a performing art, Performance and Professional Wrestling makes essential reading for scholars and students intrigued by this uniquely theatrical sport.

Download or read book Chokehold: Pro Wrestling's Real Mayhem Outside the Ring written by Weldon T. Johnson and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This meticulously crafted and searing critique of pro wrestling is unlike any wrestling book published: Chokehold is a penetrating description of pro wrestlings dark side, a secret underworld of deception, exploitation and greed. The storyteller is Big Jim Wilson, All-American football player and survivor of seven years in the NFL, who was promised wealth and the world championship as pro wrestler. Instead, Jim Wilson found a surprisingly lucrative sports entertainment industry built on a pyramid of secrets that included abusive control of its performers and a long history of illegal business practices and corruption of politicians and state athletic commissions. Chokehold describes and documents the abuses that Jim Wilson witnessed and endured blacklisting, strong-arm tactics, homosexual blackmail, defiance of the U.S. Justice Department and bribery of TV executives and arena managers. Chokehold is an explosive indictment of the pro wrestling industrys business practices as well as a thoughtful proposal for pro wrestlings reform. This book is not a conventional expos of pro wrestlings orchestrated stunts, gimmicks and blade jobs. Instead, it is an unprecedented examination of pro wrestlings less visible cons outside the ring -- its hidden manipulation of wrestlers with broken promises and broken bones and a backstage power of the pencil that writes scripts for wrestler stardom or extinction. Chokehold describes a secret slice of the wrestling life where traveling troupes of heels and babyfaces understand how they got into the game, but cannot find a way up or out. This is the story of why and how the big guys almost always lose. Chokehold is part autobiography and part pro wrestling history. Written in wrestlespeak (the industrys insider argot), it is dedicated to the memory of the older boys whose broken bodies and shattered lives should have taught us something. In addition to Jim Wilsons experiences in The Business, this book reviews significant but forgotten episodes in the wrestling industrys long history of gangland tactics. The industrys infamous blacklist is revisited by revealing the dozens of wrestlers from the past whose names were on it. The industrys history of predatory promotional wars in California, Georgia, Texas and Virginia is told with FBI reports obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. From court documents, this book names compromised state athletic commissions, TV station managers and local politicians from wrestlings viewpoint, the best that money could buy. There are many famous wrestling names in this book --Gorgeous George, Lou Thesz, Jack Brisco, the Funk brothers, Dusty Rhodes, Bruiser Brody, Bill Watts and others. Another is The Sheik (Eddie Farhat), who says: There aint no nice guys in this business. There aint no people theres dollars! Another is Jim Wilsons tag team partner Thunderbolt Patterson who warned Jim, The wrestling business takes advantage of anybody who has any notoriety or ability. You got to understand that wrestlers are worse than whores. They are pimped. They use you as long as they possibly can or as long as you dont complain. When you complain, they get rid of you. Another is Jim Wilsons friend The Magnificent Zulu (Ron Pope) who summarizes his career this way: Its such a crooked business. The guys [wrestlers] are a bunch of crooks. They steal from the marks and the promoters steal from them. The guys [wrestlers] want to be stars! Theyll do anything theyll cut throats for it. Actually, wrestlers dont have to be paid. All they need is a couple of six packs of beer a night and a nice looking ring rat with a good body. Or, drugs and a ring rat. Its not the money. Its being a star! Its the glory and the pussy! This book confronts the wrestling industrys traditional practice of punishing wrestlers who refuse

Download or read book Pro Wrestling written by Lew Freedman and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2018-09-07 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides readers with an abundance of information and historical perspective as well as entertaining and memorable anecdotes about professional wrestling. Readers will also learn unusual snippets of trivia that will enhance their comprehension of the sport. This authoritative work on the history and culture of professional wrestling features the biggest names in the wrestling world since the sport emerged on the American sporting landscape. It comprises short biographies of all of the key players in the sport's evolution and rise to popularity—from old-timers to barrier breakers to household names such as Hulk Hogan, The Rock, Andre the Giant, and more—and includes not only men but also many women who have made a name in the sport. Surveying professional wrestling from its roots, dating centuries, to the modern era, pre–20th century and into the 21st century, the work tells the transformational stories of prominent wrestlers and the sport as a whole, in many cases bringing out the humor and outrageousness in the nature of an activity that has always straddled the line between show business and sport.