Martial artists also were involved: Early twenty-first-century wrestlers
included former world karate champion Ernest Miller and Ultimate Fight-
ing Championship (UFC) champions Dan Severn and Ken Shamrock. Un-
like some of the jûdôka(jûdô players) who tried wrestling during the 1950s
and 1960s, they were well received by the fans and apparently considered
the move a career decision rather than a letdown.
Audiences for WWF and WCW promotions were huge, and by the
mid-1980s wrestling had become the third most popular spectator sport in
North America. (American football and automobile racing were numbers
one and two.) According to wrestler Adrian Adonis, this was because the
“American people are sickos who love violence and the sight of blood.”
Perhaps. But then why wrestling’s even greater popularity in Japan? Ap-
proaching the question from another tack, academics such as Theodore
Kemper have claimed that watching wrestling releases testosterone in view-
ers, thereby giving them vicarious thrills that they don’t get in their dead-
end jobs (Kemper 1990, 203–204, 214–217). Perhaps. But then how to ex-
plain the sales of wrestling action figures to children or market research
showing wrestling’s enormous popularity with female viewers? Finally,
there are the opinions of academics such as Gerald Morton and George
O’Brien, who equate “rassling” with folk theater (Morton and O’Brien
1985, 52–54, 63–64, 74–75). Is wrestling theater in a squared circle, the
Shakespeare of sport? That is the most probable explanation. However,
there is still no easy way to explain why millions of people enjoy watching
professional wrestling and yet dislike watching amateur wrestling.
Jeff Archer
Joseph Svinth
See alsoJûdô; Stage Combat; Wrestling and Grappling: India; Wrestling and
Grappling: Japan
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