Find out more about the top matches in the wrestling world from yesterday and today. The title features informative sidebars, a glossary, and further resources. SportsZone is an imprint of Abdo Publishing Company.

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.

A history of professional wrestling from its roots in legitimate sport to its days as a carnival attraction followed by the growth of regional rivalries and culminating as television-centered entertainment.

Find out more about the biggest secrets behind the scenes in the wrestling world from yesterday and today. The title features informative sidebars, a glossary, and further resources. SportsZone is an imprint of Abdo Publishing Company.

Interviews with more than 30 wrestling performers, conducted between 1992 and 1997, offer firsthand accounts stretching as far back as the 1930s and provide a glimpse into the lives of grapplers and those involved in the industry today.

The Wrestler's Body tells the story of a way of life organized in terms of physical self-development. While Indian wrestlers are competitive athletes, they are also moral reformers whose conception of self and society is fundamentally somatic. Using the insights of anthropology, Joseph Alter writes an ethnography of the wrestler's physique that elucidates the somatic structure of the wrestler's identity and ideology. Young men in North India may choose to join an akhara, or gymnasium, where they subject themselves to a complex program of physical and moral fitness. Alter's first-hand description of each detail of the wrestler's regimen offers a unique perspective on South Asian culture and society. Wrestlers feel that moral reform of Indian national character is essential and advocate their way of life as an ideology of national health. Everyone is called on to become a wrestler and build collective strength through self-discipline.

Wrestling dates back to ancient times, but it was not until Edmond Desbonnet (1867-1953) produced his groundbreaking work The Kings of Wrestling in 1910 that its history was set down in book-length form. His work consists of nearly 150 biographies and accompanying photos of the men who pioneered professional wrestling, particularly in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He explains how Greco-Roman wrestling emerged in France around 1845 and then evolved into a big business during its golden age of 1890 to 1910. The sport drew men from all over Europe as well as Africans, Turks, East Indians, Russians, Americans, and others. Wrestling became the first truly international sport the world had ever known. Desbonnet wrote his history in French, and it is translated here for the first time. This richly illustrated edition has an introduction and extensive annotations, along with many contemporary newspaper articles, book excerpts and magazine pieces from French, Italian and German sources.