Professional wrestling is a form of athletic theater that combines mock combat with drama, under the premise that the performers are competitive wrestlers. Although it entails elements of sports wrestling and martial arts, including genuine displays of athleticism and physicality before a live audience, professional wrestling is distinguished by its scripted outcomes and emphasis on entertainment and showmanship. The staged nature of matches is an open secret, with both wrestlers and spectators nonetheless maintaining the pretense that performances are bona fide competitions; this is likened to the suspension of disbelief employed when engaging with fiction.
World Wrestling Entertainment, LLC (WWE) is an American professional wrestling promotion. It is owned and operated by TKO Group Holdings, a majority-owned subsidiary of Endeavor Group Holdings. A global integrated media and entertainment company, WWE has also branched out into fields outside of wrestling, including film, football, and various other business ventures. The company is additionally involved in licensing its intellectual property to companies to produce video games and action figures.
Bret Sergeant Hart is a Canadian-American retired professional wrestler and actor. A member of the Hart wrestling family and a second-generation wrestler, he has an amateur wrestling background at Ernest Manning High School and Mount Royal College. A major international draw within professional wrestling, he is credited with changing the perception of mainstream North American professional wrestling in the early 1990s by bringing technical wrestling to the fore. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time; Sky Sports noted that his legacy is that of "one of, if not the greatest, to have ever graced the squared circle". For the majority of his career, he used the nickname "the Hitman".
Michael Shawn Hickenbottom, better known by his ring name Shawn Michaels, is an American retired professional wrestler. He is signed to WWE, where he is the Senior Vice President of Talent Development Creative and oversees the creative aspects of the NXT brand, the promotion's developmental territory. Regarded as one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time, he is known by the nicknames "The Heartbreak Kid", "The Showstopper", and "Mr. WrestleMania".
Michael John Lockwood was an American professional wrestler. He was best known for his appearances with the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) / World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) from 1999 to 2003 under the ring names Crash Holly or simply Crash.
Christopher Keith Irvine, better known by the ring name Chris Jericho, is an American-Canadian professional wrestler and rock musician. He is currently signed to All Elite Wrestling (AEW), where he is the leader of The Learning Tree and is the current FTW Champion in his first reign. Noted for his over-the-top rock star persona, in-ring technical wrestling prowess, and his ability to reinvent his character throughout the course of his career, Jericho has been named by journalists and industry colleagues as one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time.
In professional wrestling, a face (babyface) is a heroic, "good guy", "do-gooder", or "fan favorite" wrestler, booked (scripted) by the promotion with the aim of being cheered by fans. They are portrayed as heroes relative to the heel wrestlers, who are analogous to villains. Traditionally, face characters wrestle within the rules and avoid cheating while behaving positively towards the referee and the audience. Such characters are also referred to as blue-eyes in British wrestling and técnicos in lucha libre. Not everything a face wrestler does must be heroic: faces need only to be clapped or cheered by the audience to be effective characters. When the magazine Pro Wrestling Illustrated went into circulation in the late 1970s, the magazine referred to face wrestlers as "fan favorites" or "scientific wrestlers", while heels were referred to as simply "rulebreakers".
Roy Wayne Farris is an American former professional wrestler. He is best known for his tenure in the World Wrestling Federation from 1986 to 1991, where he performed under the ring name The Honky Tonk Man.
Fred Alex Ottman is an American retired professional wrestler. He worked for the World Wrestling Federation from 1989 to 1993 under the ring names Tugboat and Typhoon. As the former, he played a key babyface ally of Hulk Hogan. As the latter, he turned heel to form The Natural Disasters with Earthquake and held the WWF Tag Team Championship.
WrestleMania X-Seven was the 17th annual WrestleMania professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by the World Wrestling Federation (WWF). It took place on April 1, 2001, at the Reliant Astrodome in Houston, Texas. It was the first WrestleMania held in the state of Texas. Twelve matches were contested at the event, including one broadcast exclusively on the Sunday Night Heat pre-show.
Michael K. Cariglio is an American professional wrestler, better known by his stage name, Michael Modest. Modest ran the promotion Pro Wrestling IRON with tag partner Donovan Morgan and Frank Murdoch until its closure in 2005. Modest has also wrestled in Japan for Pro Wrestling Noah, winning the GHC Junior Heavyweight Championship after defeating Yoshinobu Kanemaru. He has also wrestled in Canada, Mexico and Ireland. He is perhaps best known for his appearances in the wrestling documentary Beyond the Mat, the film Ready to Rumble, and the TV special Exposed! Pro Wrestling's Greatest Secrets.
Professional wrestling in the United States, until the 1920s, was viewed as a legitimate sport. This view did not endure into the 1930s, as professional wrestling became identified with modern theatrics. The scripted nature of the art has made some critics view it as an illegitimate sport, particularly in comparison to boxing, mixed martial arts, and amateur wrestling. No major promoter or wrestler denies that modern professional wrestling has predetermined match outcomes. Despite this, promoters and fans continued to play along with the tradition of viewing the matches as legitimate competition; this has become a tradition known as "kayfabe".
Superstars of Wrestling is a nationally syndicated professional wrestling television program that aired throughout the United States from 1986 to 1992. Created and produced by Joe Pedicino, the series broadcast eight hours of wrestling from around the country and was the first to provide national coverage of both the National Wrestling Alliance and international promotions. It was also the earliest U.S. television show to regularly broadcast Japanese puroresu and joshi wrestling as part of the Fuji Television Network's efforts to develop a market in the American television industry.
In professional wrestling, kayfabe is the portrayal of staged events within the industry as "real" or "true", specifically the portrayal of competition, rivalries, and relationships between participants as being genuine and not staged. The term kayfabe has evolved to also become a code word of sorts for maintaining this "reality" within the direct or indirect presence of the general public.
The 1994 King of the Ring was the second annual King of the Ring professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event produced by the World Wrestling Federation that featured the eighth King of the Ring tournament. It took place on June 19, 1994, at the Baltimore Arena in Baltimore, Maryland. The tournament to determine which wrestler would be crowned King of the Ring actually began the month before the pay-per-view, as the wrestlers gained entry in the tournament by participating in qualifying matches. These matches were held throughout May 1994 on WWF television programs, although the WWF did not explain how wrestlers were selected to compete in the qualifying matches. The second, third, and fourth rounds of the tournament were televised on the pay-per-view broadcast on June 19.
The history of professional wrestling, as a performing art, started in the early 20th century, with predecessors in funfair and variety strongman and wrestling performances in the 1830s.
Tzuki is a Mexican Luchador enmascarado, or masked professional wrestler, who works as a Mini-Estrella or "Mini" division in Mexico. Throughout his career Tzuki has worked under various ring names, most notably Máscarita Sagrada Jr., Mini Rey Misterio Jr. and Max Mini. Tzuki has worked for (AAA), the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) and a variety of special appearances for independent promotions all over Mexico, the United States, Europe and Japan and currently works for Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL). Tsuky's real name is not a matter of public record, as is often the case with masked wrestlers in Mexico where their private lives are kept a secret from the wrestling fans. While not all Mini-Estrellas in Mexico have dwarfism, Tzuki is one of the Mini-Estrellas that actually does.
WWE, an American professional wrestling promotion based in Stamford, Connecticut in the United States owned by the McMahon family, has been promoting events in Canada since its founding in 1980.
The Wrestling Summit was a professional wrestling pay-per-view event that was produced and scripted collaboratively between the US-based World Wrestling Federation (WWF) and the Japanese All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW) and New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) promotions. The joint venture show took place on April 13, 1990 in the Tokyo Dome, in Tokyo, Japan and reportedly drew 53,742 spectators. The event was the only time the three promotions produced a joint show, although NJPW and WWF had previously worked together in the 1970s and '80s.
