HISTORY OF WRESTLING

The sport or activity of grappling with an opponent and trying to throw or hold them down on the ground, typically according to a code of rules. Wrestling is a general term for a combat sport between two competitors involving grappling type techniques. The main objective in most forms of wrestling is to pin down the opponent’s shoulders on to the mat.

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The modern history of wrestling begins with a rise of popularity in the 19th century, which led to the development of the modern sports of Greco-Roman wrestling on the European continent and of freestyle wrestling and collegiate wrestling in Great Britain and the United States, respectively.

These sports enjoyed enormous popularity at the turning of the 20th century. In the 1920s, show wrestling as a form of sports entertainment, now known as professional wrestling, separated from competitive sport wrestling, now known as amateur wrestling.

Wrestling is one of the oldest forms of combat, referenced in the Iliad and depicted in 15,000-year-old cave drawings in France. Early Egyptian and Babylonian reliefs show moves still used today.

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Always popular in ancient Greece, wrestling held a prominent place in the Olympic Games. It was developed by ancient Greeks as a way to train soldiers in hand-to-hand combat. After defeating the Greeks, the Roman Empire borrowed from Greek wrestling but eliminated much of the brutality. The Greeks feared the true history of the sport would be lost, and so Greco-Roman wrestling was born.