Author: In an interview conducted a few years before his tragic passing, the late-great Roddy Piper painted a beautiful picture in response to the question: “When did wrestling begin?” His response was too good not to share!
Quick Tip for Facebook Readers
Many of our readers connect with our content through our Facebook page. However, Meta's built-in browser (which opens by default on mobile) occasionally freezes mid-article- a known issue unrelated to our site. To enjoy uninterrupted reading: Tap the three dots in the top right corner → Select 'Open in external browser.' This will resolve the glitch. Thanks for your support. We want your wrestling stories to stay as smooth as a top-rope hurricanrana!
When Did Professional Wrestling Truly Begin?
Professional wrestling has a complex history that predates what most historians consider the birth of American professional wrestling. While professional wrestling exhibitions appeared in the United States as early as 1846, with documented performances by European wrestlers such as M. Charles at venues in New York City, the distinctly American form we recognize today would emerge in the post-Civil War period of the late 1860s and 1870s.
Understanding this distinction is crucial to appreciating how wrestling evolved from a European touring spectacle into a uniquely American entertainment phenomenon. The transition from imported professional wrestling to homegrown carnival wrestling tells the story of American entrepreneurship, showmanship, and cultural adaptation – a story Roddy Piper captured beautifully in his recollection of wrestling’s carnival roots.
From European Imports to American Innovation
When French wrestler M. Charles and his colleague M. Carriere appeared in New York City in August 1846, they brought with them a European wrestling tradition that had been developing since the 1830s in France. These weren’t mere circus sideshows; they were professional wrestling exhibitions advertised in major newspapers, conducted at established venues like Castle Garden and the Shakespeare Hotel, and featuring substantial prize purses (commonly $100 or more to challenge wrestlers).
The New York Herald documented these events as legitimate sporting attractions, complete with formal rules, established competitors, and paying audiences.
However, European touring wrestlers represented something foreign to American audiences. These performances followed strict European wrestling traditions, often featuring Greco-Roman style (featuring no holds below the waist) or other regulated forms of grappling. The venue was typically an urban theater or hall. The wrestlers were often French or European immigrants. And crucially, the model was one of touring specialists traveling from city to city, rather than community-embedded entertainment.
The American form of professional wrestling that emerged after the Civil War was fundamentally different in origin, structure, and philosophy. Rather than importing European wrestlers to perform in theaters, post-Civil War America developed wrestling exhibitions that traveled with the carnivals themselves, becoming integrated into the broader carnival ecosystem alongside the Bearded Lady, the Strong Man, the exotic animals, and the mechanical attractions that defined 19th-century traveling entertainment.
The Carnival Wrestling Era: Born of Necessity and Entrepreneurship
In the late 1860s and 1870s, American carnival operators discovered a goldmine in wrestling. Traveling carnivals needed compelling attractions that could draw audiences night after night in different towns. Wrestling, combining athletic legitimacy with theatrical appeal, proved to be the perfect vehicle.
During this era, wrestlers were often athletes with genuine amateur wrestling experience who had joined the carnival circuit. But unlike their European predecessors, carnival wrestlers weren’t pure athletes; they were showmen first, entrepreneurs second, and grappling specialists third.
The athletic shows (abbreviated as “AT shows” or “ATT”) became the signature wrestling format, where experienced wrestlers offered open challenges to local audience members, creating the illusion (and sometimes the reality) of impromptu competition.
The genius of this format lay in its ability to generate revenue. A wrestler would be hyped in local saloons and taverns the night before. The carnival workers would identify the toughest local men and talk them up as challengers.
The next afternoon, spectators would pay admission to witness the match. If the local challenger won, rare but not impossible, he’d receive a purse. If the wrestler won, the crowd would be enraged and energized, creating perfect conditions for that evening’s rematch, where another admission fee would be extracted from the angry, determined audience.
This wasn’t accidental. It was carnival economics. The “worked” nature of many of these matches (where predetermined outcomes were arranged between the wrestler and a planted challenger) was the secret sauce that enabled promoters to guarantee entertainment value while controlling financial risk.
The Mechanisms of Carnival Wrestling
Roddy Piper’s description of “The Sugar Hold” and the theatrical psychology surrounding it captures something essential about how carnival wrestling actually functioned. It wasn’t purely legitimate athletic competition, nor was it purely theatrical fakery. It occupied a liminal space where athletic skill, performance, psychology, and choreography merged into a spectacle that was entertaining precisely because audiences couldn’t be entirely certain what was real and what was predetermined.
The carnival wrestler’s toolkit included legitimate holds that could cause real damage and pain (the “Sugar Hold” that Piper described, for instance, could cause blood to rush to the head and cause epistaxis or other dramatic visible injuries), combined with theatrical selling, exaggerated expressions, and storyline elements that built crowd investment. A wrestler might have a reputation as an undefeated strongman, real or fabricated. A local challenger might be introduced as a tough man seeking to prove himself, sometimes genuine, sometimes a carnival plant designed to tell a specific story.
The beauty of this system was that it didn’t matter whether any given match was a genuine contest between unknowns or a carefully choreographed, worked match between conspirators, the entertainment value was consistent, and the revenue was guaranteed.
With hundreds of amazing Pro Wrestling Stories to dive into, where do you start? Get the inside scoop – join our exclusive community of wrestling fans! Receive 10 hand-picked stories curated just for YOU, exclusive weekly content, and an instant welcome gift when you sign up today!
Why Carnival Wrestling Replaced European Touring Wrestling
The carnival wrestling model eventually eclipsed European-style touring wrestling for several reasons. First, it was far more economically efficient. Rather than the expense of importing or transporting individual European specialists, carnival wrestling generated its talent organically, with American wrestlers learning the trade from each other on the circuit.
Second, it was culturally integrated in a way European exhibitions weren’t. By the 1870s and 1880s, wrestling had become genuinely embedded in American entertainment culture, with deep roots in community after community across the country.
Third, and perhaps most importantly, the carnival model was explicitly theatrical and entertaining in a way that appealed to American audiences.
While European wrestling emphasized legitimate athletic competition with strict rules and technical expertise, American carnival wrestling emphasized spectacle, narrative, and participatory excitement. It was wrestling designed to be fun first and competitive second, a shift in priorities that would define professional wrestling forevermore.
By the 1890s, wrestling had become the centerpiece of carnival entertainment across America. Frank Gotch, who began his career in carnivals before becoming a world-renowned heavyweight champion, represented this evolution. He started as a carnival grappler, then transitioned into championship wrestling that maintained many of the theatrical elements he’d learned on the carnival circuit. His combination of legitimate technical skill and showmanship created a template for American professional wrestling that survives to this day.
Roddy Piper’s Carnival Vision
When Roddy Piper described wrestling’s origins in his 2010 interview, he was capturing the essence of this American carnival tradition at its peak. His description of the carnival pulling into a town “that looks like Little House on the Prairie,” the carnival workers scouting for tough guys in the bars, the dramatic confrontations, and the theatrical holds designed to elicit crowd reaction. This is the authentic voice of American professional wrestling’s true genesis, even if that genesis occurred decades after M. Charles first challenged Americans to wrestling matches in New York City.
In a 2010 IGN interview (H/T: ‘Wrestling’s Glory Days‘ Facebook page), Roddy Piper talked of wrestling’s early days:
“Picture the carnival pulls into town, one that looks like Little House on the Prairie, and the covered wagons would come through, and there’d be the Bearded Lady and the Strong Man and some animals.
And then there’d be the wrestler.
And so the night before the carnival on Saturday, there’d be people at the bars. And the people from the carnival would find out who the tough guys were. And they would talk up The Wrestler. And so in the afternoon, the next day, everyone would come down, and some local guy would take him on for maybe a nickel or something. And if you won, you got fifty cents. And the wrestler would get him in a hold, and there’s a hold called ‘The Sugar Hold’ and it’s a hold in which it makes all the blood rush to your head and blood comes out of your eyes, nose, and ears, etcetera.
But he doesn’t pin him.
So the wrestler would catch him in this hold and slap him on the ribs, and it would make the guy scream. Well, the crowd would get so upset and so angry that all of a sudden, a guy would jump up and say, ‘I’ll take you on!’ And the promoter would come out and say, ‘Whoa!’ And the wrestler would let the guy go, and the promoter would say, ‘My guy just fought. You come back tonight!’
They’d all come back that night, but the guy who stood up was part of the carnival. Everyone would come back and pay another nickel.
That’s the answer to when did wrestling begin.”
Piper’s vision describes the exact mechanics of how carnival wrestling functioned as a revenue-generating enterprise: build anticipation through word-of-mouth, create dramatic confrontations through psychological tactics and painful-looking holds, manufacture crowd outrage to drive repeat attendance, and monetize that outrage through evening return visits. The wrestler “doesn’t pin him,” meaning no definitive victory is declared, because the goal isn’t to settle a competition; it’s to create unresolved tension that demands a return engagement.
Legacy: From Carnival to Championship
The carnival wrestling tradition that Roddy Piper described would eventually transform into championship wrestling, territorial promotions, and, ultimately, the televised professional wrestling of the 1950s, ’60s, and beyond. But the DNA remains unchanged: wrestling as theatrical spectacle, wrestling as narrative-driven entertainment, wrestling as entrepreneurial hustle, and wrestling as community engagement.
What’s remarkable is that nearly two centuries later, professional wrestling still operates on the same fundamental principles that carnival wrestlers discovered on dusty fairgrounds across America. The worked match, the dramatic arc, the heroic comeback, the crowd psychology, the larger-than-life personality – these aren’t modern inventions. They’re carnival innovations, refined and amplified through radio, television, and now streaming platforms, but fundamentally unchanged in their purpose: to create compelling narrative through physical spectacle, to build emotional investment in outcomes that are ultimately predetermined, and to transform a paying audience’s skepticism into enthusiastic participation.
When you watch a modern professional wrestling match, whether in a WWE stadium, an AEW arena, or any independent promotion, you’re witnessing a direct descendant of those carnival wrestling exhibitions that pulled into small American towns in the 1870s and 1880s.
The wrestler who cuts a dramatic promo, who sells an opponent’s offense with exaggerated pain, who orchestrates a near-fall before mounting a comeback, is performing a technique perfected by nameless carnival grapplers more than 150 years ago.
Roddy Piper understood this lineage intuitively. He wasn’t just describing wrestling’s origins. He was identifying the eternal formula that makes professional wrestling work, a formula so powerful and so fundamentally sound that it has survived the transition from carnival grounds to championship belts, from traveling shows to international corporations, from regional territories to global entertainment empires.
The answer to “When did wrestling begin?” isn’t simply 1846 with M. Charles, or 1870 with carnival wrestlers, or 1950 with televised wrestling. The answer is that professional wrestling began the moment someone realized that the combination of athletic skill, theatrical presentation, narrative storytelling, and audience participation could create something more powerful than mere sport or mere entertainment, something that touches a primal part of human nature. That moment happened in America’s carnival grounds, captured perfectly in Roddy Piper’s timeless recollection.
These stories may also interest you:
- 19th Century Wrestling: 30 Untold Facts Revealed!
- Evan Lewis: The 19th Century’s Most Feared Wrestler
- Earliest Wrestling Footage: 1908 Hack vs. Rogers Review
Can’t get enough pro wrestling history in your life? Sign up to unlock ten pro wrestling stories curated uniquely for YOU, plus subscriber-exclusive content. A special gift from us awaits after signing up!
Want More? Choose another story!
Be sure to follow us on Facebook, X/Twitter, Instagram, Threads, YouTube, TikTok, and Flipboard!
Our wrestling history is gold, and so are readers like you!
If this story added to your collection of wrestling knowledge, you can say thanks:
Tip jar (PayPal)
Browse our merch at PWSTees.com
Pro Wrestling Stories is committed to accurate, unbiased wrestling content rigorously fact-checked and verified by our team of researchers and editors. Any inaccuracies are quickly corrected, with updates timestamped in the article's byline header.
Got a correction, tip, or story idea for Pro Wrestling Stories? Contact us! Learn about our editorial standards here. Ever wanted to learn more about the people behind Pro Wrestling Stories? Meet our authors! Want to write for us? Learn how to join the team.
ProWrestlingStories.com participates in affiliate marketing programs. This post may contain affiliate links, meaning we may earn commissions at no extra cost to our readers. This supports our mission to deliver free content for you to enjoy!
