And if you really want to vanquish all traces of Americanism from British rings, bang goes the sport as a whole; like Woolworths, Bingo and Cornflakes, worked wrestling shows developed in America first. Other countries such as Britain, Japan and Mexico merely took the genre in their own directions and created their own _style_s by bringing in elements of their own traditional combat sports. as for americans starting the arranged matches and the rest of the world following I think the pre arranged matched actually stated as far back as the early greek days of the olympics Show-wrestling as we know it comes from France originally.
Worked Greco-Roman bouts were a major attraction at circuses from about the 1850s onwards. ("French Wrestling" continued to be performed at circuses in the Soviet Union throughout the C20th and was arguably responsible for the USSR's success in G-R - and Free_style_ too - at the Olympics)
Lancashire Catch-as-Catch-Can, however, was a very British, very Northern working class English _style_ of submission wrestling. And this was something which would go on to swathe the UK pro wrestling industry and give it much of its character. Here in Britain, Lancashire Wrestling was a major working class sport in the industrial North from the early 1800s until the 1960s, centred around its cultural capital, Wigan. It was also very popular amongst a large community of shooters in London gymnasiums (of which my great-uncle Jack McKay was one) from the late C19th until the 1980s (they would eventually centre on the Dale Martin office gym in the 1950s.)
The one contribution America has made is the use of catch/submission in worked show-wrestling.
A potted history:
Catch was imported to America in the late C19th where its submissions (or 'hooks') became the secret weapons of carnival wrestlers who, when not working exhibitions, took on all comers for money challenges.
Off the back of this, many of these carnival 'shooters' and 'hookers' earned themselves reputations as fine legit wrestlers, and demand grew for them to compete in championship tournaments. Around the 1890s, Catch-as-Catch-Can ousted G-R to become the dominant professional _style_ in the USA and until WWI it was a major gambling sport which meant that a great many bouts were rigged to pull off gambling scams, rather like bent horse races. After WWI and until the 1950s, Catch-_base_d exhibitions became the dominant form of pro wrestling, while Free_style_, a watered down form of Catch, became the dominant amateur/scholastic _style_.Leaving aside a brief boom in G-R on Edwardian music hall stages, thanks to stars like Hackenschmidt and prmoters like Cochran, British Wrestling as we know it began with the birth of All-In in 1930. By WW2 this had degenerated into a garbagey mess, but the Mountevans Rules, an influx of shooters wanted to make money off their skills and finally the ITV contract secured British Wrestling's _style_ as a classy technical-orientated product, which would remain the dominant ethos throughout the Golden Era. It inherited the English proletarian, salt-of-the-earth character from the Lancashire Wrestling gyms and firmly maintained this aura of earthy autheticity.
America however was by the 1950s shifting away from the idea of Pro Wrestling as an exhibition of a sporting skill and towards the idea of wrestling as a pure entertainment medium, helmed by Buddy Rogers, Antonino Rocca and promoter Vince McMahon Sr. From this comes American Wrestling as we know and loathe it.
So to sum up
[li]America did NOT invent pro wrestling. France invented show-wrestling, Britain invented Catch-as-Catch-Can. America merely combined the two.
[li]The culture, and the impact of the domestic popularity of Lancashire Catch Wrestling flows directly into British Wrestling's veins. (Unlike America, where Shoot (Catch) was a secret mysterious craft from far over the seas.)
[li]There is a MAJOR schism between British and American wrestling which is quite vivid from the 1950s onward. The two wrestlings evolved into quite different things. Beyond a superficial similarity and worker compatibility, British exhibitions and American entertainment were as different as chalk and cheese.
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