Despite its status as one of the oldest and most enduringly popular sports in history, wrestling has been pushed to the background of the current American sports scene. Wrestling, its modern theatrics, is rarely considered in the same terms as track and field or boxing. But until the 1920s, wrestling stood as a legitimate professional sport in this country, and a widely practiced amateur one as well. Its respectability may not have endured, but the advent of cable television in the 1980s offered the sport a renewed opportunity to play a determining role in American popular culture. "Ringside", the first work to fully examine the history of professional wrestling in this country, provides an illuminating and colourful account of all of the various athletes, entertainers, businessmen, and national outlooks that have determined wrestling's erratic route through American history. This chronological work begins with a brief account of wrestling's global history, and then proceeds to investigate the sport's growth as a specifically American institution. It shows how the sport has survived in the face of adverse technological developments, scandals, public ridicule, and a lack of centralised control, to become an international industry capable of attracting enormous television audiences. "Ringside" focuses on the business of wrestling as well as on the performers and their in-ring antics.