ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book is concerned with the development of the sporting field, and how the key tensions and debates created and sustained the terrain of the field. To examine a fielded society is to trace the moment in which a society becomes differentiated enough to sustain them. The book assesses the critical role of sporting organisations in policing and negotiating the sporting field, and attributes professional wrestling's embrace of entertainment to the sport's lack of coherent national or international institution. It explores key sites of contention about what professional wrestling is, including performances of violence, the display of bodies, comedy, and subversions of masculinity. The book explores television's influence on the media field, and then how those influences radically altered the sporting field and professional wrestling. It explores the growth and development of Independent Television, and how wrestling became a signature of that channel.
