ABSTRACT
Speaking to a local radio station in the 1960s, with the glitz, glitter and glamour of televised professional wrestling at its height, one old, retired Cumbrian wrestler declared that 'wrestling was a game for the field not the stage'. This chapter examines the emergence of the sporting and exercise field, a space which sought to establish key values around amateurism, rational recreation, and sport for health. Sport was deeply intertwined with ideologies about British men in industry and empire. Due to wrestling's regional nature, it resisted the growth of a national sporting field, and did not comfortably operate on the forming terrain. Because of these complexities, wrestling occupied an uncomfortable position in the sporting field, a position that cultural entrepreneurs would take advantage of in the twentieth century. Types of wrestling and pugilism, like many sports in the early modern period, were a regular feature in quotidian lives and the festival calendar.
