ABSTRACT
The history of British wrestling can be traced through a narrative of decline and then resurgence. Though this is something of a simplistic telling of a more complicated history, throughout the 1990s and 2000s, British wrestling has been overshadowed by its American counterpart, particularly World Wrestling Entertainment. Since the 1990s, Vince McMahon has worked incredibly hard for professional wrestling to be synonymous with the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), at least in America, Europe and Australasia, with an ever-growing number of countries also having access to the company's television product. Historical narrative, it has seemed that Vince McMahon's control over professional wrestling was fixed, with British wrestling serving as an historical legacy – a discarded possibility – supporting the narrative of the WWE as the cutting edge global leader. Key theoretical approaches developed around kayfabe and performativity; in particular, seem vital in understanding the metamodern politics of contemporary celebrity cultures and politics.
