The beginning of this chapter discusses the free for all brawls that were common in the southern states and how ugly and violent they would become. During the rise of professional wrestling the south needed a new way to showcase the roots of fighting in the south without having no rules. Professional wrestling provided the entertainment of fighting in the form of staged and almost raunchy matches. Fighting and wrestling was a test of manhood in this part of the country, and professional wrestling still has roots in the south to this day. The chapter connects professional wrestling and the south to two individuals: Ted Turner with the World Championship Wrestling and Vince Machom who owns the World Wrestling Federation; they are both from the south. In professional wrestling there are big personalities and each wrestler has their own character, this is one of the reasons why fans feel so strongly about the wrestler they root for (especially southerner fans).The outlandish southern style characters gave the south someone to root for, making professional wrestling even more popular in the south. There is also a good vs bad aspect of wrestling where one of the wrestlers is the protagonist and the other is the antagonist giving the sport lore and a storyline, even though these fights are often staged.
The chapter talks about the legacy of wrestling in the south stating: “1995 listing of leading professional wrestlers revealed that 70 percent were from the United States. Of those American-born wrestlers, nearly half (49 percent) hailed from the South, and Texas, Tennessee, and Florida were three of the five leading states of origin for wrestlers. The image of southern wrestlers was always present in professional wrestling with characters like Sergeant Slaughter and the Honky Tonk Man.
For Southerners wrestling wasn’t just a sport it was a way of life and it projected an image of manhood and pride for the south. At the same time these characters in wrestling often were very stereotypical of the south and still portrayed southern as uneducated and dumb. This chapter does a great job of highlighting the legacy of southerners in wrestling and what wrestling means for this region of the United States.
