1980s wrestling boom

The 1980s professional wrestling boom (more commonly referred to as the Golden Age) was a surge in the popularity of professional wrestling in the United States and elsewhere throughout the 1980s. The expansion of cable television and pay-per-view, coupled with the efforts of promoters such as Vince McMahon, saw professional wrestling shift from a system controlled by numerous regional companies to one dominated by two nationwide companies: McMahon's World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE) and Ted Turner's World Championship Wrestling (WCW); the latter in the 1990s, as by the time the WWF were in the top during the 1980s and early 1990s, the WCW was still a National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) territory. The decade also saw a considerable decline in the power of the NWA, a cartel which had until then domineered the wrestling landscape, and in the efforts to sustain belief in the verisimilitude of wrestling.

In the early 1980s, professional wrestling in the U.S. consisted mainly of three competing organizations: the World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF) in the Northeast, the American Wrestling Association (AWA) in the Midwest, and the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA), which ran a territorial system around the country.

Multiple NWA territories were very successful in the 1970s and continued that success in the early 1980s. TBS became a cable television superstation based on broadcasting Georgia Championship Wrestling. Ric Flair rose to prominence in Mid Atlantic Wrestling, while Dusty Rhodes was the fan favorite in Championship Wrestling from Florida. Mid South Wrestling had the first significant African American champion babyface Junkyard Dog.

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