Midget Professional Wrestling

Midget Professional Wrestling

A midget professional wrestler is a dwarf or person of short stature who competes in professional wrestling. The heyday of midget wrestling was in the 1950s and 1960s, when wrestlers such as Little Beaver, Lord Littlebrook, and Fuzzy Cupid toured North America, and Sky Low Low was the first holder of the National Wrestling Alliance's World Midget Championship. In the following couple of decades, more wrestlers became prominent in North America, including foreign wrestlers like Japan's Little Tokyo.

The event was very popular in wrestling promotions from the 1950s in to the 1970s. Many cards featured midget wrestlers and included tag team and women's midget wrestling. Television shows for promotions in various cities would frequently include midget matches.

Midget wrestling began to wane after World Wrestling Federation (WWF)'s WrestleMania III. Afterward, promotions continued to feature midget divisions, but its popularity was slowly declining. By the mid-1990s, midget wrestlers were mostly featured in comical matches and segments, rather than serious competitive wrestling-type matches. In Mexico, however, this was not the case, as wrestler Mascarita Sagrada continued to compete in prominent Mexican promotions such as Asistencia Asesoría y Administración and Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre. By the mid-2000s in the United States, midget divisions were once again being featured in major wrestling promotions, and wrestlers such as World Wrestling Entertainment (formerly the WWF)'s Hornswoggle were competing for and winning championships made for average-size male wrestlers.

The Little People of America (LPA) have criticized midget wrestling as reinforcing stereotypes that little people are no more than entertainment. The LPA also frowns on the use of the word "midget" in the name of the sport—stating that it is as offensive as a racial slur—but the performers themselves do not always feel the same way.