Injury and Professional Wrestlers
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Authors
Phillips, Shane
Issue Date
2018
Type
Thesis
Language
en
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
All athletes have the potential to experience injury in any sport, and professional wrestling is no exception as it is a unique combination of athletics and performance. The purpose of this research was to understand the injury experience of professional wrestlers within the contexts of injury and sport culture. Five professional wrestlers with a range of three to fifteen years of in-ring experience were interviewed in semi-structured format about their experiences with injury and their perceptions of the sport culture. Analysis of the interviews was done deductively, guided by the research question, and inductively in the format of conceptual exploratory factor analysis from the data in the interviews. I learned that professional wrestlers experience the full gambit of the psychological, emotional, financial and physical effects of injury. A total of 111 Meaning Units (MU) of participants' descriptions of their experiences with injury and sport culture came from the interviews. Under the primary issues of injury the themes reinjury anxiety, coping strategies were brought up. For sport culture the main theme was conformity to sport culture. The categories reflect the unique experiences of professional wrestlers and how their injuries interact with their sport performance culture. Recommendations for future research are that of examining what sport and performance psychology interventions are most suitable for these hybrid athletes and entertainers when experiencing and coming back from injury.