So one thing we should note is that Worked matches are a long LONG tradition too.

Its not that Shoot (real unscripted) matches were replaced with Works(preplaned to a degree or another). Its just that one phased out while the other became a billion dollar business.

Wrestling, mostly of the Catch Style, was a common enough part of carnivals and sideshows in the US and Europe throughout the 2nd half of the 19th Century, it added some spice, and a popular feature was having an audience member try to last maybe 10min with a star! In the US there is perhaps no many more associated with this era than Frank Gotch, and his famous bouts with European Champ George Hackenschmidt. A truly legit superstar of the time and peerless athlete, but one who was even then not above a bit of dirty business, he was 154-6 for a career after all!

But even then in the late 1800's it was, just like today, a sport full of the worst kind of Carny and scammer. Plenty of the matches were fixed by Bookers who would work with the talent they had on hand or the core that would travel with the carnival, often of course under the pretext of it being an honest match.

This in the US really changed though after WW1, Gotch was retired (and died in 1917), and growing accusations of match fixing tanked wrestlings popularity. Enter 3 men known as the Gold Dust Trio: Ed Lewis, Billy Sandow, and Toots Mondt. Star, Manager, and Booker of their own organization, which was in many ways the first modern Wrestling Promotion. Lewis was a legit or Shoot champ on many occasions, but the 3 coordinated to always provide a refreshing product for entertainment purposes. Including prearanged worked matches where Lewis would lose to a hot challenger to create drama in a larger program. Instituting time limits to matches, tag-team rules, and more flamboyant and signature moves, were all things they began to include. While the shows also moved away from the traveling circus to a show of its own in venue halls and arenas.

Post WW2 the various small local and regional companies in the US faced intense rivalry, but in 1948 the largest formed a loose alliance called the NWA, with a single unified World Heavyweight Title whose holder would be a super star that could elevate any local match and be a true mega star. The post war golden age was typified by Gorgeous George being a true crossover celebrity, it also featured a breakout interest in women's wrestling! No longer was it just about the fight, but the conflict and stories told in ring and out via promos, confrontations, and antics by the evil cowardly Heel vs the charming and brave Babyface were larger than a simple grappling match.

The 3 most important members in the NWA were for our purposes, Georgia Championship Wrestling in Atlanta, Jim Crockett Promotions in the Carolina's, and The World Wrestling Federation in New York. TV also began to play a major role with the flashy moves and larger than life characters translating well to the screen, and cheap to produce for new networks looking to fill airtime, GCW for instance had a long and fruitful relationship with Ted Turner's TBS. However legal troubles and public distaste again would cycle through to bring down ratings in the late 50's. While disagreements between the groups would also hold things back, Vince McMahon Sr at one point even left the NWA before returning to the fold, while his son Vincent K McMahon would buy the WWF from his father in 1982.

The names at the top of the card in the NWA were true stars and ones that loom large over wrestling even today, Dory and Tery Funk, Bruno Samartino, Harley Race, Dusty Rhodes, and Ric Flair. They were men who you would see on tv and then they would show up in your local territory and wrestle your hometown star for bragging rights! Or perhaps you local baby face hero would come save Dusty from an attack by Flair and his 4 Horsemen!

But by the mid 80's Vince McMahon had started upsetting the balance of things, aiming to expand WWF tv broadcasts to be nationwide, and buying up GCW in Atlanta to fold it into his own promotion. And withdrawing from the NWA to focus all his efforts on the WWF, including directly counter programming NWA's Pay Per View events, which were a huge source of each companies revenue. Events like JCP's Starcade, and WWF's Wrestlemania got their starts here in the mid 80's. Vince also had stars of his own, like Andre the Giant, Rowdy Roddy Piper, and none more so than a newly returned to the US from Japan Hulk Hogan. Hulk Hogan may still be the single most influential wrestler in American history, his ability to tell a story by way of the match and connect with a live audience was unmatched, even if Terry Bollea the man is a real piece of shit.

From there the WWF was off to the races with new PPV events like Survivor Series and Summerslam, a roster of huge stars, and a man at the wheel who is still perhaps the greatest Carny in American History. Though they would face challenges, most notable when Ted Turner bough the old JCP and turned it into World Championship Wrestling, WCW and WWF would compete head to head on TV in the Monday Night Wars, until WWF bought WCW in 2001. Leaving the new WWE without anything even approaching a true peer until the found of All Elite Wrestling (AEW) by the Khan family in 2019.

So really as we see the transition point was not a clear line, as far back as the 1880's there were public exposes on the business as it were, and legit shoot fights were not unknown well into the 1900's. With each stage of the product becoming more stage craft it was to grow the business, to make it appear more interesting in a packed arena, to provide a compelling show to fill a few hours of tv or sell tickets to the next show at the VFW Hall, or get kids to beg their parents to order that next PPV