 Television also helped many wrestlers break into mainstream media, becoming influential celebrities and icons of popular culture.In the United States, in the First Golden Age of professional wrestling in the 1940s–1950s, Gorgeous George gained mainstream popularity, followed in the Second Golden Age in the 1980s–1990s by the likes of Hulk Hogan, André the Giant, Randy Savage, Ric Flair, Shawn Michaels, Bret Hart, Sting, The Undertaker, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Koko B. Ware, The Rock, Kurt Angle, and Triple H, Goldberg, Ricky Steamboat, Ultimate Warrior and many more.Professional wrestling, in the sense of traveling performers paid for mass entertainment in staged matches, began in the post-Civil War period in the late 1860s and 1870s.