What is the history of face paint and maskes?
 

When exactly did those come into wrestling?

Also, long those same lines, when or how did the popular image of wrestlers start to be the masked or face painted wrestler? To clarify the question, like when ever a TV show has its wrestling episode the champ is almost always wearing a mask. I ask because in the grand scheme of wrestling, very few famous American and to a lesser exent Canadian wrestlers wear maskes or face paint, and even few of them were really over, hell the can be counted on one hand: Sting, Mankind, Vader, Kane, and the Road Warriors (yeah, I'm counting the Road Warriors as one, and if you want to get techincally about it you need a second for Doink, Hurricane, Rosey, and Vampiro, but they were never all that over).

Masks are like superhero secret identities in Mexico.

LOD were the very first to wear the pain in wrestling and it just kicked off from there

I was asking about in America, not Mexico and Japan.

When did they first start wearing face paint. And what about Sting?

Also, did Sting and Warrior ever wear face paint when they were a tag team many moons ago?

according to the LOD dvd Animal said they started wearing paint in 1983

Sting and Warrior wore paint as Blade & Rock starting in early 1985

Gotcha, thanks! :)

Would the Freebirds count as wearing paint? If so, when did they wear it?

http://www.obsessedwithwrestling.com...eebirds/04.jpg

Well then my guess is either wrestlers came from Japan and Mexico to wrestle in the USA, or the USA ripped off Japan and Mexico's style.

Hmmmm, I thought the Great Kabuki was the first person who wrestled in America to wear facepaint.

Kamala

it was in kimischke park for the tag titles and the freebirds just wanted to match the paint to add a little more heat for their match against the Road Warriors

(Road Warriors DvD)