Though it would be somewhat difficult to document or provide sources for, e-wrestling federations also existed on local BBSes prior to the widespread adoption of the internet. Whether this predates its emergence on Usenet I'm not sure, but I was participating in such leagues as early as 1992 or 1993.
The assertion that the "origins of e-wrestling are unknown" is incorrect. There are several articles from the past that address a number of different communities, how they came to be, and what preceded them. http://whatis.fwrestling.com is one such place.
Imaginary Wrestling Association: http://www.iwachat.com Has been in business and is still quite profitable from what I can tell since the mid-80's. If you ever bought any of the Apter Mags back in the day, chances are you saw the advertisements for the IWA. If they mean strictly online, then yes, the early 90's when the earliest public internet forums were available. Otherwise, it was the IWA and the various the copycat groups that used it's design.
Even a place like Bad A** Championship Wrestling http://www.ewrestling.org/BACW/index.htm have been operating since Feb. of 1999 without closing their doors once can still be found operating.
It's definitely incorrect to say that the history of e-wrestling is unknown. Documentation exists for fully online (as opposed to BBS or play-by-mail) federations dating back to late 1990. http://ewrestling.avigne.org/history.html has a fairly authoritative history that can be substantiated by reading Usenet archives of rspw and related newsgroups.
The punctuation in this article is truly atrocious as well as some of the assertions made about why people choose feds over others. Would suggest that this article is reopened.
--Omegamale 09:17, 22 June 2009 (UTC)