WrestleMania is here
By the time you read this, Night One is essentially minutes away. For 40 years, this has been coined the “Biggest Pay-Per-View,” the “Showcase of the Immortals,” and a plethora of other grandiose titles. It has defined generations.
I should be vibrating with excitement. I’m almost 44. I have been a wrestling fan since I was five. My relationship with this event is deep:
I remember WrestleMania 1 (1985), where Vince McMahon bet the farm that this supercard concept would become the Super Bowl of wrestling. He was right.
WrestleMania 3 is still notable to me because of the symbolic passing of the torch when Hulk Hogan slammed Andre the Giant.
I still own the VHS double-tape of WrestleMania 4 (1988).
It was a tournament to crown a new WWF Champion after “shenanigans” between Ted DiBiase and Andre left the title vacant.
Side note: Macho Man Randy Savage won that tournament, leaving with the ‘Winged Eagle’ belt. Even today, that is my favorite title belt of all time.
I could go on without straining my memory. I remember Shawn Michaels and Razor Ramon in the first ladder match at WrestleMania 10. I recall WrestleMania 12, where Millennials watched Shawn zip-line down before beating Bret Hart in an Iron Man match. WrestleMania 14 was Stone Cold’s moment against Michaels.
These aren’t just moments; they are straight memory anchors.
The State of Play in the TKO Era
I am bringing all this history up because, with WrestleMania 42 looming, I need to talk about the state of professional wrestling.
I am honestly not that excited to watch it.
The structure is exhausting. It is now a mandatory two-night event. We can’t organize our lives around it anymore; my friends and I essentially pick the lesser of two evils, watch one night together with pizza, and go our separate ways for the other. It feels less like an event and more like a task.
Since TKO bought WWE, the priorities have shifted. They seem more concerned with brand value than building logical arcs. We have weird booking, like Pat McAfee injecting himself into the already-awesome Cody Rhodes versus Randy Orton match. We have a strange clash between Seth Rollins and Gunther, a match that seemingly came out of nowhere.
This is where the story logic falls apart for me. We know Gunther was booked specifically to end the career of AJ Styles and John Cena. He is the career-killer.
If Seth Rollins—who is supposedly taking time away and dealing with drama with Paul Heyman—returns just to beat Gunther, it immediately makes Gunther beating Cena and Styles a moot point. It doesn’t make sense. But if Gunther wins, what was the point of Seth’s return?
Falling Out of Love with the Grind
I am not sitting here trying to be a cynical “armchair booker,” though I will say I would love to clean up this storytelling. I might also sound like a bitter, middle-aged millennial man yearning for the old days.
But the fact of the matter is that I do not know what I am watching anymore. And clearly, I’m not the only one. They are having trouble selling tickets to the point where Pat McAfee had to come on SmackDown last week to talk about discounts.
And that brings me to the meat and potatoes of this whole post.
The Real Solution: Support Your Local Indies
The current state of professional wrestling, and this includes AEW (which recently had an AEW show run five hours long on a day event, turning friends’ $70 tickets into $600 expenses for hotels and ferries just so they didn’t have to navigate from Vancouver back to Victoria), should force us to take an in-depth look into our local “Indie” promotions.
Most notably for me is Vancouver Island Pro Wrestling (VIPW). They do not have backhanded motives or streaming fees. There are countless others across the country doing fantastic work:
365 ProWrestling Vancouver Island
Here are some others from a quick search
BATTLEWAR (Montreal, QC): A very high-production, punk-rock vibe indie that sells out clubs and gets a lot of local press.
Smash Wrestling (Toronto, ON): One of the largest indies in Canada, they often feature talent that moves on to WWE/AEW.
Prairie Wrestling Alliance (PWA) (Calgary/Edmonton, AB): A historic indie promotion that keeps the Hart Dungeon tradition alive.
When you go local, you get people who are closely knit, doing it for the passion. They are fans like me who got an opportunity to learn how to wrestle, and they basically do it for a few bucks, maybe a hot dog, or some pizza. They are happy to be there.
They cannot throw ads in the middle of it. They won’t change camera angles on you in a chaotic way. They won’t all of a sudden surprise you with yet another streaming service fee. When you buy your ticket, you know right where that money is going: split evenly into the pockets of the entertainers and their help staff (mostly the wives, girlfriends, and friends that are happy to be there).
Why I Am Not Leaving the Legion
I am not here to crap on the profession. I know the people who entertain me for 20 bucks in the Legion hall have aspirations of making it to AEW or WWE one day, and that is a good thing. I love professional wrestling; it is my live-action soap opera.
But I am falling out of love with having to wade through ads, promotions, and backhanded motives. I just want to watch wrestling and enjoy it again.