So James The Tech Guy tweeted this link at me and probably wasn’t expecting that it would piss me off. Which it did. James, to his credit, was of course thinking: “MGK likes wrestling, MGK lives in Toronto, this is wrestling in Toronto, QED.” (I mean, I assume that’s what he was thinking. James can tell us if I’m wrong.)
But my problem with this outfit is not that they are unserious or quite clearly trying to have a laugh with professional wrestling. I mean, just this past weekend was National Pro Wrestling Day, a live-streamed free event put on by the various wrestling promotions that sprung up when CHIKARA Pro “ended”, and which featured, among other things, an Estonian frog-man with the power of Thor knocking an entire ringful of wrestlers off his feet with his mighty hammer, a formerly evil man pretending to be a giant ant turning his back on his corporate masters to remain alongside his new friends who are also men pretending to be giant ants, a pair of evil ice cream cones being hypnotized by a funky dancing Pharaoh, three men time-traveling to the present in a DeLorean to heroically attack the aforementioned evil corporate masters, and two lifelong enemies hugging it out, who are an evil football jock and a heroic marching band leader. And National Pro Wrestling Day was fine and good, wonderful in so many different ways that you just have to stare at how good it was, both in spite of its inherent silliness and because of its inherent silliness -just like so much of pro wrestling. (See also Dragon Dragon or the Chikara baseball game or, in the “majors,” anything involving Santino Marella – such as the snake charming bit.)
This Indiegogo campaign for a crappy hipster pro wrestling event in Toronto is not that thing – it has in it a lot of the amateurism that made 90s backyard wrestling so dangerous (and occasionally so cynical), although it doesn’t appear to be as dangerous because from what they show of the matches they’ve taken out everything exciting about pro wrestling, which is probably for the best considering if you don’t know how to take a bump, even a simple bodyslam is very dangerous. But generally speaking, the lack of a damn given is pretty evident, and the one thing that makes indie wrestling so wonderful is that everybody present, fans and wrestlers and referees and staff all alike, give very much of a damn indeed. Even when indie wrestling isn’t particularly good as wrestling per se, it’s still people who care about a shared community and craft, and this thing doesn’t have any of that. It’s like somebody standing next to a cellist playing Bach’s “Six Suites” and making armpit fart noises and saying it’s the same thing because A) they’re being “creative,” B) they’ve managed to find fans who like it, C) technically they’re both making sounds so come on. But it’s not the same thing.
And I think it’s great that they want to promote queer and feminist identities. But, if you ask me what would be best to promote feminism in a wrestling context, I’m gonna go with SHIMMER or Team Sendai Girls fearlessly taking on the Young Bucks and Mike Bennett or anything Manami Toyota. Because those are all awesome because of passion and dedication – and yes, passion and dedication matters. It matters more than anything, and that’s not just me being a humourless fanboy because when I say that I’m not just talking about wrestling but about everything. Because pro wrestling might, at heart, be a big joke – but it’s our joke, and these people haven’t learned how to tell it yet. And that’s kind of a problem.
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9 users responded in this post
To use a relevant quote: Oh my brother, TESTIFY!
It looks like they’re trying to apply the same sort of generally half-assed but well-meaning irony that works in roller derbies to wrestling.
The problem is that roller derby is an actual skill, a sport with actual danger to it, and you can’t just show up and fuck around because the other derby girls will beat your ass. This is much more in line with things like Pillow Fight League.
(This is James the Tech Guy.)
“MGK likes wrestling, MGK lives in Toronto, this is wrestling in Toronto, QED.”
Pretty much, yeah. “Ha! Silly backyard shenanigans!” Having said that, though: I get where you’re coming from. Carry on!
I like the indie wrestling where kids in KISS makeup are jumping off ladders onto mats covered in broken glass and on fire. Hipsters could never manage that level of COMMITMENT.
Yeah, I live in a pretty bad market for roller derby, unfortunately.
You know, we criticize the WWE a lot, and rightly so, for their inclination to turn models into wrestlers, but at least they TRAIN the Divas. These girls have a lot of nerve calling themselves wrestlers. They namecheck GLOW on that Tumblr, but I have my doubts they’re ever gonna produce an Ivory.
This is a great example of why everyone hates hipsters. They approach everything so carelessly. And then they expect everyone to support their non-efforts.
I caught the GLOW documentary on Netflix this past weekend, and I gotta say, this company makes GLOW look like friggin’ Ring of Honor.
The very little they show of their previous event is kind of damning- both in the sense that we don’t see much of it and what we see of it is dire.
To build on what Snackbar says, I think it’s a question of the minimum level of training and competence you have to have to be a wrestler- to be in the WWE as a Diva you have to at least be able to take a bump.