Lets begin this entry with a flyer for an upcoming WrestleForce event entitled AGGRESSION.
I have to applaud WrestleForce because they've truly stepped up their game in terms of flyers over the course of the past year. They've gone from having what were decent posters at best to work like this that is eye-grabbing, colorful, and well designed in terms of the overall layout. I know that there are those who will look at this and say "Oh, someone's playing a lot of Grand Theft Auto, huh?" because of the similarities between this poster and artwork produced by Rockstar Games for use on the GTA series of video games. Imitation in this arena isn't a bad idea seeing as how that beloved 18-35 year old male demographic is going to see this and immediately recognize the design as something potentially interesting. Besides, gaming and wrestling are two forms of entertainment with overlapping fanbases, so it's an organic method of drawing in potential consumers.
Next we have the poster for the debut event from AML Wrestling - "AML" meaning America's Most Liked. Not to sound too snarky here but I will say what others are probably thinking by stating that it might be a bit early for them to proclaim themselves as "America's Most Liked" wrestling when they haven't even had their first show yet.
I like this poster as it has an American Gladiators feel to it, which is fitting seeing as how AMLW has clearly put a significant amount of money into this production since they're bringing in names like Sean Waltman, Matt Hardy, and others. I'll add that the logo is fantastic; I'm a big fan of symmetry in design and there's plenty of it to be had in this piece.
Now we'll take a look at a poster from Premiere Wrestling Federation, a company owned and promoted by Steve Corino. This was for their January event, entitled SOUL SURVIVOR.
This is a fine example of a clear, concise poster that isn't overloaded with graphics but still accomplishes everything that a good poster should in serving as an advertising mechanism. I appreciate PWF's effort towards having an event title pair up with a featured match. So often it seems as though promoters just pick a word to go along with their show as a title or tag line because it looks cool when you spell it out in a certain font style without ever thinking of how it should influence the card.
Ultra Wrestle is a relatively new company that launched in 2014 but looks to make strides in 2015, starting with AWAKENS, which will be their first event of the year.
I can't say that I dislike this poster but I'm not 100% sold on it either. I get what they're doing here in trying to get a bit of a rub from Star Wars' momentum. (In case you've been under a rock for the past 3 months, it was announced last year that the next Star Wars film will be called "The Force Awakens".) Even so, there's a lot of text and I feel as though images of the talent from more than just two matches could have been involved. As I mentioned, UW is a young promotion - hopefully once they have a greater library of stock photos to work with they'll be able to incorporate more of their roster onto posters.
We've been on an uphill climb thus far but the path is about to take a very abrupt and misguided left hand turn into the inane! Here's the poster for HARDCORE HOMECOMING, Milestone Wrestling's next event.
This is pretty mild as far as Milestone Wrestling's posters go in terms of being a random mish-mash of imagery and text. As much as I want to make fun of this poster, there's a certain artistry to it that is keeping me from being too derogatory in addressing it. The background looks like an Andy Warhol painting, but then you've got Mike Levy and the Burke County Boyz (it's spelled with a "Z" because of course it is - kind of like putting an "X" where it doesn't belong in a word, purely for the visual) and that's the end of anything beautiful about it. If you'll notice there's only one match announced on the flyer - someone asked them about this on their Facebook page, and a representative from MW replied along the lines of "Whatever we decide to bring it will be a blood bath", so if the flyer doesn't entice you hopefully the promise of potential exposure to blood-born pathogens will.
Following that is a recent poster from Southeastern Pro Wrestling for an event they dubbed NEW YEARS RESOLUTION. Regarding that event title, I will say that in the past two months I have seen more shows with some variation on the phrase "New Year's Resolution/Revolution" than I thought conceivably possible - some that were and were not grammatically correct (there's supposed to be an apostrophe in "year's" that some seemed to leave out for whatever reason - I'm guessing ignorance and stupidity), and some that went so far as to incorporate backwards letters or numbers into the spellings.
I harp constantly about the fact that wrestling posters should highlight a handful of the talent scheduled to appear on the card - young, good looking, physically fit athletes who appear to be ready to pop off the printed page - via clear, posed stock images. Why? Because you can't promote shows only to the people who know the wrestlers by their names, you have to promote shows to everyone and that includes the potential audience that (despite the assumed popularity of a given talent) might never have heard of or seen them before. That and the fact that there are those "fans" out there who will come to shows because they aren't actually wrestling fans, if you catch my drift (judging by some of the comments that get left on the matches I upload to YouTube there are a LOT of people watching wrestling who don't know an arm bar from a suplex; I'll stop there and leave that information for you to digest).
The images of the wrestlers on this poster are so small that they look like thumbnails, totally devoid of any detail whatsoever. I'm not just talking about how they appear when you look at this poster on your monitor/tablet/phone/etc. Imagine a printed version of this poster and bear in mind the fact that most documents of this type would be, at most, 16" x 20" in size. You wouldn't get a clear view of them even if it was 3' x 2.5'!
I grew up in Lancaster, South Carolina which isn't too far from Monroe, North Carolina. I don't ever recall there being wrestling around Monroe when I was a kid, but if New Life Wrestling (the company for which this flyer corresponds) was around back then I'm glad I never saw one of their posters because it likely would have damaged my point of view on indie promotions.
Here is an example of a poster loaded with images that were culled, for the most part, from action shots and cropped down so as to be suitable for use on a flyer. (I have no idea what is going on with the "wrestler" I'm assuming is in black & white face paint for the NLW championship match; by the look of things dude could be an alien, is all I'm saying.) This is one of the most carnal sins wrestling promotions make these days because there's no reason you shouldn't have stock photos of all your talent. Buy a bed sheet that's an odd solid color, download GIMP or some other free image editor, get yourself a decent camera, and have them pose for 4-5 photos once they're dressed to compete on your show - guess what, by the next time you run an event you've got a whole bunch of material to work with in making your posters!
I do have respect for whoever made this poster because it genuinely appears as though the effort was there. Someone went through the trouble to chop images of NLW's roster out of other photos so they could be used on the flyer, and trust me when I say that can be a painstaking process. Pardon my French but to make use of an phrase quite popular amongst wrestling critics, they tried to make chicken salad out of chicken shit.
I want to briefly point out the title for that NLW show, REVOLUTION IV: A NEW BEGINNING. If you follow that logic, one can assume that there have been three "revolutions" prior to this one, and none of them were apparently effective seeing as how there's now going to be a fourth revolution. Whoever is leading that revolt should probably rethink their strategy, unless their strategy is to go around in circles in which case the title really is ironic (because sometimes words have double meanings).
We're getting towards the bottom of the proverbial barrel here now, and Southern Fried Championship Wrestling has the honor of being the upper crust of the worst this time around as they've published not one but TWO posters as of late that have drawn my ire.
The first event was called HALLOSCREAM and the second NEW YEARS NIGHTMARE (there's no apostrophe in the flyer so I didn't use one either). I am going to go out on a limb here and take a guess that SFCW utilizes the tried and true method of naming their events with the most clever thing they could think of based on what time of year it is. As such I expect their February event to be called VALENTINES VINDICATION, their March event to be FIGURE FOUR LEAFED CLOVER, and their April event to be EASTER EVISCERATION. See, it's not that hard - you just take something the month in question is known for then combine it with either a violent act or a wrestling-related term and, presto, you have your gimmick!
I'm not going to bother with going into more of a rant about the backgrounds, color choices, or the stock imagery being awful because I would be beating a dead horse, however I will add on a more serious note the fact that Anarchy Wrestling out of Cornelia, Georgia was recently purchased by SFCW's ownership. Anarchy has a rich history behind it as having been where a number of well known talents cut their teeth in the business (men like AJ Styles, Abyss, Xavier Woods, and others) and hopefully the new owners will be able to maintain that legacy rather than muck it up.
All Pro Classic Wrestling is (or possibly was; more on that in a moment) a promotion based out of Mullins, SC that, if memory serves, seemed to pop up onto my radar about half way through 2014. They never drew too much of my attention because they seemed to exclusively use a crop of performers from a region of South Carolina known for turning out competitors that are only slightly beyond backyarders in terms of their actual wrestling ability. Here's the poster for REDEMPTION, their November 2014 event.
I took an art class in high school and I remember one of the projects we had that semester was to make a collage using images we found in newspapers and magazines. I made this really creepy and rather dismal scene that had a passenger jet crashing into the letters "FAA" with background elements that were all either on fire or looked like they were part of a cave. (Don't ask me what my inspiration was, I think I just wanted to make something that looked mildly offensive for the sake of making something mildly offensive.) I tell that story because this poster reminds me of that collage in that it's a jumbled mess of logos, text, and stock photos that don't at all work well with one another. I can't stress enough how important having a clear idea in mind is when designing a flyer. It's like Steve Martin once said, "Here's an idea, have a point!", otherwise you wind up with something like this.
APCW had been promoting their January 3 event up until a few days before it was scheduled to happen, then without much notice at all it was cancelled. It was later made public that the reason for the cancellation was that they had issues getting the ring to the venue. I found that particularly silly seeing as how in the realm of professional wrestling the ring is arguably the most essential piece of equipment there is (although George South has proven that otherwise seeing as how he and his students once held a show for a community event in a grassy field after there were issues with the ring they were supposed to have used that day). Ironically enough, images of the ring APCW had used in the past were posted in a for sale ad on Facebook.
So was the show cancelled because they couldn't get the ring to the venue or was it cancelled because the ring had been sold? Only in indie wrestling, folks!
Last and certainly least I bring you another pair of flyers, this time from New Millennium Championship Wrestling hailing from Kings Mountain, North Carolina. These posters were for events called DEADLY GAMES and ROYAL BASH, titles that immediately reek of gimmick infringement seeing as how they're rather similar to WAR GAMES (the classic event that began back in the heyday of the National Wrestling Alliance and continued on into the World Championship Wrestling era) and the ROYAL RUMBLE (World Wrestling Entertainment's annual January pay-per-view) but that's where the similarities to anything awesome end.
I don't know where to begin with this, quite frankly. They chose to use Comic Sans as the font for the poster, which says a lot about the person responsible for it (i.e., childish, immature, and completely lacking good taste - I didn't come up with those character traits myself, mind you, I'm just citing the BBC). I am hoping I'm wrong here but the image of the wrestler (I assume he's a wrestler, anyway) on the right looks like it could have been a prison booking photo. I don't know if it's the jumpsuit or the forearm tattoos that make me think that. By contrast, the guy on the left has a double chin and no discernible muscle tone whatsoever yet he's trying to puff himself up by crossing his arms, a pose that everyone knows only real tough guys use. He's wearing sun glasses and he's got a super-cool replica of the "winged eagle" WWE championship belt (arguably one of the most identifiable belts ever yet one that gets made over by indie feds all the time as their "world" championship belt), so he's clearly not someone you should mess with if you know what's good for you!
NMCW took a different approach with the flyer for ROYAL BASH, their January 2015 event.
I would call it minimalist but I think lazy might be more fitting. To answer a few burning questions right up front:
- No, the date of the event isn't on the poster.
- Yes, this show was held on January 17.
- Yes, I had to spend more time than I'd like to think about verifying what the date of the event actually was.
No announced matches, no images of talent scheduled to appear, just a whole lot of tildes (~). When you're running a wrestling promotion and your posters look like this, it's time to rethink the decisions you've made that have brought you to where you are in life.
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