The Sudden Proliferation of Bad Pro Wrestling Posters

I've been going to independent professional wrestling events in the Carolinas since the late 1990s (I use the fully qualified version of that era as opposed to "the 90s" because you never know, someone may be reading this at or beyond the year 2090). I still remember the first show I ever attended which was at the South Middle School gymnasium in Lancaster, South Carolina. "The Boogie Woogie Man" Jimmy Valiant was there, and he more or less conned me into buying one of his autographed 8x10s. That right there is what you call a hustle.

Suffice to say that in the span of time from here to there, I've seen a lot. Some good, some not so good, some great, and some just plain awful. For the most part I've learned to accept the negative with the positive; truth be told these days the pluses do seem to outweigh the minuses, and that's absolutely fantastic. Be that as it may, there are a handful of things that occur in relation to indie wrestling that truly bother me, and unfortunately I've encountered them all too often for my own comfort. They bother me to the point that when I see them either at a show or online I literally become physically ill for a brief moment, after which I immediately develop the urge to give someone a knife-edge chop to the throat.



Why do they bother me so? Because I love professional wrestling. I'm being completely serious when I say that I wish the people who are responsible for its further ruination would realize what kind of harm they're doing by not working harder to create a better product. They got into this business, surely they must respect it and love it as much as I do? Not hardly, from the look of what I've seen from some promotions.

Trust me, I know I'm opening myself up to criticism here because I'm sure someone will read this and say to themselves, "Well if he thinks he's so smart, then why isn't he running shows?" The answer to that is simple - even if I had the kind of money it would take to run a promotion properly, I more than likely wouldn't be doing it. Promotion is a genuine money pit and these days there's very little reward in it if, in fact, you are lucky enough to create something lucrative and sustainable. Sure, I probably could do it but the risks far outweigh the rewards.

Like I said, there are a handful of issues common to indie pro wrestling that bother me. The one that gets under my skin quicker than any other is when promotions use replica championship belts from World Wrestling Entertainment, World Championship Wrestling, or TNA/Impact Wrestling to represent their outfit. (I never thought I'd see it but believe it or not there's a company in South Carolina right now that's using a slightly modified version of the current TNA belt [seen here] as their championship. Previously they'd used a WWE Championship belt [like this one] for their top prize. To make matters worse, this same company uses a replica WWE Intercontinental title [this version] as their "southern states championship" [a descriptor that makes zero sense seeing as how they only run shows in one state] and a pair of WCW World Heavyweight Championship replicas [otherwise known as the "big gold"] as their tag team championship belts.) Nevermind the fact that replica belts are cheap and typically poorly made, what I find insulting about a promotion using them is the fact that in doing so they expect their fan base to not be knowledgeable enough to realize what's going on. Wrestling may be near the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to well-respected forms of performance art, but what this boils down to is that I don't appreciate being made to feel like an idiot. Suspension of disbelief is one thing, asking your audience to choke on what amounts to a cleverly disguised lie is something else.

Investing in a custom made belt is specifically that - an investment. I wish more promotions would take the extra step of having their own belts. It adds so much to the presentation and authenticity of the experience for a fan like myself as it conveys a sense of how valuable that title is. If you'd like to see examples of what a great belt maker can produce, check out Dave Millican Belts or Top Rope Belts. I'm a bit of a "belt mark", truth be told, but the kind of work groups like DMB and TPR produce is nothing short of art in my opinion.

On the ladder of things that get my dander up about indie pro wrestling, directly below replica championship belts are poorly designed event posters. To me, the most basic form of promotion other than word of mouth is an event poster. It should be eye-catching without being too exotic in its layout (read, it shouldn't be too busy) and informative instead of vague or otherwise devoid of pertinent details. There aren't many excuses for turning in a bad poster seeing as how a better-than-average camera won't set you back too badly and editing software isn't that expensive (Paint.net, GIMP, and event Photoshop CS2 are free). Trust me when I say that it can be a bit of a juggling act in trying to find a happy medium but it can be done and there are a lot of companies that do it quite well. For example, here are a few posters that represent what a great event poster should be.

 

This poster was for OMEGA Championship Wrestling's "CHAOS IN CAMERON" event, which my wife & I were lucky enough to be able to attend. What makes this a solid poster? Three things:

1) You've got eye-grabbing graphics - what's more eye-grabbing than a logo that's on fire? Maybe a logo with boobs on it, but that wouldn't be prudent as we're going for family entertainment here.

2) The talent on display all look like a million bucks; that's as much a testament to their physical conditioning as it is to the fact that someone took the time to make sure quality stock photos of each of those athletes were available.

3) The pertinent details regarding the event (date/time/location) are plainly visible in an obvious location that is complimentary to the rest of the design.

Notice as well that the color choices made in composing this poster allow for everything to be seen without one area or another winding up looking fudged, blurry, or over-saturated. This is a fantastic poster, one that would definitely make me want to attend the event.

That kind of poster takes some real skill to pull off. I don't know who put it together but they're obviously talented when it comes to image editing. As an example of what a quality poster can be that's not as involved, I give you this poster from G.O.U.G.E. - Gimmicks Only Underground Grappling Entertainment.

I dig this poster for the fact that it is colorful and fun, which is 100% indicative of the kind of wrestling you'll see at a G.O.U.G.E. event. It's much more simplistic than the OMEGA poster, clearly, but it's just as effective in its delivery.

Finally, as a third example of a good wrestling poster, here is one from Premiere Wrestling Xperience.

I like this poster a lot as the bold graphics are neat, although I will say that this one is on the precipice of being a little too involved. There's a lot going on here between the text at the bottom and images of 11 guys in the upper half. Even so, this poster is successful in that it gets your attention, shows off the talent, and lets you know the what, where, and when.

This next poster from a recent WrestleForce show is a 'tweener. What I mean by that is that it isn't necessarily bad but it isn't necessarily good either.

There are a couple issues here. For starters, it comes off like whoever designed it is fairly new to Photoshop because they've gone a little nuts with filters and saturation. That may sound like nonsense to you but it relates to how the images of their talent look washed out and not all that clear. The background looks like a black chalkboard that hasn't been washed in quite some time. The color choices aren't terrible but the green "Spring Fling" logo on top of the green Matrix-esque pattern in the header make for a muddy combination. To its credit, the details are there and there's obviously been an effort to showing off the talent.

Now, dear readers, is when we get into the realm of bad indie wrestling posters. I feel as though I have to preface what follows by telling you that these posters are real. They represent promotions that either were or are currently running shows. I have not edited them in any way, shape, or form - what you see is what they have made available as advertising.

Hoo-boy...First up, this offering from Southern Wrestling Alliance.

This looks cheap and poorly made. I probably could have whipped this up when I was 18 using nothing but MS Paint. The most egregious failure here (other than the typo - admission to this event is 6 "doolars" - and the fact that the background gradient goes from lime Jell-O green to bile green) is that the images of the talent are just plain bad. If I ran a promotion I would have a photo area set up where everyone on the roster would have to come at least once so that I could get a set of current stock photos for use in promotional materials. (All you need is a sheet or some other background to have them stand against that's a solid color; the software will allow you to separate them from the background rather easily so that the resulting image can be used in material like this.) Lastly, I think at least 2 of the sponsor images at the bottom are, in fact, photos of business cards.

What's worse than a yucky green background on a wrestling poster? Lightning.

I'm sure there's a website somewhere that specializes in graphics like that. I wouldn't be at all bothered if the server hosting it exploded and all back-ups were lost in a fire. Again, it looks cheap, and it makes me think these guys are all hacks because if they were any better they'd be working somewhere that could afford to make a better poster. (That's harsh, I admit, but it's honest.) On the plus side, they included a picture of the venue so at the very least if you for some reason actually wanted to go to this show you shouldn't get lost.

Sometimes when a person is putting together a poster they have good intentions but the execution gets botched. That's what's going on in this next image which is a poster for Disciples of Christ Wrestling.

This is a mess, on a number of levels, and it's an example of why adhering to a consistent theme is crucial when laying out a poster. The background looks like a pool of water that's been polluted with some sort of foulness. I can only assume the wolf/lamb/ring image is a part of the DCW logo - it doesn't make much sense, period, but I'm trying my best to figure out why it's there in the context of the thing. I assume the Lions Club is sponsoring this event because they're featured quite prominently, so prominently in fact that their logo is bigger than any of the images of the DCW talent. Actually, that might be on purpose because if you get a closer look at those guys do any of them strike you as being wrestlers you'd pay to see? Do they strike you as wrestlers at all? A lot of people who buy wrestling boots should be buying wrestling tickets, and DCW might be an entire promotion where that's true.

I don't want to come off like I'm making fun of someone who's apparently suffering from a debilitating illness but this next one has the misfortune of putting an ugly face on what's hopefully a good deed.

WASP Championship Wrestling - I don't like them already based on nothing other than the name. Wasps are some of the most ornery critters in the entire animal kingdom. One got into our house not too long ago and I felt as though I would've been justified in using a shotgun to kill it, even at the expense of perforating our cabinets.

My personal feelings about wasps aside, I don't know where to begin here. A mustard-yellow background - at least it's not lightning or chain link fencing, I guess. The text regarding the benefit information is poorly written, loaded with grammatical errors (some punctuation would've been great), and there are a handful of misspellings. As for the rest of the poster, the images are all horribly grainy. They look as if they were scanned at low resolution settings, printed on an old inkjet, and then scanned again at even lower resolution settings. I would sooner mail the guy for which the benefit is being held a money order for $6 than I would go to the show, quite frankly.

I've poked fun at the way the talent is presented on several of these posters. I don't get to do that with the poster below because there is no talent presented on the poster - yes, you could take that statement a couple of different ways, all of which are valid in this instance.

When I first looked at this poster I thought I had a flyer for a hardware store, what with the ladders, table, and rope. Apparently the name of this promotion is Pro Wrestling. That's it. You were looking for pro wrestling, well guess what - here it is, Pro Wrestling. They're so new and so cutting edge that they didn't want to burden themselves by trying to adhere to a standard that might be set forth by having created a unique identity for themselves. (Oh, great - pro wrestling for hipsters!) Likewise, they wanted to be so modern and forward-thinking with their advertising that they didn't see the need to show off any of their talent. That would've been too pretentious, obviously.

Last and definitely least, I give you the poster that recently set a few threads on Facebook afire. 

To begin, the reason for it having caused such a stir is the fact that TNA/Impact Wrestling star Gunner was vocal on social media that he would not be at this show and that his likeness was being used to promote the event despite his having no involvement. He was never booked for this event but you wouldn't know that by the look of the poster. (Nikita Koloff, from what I've read, did appear as advertised.)

This doesn't happen that frequently anymore but it does happen. Scumbag promoters will do things like this in order to sell tickets then their excuse to a disappointed fan will be the "card subject to change" clause that seems to accompany ever wrestling event by default. (Or as was done by one local promoter a few years ago who advertised Samoa Joe as being on one of his events, you could claim the star no-showed [even going so far as to arrive late to your own venue, with the story being that you were at the airport waiting for "The Samoan Submission Machine" to arrive] only to have it revealed later that you never paid his appearance fee or booked his travel.) That phrase used to be in place because there were times where talent had travel issues or injuries and couldn't make it - in this situation it's there because the jerk running the show knew he wasn't going to draw a crowd unless he could get the people to believe there were known wrestlers on the card. It's pathetic and people like this should be run put of business; sadly enough, they're usually the ones who manage to hang around the longest.

One of the other talents shown on this particular poster is a guy who calls himself Rex Rumble. I mentioned in a previous paragraph how one of the posters featured talent that didn't quite look like anyone that would be worth paying to see. (Get a membership to a gym and a tanning salon, for crying out loud - maybe go to "GNC" and get some "supplements", if you know what I'm saying?) Notice that the image on the poster of Rex makes him appear to be a tough guy, as he has his fists clinched, ready to fight. If you squint real hard, you might even say he could pass for someone whose look was inspired by Kevin Nash.

Here's a more, shall we say, honest picture of him.

 

Yeah, people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones and I'm certainly not the one to be criticizing people about their physiques, but I'm also not squeezing my voluptuous beer gut into an Under Armour-style shirt and wrapping my arms in electrical tape up to my elbows so I can go play fight with my buddies.

Beyond that, I'll say that this poster looks more like a page out of a high school football program than anything. (That or one of those athletics schedule posters you find at gas stations. You know the type - the schedule gets about 2 inches of space and the rest of the poster is nothing but ads.) Sponsors are great but you can't put that many corporate logos on a poster. It detracts from the purpose of the thing, which is to promote the event. Give those businesses an opportunity to hang banners at the venue, sure, but don't saturate a poster with that nonsense.

I've written this entry with a tongue in cheek approach, and I hope that's detectable. I'm reaching a point in my life where even though I love wrestling I'm beyond being able to take any of it seriously. No matter how much people like myself would appreciate it, Ric Flair and Ricky Steamboat can't go for 60 minutes anymore. Arn & Ole Anderson aren't going to come to a ring and make you believe that they're capable of crippling their opponents. Bret Hart isn't going to be having any more 5-star bouts with the likes of Mr. Perfect or Steve Austin. As much as it pains me, I've accepted these things. Similarly, I've accepted that there's no better way to handle the goofball side of pro wrestling than by treating it as such. If Mystery Science Theater 3000 taught me anything, it's that there's fun to be had in pointing out the ridiculousness of what some people would call art, so that's exactly what I'll continue to do - have fun and make the best of what's left of indie pro wrestling in the Carolinas.

Our Road to Building a Family - The Moment Things Got Real

I will fully admit that I haven't written much about the experiences my wife & I have been through in trying to adopt children. I don't want it to seem like I feel it's not important enough to chronicle here - gosh knows all my thoughts on professional wrestling, movies, and the like deserve their space - but Jill has taken the reigns when it comes to keeping all those stories together in her blog, The Truesdale Times. (That blog was originally supposed to have been a shared space for the both of us. Over time it's metamorphosed into her personal chunk of blogging territory just as Redbeard's Rambling is mine.) She's done a fantastic job of documenting our every move and what it amounts to is that I simply don't think I could do a better job, so if you're curious to read more about what we've encountered thus far please take the time to check out her entries. They're quite insightful, especially for anyone who may be thinking of or otherwise already involved in dealings similar to ours.

That said, I wanted to share an update with you, dear reader, about a realization I had recently.

Truth be told, Jill & I have been having some frustrations with this process here lately. We've done all the paperwork, we've gone through all the inspections, and we've gotten our approvals. It is my understanding that where we are at this point is more or less a waiting game. When it comes to adoptions through the Department of Social Services here in South Carolina, there are boards in place the members of which work to try and pair up children with prospective parents. We're to the stage where it seems like the best we can do is hope we get noticed - to make a sports analogy, it's like we've declared for the NFL Draft and our Wonderlic scores came back high but we don't know which team (if any) will give us a chance to prove ourselves.

Jill has gone out of her way to be our own best advocate. That she has done this was no surprise to me. Jill is her mother's child; when I say that, I mean to point out that - much like her mother - she is not content to merely sit idly by when it appears that there's work to be done on something she's passionate about. (I added that last bit regarding her passions because while my wife will not hesitate to assume the role of master and commander when it comes to a situation in which she's emotionally invested, I have yet to have her sprint to action over matters of state like laundry, cleaning the house, or dish washing.) She has done all she can to investigate details on children, those in South Carolina as well as in other states, who are available for adoption by contacting the agencies providing them care. On top of that, she has sent countless emails and made Lord only knows how many phone calls to our own social worker.

I understand that everyone is busy these days and that it seems like every government office is having to learn to do not more with less but more with nothing. (Having worked in the public sector for more than 6 years, I can tell you that statement is true on a variety of levels.) Be that as it may, it's been difficult to get over how uncommunicative certain entities have been with us now that we are where we are. You're in the office 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. Did you forget your voicemail passcode? We rarely get a callback, and when we do it's typically not in a timely manner. How hard is it to reply to an email? We're not expecting a message that's 10 paragraphs in length, just a simple acknowledgement that you are still there and that we're not wasting our time by contacting you is more than enough.

I feel like patience is one of my better virtues, and as it relates to the adoption process I have done my best to be patient in navigating the various twists and turns. When we got into this I knew it wasn't going to be something that came to fruition within a couple weeks. For that matter, I knew it was going to take a number of months if not more than a year for our efforts to pan out. (People I know and work with ask me often how long it's been since we've been at this; I try to keep it in perspective by remembering that were we genuinely pregnant we'd only be about 7 months into the delivery. In reality, were things to have worked out differently, we'd still have at least a little ways to go.) As much as I would like for it to be different, this isn't a situation where you can force someone's hand with sweet talking, threats, bribes, or even litigation (which would probably draw it out even further, more than likely). Jill, on the other hand, has never been a particularly patient person. Try as I might to remind her of the teachings of Master Yoda ("Patience you must have, young padawan..." is a favorite quote of mine to use on her), I've learned over the course of our relationship that there's not a whole lot I can do to divert her away from whatever path she's on. I'm not saying that her desire and passion is a bad thing, especially in these circumstances, rather I merely wish she would understand the subtle difference between persistence and insistence (she knows I feel this way, so don't go thinking I'm taking to my blog to air dirty laundry).

Be that as it may, within the past week we made contact with an out-of-state agency about a child in their care and they responded to us almost immediately (as in within 24 hours; that's a precedent no other group has lived up to). The agency said that they were fielding a number of inquiries about the child and that they were in the process of trying to narrow down prospective families but they felt we would be great candidates, part of their reasoning being Jill's experience as a social worker. They granted us an opportunity to learn more about the child's history at which point we were required to sign confidentiality waivers which is why I have to be somewhat guarded in saying what I'm going to talk about next.

There is no reason a child should have to endure what this one has. The report we received spelled things out very clearly and concisely, detailing the data they've collected over the span of time the child has been in their custody (roughly three years). As painful as it was to read, it was more painful to come to the quiet realization that it didn't seem like there was an opportunity for us to help. The list of issues they are dealing with felt insurmountable in my mind, and the fact that the child has begun to develop defense mechanisms in order to deal with them made their plight that much more awful.

It wasn't until I read the report that it dawned on me, this is the kind of abuse that gets found out and these are the kids that we'll be adding to our family. It hasn't dissuaded me from the prospect - not in the least. However, it has made me come to terms with the fact that we're all broken in some way, shape, or form. No one gets through life without chips, dings, and cracks. Sometimes the damage is so bad it seems like it can't be fixed, and even when it can be sometimes you have to admit, no matter how bad you want for things to be otherwise, you aren't the one to handle the repairs.

I mentioned earlier about how the agency representing this child made a point to bring up my wife's career as a social worker. A close friend of ours made a fantastic comment about this and it is one that I'm sure we'll need to be reminded of again as this process continues. The comment was that my wife isn't going to be our child's (or children's) social worker, she's going to be their mother. While her experiences in social work give her a unique perspective, she shouldn't have to be saddled with that role because it would undoubtedly get in the way of the bigger task, that of being a parent.

We decided this particular child has needs we are not prepared to tackle. We have had a tough time of admitting this because we don't know how many opportunities like this we may get. Sure, there are thousands of children out there, but there are potentially as many prospective families. As odd as it may seem, this is something of a competition. What's more, we've both felt in a way that we're letting the child down. Even though we'll never meet the child and the child will never have any idea that we made an inquiry, it's been as though we had to tell the child "no" face to face.

That is what's broken my heart. Two letters, one word, and yet so much hurt it can cause.

Video Killed the Radio (Blog?) Star

If you're a frequent visitor to my part of the blogosphere (just for reference, that is the first and more than likely the last time you'll ever see me use that word) you may recall that earlier this year I made a post wherein I set a goal for myself to make at least 3 blog entries per month. I've held pretty close to true on that, although I will say that there are only two entries for the month of April even though at one point in time there were 3.

"What happened to the third one?", you ask. Well, a while ago I purchased a keyboard dock for my Asus Transformer tablet which essentially turns the tablet into a handy-dandy Android-based netbook. It's great because it's portable, has awesome battery life, and because it's Android it runs just about every app you could think of, including one that's meant for users of Blogger such as myself. I sometimes will start a blog in the app then work on it again when I'm in front of a PC or vice versa. The missing blog from April (which was an event report from a recent WrestleForce show I attended) is an apparent victim to the fact that I published that piece through the web after having started it in the app. Evidently when I went back to the app my Blogger entries were updated based on the data that was (for some reason) still queued in the app, meaning that published entry reverted to an unfinished draft state.

Suffice to say I was pissed when I realized what had happened. I guess whoever Google has working on this particular product skipped over the importance of checking date stamps on database entries; that, and they also offer no ability to recover material in situations like this. Once it's gone, it's gone. Such is life, eh?

Be that as it may, I haven't soured on the prospect of keeping up my blog but I have gotten quite into the realm of video here lately. I'm not going so far as to label myself a vlogger (there's another word you may or may not ever get from me again), however I can tell you that I genuinely enjoy the experience of working with video! Perhaps it's the newness of it or the excitement may be from my merely getting with the times - whatever the case, I've taken to YouTube and have some actual content to share. That said, what follows are a handful of my most recent videos and a bit of commentary on each. If you'd like to see my full YouTube channel, you can do so via this link.

CLIP #1) Rasslin' with Redbeard - Episode 4

I'm particularly proud of this edition of RWR mainly because I think it's the best example to date of what RWR is all about, that being an honest depiction of the fan experience at professional wrestling events. In this instance, the video follows my wife & I as we made our way to Cameron, North Carolina for an event promoted by OMEGA Championship Wrestling headlined by the Hardy Boyz as they faced off against the Briscoe Brothers.



CLIP #2) Random Clips & Match Highlights from CHAOS IN CAMERON

Also recorded during our trip to Cameron were these clips from the show we attended. I'm a little gun shy of promoting this simply for the fact that I had another highlight package I'd put together of nothing but footage from the main event (which was one of the best tag team matches I've ever seen, quite frankly), but I was asked to remove it by someone in OMEGA's "front office" after having published it. Hopefully if they see this they'll understand the point is to make people interested in their product.



CLIP #3) Team Alexander vs. Team Konley (WrestleForce; 5-4-2014)

At almost 45 minutes in length, this match is more than a little beefy. There's a story to be told here, though, and if nothing else I would hope that should you watch the entire thing you'd come away from it impressed by the skills of those involved. It takes a ton of cardiovascular conditioning to gut out a match of this length, which is why competitors like Cedric Alexander and Vordell Walker are in a very small group of elite athletes out there on the independent pro wrestling scene today. Should you not have 45 minutes to invest in it, at least watch the last 15 minutes - TRUST ME.



That's a sampling of what I'm doing with my YouTube channel. I have a few other videos I've amassed but haven't done anything with, primarily because I'm not 100% certain they're worth putting out there. I may add them someday to round out the kind of material I publish because I'll be the first to admit that my channel is very wrestling-heavy. Then again, it's my channel and I'm a big fan of wrestling, so it's only fitting. Regardless, if you've been a fan or follower of mine here on Blogger I would hope you'd take the time to see what else I've been working on. I'm still working on learning the ins and outs of this but I like where it's going.