The Sudden Proliferation of Bad Wrestling Posters - Part 5

It has been more than three months since I've made a contribution to this running series of blogs dedicated to shining a big, bright, shiny light on what are more often than not dull, dark, and usually depressing documents meant to serve as professional wrestling posters. Why the gap in coverage of this all-important topic in this day and age? I would like to say it's because the promotions responsible for such drivel have dried up and withered away but I don't think I could ever be so lucky as to have that happen. Crap-can indie wrestling federations are like the mythical hydra in that regard - cut off one head and two more appear. There's an old saying that the only critters left on this planet after World War 3 or some other type of global holocaust occurs will be cockroaches. I'm fairly certain that somewhere, even after the bulk of humanity has been annihilated, there will still be a middle school gymnasium with a ring made out of old car parts, railroad ties, and garden hoses set up inside of it where half a dozen or so "professional wrestlers" shall gather to entertain their fans, the cockroaches.

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.

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.