spookydust

this is such a tough question. i guess - cards on the table - i've only been a wrestling fan for a little over 10 years. the history of pro wrestling goes back centuries and i am certainly not an authority on the full breadth and depth of it. i don't even have the shared baseline of watching wrestling as a kid in the 90s like a lot of fans my age do.

anyway, you didn't ask about my fandom imposter syndrome.

if i had to pick, i have a very special place in my heart for late aughts and 2010s SHIMMER. Stephanie McMahon may have taken credit for the WWE Divas Revolution, but that shit started in SHIMMER. they had a murderers' row of wrestlers coming through the Berwyn Eagles Hall back then, including some of the biggest women wrestlers working today. SHIMMER was the first place i saw Dakota Kai (fka Evie), Asuka (fka Kana), Athena (fka Ember Moon, fka... Athena), Mia Yim, Mercedes Martinez, Hikaru Shida, Saraya (fka Paige, fka Britani Knight), Sara del Rey, the list goes on. it helped expose me to a side of wrestling i hadn't seen in WWE and got me to branch out into other indies and the Japanese scene.

sadly, i don't think they've run any shows since the pandemic and i don't know if they have any plans to start up again. it's too bad that i never got down to Berwyn to see them live. it was a very special promotion for a while though and they've got a pretty good catalog on Youtube, so i highly recommend folks check them out!

thanks for the ask!

went to a wrestling show on a boat tonight!

specifically, IPW's third installment of War On the Shore. saw some favorites including Jumal Kyng and Ren Jones¹, experienced requisite local right wing "patriot" wrestler Chad Alpha², and was impressed with some folks i saw for the first time tonight like Stella Búho.

i love local indie wrestling so much. you're in it in a different way than you are with the big live TV wrestling shows. it's also just cool and inspiring to watch folks who are just doing this crazy thing because they love it. you know, not that the big stars don't love it, and some of these people may very well become big stars someday, but most of these folks are getting out there, putting their bodies on the line, doing the same bumps the people who make the big bucks do, and then they have to go back to their shitty job on Monday. that's dedication to an artform. that rules.

if you have a local indie i highly recommend you go. there's nothing else like it and i guarantee you're going to have a blast.

1. who you may have seen on AEW Dark

2. if nothing else the name is incredible, and to his credit he's no longer sporting straight up InfoWars logos on his boots