Heaven is an Indy Wrestling Show

Dear Wrestling,

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

This is the story of my first indy wrestling show.

On July 29 me, my friends Betty and Georgia, my sister (who shall be known as Seestor), and two of our friends went to a Ring of Honor taping in Concord, North Carolina. Miss Betty Rock has a radio show in Huntington, WV called Marking Out, and as a result of said excellence, she was able to get press passes to do some interviews before the show.

Muffins, my first try at college I did technical theatre, because I love working with my hands and seeing the hidden side of things. So when it turned out that we weren't being sent to some sterile room somewhere at the arena, but in fact to the floor, with the ring, and then backstage, I was in *heaven*. Not just because of seeing so many amazing wrestlers, but look! The lights attach to the girders on the ceiling with big ass clamps! And they're testing out the fog machine! And that's a screen for doing promos against! And on and on and on. Admittedly some portion of this was pure naivete and gawping--but I can't overstate how much of it was me being truly in love with seeing how the show gets made. I *love* that stuff, always have. It’s never broken the magic for me: if anything it heightens it, and makes me feel included.

So we meet Betty’s contact and he takes us to the arena. We walk in and it’s mostly empty, and feels huge. It’s definitely not, it’s just a little county arena, but…well. We were generating a fair bit of excitement already. He goes off to find the promoter, and we stand at the top of the stairs, watching.

The ring is full of men in sweats and tee shirts. I have face blindness, so I’m not sure but…but guys, that one there, with the hair…is that Dalton Castle? Waitwait, that’s a Boy, that is DEFINITELY Dalton Castle! Oh god, oh god, they weren’t on the card, they’re here! Betty immediately plans to ask for him specifically because she is a genius and an opportunist, while the rest of us are merely trying to remember how to be human beings. It’s a struggle, and I pray to my sweet thewful Thor that we didn’t embarrass ourselves. The contact comes back and takes us downstairs and backstage/behind the massive curtain and asks us to wait until someone is free to talk.

We're standing by a truck using a crate as a table, Betty's checking her equipment, and there's a promo being taped on the other side of the truck, and a guy changing over there, and guys doing moves and stuff over there. We listen to the promo while pretending to be furniture behind the truck and giggle quietly. A fight ‘breaks out’ during it, and we hear chairs and punches being thrown. We meet each others eyes and marvel at how this turns out to be the best day ever. Who knew?

We ended up being able to interview Silas Young, the Beer City Bruiser, and Jay Lethal, who were all great. Silas and the Bruiser gave fantastic station liners, and Jay was charming and sweet. Betty didn’t have a ton of time to prepare since the passes were last minute but I felt she had a great mix of unusual questions and familiar ones.

We didn't know who else might have time, so we stood about for another hour or so, waiting and hoping* before it was time to go get our seats/food/merch. That sounds like a complaint: we had a BLAST. Marty Scurll passed us twice, and we all met each other's eyes and quietly flipped out. Even given how good we are at entertaining each other, we commented several times on how much fun we were having. Standing by a truck. Being awkward. If anyone ever tries to tell you that wrestling isn’t purest alchemy, you tell them from me that they’re a damn liar.

The show itself...god. How can I possibly put into words the utter joy of it all? The many perfect moments of 'only in pro wrestling'? The power and rush of chanting with a crowd and giving someone the strength to keep going, get up, fight back? I hope you know it or you get to. I’ve had a pretty weird life, and I’ve had some amazing experiences—I’ve gone to France while homeless thanks to the generosity of a teacher. I’ve climbed a seastack on the coast of Oregon. I’ve nearly drowned three times—I am persistent, I’ll admit.

I want you to know that this was the most powerful happiness I’ve ever experienced. I want you to have an idea of what that means, coming from me.

Back to the narrative.

I’m not going to go into each match—Betty and Georgia did that much better than I could on Marking Out. I’m a Romantic at heart, so my best efforts are in the qualitative, not the quantitative. Such as our shock and delight when Dalton Castle came out with the Boys and cut a promo on Colt Cabana, and said that he’d face him in a week, in this building--which we were too excited and slow to catch meant later that night.

So now not only do we get to see Dalton and the Boys, we also get to see Colt Cabana! Bear in mind, I am a tiiiiny little infant baby fan, so what I know about Colt so far is that during the yearlong feud between Generico and Steen at Ring of Honor, he was Generico’s mentor/corner guy. I know a little more already as of this writing, but I didn’t then.

The match is fantastic, of course it is. Colt has the Tempura Boyz with him, and the antics all the various Boys/Boyz get up to are ridiculously wonderful. It’s everything I’ve dreamed and at least 30% more—at very least. At one point Colt Cabana had one of Dalton Castle's Boys on the ropes near us. I turn to my friends and say, "Save that boy on three?" We chant it, and Colt looks at us and smiles a little, and begins tormenting the Boy worse. "This boy?? Oh, he needs you! You're not helping him!" My friends and I fall apart, laughing and mock-horrified.

It was probably the most powerful moment of my life so far. And I've had a weird life, full of strange things, but that moment, that exchange, was something utterly unlike anything I've ever experienced. Later I had two thoughts: that is probably the closest I will ever get to understanding why wrestlers do this, and I can see why so many have issues with drugs.  It’s been a week at this point, and I’ve thought about it every day. Something shitty might happen at work, and that first moment when he looked at us has been my happy place. It helps, and what more can you ask art to do?

That match was the highlight for every single one of us. The rest of the evening continued that high. A week out everything is kind of a blur of joy and surprise and amazement. It wouldn’t be fair to pick out any other highlights because it would be pretty arbitrary. Until the final match, when Marty Scurll fought a Briscoe (face blindness, I don’t know which one) about two feet from my sister—she’d gotten her ticket last, and it was in a different section, so she spent the last hour or so just standing behind our chairs where we were seated on the floor. So Marty and Unknown Briscoe come over the barricade and around the crowd, to fight along the last row—which is us. The Briscoe pushes Marty, who stumbles nearly into my sister, then picks up a cup from the floor and throws it at the Briscoe.

That cup is sitting on my kitchen table right now. We happened to notice it as we left, so I grabbed it and thought, “Eh, I’ll keep until it doesn’t make me giggle anymore.”

The show ended. We’d been at the arena for a little over eight hours. We made our way out with the crowds and saw a little boy sitting on the stairs with his parents. At the very end, when Bully Ray broke a table, he invited two little ones into the ring to take home a piece of the table. This one was clutching it to his chest, like a teddy bear.

We all agreed: that was our best day ever. Yet.



*"All human wisdom is contained in these words: wait and hope!" -Alexandre Dumas