Am I Dumb For Being Excited For A GCW Show?
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Probably going to start blogging more for Violent People. Sometimes I don’t want to sit in front of a mic, riffing for 20 minutes, editing, uploading, etc. I just want to throw together my ramblings and toss them to the world.
Recently bought a single ticket (very sad) to see The Game Changer Wrestling in Rochester. Only an hour or so away, will consider this fairly local. I bought floor seats so I’ve made some sort of investment here in attending this show. I don’t do GA, I like to be able to see what the hell is going on.
It feels weird to be excited about a show for a promotion I have so many misgivings about but here we are. I think there is something to the fact that the promotion’s biggest strength, at least after the first few years of the promotion, is that it feels like a touring brand. A company that goes from town to town with its stars playing the hits for the locals. It is like a worse, wrestling show version of the Ringling Bros. Circus. Maybe saying “worse” and “wrestling show version” is a bit redundant but whatever.
Let’s air some grievances on the promotion first, I’ll toss to Quentin and Tim as they did a thorough breakdown around For The Culture back a few years ago. And GCW hasn’t done anything over the past few years in regards to 1) appropriating black culture and 2) consistently using black talent and putting them in strong positions on the cards. It sucks. I don’t foresee this promotion getting their heads out of their asses.
Hard to go from “A shitty company, with some inherently racist stuff going on” to something a little more poindexter. We will just do the hard pivot and get it over with for grievance #2. GCW doesn’t reward the regular viewer or the drop-in viewer. You aren’t guaranteed a great match every show and the good-to-bad ratio isn’t stellar. Saying a promotion has stories doesn’t mean they are good. Somehow this distinction has plagued the bad brains of fans for years. They run so many damn shows that at one point in wrestling history, this would all be okay, major shows get the major plot beats, and everything else is essentially a house show. In 2024, a good promotion can’t run that way, especially if you stream all your shows. Every show in those instances has to have something to offer for the folks not in the building. Vaguely hard-earned money is being used. I think it is pretty easy to argue that GCW doesn’t do that.
My other grievances mostly build off #2. None of the belts feel have any weight. Probably literally as well as figuratively. The tentpole events are Mania weekend and their deathmatch tournament weekends. The former has some of the worst vibes on the planet. Not necessarily their fault since that’s Mania weekend but that’s where all the effort goes. Then I love tournaments, I do a podcast semi-regularly on the topic, but GCW can’t seem to make any of them feel meaningful long-term. They have two deathmatch tournaments with neither having substantial uniqueness or stakes! WHAT ARE YOU DOING BRETT?!
The only real positive I have is they have a product that their audience gets excited for and they book local talent to make sure there is always a certain energy. That is likely cost-cutting and contributes to the lack of continuity, but as far as being a live performance, that goes a long way.
For Rochester, they bring in Cheech, Colin Delaney, and Cloudy. People online losing their minds over Up In Smoke being on the show and former ECW Superstar Colin Delaney on the show…something that makes me think GCW has cemented itself as the One Indie. Cloudy has been on several shows with Cheech throughout the past years. And Cloudy has a school in the area that is producing some promising cats. Seeing ECW tweets about Colin has me questioning reality. Too Infinity And Beyond of Delaney and Cheech have been wrestling as a team regularly for a decade. I know AIW exists in a bubble but does it provide such little value to the indie wrestling landscape that this team doesn’t register? Sorry, got stuck there. Anyway, these folks provide value anywhere they go. Even if I have major misgivings about the promotion, it is the biggest of its type in the States. Local folks getting that sort of stage is a net win.
I like they bring in local talent, especially when I like that talent, but there are two things I’m excited about for a promotion that I’m otherwise not so much. First, seeing some folks that are on my bucket list and others that are a neat attraction. VIF is on The List, having been going to shows less over the past few years, didn’t realistically see a chance of this happening near term, over the moon there. Then Billie Starkz who probably doesn’t have that long of a consistent indie career left despite her age. Not a bucket list wrestler but someone I think is really good and probably not going to be afforded other opportunities in this type of setting. And while 2024 Nick Gage isn’t someone that inspires joy when watching wrestle there is still something to the magic of live professional wrestling.
What gets the juices going about this show though is the Upstate NY scene once again gets a big show. Bonus points for being outside Buffalo or Albany. Rochester has been relegated to the house show circuit for WWE and I’m worried AEW will eventually go that way after the last round of TV. Sure, Brett has ties to the city obviously but the promotion has been around for nearly a decade, consistently drawing cards throughout the country, and touring abroad, there is seemingly no real reason why this vanity show couldn’t have happened by now. But finally, it has. Tickets are moving well. Not something I would give a shit about with GCW of all places but that means there are people in the area, at least within travel distance, who are treating Rochester like a place to be for wrestling. Sure, I wish that place they were interested in revitalizing was Syracuse but I can’t change Brett’s hometown.
This didn’t need to be a post, what am I doing? “Why am I paying to go to a show of a promotion I think isn’t good?”. Because I have a problem and live wrestling is the only solution.
