Hello, SCU Readers.
Before I get on the topic at hand, I want to tip my hat off to Suede Thompson for winning the Maverick Pro Heavyweight title, Fidel Bravo for ending the 2nd longest EWF title run to leave Covina with the EWF Heavyweight title, & Mayu Iwatani for finally winning the 1 title that has eluded her for 6 1/2 years–the World of Stardom title. Those 3 are great examples of how hard work, continuous training, & staying the course for so long, lead to great things in the ring.
Now, on to the topic at hand. If the last few years had shown, this is normally the time of the year where I’m thinking less about roaming the convention centers on a hot, summer day, and more about sitting at ringside, following the So Cal indie wrestling scene. This year, however, has gone the other way. While most of the fellow wrestling fans were focused on the NJPW G1 U.S. Special on the 4th of July Weekend, I was in DTLA, enjoying Anime Expo. While most people are planning to spend their Labor Day Weekend in Reseda, & the 2017 PWG Battle of Los Angeles Tournament, I’ll be in Long Beach for the Long Beach Comic Con. So what changed? Not a whole lot! I still follow the So Cal wrestling scene when I can. I still keep an eye on what’s going on in the big promotions, and how names familiar to the So Cal scene are faring. The main thing that had me place AX over NJPW, & the LBCC over BoLA, is timing! I had bought my AX weekend pass well before NJPW announced their U.S. debut, which they scheduled for the same weekend as AX. At first, I thought I could spend the day at AX, then drive to Long Beach for NJPW. Wrong! What killed that scheduling plan, was their 2:30pm meet-and-greet, & 5:00pm belltimes. That would’ve left little time for me to enjoy the big crowds of the 1st half of AX, before leaving for the NJPW events. Had the belltimes been at 7:00 or 7:30pm, I would’ve been content with staying in DTLA until 4:00, then drive to Long Beach for the big wrestling event. I’ve done a couple of comic con/wrestling doubleheaders (i.e. TitanCon & the AWS/PWB joint show that one day in April), and will do it again in September. That 4th of July Weekend, was obviously different.
A similar problem arises with Labor Day Weekend, except timing alone isn’t the issue, it’s also money. People shell out hundreds of dollars in the winter & spring, buying their San Diego Comic Con tickets, and expect wrestling fans to do the same with tickets for all 3 nights of BoLA. While it would be a big score to outrace thousands of other wrestling fans for those hundreds of PWG tickets (sound familiar, SDCC fans?), it just doesn’t seem practical overall–at least in my books–when the LBCC is alot more economical, and much easier to get tickets. It’s also my “home comic con“, which is where I was introduced to the comic convention scene & the world of cosplay, thanks to M1W running their “Wrath of Con” shows.
All of these comic cons in the L.A. area, plus the wide variety of wrestling shows to attend also have to put one last, major factor into account, and that is family. Years ago, I would go to at least 1 wrestling show or 1 comic convention every week. That didn’t leave much time for the family. Now with elders aging & fully retired, there will be an increasing need to help support the family. It also means some of the spending cash that would’ve gone into attending a wrestling show, now have to go into buying groceries, because the elders can no longer buy everything the family needs. All of those things now have to be juggled, until I can achieve some sense of balance between those three major things, plus my day job.
Does this make me less of a wrestling fan today compared to the last few years? Not by a longshot. With other fans doing recaps of attended shows, there hasn’t been much of a need to do my own recap, other than my live tweets of real-time results from those shows I’ve attended. I’ll still do my recaps of attended shows, if noone else does one of their own by the time I’ve posted my ringside photos on FB. Of course, I’ll still be sending arena reports to PWI, helping the regional talents make the PWI 500/Female 50.
In closing, I’ll leave you with my #1 priorities for the rest of the year, sorted by month, so that no one will complain about why I’m not going to BoLA, or why I’m not going to shows in October. They are, as follows:
August: AWS in South Gate, NXT at The Novo, & Sabotage Wrestling
September: Long Beach Comic Con, Nerd-Bot Con, & AWS “Lethal Lottery 4”
October: L.A. Comic Con
November: ?
December: RISE 6 / AWS Double-Shot
Hopefully, with some work, I’ll schedule 5 straight weeks of going to wrestling shows, then it’s the “Fall Comic Con Season” for me. And with that, that’s all for now. I’ll see you at ringside.