It kind of feels like my wrist has been broken again. No wrestling to devote myself to and no awesome influence like Stacia Hardin to realize there are more important thing to life. Or to at least make me think wonderful things like rainbows, unicorns, and real libertarians could exist.
Perhaps, the wrestling wouldn't be on my mind except for the bullshit that is NGW: The Last Hurrah.As the title of the blog implies (I am proud of the titles duality with my general mind set), there is nothing the promotion did to be proud of. There is just no reason to celebrate it's death.
The best things the promotion did was allow six of us to go to a wrestling clinic in Cincinnati for 25 bucks each and NGW teaching Brett Gakiya and CJ Esparza how to run the ropes. At least that was all that happened when I was part of the promotion. Otherwise, the only good I think it did was lay the groundwork down for the VBI Tourneys. On the flip-side, it laid the groundwork for Ian Rotten to keep running third rate-shows.
You could say it gave a few guys the chance to live out their dreams since it was just not practical for them to dedicate themselves to the business. Unfortunately, a lot of them were the Pekin kids. It was a step above backyard wrestling, but the environment did not encourage them to pursue their dreams.
From what I could gather, none of them worked outside of NGW until the promotion quit running shows on a frequent basis. I suppose you could count whatever promotion the so called trainer Norman Callaway got conned into being a part of. World Wrestling Zone and Thunder Wrestling Federation come to immediate mind (I won't list the con-artist names, but I'm sure you remember who they are).
Celebrating NGW feels like it's an excuse for guys who didn't make it out of the Indie dead zone in Illinois between I-80 and I-72 to feel like they did not have to. I'm sorry, Peoria was a dead zone (hence some of the inspiration for "Main Event of the Dead"), and if you wanted to be a success in this business, you had to want to get out of there.
It goes back to the old saying, "It is better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven." It is still hell, and you know you shouldn't want to end up there.
I don't want any of the boys to not be proud of what they did in NGW. But I don't want them to think we were part of ECW or Jim Crockett Promotions. Next Generation Wrestling was not a stepping stone to bigger and better things. Peoria was not a place where the stars wanted to stay or were offered to further their legacy. To think we should celebrate our efforts with the great territories is just ridiculous.
If you want to argue about this show being a chance for old friends to get together and do what they love to do, I can understand that. But I also understand the irony of Bruce Springsteen songs.
You can say it is like the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame induction concerts, but they have Bruce Springsteen, rock's Arn Anderson. Love Zero Gravity, but they are not quite the E Street Band. They aren't Max Weinberg and Steven Van Zandt yet.
The Last Hurrah is a high school reunion, but the 10-year scheduled dealing with the douche-bags has more class. High school reunions don't try to charge people to be spectators.
That is unless the proceeds are going to help out Nose.
In the end, I just want to see a future for Peoria wrestling. I don't want to believe, we are all fine with just doing one show a year. Let's get to work on rebuilding instead of remembering what we did for more no more than 120 people. Let's not be a song lyric:
I hope when I get old I don't sit around thinking about it but I probably will.I'd love to help build a future for this business in this town and if I can help out let me know. I have Main Event of the Dead, if anyone wants a script treatment, drop me an email at russthebus07@gmail.com.
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