Hello! My name is Sam West. I am one of the three founders of Wrestling Resurgence. This is (another) attempt at trying something different, hopefully more successfully, in terms of the content we share with you and how we distribute it.
Initially, I hoped to create a show day video blog, some of which made it onto the Resurgence Instagram story on Saturday. Inevitably, the day overtook me, which I hope to tell you about at some point, potentially next week (though don’t hold me to that!). So, my foray into “vlogging” didn’t get off to the “viral start” I had hoped for, despite John assuring me it was highly unlikely. John has the outtakes on his phone, which he’s edited together into a compilation—the bastard!
Anyway, that false start has led to this. A more traditional written account of what a somewhat typical Resurgence Day looks like from the perspective of someone who likes to pretend they know what they’re doing… Spoiler alert, even after nine years, I seldom do.
If you like this format and want more, please tell me! And while you’re at it, tell me where you accessed it (and where you would prefer to access it). If you are feeling really engaged, tell me what else you’d like me to write about in the future (a biography of Resurgence’s Charles Wheeler, perhaps?).
Anyway, that’s two hundred and however many words of introduction, so let’s crack on with my account of Saturday 10 October at the Y Theatre in Leicester for Wrestling Resurgence presents THE WARRIORS (Part I).
I hope you enjoy. If you don’t, I assume other wrestling show blogs written by independent British wrestling promoters with a PhD are available.
It’s about 11:00 AM. I have my bag packed. I have a ring bell under one arm. I have a steel chair under the other. Today is Resurgence Day. It’s been however many days there are between Saturday 4 July and Saturday 10 October. I am ready to depart my hometown of Nottingham and set off for Leicester. Unlike most Resurgence Days, however, I am early. A bit too early. But the kids are causing chaos, and I kind of wanted to get on the road, leave the commitments behind me and get to the wrestling.
John, another of the three Resurgence founders, and I both live busy lives. John has a daughter who has, in many ways, been to more Resurgence shows than I have. I have two kids of my own. One of them came to the show—his very first, no less. So, our lives are packed full of demanding (but mostly rewarding) non-wrestling-related commitments.
In that sense, for both of us, and Claire too (who we will introduce at some point I’m sure), Resurgence Day is special. And for me personally, it’s special not just because we’re going to have a wrestling show, but because it’s a day to go and hang out with people that I really like for about ten hours. We often, as I have already deliberately started to do here, call each of these days ‘Resurgence Day’. There are only four every year.
When I arrive, the venue is nice and empty. No chairs set out. Just John, the Y Theatre technician, and me. We say hello, chat, joke, and start to mention the show, but not in detail yet. We’ve done thirty-plus of these now—I can’t remember exactly how many—so there’s not really any sense of stress or anxiety this early in the day.
That hasn’t always been the case. In the past, we’ve had shows that have sold poorly. Last-minute dropouts due to injury or unforeseen circumstances are a regular occurrence. We once had a show where the venue’s lift was broken, which meant carrying the ring posts up several flights of stairs and through a busy café.
Thankfully, though, even if something has gone awry on this day, we accept it as an occupational hazard and take it in our stride. I think part of not letting these things shake us is down to experience, but it’s also about the working culture we’ve established within the company. We privilege a positive experience, not just for audiences and talent, but for ourselves too. We’re going to work hard to protect our enjoyment.
Anyway, back to the theatre. With bags unpacked and jokes exchanged, John will normally start setting out the chairs, laying out programmes and running orders, unpacking the merch, and moaning about the number of t-shirts he has to store. John likes to write the show cards down in his notebook, which I think says a lot about the kind of person he is. By the by, we have new pin badges for this show: the white Arthouse Championship belt. They are very nice and definitely worth £5 if you have a tiny metal wrestling belt-shaped hole in your pocket. While John does that, I’m talking to the tech, typically about the lighting and the music. Really, we’re just waiting for the ring to arrive.
As the ring arrives and the crew start noisily assembling it, John and I are already discussing what the show’s going to be like and some of the things that might have to change. On this day, we had a couple of big booking decisions on our minds.
As I’ve mentioned, changes aren’t unexpected. In fact, it sometimes feels more worrying when there aren’t changes to be made. However, in this case, a problem that seemed relatively straightforward had, over the previous twenty-four hours, become increasingly complicated.
The issues affected the main event that night but would also have implications for our next show in November, and potentially well into 2027. In fact, it could even cause us to make one of the biggest decisions any promoter ever has to take, but that is revealing far too much. Plus, if really you want to know more about it, tickets to the next show at the Y Theatre on Saturday 14 November are on sale now. If this blog takes off, you will quickly learn that a wrestling promoter never stops trying to flog tickets, as all our close friends and family, colleagues, friends of friends, people we met on the bus and random strangers in the street will attest to.
Now, at this point, I could reveal what these issues were that evening, how they will affect us going forward, and what we did or didn’t do to rectify them. But alas, I am governed by the conventions of what is known colloquially as kayfabe, laid down upon me by both those who wrestled in the ring and those who booked from the outside (I hope I don’t need to alert you as to the proximity of my tongue to my cheek as I write that). So I’m not going to tell you. What I will tell you, which I hope is at least as interesting, is how we approach similar booking conundrums.
So here goes. First, what absolutely does NOT happen: John and I will NOT go back and forth on WhatsApp or, in this case, at the show in person. John will NOT present his idea. I will definitely NOT explain why he is wrong. WE WILL NOT go back and forth until we get bored or, if we’re online, someone’s wife tells someone to stop looking at their phone. We definitely never consult referee Charles Wheeler and then regret it later (Charles, we’re not booking Josh Barnett 24 hours before a show).
Instead, we normally start by asking ourselves: What’s the easiest way to resolve this? What can we do that involves the least number of changes to the show? That generally means you can stay true to what you wanted to do in the first place. And if you try to add a lot of complexity, I think you start running the risk of losing the audience as well. So whatever you decide to do needs to remain coherent. If you lose hold of that, you start to get into what is often called overbooking—in other words introducing too many twists and turns.
A key part of this mindset is consideration for the audience. These are fans who have parted with cash, in some cases travelled great distances, or brought friends and family along with them. If a show needs to change, even if that change might result in changes to long-standing plans, at Resurgence, John and I try to privilege their experience.
So to the question, “What is the simplest solution?” we might add, “What will deliver the best show experience?” By holding on to that second question and using the first as a kind of internal logic, John and I, the team and the wrestlers can pull together to find the best way to tell the story of that evening (even if that does inevitably involve Charles Wheeler getting punched in the face… which is not a spoiler. It’s an inescapable fact).
Did that mean the resolution ended up being simple? In all honesty, probably not. Was it legible to those in the room? Was it dramatic? Was it chaotic? Was it satisfying? Did it get the right reactions? I’d like to think it probably did (though, of course, feel free to tell me otherwise in the comments).
To start to wrap up what has now, over the course of its writing, become the first part of at least two blog instalments, I want to expand my ramblings, messy as they are, to consider something I think is especially interesting about wrestling and storytelling.
There exists a hazard, a booking or promotional trap, that fans, followers, performers and creators of wrestling often fall foul of (I very much include myself in this): thinking that independent wrestling must deliver complex long-term storytelling, carefully crafted and painstakingly delivered. It can, sometimes, but more often than not, the challenge, the joy, the satisfaction come from reacting to situations, capitalising on opportunities, and taking risks and accepting mistakes. It helps also that most (though certainly not all) audiences of independent wrestling shows are a forgiving bunch. They like the rough edges, the shameless melodrama and the general ridiculousness of it all.
So that’s not to say there isn’t a place for story, of course not. The point, if there is one within reach, is more that story kind of fills the space up and turns it into a show. You can find it in everything, from an epic tale of two wrestlers locked in a bitter feud to a submission hold applied late in a match, from a lifelong fan’s thousandth show to a dad taking his son to his first show. That, at least to me, is the story of Resurgence.
So, in conclusion, John and I are still not talking to each other. Stay tuned for Part II!
