Troubled Production / Professional Wrestling

"I've been reading The Death of WCW, and after reading it I mean... Hulk Hogan, I'm glad he's not with us."

—AJ Styles ^note (Unsurprisingly, AJ had very little to do on television after Hogan signed a contract with TNA.)

With backstage heat, dangerous stunts on live TV, and sketchy booking and promotion policies, it's a miracle that many shows managed to make it to air.

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WWE

WWE has a lot of problems considering its weekly live shows that are in a different city each week. It has been reported that the script is sometimes being rewritten as the show is going on. Here are a handful of stories of how disjointed and convoluted things backstage can be.

• The fans and workers of other promotions alike derided the "WWF style" of wrestling when Vincent Kennedy McMahon took over, but there were good reasons for its development. Vince Jr. insisted on having a larger ring than everyone else^note Except the AWA, which also used a 20 foot ring with ropes made of, well, rope. AEW also uses a 20 foot ring, but with cables. Most independent promotions use an 18 foot ring (measured from rope to rope) with cables, WCW and ECW also used 18 foot rings, which automatically made matches that much slower as wrestlers took that much longer to simply get to one another and conversely, cause rope breaks or exploit the turnbuckles, it also made the wrestlers look proportionately smaller, leading people to make remarks like "Man, he looked bigger in WCW/TNA/ROH/etc..." when a new wrestler shows up. Though it should be pointed out that two of the "Big 4" PPV shows (or three of the "Big 5" if you include Money in the Bank) are based around multi-person Gimmick Matches, so the WWE having a bigger ring does make some sense. The WWF also had one of the single hardest rings in the business because he thought it looked nice, but several wrestlers naturally refused to bump, or in some cases even execute basic positions like the bridge on it, resulting in much lower-impact fights, less technical wrestling, and less awe-inspiring antics from what was once Antonino Rocca's home promotion. While promoting the products on Highspots.com, Harley Race credited overly hard rings to cutting his career short more than his vehicular crashes. On top of this, Jr. was oddly conservative in his insistence on using plain hemp, polyester, or jute nylon ropes rather than cables or wire ropes^note Most companies use 14ga aircraft cable inside a garden hose, which is then wrapped in colored tape. You can easily spot new cable "ropes" because you can still see the kinks in the hose. because that's what Vince Sr. used. This meant simply trying to move faster to offset the larger ring was a risky option, lest one collide with the ropes too hard and break them. The switch to plain rope after familiarizing himself to cables most infamously lead to the injury of Mark Henry. In the mid-1990s, the wrestlers and WWF staff successfully banded together and convinced McMahon to get rings with enough give for them to more easily compete with superior in-ring products^note Jim Cornette takes credit for the current design, though he didn't actually create it, it's just a modified NWA/WCW ring. Unfortunately he wasn't able to convince Vince to replaces the ropes with cables, but much of the derided "WWF style" had crystalized by this point and the other physical issues with the ring remained.
• Kamala repeatedly complained about being underpaid. After a match at SummerSlam 1992, he claims he received $13,000 and heard his opponent, The Undertaker, had received $500,000. Partly due to no one covering his hospital bills despite being a fairly popular WWE veteran, he ended up losing both of his legs to diabetes.
• Krissy Vaine was brought up to debut on an episode of WWE SmackDown. She showed up at the arena for the taping, but none of the agents she asked had a clue what she was doing that evening. It wasn't until Victoria witnessed Krissy talking to an agent that she went to get Stephanie McMahon and asked Stephanie to direct Krissy on what was happening. Krissy also wore an absolutely hideous wrestling outfit for her segment (described by her as "looking like a frigging Christmas Clown"), only to be told afterwards by producers that they wanted her in street clothes. Krissy had walked around backstage for an hour wearing her wrestling gear, and nobody had said anything to her.
• Stacy Carter was signed in 1999 but didn't debut until about six months later, and they had no idea what her Stage Name would be. She was literally waiting in the curtain to go out on TV without a clue what she was going to be called (Jeff Jarrett settled on "Miss Kitty" in the promo introducing her). She also describes the communication as being done through her husband being asked if she would do things rather than her personally (including her abrupt 2001 release).
• Molly Holly didn't know she was debuting until only a couple of hours before television - not being told by Vince or an agent personally, but rather by a seamstress asking if she had some gear she could sew Crash Holly's symbol onto. Molly had been working a completely different gimmick on dark matches as William Regal's valet Lady Ophelia, and had no idea what was going on.
• Mike "The Miz" Mizanin faced frequent hazing from veterans backstage. As part of Wrestler's Court (a Kangaroo Court used to settle backstage disputes between wrestlers), Miz was kicked out of the locker room for getting chicken crumbs on the gym bag of one of the senior members of the court. ^note (Years later, as part of a Worked Shoot, Miz stated that the wrestler in question was JBL. In reality, Miz was kicked out of the locker room by Chris Benoit. Admittedly, JBL did bully Miz that much too. When WWE told Miz to change the story following Benoit's Un-person, Miz was fine with it.) Many employees resented that Miz had come from a reality TV show, and attempted to bully him out of the company. Miz once had to change in a stadium's public bathroom amid fans wearing his merchandise. Miz had to stay out of the locker room for more than six months until The Undertaker (a noted Papa Wolf and A Father to His Men, who usually acted as the judge of the "court") saw Miz changing clothes in the hallway and rescinded his ban. ^note (The reason why Miz was banned for so long is that by wrestling tradition, only the person who imposes punishment can rescind it. Unfortunately for him, shortly after Miz got the locker-room ban, Benoit committed murder-suicide. Taker technically had no power to rescind the ban, but given his respect in the locker room, no one challenged him.)
• Gail Kim claimed in an interview after leaving the company that she and her fellow Divas often faced restrictions placed on them by management. They were frequently told to make their matches more girly and forbidden from punching one week and kicking the next. Melina and Michelle McCool were reportedly told off for doing a spot that was "too good". Gail claimed that she frequently had to sneak spots past the agents into her matches.
• Simon Dean was taken to Wrestler's Court for insulting Roddy Piper, even though Piper never felt insulted. Dean's punishment started with his belongings being destroyed in a shower, and ended with him being taken out of an onscreen role entirely. Traditional Wrestler's Court judge The Undertaker later asked Piper exactly what Simon had done to him to get "the jury" so against Dean, and Piper had no clue what Taker was talking about.
• Muhammad Hassan got taken to Wrestler's Court for refusing to sell for Sergeant Slaughter, even though that instruction came from Vince McMahon. Hassan was taken again for telling Eddie Guerrero not to use the camel clutch, the move Eddie's father had created and he briefly used in tribute of. Hassan was punished by having to pay everyone's bar tab, which ran up to $4,000. Once again, Muhammad was only following Vince's orders. Remember, Wrestler's Court was established because apparently just taking the problem to Vince got even worse results. Imagine that. This, combined with the UPN London Bombing farce, ended Hassan's career. To make things worse, when Hassan paid for the drinks, the wrestlers all at once poured their drinks to the ground as a act of spite.
• Another wrestler who suffered this was "network representative" Palmer Cannon (played by Brian Black). Rumors have circulated that WWE planned to set up a feud between him and the recently-debuted Miz, but after suffering some hazing from JBL on a foreign tour, Cannon was so distressed that he left WWE, and eventually wrestling in general.
• Developmental Divas faced vicious bullying from trainers Ivory and Jacqueline. Former developmental Diva Bobbi Billard claims that she and another woman were called to the front of the class by Ivory who announced "sluts like you all fuck your way to the top", while Jacqueline went so hard on them in training that many girls were injured and then later released. Kristal Marshall told a similar story on how she felt that her trainers resented that she came from a modeling career on The Price Is Right. Despite Kristal wanting to learn how to wrestle, Kristal claims she felt the rest of the Divas didn't want her to learn.
• When accused of abusing trainees in Deep South Wrestling (a failed farm league for WWE), Bill DeMott produced evidence that every wrongdoing of his that could be proven was done on the order of head of talent relations John Laurinaitis. Laurinaitis also ended up running off Ohio Valley Wrestling, who had been WWE's most self-sufficient and successful farm league, and American Combat Wrestling, who provided much of the material that made WWE's version of Florida Championship Wrestling a practical venture. OVW and ACW had been and remained successful local promotions without WWE's "help", but DSW closed down very quickly.
• Speaking of DeMott, in early 2015 several complaints from former WWE developmental talent ^note (the most notable being Derrick Bateman/Ethan Carter III) were brought forth about several abuses that DeMott had done as head trainer of NXT, including making the trainees do dangerous training, bullying/assaulting them, using racial and homophobic slurs, and generally encouraging sexual harassment, and that several trainees had complained to WWE management about this during their tenure with the company. WWE claims they investigated the accusations and found "no evidence of wrongdoing", and DeMott denied all of it, but resigned to save the company negative press after the accustations contiue to grow and gain more press. His departure lead to Matt Bloom replacing him as new head trainer.
• Ashley Massaro won the 2005 Diva Search and was immediately placed on TV with no wrestling training beyond how to do a monkey flip. She later revealed in an interview that she had only been trained on a per-match basis (if one looks at her matches, that explains a lot). This resulted in frequent injuries for her. She was even placed on a WrestleMania card purely because of her Playboy cover and had to compete with a broken foot. She and Melina also claimed that they spent most of the night in gorilla position not knowing if the match was going to happen.
• The Ashley Massaro case is notable because several developmental Divas still get called up to the main roster before they are ready. While not as bad as it used to be (every Diva has to train in NXT first), Eva Marie had about a month's worth of training and was put on the road as part of the Total Divas cast. She was also eventually put into the ring despite it being obvious that she was far too green. Cameron was also called up after only a few months in developmental (albeit as part of a valet role), but essentially had to train on her days off. It got to the point where she had to take time off TV just to train in NXT for about a month - but again had to return to the road quickly in fear of losing her spot on television. Other Total Divas cast member JoJo was a similar case, but a rumor about why she was cut from the Season 2 cast is that she willingly had herself Put on a Bus to focus exclusively on her training.
• WWE generally takes care of medical expenses, which is good, but are not above cutting the contracts of talent who have not made a full recovery, even if they require more medical attention for injuries received on the job. The most infamous case of this was Test, but also Russian kickboxer Anna Bogomazova, who at first was still praising WWE even after release yet later changed her tune when she realized she wasn't going to get the necessary compensation for her arm after it was injured in NXT (she didn't know about the Test case).
• While WWE generally takes care of medical expenses, the wrestlers and other onscreen talents don't get insurance, a 401(k), or any benefits, due to being independent contractors. Why this matters is that (1) the company is so isolationist and controlling with what the wrestlers get to do that they are effectively employees in all but name, and (2) the people who don't go on the road but just stay in the office 9 to 5 are employees and do get all those things.
• CM Punk revealed in a 2014 shoot interview that he suffered a concussion and passed the test by one of the WWE doctors - yet was still told to go and run the ropes in the ring just to make sure ^note (if one has a concussion, excessive physical activity is a big no-no) - and was still expected to work that night on Raw. He later found out he'd had a staph infection in his shoulders for three months after leaving - and was told he could have died.
• Another Gail Kim story: one night, she accompanied Daniel Bryan down to the ring for his match against Sheamus. As soon as she got down to the ring, she was told go to the back as she was not meant to be there for the match. She had been backstage in gorilla position right beside Vince McMahon for ten minutes and had never been told she was not to go out.
• When DSW closed down, Angelina Love was assured that she would not be fired. She relocated to Louisville and got a year's lease on a new apartment. She made her debut for OVW and was then released two days later.
• The very existence of SmackDown's Juniors Division was the result of this. Creative had some grand plan to reinvigorate the cruiserweight division that fell apart when talent relations head John Laurinaitis hired a bunch of midgets, dwarfs, and minis that creative wanted nothing to do with. This resulted in WWE promising that fans would be impressed with the talent displayed by the juniors but doing little to promote any individuals among their ranks, using them as sacrificial lambs for the purpose of generating heel heat and basically giving them just enough working dates to possibly avoid a discrimination lawsuit when they were all collectively released.
• In an effort to hold down Ring of Honor, Impact Wrestling, MLW, NWA, All Elite Wrestling, etc. while trying to prevent foreign companies such as Dragon Gate, New Japan Pro-Wrestling, CMLL, and AAA from getting a foothold in the US (or even UK), WWE made the ambitious move in 2019 of signing over 300 wrestlers, largely to exclusive five-year contracts, and spreading them across its four "brands" (Raw, SmackDown, NXT, and NXT UK). To say WWE actually had a plan for eight hours of weekly television when factoring in B Shows to said brands, that it knew what to do with more wrestlers than even WCW ever had, or that it had an actual use for every one of those bodies, would be a bald-faced lie. Luke Harper was literally not being used but held to an exclusive contract just because some company that wasn't WWE might think of using him for something, and severe roster bloat is partly why Kenny Omega made no serious effort to sign. It has directly lead to production issues as well when inactive wrestlers make their desire to be used known, which has increased the number of those aforementioned last-minute script rewrites.
• The Elimination Chamber has become one of WWE's most cherished and long-running Gimmick Matches in the company's history, to the point of receiving an entire pay-per-view built around it. However, as this recounting from ESPN illustrates, the inaugural match, which served as the main event for the 2002 Survivor Series PPV, would not be a smooth ride, featuring wrestlers performing in an unfamiliar environment, botched entrances, and one very severe injury:
  • Triple H developed the initial concept, inspired by WCW's iconic WarGames match.^note Triple H originally wanted WWE to ouright bring back WarGames, but Vince McMahon refused to bring it in; while Triple H would book WarGames while he booked the brand, WWE would not bring in WarGames to the main rooster till Triple H was completely in charge of creative. It would start with two wrestlers in the ring, with new wrestlers entering in five-minute intervals from the four "unbreakable" plexiglass pods built into the chamber.
  • The Chamber was a massive 16-feet-tall dome-like cage of steel and chains, featuring an elevated steel floor built on-level with the ring. It looked impressive, but it was where the problems began: none of the wrestlers in the Elimination Chamber match (Triple H, Shawn Michaels, Booker T, Kane, Rob Van Dam, and Chris Jericho) even saw the cage until they arrived at the venue, and nobody was pleased when they did. Jericho later called it "clunky and dangerous", and Kane singled out the chains surrounding the ring.
  • Just moments before the entrances were to begin, Michaels realized that they hadn't put together a finish. Triple H reassured him by saying "Oh, I'll call it out there. No worries." This anecdote is worth noting due to what later occurs during the match itself.
  • The match began with Triple H and RVD in the ring as the first two to have to work within the Chamber. Triple H took the first bump on the steel floor, and then was slammed repeatedly into the steel door of the Chamber, causing it to fly open. When describing those first bumps, Triple H said "I remember the first time I hit the chain wall, I crumbled to the ground, like 'Oh my god.'"
  • Despite this, the early minutes of the match went relatively well, with Jericho and Booker T entering the match as intended. RVD even produced the famous "Spider-Man" spot, where he grabbed onto the chain link wall of the Chamber, then performed a cross-body onto Jericho. However, the next big spot involving Van Dam would mark the first moment where things would go seriously wrong.
  • RVD climbed to the top rope for his Five-Star Frog Splash, but then decided to climb all the way on top of the pod behind him. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to fully stand up, and when he came off the pod, his shin came down right across Triple H's neck and throat, injuring his trachea. As Triple H writhed on the mat, the horrible realization dawned on everyone that this was not just a sell-job. Referee Earl Hebner would signal to the back that something was wrong, and Triple H would find himself barely able to breathe and talk.
  • This development was bad enough, but things would somehow get worse. As the match continued, the next pod opened. The intended entrant was Shawn Michaels, but instead it was Kane's pod that was opened, causing whatever everyone had planned out to be tossed out the window. As Jericho recounted, they had to call it all on the fly, and Triple H noted that, between his injury and the botched entrance order, "the worst possible scenario (was) happening at that moment."
  • Finally, Michaels entered the match, and things would proceed with Booker T, Kane, and Jericho being eliminated before the match came down to Michaels and Triple H, continuing their personal feud going back to SummerSlam. It's at this point where the previous anecdote about Triple H calling the finish in the ring comes back; it would now be hard to do that with Triple H's throat injury. "(Shawn's) waiting for me to call it, only I'm like 'I can't, really' and I'm trying to talk to the referee. It was a complete and utter disaster," Triple H later said.
  • Pushing through the pain, Triple H would work through the final five minutes of the match, with the finish seeing Michaels hit Sweet Chin Music to win the match and the World Heavyweight Championship. The post-match scenes of Michaels celebrating his victory, with the title draped over his shoulder and confetti raining from the ceiling, remain an indelible image in Survivor Series history, and a major highlight of HBK's second run in WWE.
  • For Triple H, meanwhile, the match was only the beginning of the drama. He would find himself spending 24 hours in the hospital due to his injury. He originally refused to stay, only to be told by the doctors that if he did leave, his throat would've swollen shut and he'd choke to death. He would stay and get treated, before getting released and flying out the following day.
  • Despite everything, the first Elimination Chamber match would be well-received and would spawn one of WWE's staple gimmick matches. The match would return at the following year's SummerSlam and it would be refined as the years went on, eventually culminating in it receiving its own annual event. Perhaps Chris Jericho summed up the whole endeavor best when he said "It was all of this comedy of errors that you look back on and it's just like, 'Holy shit, I can't believe it became what it became,' because the first one, technically, was a disaster."

TNA/Impact Wrestling

Financial abuse was sadly incredibly common in TNA when it was backed by the Jarretts and Dixie Carter, an (unaccountable) heiress to a million-dollar Texas energy company. In fact, TNA won The Wrestling Observer Newsletter's "Worst Promotion of the Year" award every year from 2007 to 2017 - eleven times in a row - specifically for this reason. ^note (The award is based on the business side of running a wrestling promotion; booking quality has no real bearing on which promotion wins this award. TNA actually won both "Worst Promotion of the Year" and "Best Weekly TV Show" for Impact! in 2012.)

• From the very beginning, Bob Ryder, Jeff Jarrett, and Jerry Jarrett gathered up the sponsors and financial backers necessary to send the company straight to pay-per-view, only to see those businesses go under before they could get all the money they needed. On the very first show, the ring ropes were broken by 450 lbs wrestler Cheex during a dark match, meaning the first half-hour of the PPV proper had no wrestling, as promos were cut to give the ring crew enough time to make repairs. Without backing, these PPVs could not keep the company afloat. Said heiress stepped in, but profit would not be made until getting a deal with Spike TV.
• Jesse Neal caused an uproar when he tweeted that he had qualified for food stamps.
• There was a stink around Shawn Hernandez after he had to pay his own hospital neck operation. Then Homicide suffered a groin pull and attempted to rehab it because TNA wouldn't pay for the necessary surgery. According to reports, many wrestlers didn't get injuries checked out because the TNA office refused to pay for them. The procedure is to front the wrestler the necessary money and then take it out of their paycheck. For reference, previous "national promotions" - WCW, WWE, even the perpetually-broke ECW - paid for injuries suffered on the job outright.
• Jesse Sorensen suffered a broken neck at Against All Odds 2012 from Zema Ion^note Now known as Joaquin Wilde of NXT. Sorensen could not even walk and his family had to sell their restaurant after the medical bills TNA neglected to help with drove them into bankruptcy, despite assurance from the company president that expenses would be handled. "Handled" turned out to mean Jesse working them off "backstage" after managing to walk again, against all odds. This setup saw him take two other jobs to make ends meet, then TNA released Sorensen to save money. Surprisingly, he would keep beating odds and return to the ring. Unsurprisingly, it was not a TNA ring (he had also been wrestling for NWA FUW and later wrestled for Ring of Honor, U Know Pro, and Paragon Pro, among other indies).
• The Knockouts fared no better: Daffney took one too many injuries thanks to TNA's half-baked booking - most infamously, getting butt-dropped by the quarter-ton Rosie Lottalove - which put a quick end to her career revival. Hope the gag was worth it! (Adding insult to injury, her super-tasteless bumps did not even get picked up properly by TNA’s less than stellar camera crew). Daffney was also told that the bills would be taken care of. After a few weeks, TNA then turned around and told her to pay them herself. She suffered a concussion, but was told to work a match anyway - and when she refused, she was dropped from scheduled photoshoots for "refusing" to work.
• Lisa Marie Varon said that the company was horribly run and in 2010, she was openly criticizing the low pay for the Knockouts division on social media. She left while she had just begun a new storyline, but she returned a few months later presumably getting a pay rise. What's more is that because the company decided she should come out with a pet spider called Poison, there had to be a handler on standby in case of emergencies. This handler was paid more than the wrestlers. She also said there was barely any advertising for any shows, and she got a shock when she saw how small their crowds were.
• When Gail Kim's contract was up, she was forced to leave TNA and return to WWE because she could not afford to stay. Despite being a proven ratings draw and one of the company's top stars, TNA offered her a ridiculously low amount to re-sign. She had to be talked into signing with WWE because she didn't want to leave TNA. However, TNA welcomed her back with open arms once she quit WWE over mistreatment.
• Taylor Wilde revealed in an interview that while she was the reigning Knockouts' Champion, she was also working a minimum wage job at Sunglass Hut. She resigned immediately ^note (from Sunglass Hut; she stayed with TNA for two additional years) once she was recognised by a fan. Likewise, ODB was working a second job as a bartender because she couldn't make ends meet on her paltry TNA salary.
• Awesome Kong claimed in a 2013 shoot interview that TNA once stiffed her for a bill. She also said she heard that Dixie Carter said in a business meeting "well, let them go home and starve". Kong also claimed that she was denied a minor pay raise at the same time TNA went mad with the hiring in 2010 (see below). Bear in mind that Kong wanted the pay raise so that she could afford a car - she was already a 2-time Knockouts Champion and at the time was one of the reigning Knockouts Tag Team Champions (she had been in the main event of cards as such too).
• TNA argued for the low undercard pay with the fact they are on a television show pulling a million viewers on a low day, which should increase drawing power on the indies. The problem here was that TNA banned its workers from appearing for indie promotions that were being taped for DVD or internet PPV and charged promotions to use "its" talent (which it claims are independent contractors rather than employees). If a TNA talent isn't being used on television, then they're not likely to get many bookings elsewhere as promoters won't be able to justify the cost of bringing them in with DVD or iPPV sales. SHIMMER's Allison Danger has speculated they paid more for TNA talent than TNA actually paid the talent they charged them for. Former jobber Delirious found he had made more money on the indies prior to TNA and went back.
• In 2010, a huge sum of money was spent on hiring former WWE and WCW talents. These included Jeff Hardy (who was facing drug trafficking charges), Scott Hall (battling alcoholism and depression), and numerous others well past their prime. Hulk Hogan was also brought in on a ridiculously high salary ($10,000 per appearance reportedly), while many of the TNA talent who had never worked for WWE or were lower on the card were being paid only three figures per appearance (when they were being used at all). Generation Me (better known as The Young Bucks) were rumoured to only be making $200 per appearance. Additionally, reality TV "stars" such as Johnny Fairplay (who got health insurance despite making very few appearances) and J-Woww were brought in for considerable amounts of money; the latter was especially funny when you consider Jersey Shore aired opposite Impact. This was actually Author Appeal on the part of Dixie Carter, a self-admitted reality TV addict.
• Knockouts' Champion Madison Rayne had to miss a series of house shows in 2010 and it was rumored it was because she couldn't afford the travel costs. At the time, she was rumored to be one of the lowest-paid people in the company (she claimed she only sat out the shows to allow some lingering injuries to heal, but nobody believed her and felt she was covering for the company. As one person put it, "what was she supposed to say, 'I'm their champion and still broke'?").
• Wrestlers (particularly among the X Division) who attempted to tone down highspots for a safer style were sanctioned by the company's road agents. In addition, wrestlers suffering from concussions were placed under considerable pressure to get back into the ring (one, Shannon "Daffney" Spruill, was pulled from publicity appearances after refusing to wrestle in such a state). This was during the same time that the company used a concussion suffered by Ken Anderson (who received the legitimate injury from a mistimed chairshot by a fucked-up Jeff Hardy) as a TV storyline.
• Dixie Carter, the former owner of the company, was not even aware of Christopher Daniels' release when he asked her about it.
• On the topic of Daniels, TNA was known for making other companies who want to book its contracted talent go through its front office (fair enough, except the whole "independent contractor" thing means this should have been unnecessary) and also insisted on the direction booking must go in even after the talent has been secured. Again, fair enough if one thinks that it would be at the behest of protecting their talent, but their priorities seemed questionable at times, as TNA insisted The Motor City Machine Guns could not job to Ring of Honor's Tag Team Champions The Kings of Wrestling (Chris Hero and Claudio Castagnoli), but allowed Pro Wrestling Guerilla to make their own X Division Champion Christopher Daniels job to Chris Hero, one half of those very same Kings of Wrestling.
• According to Bully Ray, TNA's biggest problem was promotion, or lack thereof, for shows. Wrestlers tried to help with this: for example, Frankie Kazarian set up a deal to get wraps for the TNA production trucks so people would know when they were in town, but was rejected when he tried to get "management" themselves to go through with it. Tara apparently spent $6,000 promoting a show in Chicago she thought enough word wasn't getting out about and since she had a pizza place there, threw a party for the other wrestlers while she was at it. Not only did Dixie not acknowledge Tara with so much as a thank you, the wrestlers were then given the directive to promote a competing pizzeria!
• At the end of 2013, the excesses of the Hogan/Bischoff era finally became too much for Dixie's parents, prompting them to put Dixie on a budget. This forced TNA to low-ball several of their top stars, including AJ Styles, forcing them to leave for better pay. Panda Energy would continue to gradually decrease their financial support for TNA until divesting themselves from the company completely in 2015. This was one of the contributing factors to making 2016 TNA's worst year financially.
• TNA lost its television deal with Spike TV after publicly firing Vince Russo to save face with Spike, then re-hiring him in secret (a poorly-kept secret). They were found out after Dixie Carter accidentally forwarded one of her Vince Russo emails to a wrestling journalist. ^note  To make things Harsher in Hindsight, Russo would go on to trash Dixie and the company despite the fact Dixie went to the bat for him. During that time TNA got a TV deal with Destination America. However they would later lose that deal after Dixie Carter in a fit of anger over her feeling Destination America not showing other aspects of their ratings in a press release, wrote a angry email where she called the executives "Dummies" and then accidentally sent it to network brass; making the exact same mistake she did with the Russo and Spike e-mail situation.^note  The President of the company apparently responded to the email saying "I'm sorry you feel that way".The loss of the television deal proved to be one of the major difficulties for TNA in the following years, both for the loss of revenue and for their inability to find a permanent home for Impact! until they were bought out by Anthem.
• There were a lot of reports about both TNA talent and the production team being paid late. The issue became so bad that Tazz eventually left the company over it - with production, at one time they had so much back pay that the entire team threatened to walk until they got paid then and there. As for the talent, most are on a per-appearance deal while the major stars are on a salary. Said major stars had so much back pay that Matt Hardy tried to prove that TNA did pay their talent by tweeting a picture of the checks paid to him for several months of salary. What he didn't realize is that it also highlighted that TNA was still paying their talent late, which is both unprofessional and irresponsible on so many levels.
• 2016 was considered both the promotion's best and worst year specifically for this reason. Despite putting on the most compelling programming Impact! has had in a while, including the massively popular "BROKEN" Matt Hardy gimmick, TNA was hemorrhaging money like no tomorrow and closer to bankruptcy than it had ever been before, unable to do tapings due to a lack of funds to pay the wrestlers and crew, and inadvertently falling into debt with several creditors as a result. Towards the end of the year, they were also hit by a string of lawsuits, including a tax lien from the state of Tennessee and one by their own company president (at the time), Billy Corgan; Corgan had loaned money to TNA several times to keep things running in exchange for minority shares, under the impression that Dixie would eventually sell to him. Dixie actually had no such intentions - she made him company president to placate him and then started shopping around for another buyer, including, reportedly, WWE. When Corgan found this out, relations between them soured and he was eventually booted out of the company after his lawsuit failed. Eventually Dixie was forced to sell to Anthem^note However no money was exchanged, TNA was so far in debt with Anthem that Anthem basically took the promotion itself as payment, retaining only a paltry 5% stake, and was subsequently banned from tapings and Kicked Upstairs, as all of these events had caused the talent to hate her. Since Anthem took over, the numerous pay issues and production drama that was breathlessly reported on a near-weekly basis have all but disappeared.^note One negative to Anthem's ownership was trying to claim the above-mentioned "BROKEN" gimmick as their Intellectual Property to prevent Matt Hardy from using it in WWE, even though the gimmick was entirely Matt's creation. This was condemned by basically everyone in the wrestling business, even Jim Cornette, who was probably the biggest critic of the gimmick, told Anthem exec Ed Nordholm to his face that he was a complete ass for trying to do this. To his credit Nordholm (who had no experience with professional wrestling at all until this point) admitted that he didn't understand that a wrestling gimmick isn't the same thing as a character in a fictional work and dropped any claims to the "BROKEN" gimmick, and Matt is free to use it in AEW.

Ring of Honor

Ring of Honor has a loyal fan base for its wrestling but a history of production trouble, especially after losing their starting distributor, RF Video, as owner of the video company and ROH co-founder Rob Feinstein, was caught on camera trying to have sex with a 14-year-old boy. Despite dropping their main method of getting their product out, TNA still pulled all the wrestlers they had under contract out of ROH, including ROH Pure Wrestling Champion AJ Styles, which as CM Punk pointed out, was a breach of contract on TNA's part, wrestlers signing on the deal they could work anywhere else not on pay-per-view or owned by WWE.

A few efforts to rekindle a working relationship between the two companies would be made but always fell through. In particular, fear over a snowstorm resulted in another TNA pullout that resulted in OVW having to bail ROH out and a pullout over ROH trying to get a video on demand service with Dish Network. It would come back to Dish Network in 2017 when Impact Wrestling (previously TNA), purchased by Anthem, got Dish to drop an ROH show over their own dispute with Matt Hardy.

• Since losing RF, ROH ended up selling the merchandise of other companies on their site to make ends meet. This setback did at least help SHIMMER get off the ground.
• 2004 in particular was remembered for long delays in between a show being held and the show being available for viewing for those not able to attend, as well as DVDs for events becoming available in the wrong order.
• A 2004 production issue unrelated to RF Video occured during the infmaous unplanned scramble cage dives done by Teddy Hart, were he climbed and leaped off the cage so many times in rapid succession that Hart got sick to his stomach and projective vomitted not only on the fans but also into the ring ROH needed to use for the rest of the week.
• A tent had to be pitched for Generation Next due to ROH's armory reservation becoming invalid when war was declared on Iraq.
• ROH originally didn't have professional contracts because it wanted to promote based on an open-door system. That came to an end when Ric Flair no-showed an event without giving notice. Since then, the company has repeatedly tried to introduce more controlling clauses into its contracts, only to relent in the face of backlash from talent.
• Later, ROH's other co-founder and head booker, Gabe Sapolsky, would be fired by Cary Silkin for putting together a less-than-tasteful and widely-mocked angle involving simulated rape by Larry Sweeney using Bobby Dempsey and Allison Danger. While this one angle was bad, consensus among fans and critics is that ROH's booking as a whole suffered a drop in quality with Sapolsky's departure, a Broken Base on the question if it ever recovered. This also lead to an end of ROH's working relationship with Full Impact Pro and likely hasn't done them any favors with Dragon Gate, who they've also broken up with. Dragon Gate USA went on to become part of the WWN with FIP, EVOLVE, and SHINE after ROH pulled out. [[note]](Sapolsky supporters decreased in number largely after being underwhelmed by the results of his DG stint, but that could be an entry unto itself.)
• It was thought ROH's production troubles might turn around in 2011 when they got a deal with Sinclair Broadcast Group. Instead, production slid further downhill for the next two years. First of all, despite getting a deal with a television company, Ring of Honor did not have one broadcast-worthy camera to its name for the entirety of 2011. Often, the ring crew and agents had to construct production equipment with little notice. But worse, they just as often had to quickly find, rent, and/or purchase equipment locally that they could only hope would work. The first supposedly broadcast-worthy camera they were given ended up falling apart during the first shoot with it.
• Part of the deal was a new facility to shoot its main shows in, which never came to be. There was also supposed to be a building for their new wrestling school, which was delayed until they finally got a warehouse, which was not the "state of the art facility" ROH had believed they would receive based on the proposal Sinclair had purchased them on to start with.
• The Ring of Honor website was supposed to be upgraded to stream its own pay-per-views, but instead ended up relying on a string of third parties - there was a string because they kept getting replaced. They kept getting replaced because on these third-party-hosted shows, sound was inconsistent: sometimes not playing at all, or other times out of sync with the action. The action itself blanked out entirely on three PPVs in a row during 2012, two of which were the highly-anticipated and critically acclaimed by live viewers at ringside Boarder Wars and Best In The World. Show Down In The Sun in particular was reproduced better on YouTube.
• Partly due to having no ROH shows before 2010 on DVD, a streaming service, television show, and pay per views, SHIMMER DVDs started outselling ROH ones in 2011. To capitalize on this, it was decided to cut SHIMMER out of ROH entirely and start an entirely new women's division from scratch^note This was actually two separate moves done by two different people, Jim Cornette was the one that cut off the DVD sales of other companies (saying "If you're running a McDonalds you're not going to help promote Burger King and Wendy's, right?"), Delirious (who was actually the booker, Cornette just ran the TV production) started the women's division because ROH had a pretty thin roster and he figured a women's division would help fill out the cards and eat some TV time. Of course he neglected the fact that the pool of female talent not already under contract to WWE and TNA was more like a puddle... which basically meant ROH had no women besides Mia Yim for nearly a year. Even after the division was officially started and Mayu Iwatani flew in from World Wonder Ring STARDOM in Japan to help make it a success, she found herself with not a whole lot to do.
• Michael Elgin and Kyle O'Reilly were featured prominently, but the bookers were reluctant to actually pull the trigger and push them because Sinclair Broadcast Group refused to pay for their work visas, meaning they could be deported at any time. While Elgin and O'Reilly seemingly got around the issue by marrying US citizens, Seleziya Sparx was barred from returning to the country after returning to Canada. ROH was content to just replace her with Taeler Hendrix, but then the same thing happened to Elgin in spite of his marriage to MsChif. ROH did put in the effort to get Elgin back into the US this time but it wasn't enough, as he publicly quit in protest to the company's mismanagement, only returning to do a favor to the bookers, who he didn't consider responsible for his troubles, or due to ROH's working relationship with New Japan. Even on the New Japan front, longtime wrestler for both companies Jushin Thunder Liger suddenly found himself unable to enter the country due to visa issues, forcing Guerrillas of Destiny to fill in for him and YOSHI-HASHI at Supercard of Honor XI. The idea behind a "work visa" is that the place one works for will help pay for at least some of it, but since pro wrestlers in the US are "independent contractors" Sinclair felt no obligation to do so.
• Over two years, they lost at least two ring crews who were overworked due to poor scheduling suggested by Sinclair, who also raised ticket and merchandise pricing higher than the established Ring of Honor staff suggested. The ticket prices at ROH's debut in Charleston, West Virginia cost more than WWE SmackDown, for instance, while second row or sometimes even ringside used to be equal to SmackDown's general admission prices in the previous HD Net era even when attendance ended up in the thousands. Furthermore, Sinclair's deal resulted in ROH running several new venues while visiting former hotbeds much less frequently, meaning they had the tough sale of trying to win the loyalty of largely new audiences with ill-advised prices.
• Adam Pearce was kept out of Ring of Honor, be it in a wrestling, booking, or commentary role, because Ross Abrams on the merchandise team did not like him. Not a booker, owner, other wrestler, or even someone in charge of talent relations, but a guy who sells stuff somehow had enough sway to keep out a guy whose stuff he should have been selling^note Pearce had previously worked for ROH and left because of disagreements with Abrams and fellow office stooge Syd Eck, according to Jim Cornette Pearce's resignation letter to Cary Silken opened with "First of all, fuck Syd and Ross!" Cornette has also mentioned in interviews an incident where Charlie Haas threatened to knock Abrams out, which Abrams didn't take seriously until Cornette warned him "He's not playing around, he will knock you the fuck out. I'll have to fire him, but you'll still be unconscious". They were a hair's breath from losing Pearce to TNA all because of a guy who wasn't even that good at his job.
• Ring Of Honor lost a sponsorship deal with Hooters, who were also going to be giving free food to attendees at ROH events, because part of the deal involved ROH hosting one single chicken wing eating contest that Sinclair Broadcast Group did not think was worth the liability.
• ROH gave up a national television deal in Canada on the Fight Network for the sake of pleasing a local station in Buffalo, New York. This one was especially baffling since Toronto has traditionally been ROH's most profitable venue. The deal was put off on the assumption someone in Buffalo would complain, but no one in Buffalo did.^note This isn't quite as silly as it sounds. Because of Buffalo's proximity to Canada's largest city, Toronto, Buffalo's broadcast stations basically act as the affiliates of the American TV networks for all of Canada and are carried on many Canadian cable systems (this works both ways, the Toronto affiliates of CBC and CTV are carried by Buffalo-area cable providers). Sinclair's Fox network station in Buffalo, WUTV, gets such high viewership in Canada that a large chunk of it's ad time is bought by Canadian companies, leading American viewers to constantly see ads for businesses in a foreign country. In other words, the carriage fees that WUTV brings in, along with access to what would be the third largest TV market in the U.S. if it were about 90 miles to the south, was worth FAR more to Sinclair than a wrestling company drawing triple digit crowds. TNA ended up with the Fight Network deal instead^note Anthem Sports & Entertainment, owners of the Fight Network, would purchase TNA outright and rename it Impact Wrestling, as detailed above in the TNA/Impact folder, though ROH eventually found its way on after five years.
• A good deal of that local fanbase ended up jumping over to other promotions (Dragon Gate USA was held up as a healthy alternative, unsurprisingly). For one example, the Bell Vornon Rostraver Ice Garden was deemed cheaper than the ECW\2300 Arena in Pittsburgh. This switch and poor planning once led to an Ice Garden show with no heat, where the ring was literally frozen on the ground, leading to the striking visual of Davey Richards and Michael Elgin giving off steam as they wrestled, memorable to the 300 in attendance as what fans not turned off just on principle after the change of venue ended up turned off by prospect of freezing.
• Most injuries and other physical issues were handled by Alex Shelley, who is a certified trainer. The problem was that Shelley wasn't hired to be ROH's physical rehabilitation trainer, but rather took it upon himself in addition to his wrestling duties out of concern for the rest of the locker room. Flip Gordon, who mysteriously became very injury-prone in ROH, once had to have his shoulder relocated by Joey Matthews, Brody King, and Bandido when there was no medical personel to see him. Kelly Klein wrestled at least one match with an undiagnosed concussion.
• On November 3, 2012, Steve Corino suffered an injury at a house show and not one of Ring of Honor's officials had the means to take him to be evaluated by a doctor. This incident lead to Jim Cornette not only leaving the company, but wrestling in general! (Fan demand would lead him to make some one-off appearances at various shows, though ROH did not benefit from it.) In October 2019, lack of care for Jay Lethal's broken arm was the final straw for Joey Matthews, who also left professional wrestling in an even noisier fashion.
• The 2016 Conquest Tour was almost cut short due to an airplane catching fire in San Antonio.
• The 2016 Reach For The Sky tour's mere announcement led to Preston City Wrestling ending its deal with ROH, PCW officials claimed to be met with three weeks of silence after trying to contact ROH over a potential scheduling conflict, while ROH released a statement of already agreeing not to work together that year with hope the door was open for deals further in the future. Either way, the fact there were simultaneous shows lead to backlash from the UK fans.
• Increased production budget meant decreased budget elsewhere, such as security. Bully Ray violated company policy regarding his handling of a fan off-camera at a June 2019 show, where he took matters into his own hands specifically because of a lack of security.
• Finally, due to a combination of the collapse of the partnerships with New Japan Pro Wrestling and CMLL, fan apathy, Triple H basically creating a better and far more popular version of ROH (with many former ROH stars) in NXT, a near lack of enough contracted talent to even fill out a card^note Thanks to their 3 biggest stars (Cody Rhodes and the Young Bucks, along with Kenny Omega and Adam Page) leaving to form AEW and the aforementioned Triple H signing every indy worker with a pulse and a clean arrest record, and the COVID-19 pandemic, ROH's parent company Sinclair Broadcasting (who were going through financial problems of their own) decided to pull the plug. In Novemeber 2021 the promotion was placed on hiatus with a promise to return "sometime in the spring of 2022" (likely the Supercard of Honor PPV held during Wrestlemania weekend, as the venue had already been booked), while at the same time putting the company up for sale. All Elite Wrestling co-founder/CEO Tony Khan purchased the company^note Khan paid for the company out of pocket and as of now, AEW and ROH are legally separate entities, albeit ones essentially owned by the same person for a as-yet unknown price (though revealed in Sinclair cooperate documents to be no more than $9.6 million^note  For context, WWE owner Vince McMahon reportedly paid $2.5 million for the far more well known among wrestling fans WCW and it's far bigger video library in 2001 (a little over $4 million in 2022 dollars)) in March of 2022. Khan would reboot ROH as an AEW sub-promotion in March of 2023, with episodes being shown on the Honor Club streaming service. The Troubled Production didn't end with the new ownership, when TNT went to Khan asking for two more hours of wrestling programming he offered them ROH, to which TNT said "Thanks, but no thanks", giving us a third AEW show in Collision instead. To make things worse, expected ROH top guy Jay Briscoe was killed in a car accident a few weeks before the relaunch.

WCW

The now-defunct WCW is defunct for a reason. There are far too many reasons to detail on just this page, but it sums up in the following:

• Horribly-amateur booking and an overemphasis on "comedy" sketches and Gimmick Matches.
• Backstage politics. The veteran stable hired by Eric Bischoff, unsurprisingly, couldn't put on good matches and didn't want to lose face on live television, so they buried the up-and-coming talent through various - and often convoluted - means. (See the "Fingerpoke of Doom" below.) Hulk Hogan and Kevin Nash booked their own matches, put themselves over, then held up Turner Entertainment for even more money. In the end, the "Monday Night War" was a war between the past and the future of WCW, and management always picked the past.
  DDT: Hogan v. his, Yawn, weekly babble:
  · Hogan is getting booed heavier than Vince does
  · Hogan is accompanied by Bischoff, Brian Adams, Vincent, and Ed Harrison Leslie.
  · I don't want to see these guys...what's on RAW?
  · Oh no, Hogan is making a sequel to Assault on Devil's Island
  · Hogan is claiming that he provided Hall and Nash the direction that they needed.
  · Gee, Hogan's the person to accuse someone of having no talent.
  · Now Hogan is saying that other people are old and gray-haired.
• Poor talent relations. Steve Austin, The Undertaker, Mick Foley, Triple H, Edge, Kane, Chris Jericho, and Eddie Guerrero. Those 8 names drew billions of dollars for Vince McMahon. All 8 of them were either turfed, ran off, or given the "creative has nothing for you" treatment by WCW^note You could certainly add Scott Hall and Kevin Nash to that list too, if not for the fact that leaving allowed them to do the huge angle of them coming back that made the company profitable for the first time ever, so we'll give WCW a pass on those two names. Way to pick and choose a roster, Eric. Not that Bischoff was the only one guilty in this regard, Jim Herd thought it was a good idea to just hand over top draw (and really only draw) Ric Flair over to the WWF for 18 months.
• The Fabulous Freebirds defeated Doom for the World Tag Team Title on February 24, 1991; then lost them to the Steiner Brothers on February 18, 1991 (aired on TV on March 9th). No, that wasn't a typo, The Other Wiki even lists it as a -6 day reign. This blatant violation of kayfabe, and other incidents like it, was the main catalyst in the WCW-NWA relationship falling apart.^note It also left Pro Wrestling Illustrated, a magazine that normally enforces kayfabe to the letter, with really no other choice but to throw up their hands and just say "Yep, shit's fake." And then made sure to never ever mention it again.
  • Speaking of which, the infamous Disney Tapings have their own page on The Other Wiki.
• Randy Savage, Scott Hall, and Scott Steiner were so juiced-up and blitzed that they couldn't see straight. While Hall was appeased because he was an important witness when it came to defending WCW from WWF's claims of "copyright infringement", Steiner in particular was notorious for threatening his co-workers' lives (he very nearly clawed out DDP's eyes in a brawl), for which he was not punished.
  • For that matter it became common backstage with how when WCW would punish someone like Steiner, it would be a suspension with pay which basically means there was no real punishment. It got so bad with that, they even made a on-air subtle joke about it: while dealing with delinquent wrestlers, on-air commissioner Ernie "The Cat" Miller declares that if they mess up, he'll have them arrested, because if he sends them home someone at the office might pay them.
• Endless Ratings Stunts. The worst of these was David Arquette winning the WCW World Heavyweight Title to help promote the movie Ready to Rumble. Arquette, a long-time wrestling fan, was queasy at the prospect of beating legitimate contenders for the title. He knew that he wasn't qualified to hold the title and that fan response would be overwhelmingly negative^note He was right, of course, and while it wasn't the main reason why the film was a complete flop it certainly didn't help. Jeff Jarrett's involvement in this fiasco also basically destroyed his (already pretty shaky) credibility among wrestling fans, Diamond Dallas Page is well liked enough that his role in this mess is usually quietly overlooked. Arquette ended up donating all of the money he earned to the families of deceased wrestlers and to Darren Drozdov, a wrestler who had suffered permanent paralysis after a move gone wrong. For this reason and his aforesaid vocal objection to being given the title, Arquette himself usually gets a pass from wrestling fans for his involvement in this storyline, with anger being directed more towards upper management for putting on the idea in the first place. Reportedly this debacle only came about because Tony Shiavone sarcastically blurted out "Why don't we just put the title on him?" and Russo thought he was serious and loved the idea.
• KISS were paid $500,000 to put on a concert that not only was the lowest-rated WCW Monday Nitro segment of the night, but one of the lowest-rated segments of the entire 1990s. WCW paid James Brown $25,000 to perform at SuperBrawl 2000 and then neglected to mention he would be on the pay-per-view, ensuring no one bought it to see him.
• Having Vince Russo in charge meant that anything could happen at any time. It would take a 300-page book to discuss the oeuvre of Russo, but his article is a good place to start.
• Promotion tactics bordering on the completely awful - matches often weren't booked for Nitro until the last minute, and at least one pay-per-view was aired without any matches booked ahead of time.
• It's hard enough to get guys over when you're trying. When your main commentator Tony Schiavone is regularly burying the large majority of the roster, the same roster he's supposed to be supporting against the nWo, and telling the paying audience they don't need to know about more than one match on a PPV, it looks like you're trying to lose viewers.
• The Fingerpoke Of Doom - a title changed hands because one guy was literally knocked down by a finger poke to the chest. The top title, in the center of what should have been a hot feud, pitted directly against a high-caliber main event!^note This really wouldn't have been too bad had they actually stuck with the original plan, which was Goldberg beating the ever-loving shit out of Hogan, Nash, and anyone else that got in his way and getting his belt back. All he got was a win over Scott Hall in a "taser match" before Nash and Hogan politicked their way out of it. Contrary to popular belief (and it's a popular belief because Nash himself keeps repeating it) Goldberg did not kill this angle by putting his arm through a limousine window, that happened a year later.
• WCW had 240 wrestlers on its roster, half of which it had no intention of using and simply bought out so the WWF couldn't use them either. Theoretically, this questionable business practice would not lead to production trouble, but WCW still paid for plane tickets and road expenses for workers they had no intention of using! The number ballooned to 265 when wrestlers such as Honky Tonk Man realized WCW was a good place to get paid for doing nothing. People call TNA WCW's spiritual successor for this very reason: the sheer waste on display is phenomenal.^note AEW, a company that basically comes right and says they're the spiritual successor to WCW, is reportedly doing the same thing.
• WCW decided to sell the merchandise of its wrestlers at a loss, particularly Hogan's. It was rumored that Hogan got revenge by fixing it so the residuals belonging to Sting dolls, Goldberg dolls, etc. were diverted to him. Chris Jericho had proof in receipt that the royalties to his dolls were going to Kevin Nash.
  • Nash claims that he never received a merchandise or royalty check while working for WCW, nor did he expect one as merch and royalties weren't included in his contract^note Nash, having worked for WCW before and knowing how disorganized it was from top to bottom, made sure to get a contract that was simply (X) money for (Y) appearances. So it's anyone's guess where that money actually went.
• WCW implemented an injury policy that would slash a wrestler's pay in half if they were injured for too long to keep injury fakers in check. The problem was that chief injury faker Hulk Hogan had guaranteed pay in his contract so this did nothing to stop him, and instead led to an influx of wrestlers getting addicted on painkillers in order to return from injury before they were ready, most notoriously one Eddie Guerrero.
• Ultimate Warrior was given a trapdoor so he could "teleport" as part of his new gimmick, and WCW nearly fired Davey Boy Smith for believing he was faking an injury after falling on said trapdoor almost left him permanently unable to walk. Warrior was not only given this setup, but was paid $1 million to appear on no more than five shows a month. In the case of Davey Boy, not only was he nearly paralyze, the long term damage contribute to his already bad addiction issues that would leave him dead at 39 only a few years later.
• The World War 3 pay-per-view's main event was a massive battle royal with 20 men in each ring, with the selling point being "a giant in each ring"; as in, Hulk Hogan would have to fight a giant no matter which ring he was in. In the end, due to a pileup of problems, Hogan himself was billed as one of the giants, despite being the shortest of The Outsiders.
  • The October 23, 1995 episode of Nitro debuted a costumed giant known as The Yeti (or "THE YE-TAY!"). The plan was to have him be played by Giant González — the same one from that infamous WrestleMania IX match with The Undertaker. However, González pulled out due to visa issues, so Ron Reis stood in for him, wrapped up like a mummy with the hopes of unwrapping him later to reveal González.
  • Then the Yeti ran into the main event of Halloween Havoc 1995 and became a joke by attacking Hogan with a double bearhug◊ alongside The Giant. As a result, The Yeti was scrapped and Ron Reis was repackaged into The Super Giant Ninja for World War 3... but the Yeti was still advertised as one of the giants.
  • González's visa issues did not stop, and eventually he was dropped altogether. Plan B was to have the giants be The Giant, The Yeti and The One Man Gang — the latter of whom was dropped despite filming promos for it and appearing at the World War 3 battle royal anyway. Plan C for this slowly-disintegrating mess was Giant Haystacks as "Loch Ness", a British wrestling legend far past his physical and athletic prime at that point. That also fell through due to scheduling conflicts, so because advertisements promised three giants, Hogan was billed as one.
  • Then came the match itself, which was supposed to end with The Giant eliminating Hogan clean by throwing him over the top rope and Randy Savage winning the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. Then Hogan changed the finish mid-match by telling The Giant to push him under the bottom rope; as a result, Savage "won" the belt and Hogan stole his thunder again by complaining in the ring and trying to overrule the result. This left an extremely bitter taste in the crowd's mouth, and only made the audience more sick of Hulkamania.
  • Actually broadcasting this was quite the Troubled Production, no one had ever tried to film three matches (with three announce teams) going on at once in the same room, and it quickly became apparent why. The crew in the truck understandably had trouble synching the commentators to the camera covering the ring they were looking at, and much of the match was shown with feeds of all 3 rings on the screen at once at a time when most people were watching the show on a 21" CRT television. We also learned why the Royal Rumble has everyone enter one at a time and you never see more than a dozen people in the match at once, as after 10 people were eliminated from each ring the remaining 30 had to crowd into the same ring (which was already smaller than the WWF/E ring to begin with^note WWE rings are 20' x 20', WCW used 18' x 18' rings) with no room to do anything but shove each other around, and a few people (notably Lex Luger) were left wandering around on the outside for a minute because there just wasn't any more room. Later WW3 matches would wisely wait until 40 people were eliminated before herding everyone into the same ring.
  • To add insult to injury, or just injury to injury, Scott Armstrong took a really nasty bump to the floor when he was eliminated and knocked himself out cold, and had to be carted off on a stretcher while the match was ongoing.
• At one point Kevin Sullivan became booker much to the chagrin Chris Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, Perry Saturn, and Dean Malenko. Benoit in particular had issues with Sullivan due to their wrestling feud over Sullivan wife a few years ago leading to a Real Life Writes the Plot case where Sullivan's wife really did leave him for Benoit (a storyline famously referred to as Sullivan booking his own divorce) so there was still linger issues there between the two. Sullivan tried to keep Benoit happy by having him win the WCW title at Souled Out 2000. However this did not work for him as Benoit and the others still disliked him. Benoit, Guerrero, Malenko and Saturn quit the next day and Benoit was believed to have thrown the title in the trashcan before he left. WCW then kayfabe stripped Benoit of the title and refused to recognize his title change^note  Though WWE after buying WCW does in fact acknowledge the title win. All four men would debut on WWE Raw two weeks later and even lead to Mick Foley making a Take That! comment towards WCW telling them "what was it like to be in front of a full crowd".

All Elite Wrestling

• The backstage altercation that took place following All Out 2022 (which as a result was even nicknamed the "Brawl Out") and everything around it before and after is a huge example of this.
  • This whole conflict began when wrestling journalist Dave Meltzer was stating that CM Punk was the cause of Colt Cabana being demoted off of TV and placed instead to the newly purchased Ring of Honor. Punk and Cabana had once been best friends, but had a major falling out after a lawsuit involving them and WWE occurred. Owner Tony Khan has himself stated that Punk had nothing to do with Cabana being taken off AEW and moved to ROH. Regardless of what, this didn't stop Adam Page during a promo against Punk for their match heading into Double or Nothing 2022 of going off script, where he got very hostile much to Punk's noticeable confusion and making a subtle accusation that Punk got Cabana demoted and then even could be heard yelling "I'm not shaking your hand, you owe Colt money". According to Punk, after the promo, he talked to Page backstage asking him about this and Page straight up told Punk, how he said that promo because he knows Punk tried to get Cabana fired. Punk was not happy about this and it was stated that AEW tried to have Punk and Page resolve their issue, but Punk was not satisfied with how the talks went and felt Page wasn't sorry. During the match at Double or Nothing, Punk stated that he was trying to protect himself during their match and was unsure if Page was trying to hurt him for real during the match after he received a hard slap from to the face from Page which caused Punk to get his tooth chipped.
  • The Dynamite after Double or Nothing, the newly crowned AEW champion CM Punk injured his foot after he dived into the crowd and smashed his foot on a metal rail. As a result AEW would ultimately make Jon Moxley win the interim championship during that time.
  • Punk would ultimately return in August to start a feud with Moxley over unifying their championship belts. During the build up, Punk in one of his promos actually made a off-script comment where he called out Page, going as far as saying that "the apology must be as loud and as public as the disrespect". During this time, Meltzer continued to claim Punk got Cabana demoted and that he is being difficult in the locker room.^note Multiple wrestlers such as FTR, Jade Cargil, and Ricky Starks, among others, have spoken positive of Punk and him helping them. Around the same time, The Elite (The Young Bucks and Kenny Omega) seemly made comments themselves after the shows that came off as subtle Take Thats towards Punk. The Elite themselves are friends with Cabana.
  • Punk and Moxley have a match two weeks their All out PPV where Moxley shockingly beats Punk in three minutes due to Punk hurting his foot in the beginning of the match. (More on this later.) The following week, Punk decides to have rematch against Moxley at All Out thanks to encouragement from his friend/mentor Ace Steel. At the PPV, Punk wins the rematch.
  • After the show, they have a post show media scrum where beforehand Tony Khan told the wrestling journalists present that they needed to be there. Punk immediately noticed, and talked to, a journalist he thought was friends with Cabana (but actually wasn't), kickstarting the now-infamous media scrum meltdown. He talked about how he wanted nothing to do with Cabana and is sick of having to shut down the false rumors about getting him demoted. He also made comments about how Cabana "shares a bank account with his mother, which tells you all you need to know about what kind of character that is". It didn't stop with Cabana either, as Punk proceeded to accuse the Elite of going to the wrestling journalists,^note as The Elite are famously friends of Dave Meltzer and The Young Bucks have even affectionately referred to him as "Uncle Dave", and it is also believed they are a source for Meltzer, and how "they couldn't fucking manage a Target". He also referred to Page as "an empty-headed fucking dumb fuck who went into business for himself" and "that he jeopardized the first million dollar house that this company has drawn off of my (CM Punk's) back."
  • Details are scarce over what actually happened afterwards, but after Punk left the scrum, The Young Bucks and Kenny Omega confronted Punk in his locker room and a big fight broke out between the Elite and Punk and Ace Steel. It is stated Punk got the upper hand during the fight and Ace Steel actually bit Omega's arm.
  • Due to this fight and controversy, Tony Khan suspended Punk, Steele, The Elite, and several other bystanders in the fight. He also stripped both Punk and The Elite of their belts. Also during the debacle, it turned out that Punk had torn his muscle and would be out of action for awhile.
  • Ace Steel was fired in October due to this issue. The Elite would be back in November after having their suspension lifted. Also many plans had to be drastically alter due to the injuries and fight.
  • Meltzer himself during this time claimed Punk would not be welcome back and Chris Jericho in particular was said to be adamant about making sure Punk would not return. During this time they had Jericho (when he was ROH Champion) work a match with Cabana on Dynamite, which was believed to be a major Take That! to Punk. The Elite themselves took noticeable jabs at Punk when they returned and had a match in Punk's hometown of Chicago such as mocking Punk's botched buckshot lariat attempt from Double or Nothing 2022, and using the GTS.
  • Punk showed to be interested in returning and was believed to be in talks about coming back to AEW and even sorting things out with The Elite. Punk noticeably was sharing Instagram post that hinted towards him returning.
  • On March 22, Meltzer on his message board claimed that Punk refused to lose Moxley before All Out and got his lawyer involved. This led to Punk posting (and then quickly deleting) a story on his Instagram where he stated that he got his lawyer involved because he wasn't medically cleared at the time when AEW wanted him to do the match and that Moxley was pitching "a Rocky III storyline" for them where Moxley would beat Punk and then they'd do a rematch, and Punk claimed that Moxley refused to lose to Punk unless they did that storyline. Punk thought it was a bad idea (stating that he has never seen a Rocky movie) but did it after getting medically cleared for his boss, Tony Khan.^note Rumors stated that there was heat between Moxley and Punk (though Punk actually spoke positively of Moxley at the scram). Other rumors stated that Moxley's biggest issue was that he did not like being seen as just a interim champion and wanted his title reign legitimized. He also called out Meltzer and also called Jericho a "liar" and a "stooge".^note Jericho himself is another known source for Meltzer and many have even speculated he was the one talking to Dave. Meltzer later apologized a few days later and admitted he knew about Punk not being medically cleared at the time of the suggested match.
  • Moxley a few days later would go his wife Renee Paquette's podcast and state that he was not even under contract during the summer of his interim title run and how he could have easily shown up to WWE's SummerSlam event (which took place during his interim reign) if he wanted to, and overall expressed how he felt he was bending over backwards for the company. He also stated he never has seen so much drama in any other wrestling promotion backstage.
  • By June 2023, AEW was basically running a soft draft split, with some talent staying on Dynamite on Wednesday night, like the Elite, while others like Punk were expected to headline AEW's new show on Saturday called Collision, (with the rehired Ace Steele as a producer) as a way to keep the hostile parties separated unless they work it out.
  • Sadly, though, they didn't work it out. At some point during the summer tour, Jack Perry^note  who is friends with the Elite and previously took a subtle potshot at Punk when he imitated Punk bloody muffin eating at the scram brought up the possibility of using real glass in a spot; Punk advised against it due to the danger involved. This was also after serval other people including Tony Schiavone, had tried to talk Perry who refused to listen to them and they had went to Punk to try and talk to Perry. This rankled Perry to the point that at All In in August 2023, after taking a bump onto a limousine windscreen, Perry would say into the camera "real glass, cry me a river!".^note Perry was wrestling as a heel and windscreen glass is literally designed to be relatively safe to collide with. This annoyed Punk to the point he got in a backstage altercation with Perry in gorilla which also put Tony Khan in physical danger. Punk would be fired with cause by the end of the week and a few days later Ace Steele would also be fired. Punk would later return to WWE in November making a shocking return at the end of their Survivor Series PLE.
    • Around the same time as all of this was occurring, Eddie Kingston was supposed to have a match with Sammy Guevara at All Out 2022. However that match was cancelled after Eddie got into a backstage altercation with Sammy. The cause was that Sammy had made a unapproved comment about Eddie's weight in a promo, which Eddie did not take well at all. Eddie was later suspended for a few weeks as a result of this incident. Eddie still had a match at All Out, just not with Sammy-who also had another match with someone instead. A few weeks after the media scrum incident, Sammy would get into another backstage fight, this time it was with Andrade El Idolo, which started when the two got into a Twitter argument, and Andrade confronted Sammy the night of that week's Dynamite show in the arena it was held at, and attacked him. Andrade was suspend and was gone for months. Like Punk he is now going to be on Collision going forward.
• Speaking of somewhat similar issues, earlier that year MJF had a match set with Wardlow heading into their PPV Double or Nothing 2022. However, on the weekend of the show, MJF no-showed a fan event he was scheduled to appear in. MJF was said to have expressed legitimate frustrations with Tony Khan over his payment and the fact Tony was apparently mad at him for doing a unapproved interview with Ariel Helwani.^note Helwani is a sports journalist who had an infamous interview with Tony Khan, after which Khan accused him of bias for playing much harder ball with him than he would have with a WWE executive. Helwani himself stated that Tony was the worst interview he did due to Tony's lack of answers to almost all of Helwani questions. Helwani would himself later appear on WWE programming, all but confirming speculation that he was very buddy-buddy with WWE, which Khan wouldn't take well, at all. MJF was said to have almost no showed the show itself, but Tony managed to get him to appear at the show where Wardlow swiftly destroyed MJF. MJF did appear on the following Dynamite (the same one mentioned above where Punk would injure his foot at) and cut a Worked Shoot promo on Tony and the company and would not appear again till All Out 2022.

Other Promotions

• If you're willing to go back a bit further into the past, Dallas' World Class promotion went from red-hot territory to out of business in a matter of a few years thanks to the fact that top stars kept going through major tragedies, in particular the Von Erich Family. David Von Erich died in 1984, brother Mike was put in his place, Kerry has a motorcycle accident where he loses a foot, Gino Hernandez dies, Fritz Von Erich fakes a heart attack, Mike and Chris Von Erich die, and then the whole Lance Von Erich nonsense. ^Explanation(In October 1985, Mike Von Erich couldn't wrestle due to toxic shock syndrome, so WCCW brought in William "Ricky" Vaughan to fill in during a feud against the Fabulous Freebirds, billing him as Lance, the son of Fritz's kayfabe brother Waldo. In a DVD about WCCW's history, Kevin Von Erich said that most of the family, him included, protested Lance's inclusion, but Fritz insisted. Several fans also approached their manager, Gary Hart, and told him that not only did they know Lance wasn't actually part of the family, but he made them look like liars to their adoring fanbase. In 1987, Vaughan demanded a raise from Fritz to no avail and jumped to WCCW's territorial rival Wild West Wrestling - and in a rare breach of kayfabe, Fritz exposed Vaughan on television, saying that the latter was "in no way, shape or form related to the Von Erich family", that he would never mention Vaughan's name again, and threatened to cattle-prod him if he tried to come back. Michael Hayes later called this one of the worst decisions Fritz ever made.) Not only the tragedies, but because so many members of the talent were unreliable drug addicts, shows had to be frequently changed around. World Class' failure was quick and extremely painful for all involved, and neither the region's pro wrestling industry nor its fandom have ever fully recovered.
• Despite being the primary branch of the International Wrestling Association, IWA Puerto Rico ended up being outlasted by its offshore branch IWA Japan. There were a few reasons for this:
  • While the Olympic games eat into the ratings of everything, they were particularly bittersweet for IWA Puerto Rico, as Telemundo provided them no television coverage whatsoever when the games were going, including flag show Impacto Total.
  • After NBC purchased Telemundo, all promotion for IWA Puerto was done away with, causing them to attempt to make deals with the Liberty and Choice cable companies.
  • The company was gifted a new facility from Mario Savoldi to base their central offices in during 2007. He proceeded to steal all the company's assets in an attempt to put them out of business so he could start his own promotion in their place, including a ring, several computers, trucks, and their entire video library.
  • Savoldi also ran off budding top draws Los Aereos Hiram Tua and Sensacional Carltios on the promise of a deal with the National Wrestling Alliance in Las Vegas, causing a rift between them and company owner Savio Vega, who didn't want them leaving, and then leaving them out of work when the deal ended up being a farce.
  • Despite lasting longer, IWA Japan was usually the more troubled production after 1996 when Victor Quinones left. Most of the talent, and fans, decided to follow him to FMW and IWA Japan largely stayed afloat due to the funding of a restaurant owner named Tatsukuni Asano. IWA Puerto Rico would draw around 10,000 on a good day, IWA Japan once drew a crowd of 28,000! After Quinones departed, IWA Japan was reduced to drawing 225 on a good day.
• Fighting of World Japan Pro-Wrestling, or World Japan for short, was a puroresu promotion founded in 2002 by Riki Choshu, who left New Japan Pro-Wrestling that year when they demoted him from head booker. The company had various freelancers and legends signed, which included such names like Kensuke Sasaki, Atsushi Onita, and Tomohiro Ishii, among others. While this may have sounded promising on paper, WJ would become a textbook example of how not to run a wrestling promotion. It was plagued by many things, such as Choshu's habit of spending money excessively (to the point that Sasaki ended up cancelling his life insurance just to help promote events), numerous delays in debuting their first show alone, and the company's messy handling of the sudden death of MMA fighter-turned-aspiring pro wrestler Giant Ochiai. Things got so bad that two of the company's top guys, Kenzo Suzuki and Yoshiaki Yatsu, left, with Yatsu in particular declaring in interviews that "Riki Choshu has no idea how independent wrestling works." The promotion was finally put out of its misery in mid-2004, when Choshu returned to New Japan.
• Irish promotion Celtic Championship Wrestling, which lasted from 2012-18, didn't last much longer:
  • The CCW training school was a bit of a disaster. Comedian Ross Browne decided to make a comeback to wrestling, opening a promotion called Premiere League Wrestling based around traditional British World of Sport style - and training his wrestlers exclusively in that style. The problem was that they were never trained in the American WWE style that literally every other promotion in Ireland (and most indie feds) used. So when booked outside of Cork, they had no idea how to wrestle a match in the style that crowds were expecting. Ross Browne likewise debuted at the start of a planned invasion angle, winning the CCW Championship in a dirty finish - but then abruptly left the promotion between shows, rendering the whole thing an Aborted Arc. This briefly caused a split between the PLW school and the CCW school, before the former shut down and the trainees either went to CCW or quit completely.
  • There was no head trainer at the CCW school for a while. The promotion initially relied on outside talent to put on seminars for the new trainees every few weeks or so, with the slightly more experienced trainees taking training in the interim (and by more experienced, think a few months to a year). Rent for the gym was €300 a month, yet trainees were expected to pay €100 - and never found out where the €1,700 profit went. The ring was in subpar condition, to the degree that Justin Shape refused to bump off it when he was booked there. There was often broken glass and dried alcohol from too many post-show parties, resulting in rats frequenting the gym. Matt Skylar also had a bag of his tights stolen, thanks to a door that didn't lock properly. Despite the dodgy ring, hardcore matches and dangerous spots were encouraged at shows.
  • When CCW started using its own trainees on shows, several who were inexperienced or in no condition to wrestle were booked. Marion Armstrong's first match happened while he had a broken arm. NBK were also booked despite often turning up to training stoned, though they were blacklisted when a careless botch led to Lorcan Wood getting a fractured jaw.
  • Inappropriate behavior from promoter Lee Cahalane towards women was depressingly common. Raven Creed confessed to him trying to kiss her twice as soon as she turned 18, and the second happened after her drink had been spiked and she was barely conscious. She also recalls hearing him ask "is it okay to fuck a girl who's legal now but you knew when she wasn't?" - and Valkyrie Cain and Lauren La Roux were booked because Lee was hoping to sleep with them (Valkyrie not only was in a relationship but was only 18 when she debuted). Another girl was only booked once ^note (Raven Creed confesses to not knowing who it was, narrowing it down to Kasey Owens, Lucy Lasso, or Siren - who wrestled for the promotion before she had debuted) and had a camera filming one of her matches that caught Lee saying he knew she was a terrible wrestler and only booked her for having "massive tits". Another female employee who went unnamed (though many quickly guessed it was the ring announcer Marie) was treated horribly, with one incident where she was told "go out there, shake your arse and sell some tickets". Raven Creed confessed that the whole experience made her want to quit wrestling, and she only stayed on because she was CCW Women's Champion and wanted to put Debbie Keitel over before she left (though the promotion shut down before she could). Debbie later alluded to wanting to leave wrestling.
  • Abuse towards younger wrestlers was not uncommon. Valkyrie and LJ Cleary initially worked for free, with only travel expenses covered. After wrestling for the promotion for a while, they asked if they could actually be paid for their work. Lee refused at first but after giving in, told Raven Creed to stiff Valkyrie as punishment. Matt Skylar - who was dating Raven at the time of the attempted date rape mentioned above - called Lee out for his actions, and was punished with a six-month suspension. Another unnamed young wrestler was yelled at for not selling enough pre-sale tickets. In a match Lee himself was in, he hit Lorcan Wood over the head with a floor sign that wasn't protected in any way.
  • International talents were poorly taken care of. Wrestlers from outside Ireland were flown in, promised places to stay or lifts to the airport, and ended up being left stranded after shows. El Ligero came over with no idea where he was staying, and he ended up spending the night on someone's floor. Others nearly missed their flights because Lee hadn't organised lifts to the airport (and when he phoned the ring van driver to do so, he'd already started drinking as he didn't think his services were needed).
  • The beginning of the end was a Christmas show at the end of 2017, where the intermission lasted 40 minutes, and Lee reappeared drunk and screaming at other people for not getting it started sooner. Shortly after, he called a NJPW-inspired press conference to promote Revolution 2018 that only six people turned up to. The debacle was filmed and uploaded to YouTube - where it became a Point-and-Laugh Show among wrestling purists. It was the final nail in the coffin, as most of the CCW roster walked out and set up a new promotion, Phoenix Wrestling.
• The history of wrestling is full of ambitious upstart promotions that collapsed as soon as they rose up, and an entertaining story of one is courtesy of 2022's World Entertainment Series.
  • The story begins with the Authors of Pain, a star of NXT's tag team division who fizzled out and were eventually released from the WWE main roster. The pair stayed mostly silent after their departure from the company for almost a year, leading to a lot of anticipation as to where they would go. They eventually revealed World Entertainment Series, a promotion that would make their debut with a show in Dubai featuring many noteworthy ex-WWE talent.
  • The first setback was the death of the United Arab Emirates' long-term President, Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, to which the country went into a 40-day period of mourning which would've coincided with the show. Seeking an alternative option, they announced a new show at the Motorpoint Arena in Nottingham, England, which while certainly a respectable venue was considered an odd Plan B when the Plan A was in Dubai. It later emerged that the Motorpoint Arena became the host of WES' debut event because they were the first to respond to their calls.
  • The event promised a roster of talent that felt well above the event's clout: Alongside the in-ring return of the Authors of Pain (now the Legion of Pain), it featured appearances from Impact Wrestling stars Chelsea Green, Deonna Purrazzo and the Influence, ex-WWE stars like Dean Muhtadi (Mojo Rawley), Samuray Del Sol (Kalisto), Killer Kross (Karrion Kross), Dirty Dango (Fandango), Adam Scherr (Braun Strowman), Lina Fanene (Nia Jax), CJ Perry (Lana), and more, along with a selection of local British talent. The oddest inclusion was notably having Alistair Overeem in the main event, an MMA fighter who had previously made dismissive comments regarding professional wrestling. The event hoped to bank on this list of talent, given that it had a streaming deal with Fite.tv and was hosting the 10,000 seat Motorpoint Arena. For reference, WWE held a house show at the venue in November 2021, and even they didn't manage to sell out the arena.
  • The first big red flag was that the event was scheduled for the first weekend in June, coinciding with Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee celebrations, a national holiday where most people would be enjoying the festivities with their friends and family or already be attending something they booked well in advance. Approaching the day, a tweet from Fite.tv promoting the show saw Chelsea Green respond with "Actually it's cancelled.", and twelve hours later WES confirmed that the event would be rescheduled to July 9th. In-general, a lack of promotion for the event beyond tweeting out match cards was also observed as an issue, with very little attempts made to promote the event either locally or among the internet's wrestling hangouts.
  • A turnover among signed talent began to show at this second attempt at a date: Adam Scherr was replaced with Impact Wrestling's Moose. Lina Fanene took to Twitter to say she would not be able to show up at the event and protesting the fact that she still appeared on promotional graphics. Matt Rehwoldt (WWE's Aiden English), who was due to commentate the event, claimed he had been unable to contact the promoters while not having his travel or accommodation expenses paid for. Various wrestling journalists also struggled to contact the promotion, though they managed to discover that local UK talent generally had yet to be paid while the bigger names had already been paid deposits or in full, with some logistical questions not even being sorted the week of the show.
  • It finally emerged the week of the show that WES had only been able to sell 350 tickets for the show. WES finally cancelled the event, putting out a widely-criticised statement that blamed the cancellation on talent no-showing the event. Some of the talent who travelled for the show put on meet & greets to try and compensate the unpaid local talent, with most people agreeing that WES had burned all the goodwill they had.
• In 2022, popular wrestling Twitter user TransGraps announced the first wrestling card featuring only trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming talent, Wrestle Queerdom. Support was high, especially buoyed by the appearance of some of the biggest-name non-cis talent including AEW's Sonny Kiss, Impact's Gisele Shaw, and Japanese indie VENY in her US debut. And then the realities of some anonymous individual producing an international wrestling show set in: It emerged that VENY did not have a hotel organized, and was instead staying at the promoter's house. Worse, the promoter made some tweets that came across as creepy towards her. It mercifully amounted to little, but the backlash was so strong that the promoter announced she was pulling out of the business before the show. Several wrestlers pulled out citing unprofessional treatment, leaving Kota Holliday without an opponent for a headline match. The remaining talent were not catered, or even given water—that's right, an athletic event that didn't supply the performers drinking water. The ring ropes were clearly not stable, making high-flying moves look frightening, especially for the heavier wrestlers like Candy Lee. Two sideshow segments, a roast of Candy Lee and an induction of trans wrestling pioneer Mariah Moreno into the TransGraps Hall of Fame, were called off without explanation. Instead, they had Eddy Joanne-Elizabeth McQueen, who was to host the former, run commentary at the last minute... with no material, no run sheet, and—of all the times—none of the performers' pronouns. The first embarrassment came before the first match, when Aiden Von Engeland came out as a trans man in a promo and Eddy promptly continued calling him "they". McQueen was hooked off commentary during the intermission, with Kota Holliday and Cameron Saturn filling in. And the worst part? Almost no one was paid, and the promoter seems to have have disappeared. Aiden and Kidd Bandit had to scramble to make sure everyone got their fair share. The sad part is that none of this was the performers' faults. Highlights included Gisele Shaw vs. Candy Lee, Kidd Bandit vs. Don't Die Miles, and the main event, Edith Surreal vs. VENY. If anything, they were the best element, just for sticking it all out. To quote one reaction:
  "So proud of the talent at the show. To put it more bluntly, the story of this show beyond the performers should be about the incredible generosity of queer people when other queer people are in need, and that's much more important than your dunks."

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