Deadlock Pro Wrestling (stylished as DEADLOCK Pro Wrestling), is an American Professional Wrestling promotion based in North Carolina. The brainchild of James Darnell, Anthony Douglas, and John Blud, who are long-time creators in the pro wrestling space and the founders of DEADLOCK, a professional wrestling-based entertainment brand founded in 2019, which is mostly known for their flagship podcast known as "The DEADLOCK Podcast". Hosted by the boys, the podcast is an off-the-rails look back at pro wrestling's highest & lowest points along with various segments such as the "Patreon Q&A" and the "Untitled Theme Song Segment". The boys then decided the next logical step was create a promotion of their own, which they did at the end of 2021.
The promotion features free shows on Youtube, with an hourly show called DPW Fire and another called DPW Spark, as well as regular pay per views that are only available to subscribers of their DPW on Demand website.
DEADLOCK Pro Wrestling recognizes four titles that are defended at its shows;
- DPW Worlds Champion: Calvin Tankman since December 10, 2023
- DPW Worlds Tag Team Champions: Motor City Machine Guns (Alex Shelley and Chris Sabin) since December 10, 2023
- DPW National Champion: Bryan Keith since August 13, 2023
- DPW Women’s Worlds Champion: Miyuki Takase since December 10, 2023
"The Tropes Are Back In Town":
- Acrofatic: Gringo Loco is a little on the chubby side, but he can fly no problem. Bojack is a huge man, yet can moonsault like Vader. Calvin Tankman is an even better example as he can pull off running Shooting Star Presses.
- Alpha Bitch: "The Queen of House Rose" Raychell Rose.
- Ascended Fan Boy: Chris Danger was originally just a Create A Wrestler creation of Chris Denker based on himself.
- The Berserker: Yoscifer seems to be a more historically accurate version of the historical berserkers compared to John Nord's gimmick.
- Beware the Silly Ones / Cloudcuckoolander: "Melt Man" Donnie Ray is pretty much stoned out of his mind, all the time. He can still kick ass 6 ways to Sunday.
- Yoscifer was a more dangerous example, as while he apparently didn't even know the rules of pro wrestling matches (or even English for that matter), he was still a legitimate threat for his size, strength and ability to shrug off most other wrestler's offense.
- Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Skyler Mack to Yoscifer, with mixed results.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: The promotion itself heavily uses orange and black.
- Cross Through: Regularly features wrestlers under contract from other promotions like AEW, Impact Wrestling, MLW, the National Wrestling Alliance, Dragon Gate, Tokyo Joshi Pro Wrestling, etc.
- Dreadlock Warrior: Bojack, his Red Baron is the "Dreadlock Demolition Machine".
- The Giant: Parodied by Andrew Everett, proclaiming (and having the announcer list him as) to be 7ft 4in (he is around 5ft 9in), insists on climbing over the ropes to enter them during his walkout entrance, and using the chokeslam as a Signature Move.
- A straight example would be Krule, who stands nearly 7ft tall and is the tallest wrestler to have wrestled for the promotion so far.
- Insistent Terminology: For some reason all their championships (except the National Championship) use "Worlds" instead of the singular term.
- The commentators also refer to the second rope (or the more popular term, the Bret Hart rope) as the "Deadlock rope".
- Masked Luchador: Lince Dorado.
- Scary Black Man: Bojack and Calvin Tankman, two huge, powerhouse style-based, black wrestlers.
- Smug Snake: Chris Danger and his NDA.
- Special Guest: Chris Hero held a pro wrestling seminar a day before the DPW No Pressure event.
- Wrestling Family: Colby Corino, the son of ECW alumni Steve Corino.
- Wrestling Monster: A female example in Sawyer Wreck, unlike most others she gets fed male wrestlers.
- Male examples include Yoscifer and Krule.
