I thought I take a moment to get personal and talk about an independent wrestling company in my hometown of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada (a city just outside of Toronto). It’s called Destiny Wrestling, and they hold regular shows at an arena / multi purpose fitness and training centre called Battle Arts Academy currently run by former WWE superstar Santino Marella.
This past weekend they held a show called “Bad Intentions”, and it also doubled as an Impact Wrestling TV taping, since Destiny has this arrangement to tape Impact matches at this humble Canadian locale. The main event of the show was Sami Callihan vs. “The Walking Weapon” Josh Alexander in a steel cage match, and it was the first time Destiny held a steel cage match at one of their shows. The winner would go on to face the Destiny world champion in October, who happens to be current WWE UK champion Pete Dunne.
First off let me say, I was expecting blood and had no personal qualms about seeing someone get juiced. When you have a steel cage match and the two participants are nicknamed “Death Machine” and “Walking Weapon”, plus a garbage can and baseball bat being brought in, you’d better expect some blood during the match. And they did not disappoint; Alexander was bloodied by a garbage can shot from Callihan 10 minutes into the match, Callihan did the bit when he licks up his opponent’s blood, but nevertheless ended up getting pinned by Alexander, who earns the title shot at Dunne.
However I did notice all that there were a lot of children in the audience; in fact a few dads had to take their kids outside before the match was over. On the other hand, it was disappointing to see some grown men in the audience getting all squeamish and saying they should stop the match because of all that blood (a few of them were muttering, “yo, this ain’t UFC”). If these guys were purported hardcore wrestling fans, they would not reacted like that with the blood, especially since they should have known it was coming.
I also believe Alexander was booked to win that match and go on to face Dunne for the title, which is why the match wasn’t stopped due to blood loss. But during the final few minutes, officials were gathering towels so they could wipe him down as soon as the match was over, to the point where for a brief moment I thought the promoter was actually going to toss the white towel over the cage into the ring to call it off.
Therein lies the challenges of a budding wrestling company that traditionally have been quite family oriented combined with the need to expand its genre to attract more audiences. With Destiny partnering with Impact Wrestling, they would be expected to have matches of various stipulations going forward.
With WWE firmly situated into the PG environment, fans would be looking towards Impact, Lucha Underground, Ring of Honor or NJPW for some more ‘graphic’ content. How do you expand your audience without possible alienating the bread and butter that were more geared towards wrestling being a family friendly product?
That’s a question that indy companies like Destiny would have to grapple with going forward.
An average professional doing the 9-5 grind who really loves wrestling across all platforms. Here's hoping wrestlers finally get some basic workers rights in 2021.
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