Why I Create, And Why Capitol Wrestling Helps Us All Create Our Next Best Life.
Sometimes a pro wrestling company isn’t about pro wrestling.
Foremost, I am a creator. I’m also a socialist and post-modernist among many jobs and hats I wear in my life, but first and foremost, I create. I create because I feel like it’s honestly the best coping mechanism I have, and because I feel like I’ve led a charmed existence that makes me want to give back to world in thanks for a life I can’t believe I’ve lived.
The world-at-present isn’t what the world once was, and it’s likely never going to be the world we’d all ideally want the universe to evolve into. Instead of sitting, standing, marching, or walking on existent paths in likely fruitless protest, I surge forward. The latest thing I surged forward into, Capitol Wrestling, kicks off on March 25th in Jersey City, New Jersey. It’s easily the most audacious thing I’ve ever done, and I’m saying this after switching careers at 30 to become a freelance journalist, as well as in the past 12 months, re-shaping DC’s One Love Massive from an event promoter into DC’s leading artistic and sociopolitical advocacy hub, and aiding in the creation of 12,000 square foot Decades nightclub into one of America’s premier throwback nightlife experiences.
I do these creative things now more often than ever before because I’m more comfortable in an unknown future wholly defined by our past instead of living in a present that feels unjust, untrue, or more simply, un-fun. In the past three American Presidential election cycles, I felt significant dis-ease and existential angst I felt when I realized that both Barack Obama and Donald Trump were about to become President of the United States. I didn’t hide from the blighted and entirely disrupted future I twice saw, though. Instead, I doubled down and ultra-pressurized myself with what I felt was both the weight of my premonition (shout out to Matt Hardy and his “broken brilliance”) and the weight of doing my part to try assist whatever of the planet was left in coping with and pushing through all of the truly terrible fates that befell us all in the past ten years.
Very early on in the 2016 Presidential election cycle, I noted that Donald Trump was the best pro wrestling bad guy that politics ever saw. Many moons thereafter it felt like every pundit (including my friends Chris Kelly and Brandon Wetherbee) jumped on the bandwagon. However, what all of them lack that I have is the fact that I’ve (admittedly very poorly) taken a bump, (admittedly very poorly) dropped down and got it again, and still very much believe in the art of “kayfabe.”
There’s people that think that in our President using every ‘rasslin trope possible to win the election, that we’ve COMPLETELY killed kayfabe, aka the secretive protection of the carny secrets that make carny activities like the circus and magic tricks great, great. Well, after reading all of the books and all of the articles, I’m surprisingly happy. As someone who treasures with his whole life being allowed into the wrestling industry and being granted the honor of being a protector of kayfabe, to note that none of the people who tried to assault the high holy tower where the secrets are *actually* held didn’t actually reach their goal makes me giddy.
I’m thankful that these people who blindly came to attempt to understand, and on some unfortunate level, potentially destroy pro wrestling, didn’t get the job done. I fervently believe that pro wrestling in it’s purest and least diluted form, more than any other thing, showcases our best and most ideal reality. In short, that’s why Capitol Wrestling exists. It’s a platform for myself, my co-founder Matthew Ryan, and well, anyone in our ring, to showcase our best post-modern selves.
To that point, there are people who have asked me if myself or Matthew Ryan are the “booker” of Capitol Wrestling. For the pro wrestling uninitiated, the “booker” is the person who decides who wins or loses, and manipulates crowd responses via the creative direction of the product’s presentation. That’s not me, and in Capitol, to me, definitely representing what life could and should look like in a world not governed by the polarity gap between the “very right” and “very wrong” of society, there’s really no “booker” needed.
Moreso than anything, I’m a curator, dusting off the holy tablets of kayfabe, legitimately conjuring up the spirits of Dusty Rhodes, Roddy Piper, Eddie Graham, Fritz von Erich, “Playboy” Buddy Rose, Ron Wright, Eddie Gilbert, Larry Sweeney, so many others, and passionately trying to create — with the pressure of their legacies ALWAYS at play in my mind — something incredible. On March 25th, we’re placing the best post-modern humans in the best post-modern world and pushing play. In every show and every thing that comes from Capitol both leading into March 25th and hereafter, it’s all about this amazing social experiment, where we discover the best next things.
This isn’t about “wrestling,” necessarily. Capitol Wrestling is about life. It’s about humanity. It’s about finding the “third way,” the space between the right and wrong, the space where we discover our collective best selves.
