Professional Wrestling Studies Association
Studying the Past, Present, and Future of Professional Wrestling
(images Westwood One Podcasts) “Stick with us. Don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news … What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.” — Donald Trump, speaking at a VFW convention “False. Every fucking bit of it is false. This is shit where Dave Meltzer and … Read more “Rumor and Innuendo”: Fake News Discourses in Pro Wrestling Podcasts
January 12, 2020 is a date that will forever be remembered in the wrestling industry all over the world: It was on this day that a woman, the ‘Undeniable’ Tessa Blanchard, defeated Sami Callihan to win the Impact World Championship, a world title that prior to that point had been exclusively held by, and open … Read more The First Female World Champion and Her Two Main ‘Challengers’
I’ve been working on this project for awhile now, and this presentation from MPCA/ACA 2019 contains my preliminary results on slash fanfic that feature NXT wrestlers Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa. This work began with noticing that other fans were as interested in this pairing as I was: https://prowrestlingstudies.org/2018/11/21/pro-wrestling-slash. When I started looking into the … Read more When the Rebel Heart Met the Blackheart: Slash in Professional Wrestling
John Heppen and I were interviewed for a story on Wrestling in Denmark.
Wednesday, October 2, 2019, marks the first time in 6764 days professional wrestling has aired on the TNT network; it’s also been that long since the Monday Night Wars officially ended even though the meaningful battles ceased well before. Over eighteen and a half years have passed since the name on the contract read McMahon, … Read more Paradigm Shifts: A Brief History of the Life, Death and Rebirth of Pro Wrestling on TNT in the US from WCW’s Demise to AEW’s First Show on Television
I gave it four stars. You gave it two and a half stars. Fair enough. It’s just our opinion, right? Well…sort of. While it is true that match rating is a subjective process, that does not mean we cannot understand it. Too often, subjective behavior (especially as related to art) is either reduced to its … Read more Is It Terrible or Terrific? We Needs a Better Way to Talk About Professional Wrestling
Professional wrestling studies has yet to fully engage the turn toward disability studies in the humanities and social sciences. Publications like Disability Studies Quarterly and professional organizations like the Society for Disability Studies do broad-based research in disability studies. Many disciplines engage subcommunities of scholars who do research in disability studies — for example, colleagues of … Read more Wrestling and Disability: David “Silento” Rodriguez
For the last couple decades, wrestling fans have been used to a wrestling universe divided into two categories of promotions: (1) the so-called “indies” (or “independent wrestling” or the “indie circuit”); and (2) the nameless other category, which is not really a category at all since it only includes a single promotion, the WWE. So … Read more The Problem with “Indie Wrestling” (hint: it’s not the wrestling)
Wrestling legend Baron Von Raschke, Larry Lisowski and “The Incredible” Kenny J stand with the life-size bronze statue of Reggie “Da Crusher” Lisowski at Crusherfest on June 8. (Photo from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, taken by Erik S. Hanley/Now News Group) Recently, the City of South Milwaukee designated June 8, 2019, officially, Reggie “Da Crusher” Lisowski Day, … Read more “Da Crusher” Celebrated in Milwaukee
Some of the first presentations that led to the formation of the Professional Wrestling Studies Association.