Personal Off-Seasons
This is a new account, but International Object is an old idea. I've been writing under this banner since 2010, in various places. I've been a poor internet user in a way, deleting accounts over time for various reasons. Thank you for sticking with me.
I'm going to try to say new things and present new ideas. But there's a few of my old ideas I still think are somewhat important to communicate. One of them is personal off seasons for watching wrestling.
I know, it's pretty wild to tell a wrestling fan to stop watching wrestling sometimes.
This screenshot is from https://cagematch.net, and shows the amount of wrestling that happened today, June 13, 2026.
20 shows are listed. At least four of these shows went over an hour, which means there was more wrestling today than hours in the day to watch wrestling.
There may be days with less or more wrestling, of course. But this is a pretty typical day of wrestling: more than you can watch in real time. And this has been true for a very long time.
You cannot keep up with all of it.
And that's fine. It's a very rare wrestling fan that's watching everything, or even as much as they feel they can.
Most wrestling fans watch one promotion. Maybe two. Some watch three.
But even if you watch one promotion, you're probably watching anywhere between 2–6 hours of wrestling a week.
Every week.
With no off season.
Real sports have off seasons. MLB goes 4–5 months between the seasons. NFL is 6–7 months. The NHL is shorter at 3–4. But that's still about a third of the year.
WWE used to have a 300 day schedule in the 80s and 90s. Around the Loop meant going everywhere, all the time, forever.
It was brutal.
So, fine, wrestling isn't a sport. It's an art form.
Scripted television takes even longer breaks than sports. Some shows take years between seasons these days.
And then you might say, fine, wrestling is more like a soap opera. Those air every day!
Right. Except they don't shoot every day. There are 15–18 week hiatuses throughout the year on all majors American soap operas.
Okay, so maybe wrestling is more like Broadway. 8 shows a week, every week. The performance is relentless.
This might be the closest relation. Where it separates is the audience. Sure, love theatre has die hard fans who watch the same show repeatedly. But they're not watching it 24/7.
It is normal, encouraged, and enforced to take breaks from just about every sport and art on earth. But not wrestling. Wrestling will never tell you to take a break. Wrestling will never encourage you to go do something else for a while.
Wrestling will never give itself a break.
The way I've been able to maintain a health interest in this art is to take about two months off twice a year.
Used to be, those were the two months after WrestleMania and SummerSlam. I kept that schedule through most of the 90s by accident, then on purpose in the 2000s.
The way I've been able to maintain a health interest in this art is to take about two months off twice a year.
Used to be, those were the two months after WrestleMania and SummerSlam. I kept that schedule through most of the 90s by accident, then on purpose in the 2000s.
In the 2010s, I'd take a month or two off whenever I felt myself getting fatigued, or whenever I felt like wrestling just wasn't doing it for me.
Sometimes I'd just jump promotions. But that doesn't always work the same way as just taking a break for a while.
Ironically, I'm in one of those periods right now. I'm not watching a lot of current wrestling. Maybe that'll change soon, I don't know.
What I do know is that wrestling will never stop. In the 35 years I've been watching wrestling, it hasn't stopped once.
Wrestling is hard to give up as a habit. But I promise, it's very easy to get back in. As a medium, it takes less time to figure out what's going on than almost any other art form or sport. Especially when it's made well, wrestling is crystal clear and obvious.
Wrestling will never tell you this, but I will: it's okay to take a break. Wrestling will be there when you're ready for it again.
Here's my "don't get me wrong caveat": if you're super happy with your viewing experience, this wasn't aimed at you. Wrestling can be the very best entertainment on this planet and if you're cooking with it, keep going.
But you don't owe wrestling your attention if you're burned out. And if you love this art form, taking a break for a while and returning a rejuvenated and hungry fan might be better for it. You're the chorus, and they need you to be alive. They need you to want to be there. So make sure you want it