For wrestling and wrestling fans 2015 was a combination of the dark night of the soul and a valley of dry bones. The Intergalactic Brand of wrestling was dead with no possibility of resuscitation and no clamoring for one either. The Shadow Japan archive retrieval effort had been aborted after only one tournament, and the WBL, though still putting on shows did so sporadically when at all, going sometimes months on end without so much as a picture of a grappler. When they did release matches they released them to a lukewarm reception from a crowd of lukewarm “fans”. It was the bleakest period in the history of the sport, and if someone had then made the declaration that we were living in a post-wrestling world it would have seemed as if they were merely stating the obvious.
But something happened one October night in 2016. Agent Q, essentially the last survivor of the IFA, broke what been up until then a two year silence with a bombshell of a message that said that he had found Dean Waroff, that he had finally and definitively closed the case. It was as if in that instant a dam broke, or floodgates opened, as if a sky full of clouds had finally burst letting rain fall down on a parched land. And this rain brought with it growth, revival and renewal. In the period from the end of October to the end of December we saw the return of steady content from the WBL, the reappearance of Xin Shin Tien and the IWA with her, a tournament to go along with it and the discovery of more Shadow Japan content than anyone knew existed. It would have been enough if wrestling had simply returned, but it returned with a quality of story-telling and an excellence of presentation that we hadn’t seen since the 2013-2014 era.
Of course the question now is, will it last and if it does what will the future of wrestling look like? There is perhaps forever a great gulf fixed between us and the wrestling we enjoyed in years gone by. There will never likely be another era of full matches and long video packages, the means of those days were sufficient for their circumstances, and ours must be the same. In an earlier article we advocated for the release of full matches on the part of both leagues, but perhaps the idea is untenable, if it is narrative and well thought out story-telling must take its place. Regardless of whether the stories are silly or somber there must be, in this age of the mature viewer, on the part of producers of both the WBL and the IWA a handling of wrestling and its presentation as craft instead of just hobby. Whatever methods will be used in 2017 must be ditched when worthless, and improved when imperfect.
Now for some hazardous predictions.
Sadly for Shadow Japan the end is nigh. The archives only go so deep, and league only survived for so long. Our guess is that by the end of January we will have finally plumbed to the depths of, at least, the main Shadow Japan narrative up until the announcement of the IFA. Fortunately there stands between us and then nearly a dozen matches, and the possibility of more. However more interesting than this is the chance that digging through the Shadow Japan archives could prompt Ms. Tien to make some phone calls resulting in a stronger IWA roster in the coming year.
When last we were in the IWA Ms. Tien was preparing to launch her brand’s first show, and presumably that is where we’ll pick back up with the league sometime in late January or early February. The IWA is reportedly holding out on broadcasting until the technology becomes available that will allow them to have wrestlers cut promos and for the league to release, however short they may be, video packages to go along with story lines and angles. What we hope more than anything is that in between now and then the league picks up more talent. Plumbing the depths of the Shadow Japan roster and revisiting many of the IFA legends, only serves to show the stark contrast in roster depth and quality between the IWA presently and the IFA at its fall from peak. The league will also need to figure out whether or not they are going to release pay per views. In an era when long form content is becoming a rarity and a hassle it could mean we are living a post pay per view age and in its place we might see the long methodical unfolding of a unified narrative focusing on different wrestlers, feuds, and titles throughout the year as opposed to the standard of story lines that work up into frenzy and climax at a set piece arena.
For the WBL 2017 might just be year of greatest transformation. The league is in a state of unrivaled chaos, with their championship in the hands of an IFA wrestler, a devil worshiper, a man who is possessed, and the league founder Nielsens having left the building presumably never to return, if the league survives in its current state into 2018 it might be whatever the opposite of a miracle is. And this brief reprieve we received in the form of a Christmas special, and potentially continuing in Bootleg Bodybags II, cannot last without a lobotomy forcing us all forget that the Intergalactic War is currently taking place. But that very war and that entire story line is the WBL’s key to moving in a new direction in 2017. If the producers do decide to update their technology it would be the perfect opportunity to do a soft reset, a reboot in movie terms. The roster could remain the same, and new talent could be signed, but the fallout from the Intergalactic War would necessitate some kind of dramatic change. It is the only way to end such a dramatic story. And there’s simply no telling what this new iteration of the league would look like. Now that isn’t to say that the league hasn’t got on just fine without much, if any, tweaking but as we’ve commented on before, every machine needs to be upgraded after a while. All this means is that the minutiae of who will be champion, who will retire, and who will have a breakout year is impossible to predict, if the WBL hits the restart button anything is liable to happen.
Ultimately it is somewhat futile to make predictions or plans for the upcoming year, none of us are guaranteed tomorrow and all such boasting about what we might do and any similar proclamations about what will happen are a particularly evil form of pride. And if 2016 has taught us anything, has given us any bit of wisdom for the road, it is that anything can happen, and if that’s true it might be useless to plan but worthwhile to hope.
What we here at No Sell Magazine, a beneficiary of all the unpredictability that any year has in it, hope is that 2017 becomes known historically as the greatest single year in the history of wrestling. A year that surpasses all others in all possible metrics, a year of new ideas, a year of bold decisions, a year of shameless risks. We hope it is a year of honesty though never dull “realism”, a year where meaning is invested back into winning and holding a championship, a year that we can look back on as the year when wrestling transcended its seeming limitations and was pushed within an inch of its breaking point and milked for every good idea in its body. A year when the producers of both leagues can say they left nothing on the table, they never held back, and say simply with that healthy form of pride, I did my best. That hope, the hope for unsurpassed greatness, is a dangerous hope, the sheer weight of that hope could crush any man foolish enough to carry it. But like any jobber or mid-card wrestler will tell you, you have to have to hope, and you have to keep hope alive, sometimes it’s all you’ve got, and like Agent Q said, in the message that revived a wrestling league, that hope is more than we had when the year started.