John Pollock and Wai Ting invade the home of Damian Abraham (Viceland’s The Wrestlers, Fucked Up) to discuss a variety of topics in the wrestling world including streaming services, the growth of the indies, CM Punk and a preview of Viceland’s The Wrestlers.
If you’re in the Los Angeles area, see Damian host a LIVE edition of his Turned Out A Punk podcastfeaturing special guests from the worlds of punk and wrestling on Sunday, February 25th at 3pm. Click here for tickets.
. Digging the lighter and puff-puff during the podcast. It’s so difficult to compare Punk and other MMA fighters. Punk is a multi-millionaire. Fighting is his hobby. Fighting to eat and fighting to cross off a strand on your bucket list is two different things. Btw, I’ll still put Bryan Danielson over C.M. Punk.
Excellent show. Variety of topics was really fun. Just to clear up a couple of Mexico things…
CMLL does run shows outside of Mexico City. They own an arena in Puebla that runs every Monday & in Guadalajara that runs every Tuesday & Sunday (local wrestlers only). Then they have Arena Mexico (Tues/Fri/Sun) & Arena Coliseo (Sat) in Mexico City. Those buildings are only 15 minutes or so apart but Coliseo is an older building and the area gets sketchy at night so they don’t run as often as they used to.
CMLL has no interest in expansion & the boss has a strong dislike of Americans in general. They have no need to expand if one understands their business model. Even WWE would be jealous. Imagine Vince McMahon was somehow gifted land in downtown New York City… and on that land an arena was built solely for him alongside a parking garage. He could then run as many shows as he wanted throughout the week where his only costs were paying talent & support staff to run the facility. He could keep 100% profits of parking, concessions, tickets, etc. It would be a goldmine. This is what CMLL has and will always have. Arena Mexico holds 16,500-ish currently and some Tuesday shows struggle to get just 2,000 fans in the building. Sounds awful right? Not really. CMLL’s break even is pretty much 500 fans, give or take 50 or so. Process that and it will blow your mind considering they run 3x per week for 52 weeks and Friday’s attendance is usually triple a lowball estimate 2,000 Tuesday show.
In the past year CMLL has really gotten into the tourist business where they are tied into the Mexico City tourism industry. If you are a foreigner coming to visit Mexico, you end up at a CMLL show whether you are a wrestling fan or not. It’s incredible business and very important to CMLL these days since some of the smaller attended shows end up being half tourists just out for a fun time. They take it so seriously that a few months ago when there was a shooting outside Arena Mexico they immediatly sent out a press release (not common for CMLL) noting the shooting was at a bar across from the arena & involved people who hadn’t attended the Arena Mexico show that night. The last thing CMLL would ever want is tourists thinking Arena Mexico is dangerous or having their official tourism status revoked if they were declared an unsafe environment.
CMLL is an extraordinary business model that flies under the radar amongst hardcore fans because they just keep to themselves and are the constant. Since 1933. Non-stop shows multiple times per week. It’s pretty crazy to think about.
How old school is CMLL? When I was there for the Anniversary Show we were hanging around outside the arena post-show and suddenly a group of armed guards came marching out a side entrance all surrounding one older gentleman carrying a large box. What was in that box? The gate for the show. All the money. In that box. Being transported by one man into a waiting car with police escorts off to wherever it ends up going (not the bank).
This was such a great episode. Damian was excellent and a far cry from the painful to listen to Martin Bushby (I stopped listening to anything with him a long time ago). More shows like this please!
You’ve mentioned your dislike of Bushby before. I remember because you centred in on his accent and then attempted to suggest it wasn’t meant as a slight on him, as if it could be taken any other way. It seems like you have it out for the guy. Not sure why.
I attempted to listen to an interview he did with Kris Wolf before on the May 22, 2017 edition of British Audio Wrestling, but could not finish it due to his accent not agreeing with me.
Looking back on the post below (screenshot attached), slight was the wrong choice of word to use. I certainly don’t have it out for the guy, I have no reason to, I just cannot listen to him for an extended period of time.
No disrespect meant to Bushy professionally and the work he does.
Then maybe don’t take potshots at the guy in threads he has nothing to do with. He wasn’t on this show yet you still felt the need to call him “painful to listen to”. Simple fact of the matter is that he’s just not got a homogenised accent and he has no real control over that because it’s just a factor of where he’s from. Either pay a dialect coach to train the accent out of him or let it go.
Wasn’t a potshot at all, you have chosen to interpret it that way, and that is your right to do so. I could have worded it better though.
I have let it go by not listening to anything he’s on. If I saw him in person, I would happily shake his hand and have a conversation with the guy, congratulate him for his work and probably make an awkward joke about offering to be the Henry Higgins to his Eliza Doolittle.
There is no ‘easy’ way to tell someone you don’t like their accent without coming across as a twat.
