Erik Anderson asks the perennial question: Why are attitudes toward wrestling so different across the US?

Erik Anderson — The Wrestling Mind

Wrestling with Regional Differences

Professional wrestling has been a popular touring sport for nearly 40 years. What began as a United States separated by some 25 different wrestling territories has now shrunk to one major touring act with one company trying to ride their coattails.

According to the Nielson ratings, WWE’S Monday Night Raw television show averages around a 3.2 rating from year to year. This means that roughly 3,200,000 homes are watching this television show once a week.

Professional wrestling has proven to be popular on television and in the live event setting. The catch is that the majority of the wrestling popularity in the United States is located in the Northeastern and Southern side of the country.

Notice that besides the very rare Seattle or Portland WWE television taping, there isn’t much wrestling to speak of especially in a town like Spokane.

Why is this? You can drive down I-95 from Providence, RI to Richmond, Va and find about 100 or so independent promotions (not on television), but you can’t find a single one within five full states in the Northwest.

“The East Coast is much more heavily populated, which means that Indy promotions, along with WWE, can run in more cities and still draw decent crowds,” said Dave Wolf, a pro wrestling analyst, during an e-mail interview.

The Eastern Coast of the United States is jam packed with people in a small land area. This helps smaller promotions tour to different cities by only traveling 45 minutes or an hour by car, where out west, it would take five hours to drive from city to city.

This simple inconvenience could cause a smaller promotion, who is in dire straits with funding to begin with, to quite possibly collapse before they were able to get the ball rolling in the first place.

“There are states where even WWE won’t go, because they have to be regulated, meaning there are certain rules they have to follow, and certain things they would be unable to do,” said Wolf.

Perhaps there are states in the northwest that have strict regulatory rules regarding professional fighting that prevents independent companies to start up here.

In a town like Spokane, professional wrestling is considered more as a joke than anything. In Boston, MA, professional wrestling is just as popular as NBA basketball.

Wrestling shows have run in the same city on the East Coast for years and years and became successful local promotions (ECW in Philadelphia for example), yet the bigger cities in the Northwest like Seattle or Portland, who have just as many people living in them, don’t offer such a thing.

If such a promotion or even a training school sprouted in the Northwest, it would spring interest in the sport not just for people trying to become wrestlers, but being apart of the business in any way shape or form, even if it’s just attending live shows.

With a wrestling facility in Spokane, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that it would draw people not just from this town, but from cities all throughout the Northwest based upon it becoming an instant monopoly.

Currently, pro wrestling fans of the Northwest must either move to the East Coast or South United States if they want to have any part in the sport at all.

“Most wrestlers want as much as exposure as they can get, as their ultimate goal is most likely to wrestle for WWE or TNA. They would get much more exposure on the East Coast,” Wolf said.

Spokane can be a wrestling town. The few times that the WWE or WCW have done live shows in Spokane, the place nearly sold out on all occasions.

The trend of the Northwest being singled out for the sport of professional wrestling will continue and your only way onward is to move far far away from this insupportable place.

– Erik Anderson