Heavy Metal Wrestling promoter talks Fight the Power featuring New Jack

Watch Heavy Metal Wrestling: Iron Sharpens Iron (5/24/19) from HeavyMetalWrestling on www.twitch.tv

PC: What brought about the birth of Heavy Metal Wrestling, and what did you aim to do with the company that other independent promotions weren’t doing? 

DD: Really, there’s a lot of hungry talent in the South Texas area, and Texas in general, and they weren’t necessarily getting the spotlight, I guess you could say, because there’s a lot of the old guard left. Guys that are hungry or chomping at the bit for an opportunity, they weren’t necessarily getting it anywhere else. As someone that was in the business for seven, eight years, you kinda see that and it’s disheartening.

So it was one of those things that, you see these guys working hard and kind of treading water and spinning their wheels, so to speak. We wanted to create something different, give these guys kind of a platform for that, so that’s kind of what started to put the wheels in motion for Heavy Metal Wrestling.

It’s one of those things that, I feel like the majority of the events here in Texas are kind of pedestrian. You go to a wrestling show, sit in some crappy plastic folding chair, sit around for two hours, see six or so matches, maybe one of ‘em’s okay, and you go home. F– that. I wanted to turn that notion of what Texas wrestling was just completely on its ear.

Our events are jam-packed with action. We don’t have intermission or breaks between matches. Normally, we have ten to twelve matches, so you’re getting your ten dollars worth. We don’t have chairs at our shows. You’re gonna be basically standing like you’re at a concert, pressed up against the ring. We also have live music at our shows.

It’s more of a concert or a party than an event, than a wrestling show. And that was something too. I just wanted to change, I guess the perception of what a wrestling event could be. A lot of people say, it’s 2019 now, it’s time to kind of move with the times. I felt like the presentation for wrestling shows was stuck in the 1980s or stuck in the early 1990s.

I felt like that had to change in order for wrestling, or at least for the area on an independent level to grow. More of the answer to how or why Heavy Metal Wrestling started: one was to give guys that weren’t getting the opportunities elsewhere the opportunities to shine, two is to kind of change the notion and the perception of what a pro wrestling event could be.

PC: For fans who haven’t seen Heavy Metal Wrestling, what do you think is important for them to know before watching? 

DD: I think the thing that’s most important about our company that fans know is that we are—as cool as our production values look, we shoot in 4K and we upload in 1080P, but as good as our production values can be, as nice as our presentation can be, we are and will always be a true DIY type of event. These t-shirts that we have, they’re being made in my apartment. Every shirt is being handmade by me. Every sticker is being hand-cut by me.

Any merchandise that has the Heavy Metal Wrestling logo is made by me, or my wife, in my home. There is no corporate sponsor, I mean we have sponsors, but it’s barely enough to keep my lights on. We do everything ourselves. It’s complete DIY. I’m talking like, I’m sitting here, making my own screens for t-shirts. It’s us. It’s us.

We’re as genuine of a promotion as you’ll ever find, because I’ve had—personally a little experience for me, I used to be an old like crust punk and like little jerk when I was a kid growing up, and I’d never pay more than $5 to go to a local show. And that wasn’t just pro wrestling, that was just like a concert. So that kind of stuck with me. I’m very conscious of people’s money and their time. I’m cheap, myself, too.

So when I see these wrestling shows that advertise tickets for twenty, thirty, forty dollars, it blows me away. All of our tickets to shows that we have will always be $10. No matter who is coming in, no matter what name’s on the show. For a while we would tell people, you bring $20 and you can have yourself a nice night at the show. You get yourself a ticket for $10, $5 for a beer, $5 for tacos afterward. That’s a good night there.

But that’s a big thing, man. We are a DIY promotion. There’s no machine behind us. And not to sound like we’re taking shots at anybody else, but there is no old timey wrestler from the 1980s telling everybody to grab headlocks. This is something that is made by the guys for the fans with nothing but love and passion.

That’s, I think what sets us apart from any other place. Because you’ll find that love and dedication everywhere else, in any other locker room that you step in, but there’s something about what we do, because everybody knows how hard everybody else works, at our shows I always feel like guys are always trying to one-up each other, and I think that’s something special that we have going on too at Heavy Metal.