Beyond the Ropes: Vancouver’s Wild Wrestling Renaissance
Hold onto your seats, Vancouver! The city’s independent wrestling scene isn’t just thriving; it’s absolutely exploding with creativity, athleticism, and a healthy dose of pure, unadulterated entertainment. Forget what you thought you knew about wrestling, because in Vancouver, you’ll find everything from body slams involving “spot prawns” to jaw-dropping moments featuring… well, let’s just say a staple gun!
Take Tara Zep, for example. The “Vile Villain” found herself in deep trouble against the “Homicidal Artist” Drexl. He’d used a staple gun to attach sponsor flyers to her, and then positioned her over a tin garbage can. As the crowd held its breath, Drexl climbed the ropes, ready to deliver a devastating body slam. But just when it seemed like the underdog was finished, Zep miraculously rolled away, leaving Drexl to crash onto the trash can in a truly uncomfortable landing. Seizing the moment, Zep grabbed her trusty folding chair—emblazoned with “Zep”—and drove it, shoulder-first, into her pained opponent, sending him tumbling. The roar from the packed house was deafening!
This electrifying scene was just one highlight from a sold-out WrestleCore event at the Rickshaw Theatre. The evening’s “Destroy Wrestling” theme perfectly matched the seven-match card featuring popular local heroes and villains, live punk rock from Wait//less, and even projections of a flaming dumpster!
The Mastermind Behind WrestleCore’s Success
Kobra Kai, also known as Stevan Cvjetkovich, is the former pro wrestler who founded WrestleCore. Along with his partner, Calamity Kate, he has meticulously organized 38 events since launching the promotion seven years ago in Vancouver. An astonishing thirty-seven of those events have sold out, a testament to the surging popularity of local wrestling.
Today, the Lower Mainland boasts at least eight independent wrestling promotions, including WrestleCore, Canadian Apex Wrestling, Nation Extreme, Boom! Pro, No Fate, INvoke, Dusk, 365, and All Star.
“Wrestling has definitely gone a lot more mainstream in the last 10 years,” Cvjetkovich explains. “When I first started, the audience was very minimal. I would be shocked if there were 100 people in the audience.” He credits Wise Pro Wrestling, a local company started by Kenny Lush and brothers Tom and Franjo Pavlovic in 2016, with “setting a new standard of how it should be done” and inspiring the formation of other successful promotions.
Innovation and Uniqueness Drive the Scene
This surge in popularity has led to incredible innovation and a diverse range of wrestling experiences. For instance, the night after Zep’s wild staple gun showdown, Prawn Cena was seen body-slamming “Taryn from Accounting” at the Legion on Commercial.
While the Rickshaw Theatre crowd was exclusively adult, the Legion audience included several young families and children. Furthermore, no one was using a staple gun unless it was to hold together the hilarious spot prawn costume worn by wrestler Izzy McQueen!
“One of the challenges is that every event has to be unique and original,” says Max Mitchell, principal owner/operator of Boom! Pro. “That means the branding, the title, all the graphic design. Once you do a lot of these, you begin to get creative with your titles.” The Saturday night event at the Legion was Boom! Pro’s third annual “Spot Prawn Season” card. “Spot Prawn Season felt like a uniquely Vancouver name for a show,” Mitchell explains. “It’s really just marked by a couple of things: we hand out a ceremonial wreath, and there’s an appearance by Prawn Cena.”
Bringing Wrestling Joy to New Audiences
Before launching Boom! Pro three years ago, Mitchell produced comedy shows. After falling in love with wrestling himself—a process that admittedly took years and repeated exposure to WrestleMania courtesy of friend and Boom! Pro co-creative Travis Woloshyn—he even organized a private match for his family and friends on his 40th birthday. Just six months later, he purchased his own wrestling ring.
Mitchell’s mission is clear: to help more people discover the sheer joy of wrestling. “During the time that I was falling in love with wrestling, I would show clips of matches to people around me, trying to help them understand that there was this incredible thing taking place, and to convince them that it was worth their time and energy. And failing. I did this for eight years.”
Finally, Mitchell found inspiration in an unexpected place: his wife. “Because she doesn’t like wrestling, or even action films,” he says. “And I thought, ‘If I can create a wrestling show that my wife will enjoy, we’ll have something to draw in this huge group of people who don’t even know that they would like wrestling.’ So it would have to be funny. But wrestling is inherently funny. It is so strange and ridiculous that you have to laugh, especially if you’re experiencing it for the first time.”
Pushing Boundaries and Embracing Multitudes
Wrestling, however, contains multitudes, as Zep, with her fearsome appearance and staple punctures, can attest. She has even formed her own promotion, No Fate, aiming to bring a more extreme version of the art to Vancouver.
“I have a vision for this company,” Zep asserts. “There are hundreds like it in the U.S. Canada seems to be a little more hoity-toity in its rules and regulations. Especially in the B.C. area, people are afraid to push boundaries. That’s one of my main goals, to push boundaries and give fans something they’ve never seen before.”
Despite her “Destroy Wrestling” bout with Drexl being the stuff of nightmares, Zep is no stranger to the more comedic aspects of Boom! Pro. “I do all kinds of wrestling,” says Zep, who will face All Elite Wrestling star Leyla Hirsch at Vancouver Island Wrestlefest II on June 27 in Nanaimo (tickets available here). “I love doing comedy matches. I’ve pretty much only done comedy matches for Nation Extreme Wrestling because that’s the character and story I’ve been telling with that company. But I think a lot of B.C. promotions are maybe a little intimidated by me and my look.”
If you need any more convincing that there truly is a wrestling event for everyone, let’s give Chris Parry the final word. “I think wrestling is the greatest form of live entertainment in the world,” states Parry, a former Postmedia journalist who owns and operates Nation Extreme Wrestling (next event: June 14 at the WISE Hall, tickets available here).
“I just got through watching Tom Cruise spending a few hundred million bucks on stunts that he gets to plan for months and then do and redo and redo, while my guys are in the ring on a Saturday night, writing storylines on the fly, doing stunts they’ve had maybe a few minutes to go through, that they have to pull off first time, every time — without fail — or someone gets really hurt, while folks are yelling at them and cameras follow their every move.”
Feeling curious now? Upcoming events include Dusk’s Butterfly Suplex on June 22 at Performance Works on Granville Island (tickets available here). Also, mark your calendars for the August 31 No Fate pro-wrestling show at The Pearl. Don’t miss out on Vancouver’s incredible wrestling scene!
