This is a photo Super Oprah Mustafa. Super Oprah Mustafa has broken new ground in the local wrestling scene. She is big, loud, (fun) and loves to make people angry.

2006.04.06

Most indy wrestling events don't draw well. Most indy wrestling events are happy to put 100 fans in the building. I am not even going to bother trying to figure out how many of those fans are actually (unpaid) friends, family, and wrestlers.

There are some promotions that do a good job of advertising. They have a strong fan base. They consistently play to a packed house. Heartland Wrestling Association in Cincinnati used to be a WWE developmental territory. They have a TV deal. They just held an online PPV. HWA is a great promotion. WAR in Lima, Ohio draws very well. OCW in Newark, Ohio also does a good job of pulling in fans.

Indy wrestlers work hard and have a lot on their plate. Indy promoters (generally) work hard and have a lot on their plate. Wrestlers blame the promoter for not properly advertising events. This raises the question... what are indy wrestlers doing to promote the events?

These days creating a website on the internet is pretty easy. There are templates, forms, and software to do all of the work for you. It only costs about $7.00 per year to buy a domain like merth.com. Alot indy wrestlers feel $7.00 per year is too much of an investment or too much work. Many indy wrestlers sign-up for myspace accounts or a livejournal. Some "big name" pro-wrestlers have started using these free services to communicate with fans...
• Gregory Helms
• Ashley Massaro
• John Cena
• Justin Roberts, announcer
• Kristal Marshall
• Shannon Moore
• Stevie Richards

I guess if myspace is good enough for WWE Champion John Cena, I shouldn't rag on local (Ohio) pro-wrestlers too much. But here is the rub... the local wrestlers are too lazy to pimp themselves. The local indy wrestlers are too lazy to sell themselves. Very seldom do the indy wrestlers promote their upcoming matches. Not only do the wrestlers fail to promote upcoming matches... they fail to spend 5-minutes per week updating. Some of the blogs are weeks or months old. Some of the blogs are just copy/paste of forwarded emails with a one-liner at the beginning or end.

Here is a small list of of some local indy wrestling myspace offenders...

• Bassam myspace (3/15/2006)
• Tommy Chill livejournal (2/23/2006)
• Tommy Chill myspace (2/25/2006)
• "The Angry Black Man" Damien Kass livejournal (3/29/2006)
• Bruce Gray livejournal (3/5/2006)
• Carlton Kaz livejournal (1/12/2006)
• Carlton Kaz myspace (2/19/2006)
• Jeremy Madrox livejournal (3/2/2006)
• Jeremy Madrox myspace (???)
• Elliot Michaels livejournal (11/6/2005)
• Jabari Mustafa myspace (3/19/2006)
• Cyrus Poe myspace (3/7/2006)

You know, I should probably catch heat by calling these guys out by name for failing to promote themselves... but, I am guessing they will be too lazy to even respond.

By the way, I think myspace is the devil. I refuse to signup for an account just so I can see a quasi-friends pictures. That is messed up. I will not bow to the man... fool. Yardbird salute!