The Bearded Nostradamus of Pacific Northwest Wrestling
@ShutUpWilf: Thanks for chatting with us at Chops, Kicks and Nearfalls today! Tell us about Without A Cause for those of us not privileged enough to be from the PNW.
@MaxWrestlingWA: Without a Cause is an independent wrestling company based out of Everett, WA. Everett is roughly 20 minutes north of Seattle and I was born and raised there, graduated from Everett High School (2009), and have spent most of my life within city limits. Initially we ran out of the Normanna Lodge (October 2018 – June 2019), but we moved to the VFW Post 2100 (next door, literally) from July 2019 to present. We’ve had some of the best independent wrestlers on the planet walk through our doors (Chris Bey, Alexander Hammerstone, Thunder Rosa, Kimber Lee, Erick Stevens – just to name a few), but we really try to focus and showcase our incredible pool of independent, local talent such as Daniel Makabe, The Strays, 4 Minutes of Heat, Travis Williams, and a host of other hungry talent from British Columbia down to Oregon.
@ShutUpWilf: I caught wind of Makabe through WAC and Breed Pro from the UK. Dude is such an amazing talent. Tell us more about Bey and others and why it’s important to feature youth versus maybe an older style of promoting.
@MaxWrestlingWA: We initially brought Chris Bey in as part of his old tag team, but he wowed us and was actually someone on my radar as we started the company – so we decided to bring him in again and see what he could do as a singles and he has brought the WAC Championship some great prestige as he travels (when it’s permitted, obviously), and always champions our brand. We like a good mix of “banger” matches and good, old-fashioned storytelling. We’ve had several storylines throughout the last 1.5 years and we’ve had some matches that were ‘thrown together’ because we thought it would be an INCREDIBLE match. We have a pretty good batting average in bangers haha.
@ShutUpWilf: No doubt. Besides your amazing graphics and video presentation, talk to me about your style of running a promotion. I’ve spoken to several promoters from Riptide, Resurgence and Synergy and they’re all younger with their finger on the pulse of society and where wrestling fits in that. Tell us about your style of running WAC.
@MaxWrestlingWA: Well we have to give some props to our graphics guy, Justin Smith (HGPL11). He’s been the only person to our posters and match graphics, and did the video editing for our first few shows. Since March 2019, however, King Zabb has done all of our videography and editing (alongside Stephen Gleason) – and has really upped our game in terms of optics.
In terms of style of promoting, I’m younger (turning 29 on July 2nd), but I’ve been part of the local scene now for almost 5 years in some sort of fashion – and been working with local promotions since late 2016. I try to keep my eyes peeled for people who are up and coming, and we’ve had a lot of wrestlers come in at the start of their boom period (Fred Yehi and Effy come to mind). I, also, have been known to be kind of a Nostradamus in terms of booking (per my business partner, “Big Facts” Chris Ross) as I had wanted to bring in WARHORSE and Danhausen well before their boom periods – but it’s definitely a team effort. I handle most of the administrative, legal, and social media and only give thoughts and opinions on bookings whereas Chris and the others will typically focus on putting together storylines and matches that makes sense.
@ShutUpWilf: Speaking to a prophet… nice! Given the recent news in pro wrestling, could you fill us in a little more about your back office team and if you feel it’s a fair representation of what you are representing. Also, do you have any changes you’d like to implement post-virus?
@MaxWrestlingWA: WAC has always had a zero tolerance policy on drama and bull**** – so as the SpeakingOut movement started, we felt that it was important to go ahead and implement an official Code of Conduct for everyone involved, including fans, at WAC. Obviously this will be more put to the test when shows start to come back (who knows when that will happen) – but we feel very strongly that we will be able to handle and process anything that comes to us as we try and keep transparent with anything that is going on with the company. As far as COVID is concerned, we will have to wait until the State of Washington provides us with information and our commission gives us guidelines and regulations – but it’s safe to say it won’t be the same after we come back – and we’re not really planning on doing anything in 2020. We’re using this downtime to rest our brains and come back swinging hard when we can.
@ShutUpWilf: It’s seriously a worry for independent promotions this year. Ok, let’s lighten the tone slightly.
What’s one of the funniest things that’s happened behind the scenes during a WAC show?
@MaxWrestlingWA: Oh that’s a good question. Day of shows or the weekend of the show, I typically go out and get the money for the wrestlers and start making sure that music cues are good to go (as I run the music on show days). I have a re-occurring dream that either A) I didn’t get ANY money for the event and B) the music is either not working or we don’t have internet at the venue and for whatever reason it’s not getting fixed. I’ve had this nightmare during this downtime, too – it’s just one of those things that sticks with ya! As for things to ACTUALLY happen at WAC? I think it was November that our curtain / lighting rig system started to fall apart in the middle of the show and we couldn’t get it fixed, so we had a couple of our crew rotate out to hold it up for the rest of the show. I then bought a better curtain rig and it’s never been an issue since haha.
@ShutUpWilf: internet is like this silent force that controls us all haha
@MaxWrestlingWA: That is FOR SURE. I’ve been working from home since late February and I’m just waiting for a day where the internet decides to crap out for an extended period of time.
@ShutUpWilf: 1 ethernet cord essentially keeps my paycheck coming. haha. Ok, Here’s a question from the staff. Chris says, If you could book one wrestler from the 80s,90s or 00s, who would they be and why?
Please say Earthquake
@MaxWrestlingWA: As much as I love the Natural Disasters, it would have to be Mick Foley. Foley is the reason I am involved in wrestling and has always been the reason I love pro wrestling.
@ShutUpWilf: You do have a Cactus Jack looking persona…
but more handsome, clearly
@MaxWrestlingWA: Cactus Max, obviously!
@ShutUpWilf: lol
Here’s a question from Jake, he says What qualities do you look for when recruiting new wrestlers to your brand?
@MaxWrestlingWAProfessionalism. We get a lot of messages from people who have a lot of typos in their messages, their social media is kind of a mess, and their promos or photos look a little less-than-desirable. You have to market yourself as “what can I do to help this promotion” rather than look at it as just a payday.
@ShutUpWilf: That is a great thing to hear. If you look for that in your brand, you make me, as a consumer, want to support a professional brand.
In a similar light, Darren asks, What’s better for business to you? A big name doing a one shot appearance or having a storyline feud with lesser known wrestlers over a number of shows?
@MaxWrestlingWA: That’s a great question because, back in July or so, we started booking ‘angles’ for a few shows that use either local wrestlers or out-of-state folks that weren’t “big” names. It worked and it got a lot of our crowd and fanbase interested in our company, especially since we did videos and little segments on our IWTV submissions to keep the people who weren’t at the show something to showcase the story and give it a little bit more framing & foundation.
@ShutUpWilf: Max, I want to thank you so much for this AOL style chat. I’m really excited to follow Without A Cause when things re-open. Do you have any parting words for the WAC crowd and any new supporters?
@MaxWrestlingWA: Well thank you so much for having me! We want people to support their favorite independent wrestlers – WAC is fine. So as much as we love seeing people buying shirts, we’re much more interested in keeping the independent folks who may be struggling get the support.
The best way to support us is to follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook (all @WithoutACauseWA). Personally, you can help us more by following our Twitch account (@MaxWrestlingWA) and you can follow myself on Twitter and Instagram (also @MaxWrestlingWA). If you haven’t signed up for IWTV, you can use the code WAC2019 and it helps us. Go watch our July 2019 – Feb 2020 events. Over and over. It seriously helps us out.
If you would like to support me, feel free to do so at paypal.me/ShutUpWilf. Give me a follow at @ShutUpWilf or email me at ShutUpWilf@gmail.com. Be sure to follow the whole team at Chops, Kicks and Nearfalls as well as follow us at @CKandNearfalls on Twitter.