WrestleMania 41 hits Las Vegas: Welcome to Pin City
It was a far cry from the 16,000 people who filled a makeshift Roman Colosseum in the Caesars Palace parking lot to watch The Undertaker wrestle a dude who was dressed in an air-brushed muscle suit.
That was WrestleMania IX in 1993, the only other time Las Vegas hosted the annual “Showcase of the Immortals.”
WrestleMania 41, meanwhile, filled Allegiant Stadium on Saturday and Sunday with an announced combined attendance of 124,693, and it served as the catalyst for dozens of smaller promotions from around the world to invade the city.
They staged wrestling cards in such storied sports venues as the Dive Bar, Fremont Country Club, Beer Zombies and the parking lot at the Punk Rock Museum. Start times ranged from 11 a.m. to midnight. And they featured everything from the goriest of death matches to the inexplicable joys of watching three men wrestle a blowup doll and lose.
WWE takes over
Friday night was Mark Nash’s first time introducing athletes inside T-Mobile Arena. But it was familiar territory for the man who plays him on TV.
Mark Shunock, the Golden Knights’ in-arena host and hype man since the beginning, joined WWE in March as the ring announcer for “Smackdown.” Then he was christened with the new onscreen surname.
While Shunock was home in familiar surroundings, the rest of the WWE may be among the sleepiest people on the planet.
Over the past few days, the company presented a five-day fan festival, four nights of parties, a hall of fame induction ceremony, a one-man show and a roast. That’s in addition to both nights of WrestleMania, “Smackdown” and Stand and Deliver, the signature event of its developmental brand NXT.
That hall of fame ceremony went past 1 a.m. Saturday with many WWE talents in attendance. Call time for that morning’s Stand and Deliver was reportedly 5 a.m.
Still to come: “Raw” tonight at T-Mobile Arena and an NXT show Tuesday at the Fontainebleau.
The power of Cereal Man
Manny Lemons crashed to the mat as though he’d been struck with a sledgehammer.
It was worse. He’d been hit over the head with a box of cereal.
Such is the power of Cereal Man, one of the best gimmicks on the independent wrestling circuit.
The pompous blowhard wrestles in a purple jumpsuit and gold cape with a box of cereal framing his face. He made short work of the self-proclaimed “King of the Lemonade Stand” during Thursday afternoon’s Phase 1 Pro event.
The alien Cereal Man is the brainchild of Derek Smith. The 39-year-old North Carolina native dabbled in stand-up and sketch comedy in Los Angeles before taking up wrestling 15 years ago.
Cereal Man’s home planet was tragically destroyed, Smith said following the match at the Future Stars of Wrestling Arena. “So he came to Earth to spread the message of a balanced breakfast. And what better way than through Earth’s number one pastime: professional wrestling.”
The character owes a debt to Powdered Toast Man from “The Ren & Stimpy Show,” with a bit of Adam West’s Batman and Mintberry Crunch from “South Park” thrown in for good measure. Smith learned how to make the Cereal Man mask and costume from Gwar co-founder Hunter Jackson.
The gimmick is so well-constructed, Smith’s alter-ego has an alter-ego. Cereal Man’s real name is Saul Cerealman, a joke he credits to fellow indie wrestler Dark Sheik.
As for the initial idea behind the character, Smith said it came to him the way most things of that nature arrive.
“I had smoked a lot of pot, to be honest.”
Blood, sweat and more blood
Joe McGivern had a bit of a rough week.
He flew in from England on Thursday, and before he could even adjust to the time difference, he was being hit over the head with a series of fluorescent light tubes inside the Dive Bar. Then he was struck with a bundle of tubes that had been set on fire.
The next afternoon, he was attacked in the Dive Bar parking lot and hit with another fluorescent tube. This one came from inside a speeding off-road vehicle, the way people used to swing baseball bats to knock over mailboxes.
Then the police came.
McGivern, who wrestles under the name Big F’n Joe, is the often-bloody face of Rise: Underground Pro Wrestling, the Leeds-based outfit billed as England’s maddest wrestling show.
“Big Joe and Rise are synonymous with each other,” Danny O’Doherty said Saturday morning behind the Dive Bar as he prepared for yet another event featuring McGivern. The Rise promoter, who wrestles under the name Daniel, noted that McGivern had been a star in his organization since its founding in 2014.
That was back when Rise drew 35 people to a show. Now, it’s attracting hundreds to its matches in the north of England, primarily in Leeds, Sheffield, Hull and Middlesbrough. The group made its first trip to America in October, putting on shows in Brooklyn and New Jersey. This was just its second.
During McGivern’s “Backwoods Butchery” match against Nathan Mowery, pieces of those fluorescent tubes bounced off the crowd that surrounded the ring.
That Thursday card was organized by Marks R Us, the local promotion that’s been putting on death matches at the Dive Bar every few months for the past year. The night before, the group issued a notice on Instagram: “The Dive Bar is an intimate venue, if you have the means, we recommend ponchos and eye protection.”
McGivern, 37, wrestles in a short-sleeved white dress shirt, black tie and white bikini briefs, known in England as “pants.” When two Metro officers arrived Friday afternoon, no doubt summoned by terrified shoppers in the Maryland Parkway strip mall, McGivern greeted them in those blood-stained pants. It was not his first time having to explain things to the authorities.
“Normally, like, you just pull out a video on Instagram and just show them. ‘Look, it’s all pretend,’ ” he said. “If I get stopped when I drive home in England with blood on me, I just address the situation straight away. ‘I know I look like I’ve killed a man, but I was just play fighting in my pants.’ ”
Inclusion takes hold
During a week when some visiting promotions attracted more wrestlers than paying customers, Swan Dive was packed to the gills.
Friday night’s Out of This World show marked the biggest event yet in the four-year history of the local inclusive outfit PrideStyle Pro Wrestling.
“And you’re competing not only with other indies but with WWE as well for people’s time,” PrideStyle founder Milhouse Malott said as the Arts District venue was filling up while “Smackdown” was taking place at T-Mobile.
When he started PrideStyle, Malott said, inclusive wrestling — think full-on acceptance and no bigots allowed — wasn’t even a term.
“Now, it has an etched-out space to where we have a venue that we’re packing with 200 people to celebrate inclusive pro wrestling in the midst of all this craziness,” he said. “People still are electing to come here and choose what we’re doing. That’s just, like, the most amazing thing to me.”
Malott’s favored style of wrestling has grown so much, PrideStyle hosted Shooting Star Fest, a three-day gathering of like-minded wrestlers from six other promotions, including two from Vancouver and one from Belgium.
Inclusive wrestling extended to the Palms and The Collective, a 13-event spectacle in The Pearl organized by the often-brutal Game Changer Wrestling. One of the top draws was the 10th installment of Effy’s Big Gay Brunch, a series of matches headlined by GCW’s world champion. It was preceded by Effy’s Big Gay Brunch — The Actual Brunch, where fans could eat breakfast burritos with Effy and other wrestlers on the card.
PrideStyle isn’t just for LGBTQ performers, Malott explained. It’s for wrestlers from any marginalized community as well as their allies. On this night that included Ricky Tenacious, aka “The Songbird of Wrestling,” who entered the ring singing Vanessa Carlton’s “A Thousand Miles”; new PrideStyle champion “Lucha Scumbag” Chris Nastyy; and crowd favorites Alice Blair and Lazarus, who make up the tag team known as Las Vegas Murder Scene.
It was the first wrestling show for many in the densely packed crowd, so it took a bit of work to convince them to leave their seats when the combatants wanted to take their fight to the floor. Attendees eventually got the message to the point that, when it even looked like the action was coming their way, they scattered to the far corners of the bar — then began the musical chairs-style scramble to reclaim the seats that had been cast aside.
Asked what he’d want people who happened upon his organization to take away from the evening, Malott didn’t hesitate.
“Wrestling is for everybody. And some people are alone and need people. Some people need to know there’s an everybody around for them,” he said. “This is a safe space for anybody. And if you wanna be seen, if you wanna be part of a family, our arms are always open.”
Legends everywhere you look
With hundreds of wrestlers in town for appearances, fans got to see some absolute legends compete.
Juventud Guerrera brought his La Nueva Lucha Libre to the courtyard of Neonopolis, which made for a fun game of guessing which colorful characters were wrestlers waiting for their match and which were just the regular Thursday night Fremont Street crowd.
Ultimo Dragon took part in the DragonGate USA Rebirth event at the Palms. The Rock ’n’ Roll Express competed in the same match as 75-year-old “Action” Mike Jackson. And Sabu, the 60-year-old former ECW champion, called it a career following a no-ropes barbed-wire match.
But it was tough to top the excitement surrounding Yoshihiko. The Japanese icon, one of the most mysterious wrestlers on the planet, traveled to Las Vegas to compete in three matches, including a title bout.
During a 20-year career with Japan’s DDT Pro-Wrestling, Yoshihiko has won the organization’s Ironman Heavymetalweight Championship numerous times and has held tag team and trios titles.
Yoshihiko is a blow-up doll.
After being led to the ring by a masked handler dressed in black, Yoshihiko is then maneuvered by its opponents into performing what looks like a series of devastating offensive moves.
Its inanimate status is never acknowledged.
And it’s among the most stupidly entertaining things you could ever hope to witness.
It’s WWE’s world
Carmine Pantano paused to gather his purchases at the WrestleMania Superstore. He’d just spent $4,000 on four replica WWE title belts.
“I’ve been blessed with a good job,” said the 48-year-old from York, Pennsylvania.
His friend Ben Brindle, 45, also of York, had dropped $3,000 on four of the dozens of championship belts for sale as a line a hundred or more deep waited for the coveted titles.
This was Pantano’s first WrestleMania, which helped him rationalize his spending. “You’ve gotta splurge a little bit on your first one,” he said.
After arranging their spoils, they were off to shop the rest of the massive store inside the Las Vegas Convention Center, where fans could purchase everything from replica “Stone Cold” Steve Austin vests to Golden Knights- and Raiders-themed WrestleMania jerseys.
The adjacent WWE World included opportunities for fans to recreate their favorite wrestler’s entrance, complete with music and video segments. It was adorable when small children posed to the cheers of other attendees — less so when grown men did the same.
Other experiences included live matches, meet and greets, tributes to retiring superstar John Cena, a museum dedicated to the career of WWE Chief Content Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque and the chance to hit a punching dummy, made to resemble WWE star and social media influencer Logan Paul, in the face with a steel chair.
The latter was so tempting, even Paul’s mother took a couple of shots.
Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4567.