Even though the “Royal Rumble” has left Indianapolis, wrestling fans still have a chance to experience similar events through the Wild Championship Wrestling Outlaws.
According to Prowrestling Fandom, WCWO is an American professional wrestling promotion in Indianapolis. It is the longest running independent wrestling promotion in Indiana and was founded in 1995.
Although wrestling can be traced back to Ancient Greece, professional wrestling like what people see from the World Wrestling Entertainment came about in the 1980s when Vincent J. McMahon sold Capitol Wrestling Corporation to his son and McMahon Jr. renamed the company WWE, according to its website. With stars like Hulk Hogan and John Cena along with partnerships with MTV, the WWE was able to find more widespread fame.
What the WCWO does is similar to the WWE, just on a smaller scale. WCWO is an independent league so they include many more promotions than the WWE will typically run. During the weekend of the Royal Rumble, the WCWO held its own event for families that included two scheduled shows the Friday before Royal Rumble and sold around 900 tickets according to WCWO promoter Reggie Edwards. While there is not a lot of money involved at this level of wrestling, WCWO Wrestler Fenix said, it is more about the fans’ experiences.
“Whether you’re a heel [bad guy] or baby face [good guy], the important part is the reaction from the crowd,” said Fenix. “They spend their hard earned money to watch you perform.”
Even if the whole audience is booing him, he said that is what it is all about. Hearing any sort of noise from the crowd is the ultimate reward, he said. If they are able to make the crowd hate them as the ‘heel,’ then they have succeeded. One of the best ways to do this, Fenix said, is by targeting the most vulnerable people in the crowd.
“So as a heel, the thing that will get you hated the most is if you pick on children,” Fenix said. “Once you find a kid or an old lady in the crowd and you get them to boo, the rest of the crowd just starts.”
Fenix has been training since 2021 and competed in his first match in 2022. He said he was inspired by the wrestlers he saw on television as a kid. The names they choose, while some seem random, actually hold meaning in some cases.
“I’ve always been infatuated with the Phoenix, the mythological bird, because of what it represents,” Fenix said. “It never dies. It constantly reinvents itself. It comes back stronger and better than ever. Always. I kind of relate to that in my personal life, because I’ve been through so much, and I take those emotions, that trauma that I may have experienced when I was a kid, and I turn that into something positive for those people out there.”
WCWO wrestler War Ready Maleko has been doing shows for nearly two years since he began training in April of 2023. Part of the uniqueness that comes with professional wrestling is the structure, or lack thereof, Maleko said. Having controlled freedom in the ring to pull moves that will get a reaction from the crowd is part of the setup that comes with professional wrestling.
“With pro wrestling … you can do a lot more,” said Maleko. “You can jump off the top, you can do some dirty things. It’s not point based. It’s whether you pin them [the opponent] or you make them submit. That’s the way to win in professional wrestling.”
WCWO wrestler Logan Myers said one of the biggest misconceptions about professional wrestling is the athletic ability of the athletes involved. Though there is a performance aspect to the events, Myers said there is also a lot of athleticism and discipline that happens behind the scenes to make the matches come to life. The wrestlers create on-stage personalities to get the most reactions out of the crowd, he said. For Myers, his introvertedness and alternative side that influence his performance are able to get him what he loves most about wrestling: getting booed from the crowd.
“I’ve never really been one to go out of my way to make people like me,” Myers said. “I don’t like coming out and raising my hands and high-fiving kids. I kind of like just smirking, talking trash. I shout my own name a lot, and people just boo. It’s nice … This is me turned up to 10. I love rock ‘n’ roll music, so I’m the wrestler with ‘lead singer syndrome.’ I want all the attention and that’s kind of neat, but not in real life. I’m not that piece of crap in real life.”
And, while many of the wrestlers involved in WCWO work full-time jobs elsewhere, being a part of the WCWO is a passion that stems from childhood nostalgia and influence for many of them, according to Myers, Maleko and Fenix. Getting involved is a group effort that requires hours of weekly rehearsals and months of training but the outcome is to please the fans who come out to the events, said Fenix.
“My favorite thing about wrestling is the reaction from the people who paid to come watch us,” Maleko said. “Whether it’s a good reaction to me or a bad reaction, I just like that. They’re so into it, just like I have been since I was a kid.”WCWO holds shows weekly on Fridays in the Outlaw Arena, a former warehouse near Lucas Oil Stadium, and will be making an appearance at Indiana Comic Con March 14-16 according to their social media.
