It Could Be Said #22 Whatever Happened To PROGRESS Wrestling?
A look at how interest in PROGRESS has imploded over the course of 2021
Rafa Benitez may now work from the other side of Stanley Park, but one Liverpool fan emulated him at his most paranoid and belligerent. Whereas the club’s then manager once armed himself with facts when taking the fight to Sir Alex Ferguson, Jordan Devlin was armed with Cagematch match ratings in his attempt to prove to Twitter that NXT UK is actually good. Alas, it turned out that these ratings had been manipulated by several prolific posters who rate everything to do with NXT UK the highest possible score.
But Devlin’s use of statistics reminded me of a column idea I had been toying with. Could I use statistics to review the promotion that last year stripped him and his mini-me Scotty Davis of their Tag Team Titles, due to allegations that they both had abused women.
And the reason why I would need to use statistics, is because I haven’t been watching what was once arguably the world’s biggest indie promotion.
Why Haven’t I Been Watching PROGRESS?
I was never the biggest fan of PROGRESS. Its initial rise coincided with me meeting and starting a family with the woman who would ultimately become my ex-wife, and the “Punk Rock Pro Wrestling” branding was never one that fully vibed with me. But the shows were often very good, and when I got to go to more live shows, I tended to enjoy PROGRESS shows, even if it was during an era that was seen as slightly weaker than what went before.
Likewise, what they achieved was genuinely incredible, with Jon Briley bringing his prior organisational and promotional live event experience to build something that was greater than not just other British indies but international equivalents as well. RevPro and ICW may have occassionally drawn bigger houses but they did so with the type of flyins that PROGRESS eschewed, and shows such as Super Strong Style 16 or the annual September Super Show started outdrawing their indie rivals, despite these cards lacking any major ex-WWE or NJPW names.
But that success didn’t last with the promotion suffering a noticeable decline in quality in 2018, and then an equally noticeable decline in interest in 2019. This coincided with all three co-owners starting to work for NXT UK. Then they had to begin 2020 without Jim Smallman, the co-owner who had been become the promotion’s mascot. Covering those declines in Fighting Spirit Magazine or on my podcast British Wrestling Report was interesting, because you could see the interaction between product quality, the relationship with NXT UK, and their business success. Covering the shows in detail was worthwhile because the quality of the pro-wrestlers involved meant you could realistically suggest tweaks that would improve the product.
That has not been true of the PROGRESS that came back from the novel coronavirus. It has pumped out show after show with the only noticeable change in direction being the gradual deemphasising of meme wrestlers. These shows are literally impervious to critical feedback; most of the performers involved are either placed in a terrible position, or are so inexperienced that it would be cruel to place them under the microscope I and others had developed for a scene that was genuinely one of the best in the world. And there’s nothing meaningful to say about the show-to-show business because these shows are being bankrolled by WWE, so no matter how many British people watch it, no matter how few British people like it, it’s still some suit in Connecticut that determines whether the show meets the targets needed to justify prolonging the lucrative coma that PROGRESS has slipped into.
And I haven’t watch PROGRESS since the first few shows this year because it’s basically an inferior NXT UK with an inferior roster and production values. And it lacks NXT UK’s saving grace that the guys are getting paid a full-time wage and the show only lasts for an hour.
But, as a pro-wrestling journalist, a BRITISH pro-wrestling journalist no less, I have been shirking my duties in not reviewing the promotion. But how do you review a promotion that you don’t watch is an issue I’ve been grappling with...
The World Isn’t Watching
Thankfully I have discovered a different way that I can chart both the audience interest in PROGRESS and the quality of the PROGRESS shows. Instead of watching the corporate filler I will analyse data from Grappl, an app founded by Gareth Hodgson to allow fans to rate matches. Grappl first came to prominence by working with PROGRESS to highlight their most highly rated matches, with the promotion producing video content highlighting the app’s highest rated matches in 2018 and 2019. It also hosts the Spotlight podcast, which was initially envisaged as a PROGRESS fans’ podcasts with two of the founding hosts having previously submitted live event reviews to the likes of Wrestling Observer and Pro-Wrestling Torch.
I’m sure the people involved have had no reason to change their relationship with the promotion, or their opinion about the quality of its content since. I mean they even launched their Patreon with a PROGRESS retrospective.
Perhaps the most important thing we learn from Grappl is that contrary to expectations, PROGRESS actually had retained a surprisingly high level of interest for its first show back after the pandemic. If we compare Chapter 104 to the late February/early March shows in previous years we see that despite the year break and Speaking Out, it had maintained the same level of engagement on Grappl as immediately before lockdown.
Feb/March PROGRESS London Show By Most Ratings For A Match
The key benchmark turns out to be the 2019 figure. That users engagement with the promotion had more than halved a year after Chapter 84 tracks what we were witnessing at the time, with poor ticket sales ultimately forcing the promotion to abandon the lucrative Season Ticket model where fans paid in advance to attend a year’s worth of shows in the Electric Ballroom. Likewise the brain drain had already hit PROGRESS hard with Jimmy Havoc, Grizzled Young Veterans and Matt Riddle moving to America, Will Ospreay and Zack Sabre Jr busy in Japan, and even new acts such as Pretty Deadly hanging out in Enfield.
Alas, the empty arena product from Peckham Theatre could not sustain its initial audience, a decline no doubt exacerbated by the promotion’s infamous handling of Paul Robinson.
PROGRESS 2021 Shows By Most Ratings For A Match
After only four empty arena shows PROGRESS has loss over three quarters of its engagement on Grappl, and it couldn’t even sustain that as a new equilibrium, with user engagement falling even lower. We’re now almost approaching two weeks since the September show took place and it has two ratings. TWO. The last time they held a show in September, the most rated match had 91 ratings.
Some will naturally say that the issue is having to run in empty arenas, an excuse which lacks credibility given that other WWE aligned promotions such as ICW and WXW have started to run live events again, despite operating under stricter covid restrictions than PROGRESS does in England. Even OTT has started to run live events in the Republic of Ireland, after spending most of the year in exile in Northern Ireland.
But more than being out of date, when you compare PROGRESS’s experience to Revolution Pro-Wrestling (RevPro)’s earlier foray into empty arena programming you see just how bad PROGRESS are doing.
The Revolution Will Be Live-Streamed
RevPro launched their Epic Encounters series in August 2020, initially on iPPV but soon after going free on Twitch and YouTube. Incidentally, this seems to have made no difference to the engagement through Grappl, something which tracks what RevPro’s owner told me about viewership of the early Epic Encounters shows.
Unlike PROGRESS, RevPro doesn’t have a direct comparison point, because it would explicitly sort it shows into super shows, road shows, and shows at the London Cockpit. The latter seems to me to be the best comparison point with Epic Encounters, and the last Cockpit show before the pandemic saw 15 people post a rating on Grappl for Mad Kurt vs Eddie Kingston.
Despite debuting at the height of the brief respite from surging covid cases that was the English summer in 2020, the early Epic Encounters beat that threshold, with its debut show having a match with 24 ratings placed onto the Grappl. That figure actually held up pretty well for the first phse of tapings, which reflects the interest in RKJ’s rivalries with both Michael Oku and Will Ospreay.
RevPro Epic Encounters By Match With Most Ratings
Even the latter Epic Encounters comfortably have more engagement than PROGRESS shows do now. But this is isn’t a fair comparison because filming for the second phase of Epic Encounters had been disrupted by the third lockdown, which meant they had to stretch out the already recorded Southside tournament over many more months than intended. When you compare PROGRESS and RevPro’s first five shows back, you realise how much better the latter retained their audience.
Promotions By Percentage Decline In Engagement With Empty Arena Shows
And engagement with RevPro has bounced back even further now that they’re once again running live events, with the most rated match at the recent High Stakes show in York Hall receiving 59 ratings on Grappl. And smaller shows are regularly being rated by five times the number of people rating PROGRESS matches - the last Cockpit show had a match with twelve user ratings. It’s hard to argue that somehow RevPro have overtaken PROGRESS to be become England’s biggest promotion.
And when you look at user star ratings, you begin to understand why.
Muzak Pro Wrestling
Grappl allows users to rate matches according to a 20 point scale, with 0.25 being the lowest possible rating, and 5 being the highest. Again we see that PROGRESS was struggling before lockdown to match the heights it reached at its peak.
Highest Rated Match On PROGRESS Feb/March London Show
What’s useful about this point of comparison is that late February/early March was never a time of year that PROGRESS looked to load up the Ballroom card, so it gives us an insight into the quality of a generic Chapter show. And what we see is that whereas once PROGRESS main events routinely passed the four-star threshold, the promotion could not present a match that reach 3.5 stars for its long anticipated comeback show. Indeed across nineteen shows this year, Grappl users have only rated three PROGRESS matches 3.5 stars or higher, and only one of those matches actually cleared the threshold.
Highest Rated Match On PROGRESS 2021 Shows
But worse for PROGRESS, many of these relatively highly rated matches are due to performers who are appearing elsewhere. The one performer that is exclusive to PROGRESS in England is their champion, who has not exactly been setting the world on fire.
Cara Noir Match Ratings By 2021 PROGRESS Show
These are not the match ratings of someone who deserves to be considered one of the best indie pro-wrestlers in the world, like previous PROGRESS champions were. But Cara Noir is not just lacking compared to the standards PROGRESS set at its peak, he’s also barely beating the (much diminished) spread when it comes to Match of the Night honours.
Was Cara Noir’s Match The Highest Rated Match By 2021 PROGRESS Show He Appeared On
To place this in context, on the five Epic Encounters shows he appeared on, Will Ospreay secured best match of the night honours three times. And the two times he didn’t was when he was having throwaway matches against contenders. But arguably comparing Noir to Ospreay is unfair because the latter is not someone RevPro will always be able to use due to overseas commitments. But RevPro do have two performers not aligned with New Japan that don’t appear in PROGRESS; Michael Oku and Ricky Knight Jr.
Epic Encounters By Whether RKJ or Michael Oku Had The Highest Rated Match
Out of the eight empty-arena shows one of them appeared on, RKJ or Oku were only denied Match of the Night honours in the eyes of Grappl users by each other. That neither man that active on the wider Britwres scene, mean that RevPro have two unique talents to call upon, even if you don’t want to count Ospreay due to the expectation he will soon be back in Japan. But when you include Ospreay and indeed Aussie Open who returned this summer, you start to understand just how deeper RevPro’s exclusive roster is than PROGRESS’s.
Average Empty Arena Match Rating By Performer (RevPro/PROGRESS shows only)
This again tracks with what most people observed whilst watching the shows in real time. Even at his bedraggled worst, Ospreay was performing at a higher level than anyone else in the promotion, although RKJ was pushing him surprisingly close. Oku is slightly behind Cara Noir, but that’s comparing RevPro’s third best semi-exclusive performer to PROGRESS’s best. It’s worth noting that as RevPro has started running live shows with a full roster Ospreay, Oku, and RKJ have all excelled. At the promotion’s return to York Hall all three men took part in matches that Grappl users rated four stars or above. Indeed, RevPro has had noticeably more matches in Grappl’s highest rated matches this year than its erstwhile rival.
Number of Promotion’s Matches in Grappl’s Top 400 matches in 2021 so far
PROGRESS IS DEAD?
I will hold my hands up and say that Britwres is a bit livelier at the moment than I expect. RevPro weathered the various storms of last year surprisingly well, whilst for better or worse, smaller promotions are busily picking up where they left off. But PROGRESS is not fine. A promotion that was once defined by its strong online following now has no buzz on social media. A promotion that once led the British indie boom now can’t get more than a handful of people to review its matches on a British-based match ratings app. And those who are rating the matches find the content distinctly mediocre.
And the elephant in the room is why haven’t they started running live shows yet? Last year they annouced plans to return to the Electric Ballroom for Unboxing, but since the third lockdown forced those shows to be cancelled nobody has said a word. Other promotions have been running since May, RevPro have already held seven shows in London. Even NXT UK is starting to welcome live fans back.
The only logical explanation is that PROGRESS are terrified at what running live will reveal about their place in today’s Britwres. There is no way they can draw a major crowd to a live event with the current lineups, and unlike RevPro, their ability to bring in outside stars is limited by their relationship with WWE. And they’re currently running with a skelton backstage crew, something which would surely have to change before a return to live events. But hiding in Peckham Theatre doesn’t seem a plausible long-term strategy…some day even WWE’s cheques stop coming.
One doesn’t want to say that PROGRESS IS DEAD, but it certainly looks like it has kicked the bucket, shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain, and joined the bleeding choir invisible!!
THIS IS EX-PROGRESS!!!
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