It Could Be Said #35 Mates of Arabia

PROGRESS running Dubai is not just wrong, it's a mistake

One of the sad things about the possibility that Twitter may die is that we may no longer routinely see a Britwres promotion get a kicking online from the revolting mass of hardcore fans. Thankfully PROGRESS didn’t deny us all what may be one last hit of that orphenadrine rush by rushing to announce that they would be running their first show in the United Arab Emirates on 10th December.

The natural response was to accuse the promotion of sportswashing, comparing them running Dubai to what WWE and other major combat sports promotions have done across the Middle East. Naturally PROGRESS didn’t help themselves by tying to pre-emptively defend themselves by using the language of said sportswashers. The announcement focused on the fact that the show would feature the first ever women’s world title match in the Middle East, something reflected in the rather on-the-nose chapter title; Sons and Daughters of the Desert. As one Twitter user quipped to a wrestler defending the show, it does feel like they stole Michael Cole’s script. In what may have been a coincidence, their sister promotion TNT Extreme even rushed out an annouuncement that Effy would be bringing his mysteriously popular Big Gay Brunch show to the UK next May.

But doesn’t such a comparison with a promotion as small as PROGRESS feel a bit overwought? I mean the concern about UFC, Matchroom Boxing, or WWE promoting events in Middle Eastern dictatorships is that they’re putting on events of such size and spectacle that it becomes a platform to boost the regime’s prestige at home and abroad. Surely opinion about Dubai isn’t going to change because PROGRESS ran a local warehouse there?

One, of the more loathsome aspects of the shows that the major combat sports promotions present is that they involve direct collaboration with government, so implicating the promotions in accepting money from autocratic regimes that murder and torture people. WWE’s deal was the worst of the lot because the initial vision for the deal was one where the broadcast would be overtly propagandist with Saudi iconography used in the show branding and frequent references to how Mohammed bin Salman was changing Saudi Arabia for the better. Given its small stature it would seem logical to assume that this event has no such involvement from the Dubai authorities.

This would however be mistaken.

The event is being presented in conjunction with a local promotion called Wrestlefest DXB, that has been increasingly flying out British wrestlers to perform on its shows. The promotion is the brainchild of a local wrestler who defeated Dan Moloney for the title back in October, Mohammad Al Shehhi. Whilst he has been at pains to stress the inclusive nature of the events, something reflected in cards that have already included LGBTQ+ and women wrestlers, he has also not hidden his desire to represent his country through wrestling, telling a local outlet how his investment in Wrestlefest DXB will “show the world what the UAE is made of” and bring the eyes of the wrestling world onto Dubai.

Perhaps more importantly the promotion is not fully independent of the government. Earlier this year it secured accreditation from the government-run Dubai Sports Council. Al Shehhi outlined what they meant to them. “We were really nervous before the May event because we knew the sports council was attending and it could lead to big things, but we never expected it to move so quickly”. One must wonder whether one of the big things that flows from the accreditation is access to the resources to bring in overseas wrestlers and partner with PROGRESS. That also raises the question as to what conditions the Dubai Sports Council places on shows to ensure that the accreditation isn’t rescinded.

And lest you be in any doubt about his attitude towards working with his government, rest assure that he considers it a great ‘honour’ to be working with them. Indeed, many recent posters have the Dubai Sports Council’s logo prominently featured on them, a body that has the explicit goal of using sport to promote a positive image of Dubai to increase tourism.

So as surprising as it is sounds, the purpose of this event really is to make wrestling performers and fans think more fondly of Dubai. A country that for all its wealth and charm, still criminalises homosexuality, still doesn’t have free or fair elections, and runs a judicial system that can often be brutal.

Maybe the people who currently run and work for PROGRESS can justify working there to themselves due to a desire to bring wrestling to a new country and earn a lot of money whilst doing so. And if they’d leave the disingenuous drivel about this show being an advance for women’s rights and just presented it as the contractual obligation that it is, one could almost accept that. After all plenty of British people go on holiday to places run by unpleasant regimes and many more of us watch sport from them.

But if they don’t want to think about the morality have they thought about more practical considerations. This is still meant to be the same company that bragged about being ‘Punk Rock Wrestling’ and openly fundraised for Stonewall. It was meant to be promotion that tapped into the yearning amongst younger urban fans for something cooler and more sophisticated than the family friendly product which had long dominated British wrestling in small towns across England. The promotion’s very name was meant to be a mission statement, a promise that it would build a better industry than the one that existed before it.

Of course, Alex Shane or Brian Dixon would have happily taken money to run a show overseas, even if there were possible moral objections to doing so. But PROGRESS was different. The people who ran that weren’t just businessmen trying to sell you a ticket but your ‘mates’. And that friendship was lucrative with PROGRESS using that image to build a hardcore fanbase no British promotion (including Joint Promotions) has ever had. That allowed it to run more and bigger shows than the competition, whilst also flogging t-shirts, hoodies, badges, pins, VOD subscriptions, and overseas tours. It was arguably the biggest and hottest indie in the entire world in 2017.

And the three mates sold that friendship out; to WWE, to their own vices, to Tranmere Rovers. But selling out means that you got something in return. What have the new mates got from their expensive purchase? How does running in Dubai help get PROGRESS back to where it was, back to what they thought they were paying for? Ignore the ethics, perhaps the biggest betrayal of PROGRESS’s original ethos is that during its boom period it would never have done something so uncool as run a warehouse in front of 200 disinterested fans. Even in 2018, Jon Briely still had high enough standards to sit on recordings from their tour of Australia out of embarrassment for how shindy it all looked.

Running Dubai is not just morally wrong, it’s a mistake. Lee McAteer and Martyn Best would have been better off burning the thousands and thousands of pounds they paid Jon Briley for PROGRESS and launching a new group called TranmereSlam. I cannot think of a promotion with less identity or buzz in all of pro wrestling.

This Is PROGRESS? As if.