It Could Be Said #6 Mr Wrestling Goes To Westminster
A look into the formation of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Wrestling, and its recent report into the industry in Great Britain
As the wrestling industry prepared to put one of the worst years in its history behind it by hosting an eerily normal Wrestlemania weekend in Tampa, the action briefly switched to the seat of British politics. On Thursday 8th April 2021, the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Wrestling (APPGW thereafter) revealed the results of the first parliamentary enquiry into British pro wrestling since the immediate aftermath of the Second World War.
At a mid-morning press conference, the APPGW’s co-chairs Alex Davies-Jones MP and Mark Fletcher MP presented the report, stressing its recommendations to improve the governance and professionalism of pro wrestling. The press conference had been trailed by the report being covered in The Times of London, whilst the BBC and Guardian would later publish articles about the report. Such interest from the world of politics seemed remarkable to American pro wrestling commentator Rich Fann, “Here in the US I can see perhaps a state senator having an interest, but ultimately I'm unsure we'd make the effort needed for such an expansive report. Take our election, when Andrew Yang mentioned if Joe Biden won that he would try to investigate WWE. Now that Biden is in office, given the momentum, this would be an easy pet project. Instead!?! Crickets”.
And that is an important thing to remember. For all the failings of this report, both due to the misunderstood position that the APPGW occupies within politics and mistakes made in the report’s drafting, it is genuinely impressive that politicians have dedicated time to put together a report about the business that we all love. They should be genuinely and generously thanked for doing so, especially when, as Alex Davies-Jones MP explained to me, they invited ridicule by talking about their fandom. “We were laughed at. Everybody we spoke to thought of us as a bit of a joke. It was like, ‘have you not got anything better to do!?!’ Even now I get some people messaging me going, ‘you're an MP, and with everything that's going on in the world, this is what you're focusing on!’.” However, she feels attitudes are slowly changing. “When you tell people about how unregulated it is, how dangerous and unsafe it is, for wrestlers, how there's no support for the industry, and also how incredible the industry could be as a British export to fly the flag for us around the world, people actually start to take you seriously. So people are waking up to see everything that British wrestling has got to offer, which is great!”
Chased Before They Could Walk
The idea of an All Party-Parliamentary Group for Wrestling had been broached before Speaking Out, with David Starr publicly talking about meeting with a MP to discuss supporting a bid to establish one just before both politics and wrestling locked down due to the novel coronavirus. Indeed, it is my understanding that this meeting came after a long period of discussion between Starr and one of the MPs currently part of the APPGW.
But a once in the century crisis placed the whole project on the back burner, not least because the move to virtual proceedings made it harder for politicians, many of them relatively new to Westminster, to identify who would be interested in joining, and swap ideas about what the new group would look like. By the time the restrictions were relaxed, the former progressive hero had been exposed as a creep and a fraud, with several companies stripping Starr of their championships due to allegations that he had sexually and emotionally abused several former partners. The pro wrestling workers’ rights activist group he had helped established was ultimately discontinued due to the disgust his cofounders felt over his actions. The revelations did not stop with Starr as performers, crew and fans all came forward to lay bare just how endemic abuse and exploitation was within pro wrestling. This was particularly true in Britain and Ireland, and particularly true of girls and women.
“It was truly heartbreaking to me as a fan and as a woman”, Davies-Jones explained to me. “I started seeing it as everybody else did, I suppose I was in bed with my son. I was in the morning just scrolling through Twitter as you do. And I could see all the stories coming out from the wrestlers that I was following and fans of the industry with the hashtag speaking out and it was truly harrowing to read. But sadly not surprising…You know, we've seen British gymnastics and British cycling and all walks of society have had been plagued by the systemic abuse of women. We have good testimony from some men as well, but primarily women who have been harassed, sexually assaulted and abused in their workplace or in their area of a hobby which they love. And it is absolutely unacceptable and things need to change”.
Maybe returning to the office would have been enough to give fresh impetus to the idea of creating an All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG), especially given how badly the industry was being affected by the pandemic. However, the sight of the police investigating prominent pro wrestlers and the BBC carrying news reports about sexual abuse in the industry, gave the idea more urgency. Not just that, but to some it gave it a mission. “I thought as a parliamentarian, and as a fan of British wrestling, I am in this incredibly privileged position of being an MP, what can I do to help? I have got a voice, and I want these women to know that somebody is listening to them”, explained Davies-Jones. “Because it's all right Speaking Out, but if nobody's listening to you, you're speaking out against a brick wall!”
In an ideal world, the MPs would have had the time and space to make contacts across the industry, explain to fans, performers and promoters what they were trying to achieve, and only then start trying to drive the agenda. But the sudden crisis of Speaking Out and the growing realisation about just how long and large the negative impact of the novel coronavirus on the industry was likely to be, meant that it had to begin work from a running start. Davies-Jones would speak in the House of Commons about the sexual abuse of women and girls within the industry, whilst she and her colleagues pushed ministers for greater clarity about which rules governed pro wrestling and what support they could access. It was an unavoidable baptism of fire that both determined the focus of the APPGW’s report, but also its weaknesses.
The Impossible Dream
I would argue that the APPGW’s recommendations can be grouped into four baskets.
The first we will return to at the end of the article, which is a series of small bureaucratic fixes to tighten existing legislation as it applies to pro wrestling. The second is to encourage those within pro wrestling to endorse its ideas about what constitutes best practice through signing up to what they call “the APPG Pledge”. We will likewise return to this idea later in the article.
But it is the third basket where you find the report’s really big idea. Because if there is something that runs throughout its recommendations, it’s the importance of British pro wrestling establishing a clear advocacy and governance structure. What may surprise people is that one of the big drivers for this desire was actually the novel coronavirus, with the politicians believing that the industry failed to advocate for itself effectively by not speaking with a single voice. “During the first and second lockdowns, when we had meetings with the ministers, and we wrote to government ministers, about the issues and challenges that were facing the industry, they said to us, quite clearly, ‘well, if there was a governing body, or a regulatory board, they would have a seat at the table’, explained Davies-Jones. “Because all the other sports and arts based performances had had a seat at that table, they were directly involved in these decision, reaching agreements with government on how the industry should restart or what sort of financial support packages were available. And because wrestling didn't have that, they were excluded”. Speaking Out would further increase the desire for a governing body, as it could help ensure training schools and promotionse were safe and secure places for people to train and perform in.
The sad irony at the heart of the report is that while the report does a good job at explaining why such a governing body would be useful, it does an evening better job of explaining why it would be impossible. In one table they brutally outline that no one in British pro wrestling can agree on who should staff such a governing body, what its purpose or remit should be, or how it should be funded1. Even Davies-Jones had to admit to me, that her colleagues had their heads in their hands when they saw such a wide range of opinions. That insight doesn’t seem to have inspired any serious consideration of a Plan B, with the MPs still committed to prioritising establishing some form of governing body or professional association for the industry.
There is however one exception, which is the report’s attempts to construct a path to robust self-regulation of training schools without waiting for a British pro wrestling governing body to be established. And this brings us to the fourth basket of recommendations, the recommendations for how pro wrestling training should be recognised as a sport and regulated as such, whilst pro wrestling events are explictly classified as entertainment.
Whilst the report does embrace genuinely interesting ideas about how treating wrestling training as a sport with interschool competitions where performers were judged with objective criteria, I cannot help but suspect a primary motivation for classifying pro wrestling training as a sport is to force the governing body for amateur wrestling to assume responsibility for it. Indeed, the report goes into some detail how if this was to happen, it could help training schools gain access not just to clear advice on safeguarding and health & safety, but also insurance and dispute resolution processes.
There’s just one problem. British Wrestling could not be firmer in its rejection of the proposal, saying on the day the report was launched, “To be clear British Wrestling strongly discourages the government from classifying any aspect of professional wrestling as a sport”. This was in case they were being too subtle by:
Bemoaning that pro wrestling is often confused with amateur wrestling
Busting out the Oxford Dictionary to demonstrate that pro wrestling doesn’t meet the literal definition of a sport
Comparing pro wrestling to Cirque du Soleil
They also made the strong argument that classifying pro wrestling training as a sport but pro wrestling events as entertainment would “only exacerbate the problems seen in professional wrestling where, for too long, the industry has fallen between two sectors and make it more challenging to understand how the industry is governed and regulated”. The media reaction to the APPGW’s report underscores this point with the nuance that only training would be classified as a sport, completely lost on most mainstream outlets.
Their statement goes on to explain that they are an effective regulator and underwriter of amateur wrestling because they cover the whole sport, ensuring everything to do with the sport is conducted under a common framework. This is the model that British professional boxing has, with a private company acting as regulator of both events and training, as well as an industry advocacy body. The problem of course is that British pro wrestling is desperate to escape the association with boxing that is hardwired into the Licensing Act 2003, something that means many entertainment venues dare not host pro wrestling shows, because many local authorities perform additional checks on venues licensed to host boxing. One promoter told me that just the existence of the APPGW’s report, would make his life easier, simply by clearly stating they considered pro wrestling shows to be entertainment, which would be official enough to reassure reluctant venues or insurers.
Alas, that’s a relatively rare example of the APPGW having a direct impact.
They Do Things Differently There
It’s apt that the word parliament comes from the French word for talk, because sometimes it and the wider machinery of government feels like a foreign country. It’s confusing web of precedents and practices that only somewhat make sense to the MPs and Peers themselves. The proved to be a big problem as wrestling fans angered by Speaking Out tried to understand how they could use the political system to address their concerns.
An early example was lots of fans online becoming very excited about the Private Members Bill proposed by the former Sports Minister Tracey Crouch to close the loophole that some argue allows Sports Coaches to sleep with their child students due to coaching not being recognised as a “Position of Trust” where the higher age of consent and laws against grooming apply2. The problem with this mini-campaign was that the law was never going to pass, because non-governmental bills nearly never pass in the British system, and in any case, Crouch’s proposed Bill would not remove the confusion surrounding the status of professional wrestling trainers, because it was narrowly focused on sports coaches.
A similar issue happened with the APPGW itself, with many fans and performers confusing it with a Select Committee (which can compel people to testify and has public funds for their work) or even the Government itself. So deep did the misunderstandings go that former WWE UK Champion and ATTACK Wrestling Owner Pete Dunne suggested to the Daily Star that it would be the MPs that would deal with everything; “[Speaking Out] is now at a Parliamentary level which is great. I was doing the best I could, and so were a lot of people, but it’s above us, and we need people who actually know how to make the correct changes. I am glad it is in their hands… hopefully from here it can only move in the right direction and people are aware of the changes that need to be made. Fingers crossed, in a year’s time, British wrestling looks completely different”. It would be fair to say that the misunderstandings were made worse last summer and autumn by one media outlet that had close links to current and former special advisers who were providing the APPGW’s secretariat.
Having grown tired of arguing with people on this point, I reached out to Stephen Bush, the Political Editor of Britain’s leading progressive political weekly, to explain what an APPG is. “I suppose the way I would describe them is basically as talking shops for the most part - they don’t have any formal power but they are ways for MPs who share an interest to get together, whether to pool costs and resources if they want to research an issue or if they want to be able to find likeminded MPs to campaign on an issue”. Thankfully the report reflects this understanding with the APPGW going out of its way to underline that they can only play a supportive role as the industry tries to get its house in order.
But the issues of engaging with a wrestling audience that doesn’t understand the odd ways parliament works remain. One of the more humorous examples was fans complaining about the report being released at 00:01 in the morning, rather than during the day. That is actually standard practice, with the idea being that you release a report to journalists in advance so they can get their articles ready before you publish it yourself just as the early editions of newspapers are becoming available. Likewise the argument that the report is overly long is wrong, indeed having read the recent Sewell Report for work, my heart was gladdened when I saw the APPGW’s report was less than half the length.
But if fans were confused, that was nothing compared to promoters.
Shotgun Stakeholders
In the interests of transparency, I should declare that I received an advance copy of the APPGW’s report around nine hours before it was release. And I think both making such copies available, and inviting wrestling journalists to the post-release press conference were great moves, that many in the wrestling industry could learn a lot from.
But it soon became clear on Wednesday night that there was a problem. I messaged around a few promoters, and none of them had had chance to read the report. Some said they hadn’t even received it, several hours I had finished reading it. Steven Fludder, veteran promoter of PCW, was scathing about how promoters had been consulted. “I was looking at the shares and comments on the report and not many promotions have commented on it which is probably because they was not involved and same goes for talent in the UK. So it seems like the only people who actually showed genuine interest are a tiny minority of British Wrestling and for change of any way to take place you need people on the same page. We don't all need to be united, but we do need people to want change to implement it”.
The bigger issue came when you read the report and you saw that there was a certain randomness with who had and hadn’t been quoted in the report. Partially, this is politics, as it’s easy to see how a Scottish National Party MP may have been pleased to see a reference to a Scottish Wrestling Hall of Fame or a Tory MP could easily have been excited to learn about Gibraltar Pro Wrestling, despite the novel coronavirus causing its debut event to be cancelled. But to Fludder, such considerations are a world away. “It loses a lot of credibility for me when they are quoting a company that has yet to run yet because you certainly wouldn't ask a director who has yet to direct a movie about changing the film industry so why would you think it's relevant to speak to people who have not run shows about operating in my industry”. As someone who has spent a fair few days at ‘Hall of Fame’ ceremonies in British wrestling, I’ve heard similar scepticism about the Scottish Hall of Fame. But these are just unusually vivid examples of a problem that runs throughout this report, and reports of this type.
“He's like a feather pillow who always bears the imprint of the last person who has sat on him”, is a barb from General Haig that has entered the political lexicon, but it also describes the worst examples of reports that come out of Westminster or Whitehall. The body conducting the report will ask for submissions through the usual channels; website, social media, mailing lists. They will then sift through these submissions to find engaging anecdotes or plausible ideas for inclusion in their report. But the process is highly random, I’ve read dozens of these reports for work, and I have never read a report that did not have at least one case study that I knew was nonsense or that there was a better example elsewhere in my sector. But if you don’t engage with the consultation, then your voice isn’t heard.
And that is a big problem with the APPGW’s report because they had a limited ability to get their message out to people within pro wrestling. Not only did they have no mailing list of key contacts, but they were trying to reach a group of promoters and performers that were not used to engaging with Westminster. It meant that the voice of many promotions were not heard in the report.
The failure to secure engagement with smaller promotions was particularly noteworthy in some of the recommendations. When talking about how to establish professional bodies to represent promotions, it was suggesting that there be one for independent groups such as PROGRESS and Revolution Pro-Wrestling, and one for groups such as Megaslam, NGW or All-Star that run a touring circuit of holiday camps, fairs, and town halls. This undoubtedly reflected the types of promotions that spoke to the APPGW as part of their inquiry. But what about grassroots groups that run school or church halls solely for the entertainment of local fans, a key part of the British wrestling eco-system? The report seemingly envisages no professional group for them. I’d suggest it’s not a coincidence that many of these grassroots groups would be endangered if all of the APPGW’s recommendations were applied to them, not least the requirement to have medical professionals (as opposed to just first aiders) at shows, a regulation that would go beyond what is required of similarly sized amateur theatre or sporting events. Luckily, it seems that Alex Davies-Jones MP understands the importance of such groups. “They are my absolute favourites, you know, and they're the ones I love taking my boys to in the local theatre or the local community centre. And for me, seeing their faces and the faces of other children present is what inspires me to be a wrestling fan. Seeing them cheer on their favourite wrestlers and booing the heels, it's everything that British wrestling should be. And I absolutely want to protect that and support those small shows as well”. To achieve that desire, the APPGW will have to do better in engaging with smaller promotions, something for which they will need to proactively seek them out.
Elsewhere, the APPGW repeatedly shows a lack of judgement as to which submissions it takes seriously. Whilst repeatedly quoting Gibraltar Pro-Wrestling was goofy, some credulousness was more serious. For example it allows itself to be used as yet another platform for Knucklelocks co-owner Oisin Delaney to continue his bizarre and distasteful feud with several prominent women pro wrestlers, many of whom were victims of sexual abuse. Not only did the report repeat his attacks on pro wrestlers participating in “customs”3 and reference his derogatory phrase for such productions, they allowed his comments to be prefaced with the claim that the gym is “pro-sex work and sex positive”. And whilst I actually agree with Delaney that customs are almost invariably some form of sex work due to the way those products are consumed by the people ordering them, that is strongly disputed by many of the women who perform in such productions, and so shouldn’t have been accepted so readily by the APPGW.
Indeed, the APPGW even included a whole section on the topic, and ensured that later recommendations were stretched to be inclusive of customs, despite such productions being an insignificant part of the industry. What made this worse, was that there was no attempt to place this bizarre broadside in context, not least that Delaney’s crusade against customs seems to rooted in unhappiness that his gym was rocked by the aftermath of a senior pro wrestler and trainer being accused of raping a female pro wrestler. The alleged perpetrator responded by releasing screenshots from a group chat on social media, that demonstrated the casual sexism and homophobia that had run rampant in the promotion and the associated promotion, Pro Wrestling Soul.
At least with the case of customs, other people made enough submissions to the contrary that what Knucklelocks said wasn’t accepted as the uncontested truth. That was not the case when somebody, and you just know it was another promotion either directly or indirectly, complained that Kamikaze Pro Wrestling had a fifteen year old girl receive a piledriver on a car from an unnamed “well-known American star”. Much to his amusement, that star was Joey Janela. Less amused were Kamikaze, who despite welcoming the report and agreeing with many of its recommendations, told me they “respectfully disagreed” with how Janela’s match with Chantal Jordan had been portrayed in the report. “We feel the implication that there was a lack of supervision and that the move was performed in a dangerous manner is grossly inaccurate. The parents were consulted, we had a paramedic present and we had multiple staff with first aid training. At no stage in that match was Chantal, Joey or any of the fans put in danger. Chantal has talent far beyond her years and Joey Janela is an elite level performer who had wrestled for us previously and we fully trusted his ability as a wrestler. We emphasized beforehand the safety elements to both wrestlers which they both performed to a very high standard”. I would add, that as somebody who was present at the show that day, the piledriver onto the car was one of the safest things you would ever see in a wrestling match, with Janela going above and beyond to protect his young opponent.
What makes these and other examples inexcusable, is that the APPGW itself notes that there is a history of British pro wrestling promotions seeking to exploit every available tactic to undermine each other. It’s naive beyond all reason for them to not have seen that promoters would have used their inquiry as a platform for yet more squabbles and point scoring. In more formal inquiries, there is a process called Maxwellisation where anybody criticised in the official report gets to read the references to themselves before publication, and if necessary provide arguments for revisions. Given how fractious British wrestling is, I think it would be wise for the APPGW to consider adopting that rule for any future publications they produce.
Missing Piece
Whilst being gullible is a fault this report shares with similar publications, it is exacerbated by a more unusual flaw. Unlike most reports coming from Westminster or Whitehall, there was no attempt to conduct a data analysis to place the consultation responses into proper context. The APPGW admirably draws attention to this, and argues it’s a failing of the industry, but I think the authors could have done more to at least have some quantitative research incorporate into the report. They repeat a ‘guess’ from one promoter that there are 120 active promotions in the UK, but they could have easily done a search of active promotions based in the UK on Cagematch, which would place the number at 190. That number is almost certainly inaccurate, but given many smaller promotions are not listed on the wrestling event database or some may be listed as residing solely in one of the UK’s constituent nations, it could as easily be an understatement as an overstatement.
Likewise, it surely wouldn’t have beyond the wit of those involved to develop a quick survey to capture the thoughts of fans and performers. Instead they rely on a years old survey that someone did for their undergraduate degree, one that I didn’t think much of when I completed it at the time. And that failure to make any attempt to engage with ordinary fans really disfigured the report’s engagement with Speaking Out. The report repeats a common failing in the discourse by focusing on the issues that trainees and pro wrestlers face, with little attention given to discussing how to better protect female fans from sexual harassment. Likewise, its recommendations only discuss how to police fans behaviour, with no consideration given to protecting fans from harassment from those within the industry.
I was genuinely astounded to see the report lean so much into concern for those accused. I think fans with higher hopes for the APPGW would be genuinely heartbroken at the report platforming industry figure after industry figure lashing out at fans. A particularly notorious section repeated the lies that Hana Kimura and Ryan Smile both committed suicide due to criticism from pro wrestling fans on twitter, which the most basic research would show is not true. When I put this point to the APPGW at the Press Conference, Mark Fletcher MP couldn’t even offer the barest of defences. “There are some instances and perhaps you've highlighted one where there are question marks around the veracity of what was said to us. But as four individuals bringing this report together, we have tried our very best to make sure that the report is fair, and that almost all the things that are in there are accurate. And if we've missed something along the way, then we can only apologize for that”.
The bigger issue is that by striking, what at best could be called a note of concern about the fan activism we have seen this past year, the APPGW has called into question the one recommendation that could be picked up quickly by the industry – the APPG Pledge. In the report, the APPGW explicitly invokes fan power, saying that they “call on fans to consider your custom of any promotions or schools unwilling to follow what we consider minimum standards for the industry”. But unless they envisage fans to make a protest as silent as it is ineffective, that means fans using their voice on social media to highlight promotions and pro wrestlers who refuse to sign up to the pledge, and if that act is to have meaning, expose those that aren’t adhering to its precepts. But that is the type of fan activism that is explicitly called into question by the same report which launches the pledge, because it is exactly this type of fan-led boycotts that industry figures refer to when they talk about fan harassment and bullying.
Another odd thing about the pledge is that it duplicates what the performers union Equity has been trying to achieve. Surely it would have been simpler and more impactful for the APPGW to endorse the Equity pledge rather than come up with an alternative? Unlike the APPGW, Equity can offer a clear carrot in terms of providing insurance to performers and assistance to promotions in setting up a semi-independent complaints process. Steve Duncan-Rice, the Equity organiser who has led on the union’s engagement with pro-wrestling, welcomed the report as “another step forward on what will be a long journey”. He then went on to say, “Regarding the APPG pledge: the idea of pledges is to allow for our members, and others, to assess the quality of the promotions they are dealing with. It is a sound approach and a measuring stick. They provide for an excellent short term response”.
Whilst Equity may not agree, I just cannot see how two outside bodies trying to push good practice pledges on wrestling promotions isn’t going to do anything but create confusion and justify lethargy. It is particularly alarming that I’ve seen more evidence of promotions promising not to sign up to the APPG Pledge due to unhappiness with the report, than promotions commiting to adopt it.
What Comes Next
This Thursday will see the next phase of the APPGW’s rollout of the report, with the MPs involved having secured an adjournment debate on the report and its recommendations. Whilst the importance of such debates shouldn’t be overstated, the sight of the House of Commons discussing pro wrestling will be as striking as it is welcome.
But after the House adjourns, it’s not clear what happens next. According to the New Statesman’s Stephen Bush, a key criteria for All Party-Parliamentary Groups to be successful is that they stay focused on a clear goal. “APPGs are a huge mixed bag in terms of quality and effectiveness. I would say the good ones tend to have a very tight focus and sense of purpose, whether that’s ‘collecting MPs who are likely to be interested in watching something on a big screen after a late vote’ or ‘effectively advocating for our video game industry’ and the ones that are ineffective tend to be the ones with a looser sense of purpose and mission”. He repeated this point when talking about how they ensure they don’t fall prey to partisan bickering.
And to me feels like a warning for the APPGW. As it proudly notes on its website it has a long list of recommendations which range from lobbying all levels of government, encouraging the industry to put in place the necessary organisations to make self-regulation work and inspire fans, performers and promoters to hold everyone to account. It’s a work programme that would keep a government minister busy, let alone what even Alex Davies-Jones MP told me could best be compared to a “university society”.
My fear is that the APPGW will be sucked into is trying to help create some form of industry body that could represent and ideally regulate wrestling in Britain. So many of their recommendations, flow from such a body being established. But such a body will not be established. Last summer I got into trouble for saying that there was no such thing as a “Britwres Illuminati” who was going to bring people together to sort things out, and I’ve only been proven more and more right. Somehow promotions manage to be both too different from one another, and too inherently competitive with each other, for them to easily develop lasting structures.
Likewise, nobody should expect the APPGW to persuade the Government to pass legislation to establish independent regulation of the industry. Bush explained to me that APPGs typically struggle to drive such changes, “It really depends on the quality of the APPG. Often they are incidental to driving legislative changes - what really matters, is how well organised and informed individual MPs are, which APPGs can do, but they don’t often”.
Instead, I hope they pick the few elements of their plan that need only Government buy-in and then focus on securing that buy-in. These are primarily the bureaucratic fixes, where they look to the Government to issue new or amended guidance that changes the way existing laws are implemented in England, and later the rest of the UK. The ideas they suggest are that:
The Home Office issue new guidance to local authorities about what they should be requiring of venues or promotions looking for a licence to run pro wrestling events under the Licensing Act 2003
The Health and Safety Executive issue regulations about what constitutes safe practice in pro wrestling schools and promotions
The Government say that the British Standards Institution must establish a uniform standard for what constitutes a safe wrestling ring, with the sale of any rings that don’t meet this standard banned
These are simple, specific changes that they can work with Government to achieve. Using existing legislation to impose revised regulations on the industry will be the quickest way to establish a clear and easily enforceable standard of best practice in pro wrestling. The prospect of fresh regulation would provide a clear direction for further consultation, with industry stakeholders having a real incentive to engage fully, rather than use it as yet another excuse to settle old scores. Likewise, the act of new regulations being imposed may well be the wakeup call promotions need to work together so they can ensure any future changes are not imposed on the industry from above.
As so often is the case in both politics and pro wrestling, the big ideas may sound exciting but are completely impractical due to vested interests. But if they can dare to think small, the All Party Parliamentary Group for Wrestling may just seize the opportunity to make British pro wrestling a safer and more professional place for people to work and train in.
Further Listening
If you want to hear more from my interview with Alex Davies-Jones MP then you can listen to it here ($). I also joined Martin Bushby for the latest British Wrestling Exprience to discuss the report.
On The Next It Could Be Wrestling….
It’s time for something completely different as I’ll be looking at what pro wrestling can learn from Godzilla vs Kong.
See Pages 84 and 85 of the report
The point of law is actually contested with the Government having long claimed that the existing legislation implictly covers sports coaches and arts instructors, but even they have been forced to accept that making this point explicit is necessary to stop local police forces choosing not to pursue cases.
Borrowed from pornography, “customs” is wrestling slang for closed or semi-closed set shows that are typically produced to a prior specification laid down by a fan. Often features sexualised content or nudity, and rarely feature on the Grappl App.