I’d never been to a wrestling show before, but when my new friend Amanda invited me to one that started in four hours, I looked at the Facebook event page, saw the words, “If you feel the spirit, come dressed in a futuristic/cyberpunk manner!” threw on my vinyl pants and mirrorshades and started driving north.
The venue was a warehouse space behind an as-yet unopened bar/brewery. I got there early, stepped through the time portal into the dark, dystopic world of 2017, drank dollar beer and chatted with other members of the human resistance until it was time to see if our chants of “Flesh fights back!” were enough to motivate our organic champions to victory over the robotic forces of SlamNet, who had previously sent its champion Deep Slam back in time to 2015 to defeat Dock Master and steal the Party World Rasslin’ championship belt. Thus, by 2017, Austin had become a ruined world in which mandatory “work violence” had replaced the party violence celebrated by the human community.
The event was nearly five hours of theatrical wrestling bouts, to varying degrees science fictional and absurd. One of the matches involved seven different versions of the same wrestler from different points in time fighting for dominance. One involved a mystic fighter astral projecting from the year 2015 and teaming up with the spirit of Earth’s last living tree to fight twisted clones of former allies. A fight across three generations featured a cyborg pizza chef and his noodle-born son matched up against a grandchild made out of HDMI cables and a vaping android named T-420. In the climax, Deep Slam seemed set to defeat all opponents, before Future Dock Master returned from obscurity to reclaim the Party Weight Belt for humanity.
It was a fabulously well-done event, and while I’ve never been a fan of wrestling, I left thrilled. Below is a gallery of photos I took, and an embed of the webcast of the whole night.
