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Last year the Eastern Wrestling Association (EWA) lost the lease on their training gym, a tiny shopfront in Dundalk, Maryland. After 20 years in the business, EWA owner Jim Christian looked set to cut his losses and move on. Pro wrestling isn’t an easy business, and running monthly shows in armories and bingo halls doesn’t exactly rake in the cash when you’ve got bills stacking up and wrestlers to pay.
But two EWA wrestlers, Oldman Youngboy (a.k.a. Dan Gutierrez, interviewed by BRUISER in 2023) and Saul Esparza, weren’t ready to throw in the towel. They pounded the pavement until they found a new training space, a Hampden warehouse they share with an array of small businesses. They set up their ring and got to work, their efforts aimed at growing their audience within the Baltimore city limits.
While the suburban armory shows are generally well-attended, they primarily draw an audience of hardcores and families—folks who would come out to any show because they just love wrestling. But through their connections with the Baltimore arts scene, Dan and Saul knew there were plenty of potential new fans waiting for them—people who have little interest in wrestling’s soapy mainstream exponents and would prefer to see something with a little grit and reality happening right in front of them, performed by a diverse crew of hungry young talent on the rise. To that end: EWA’s next show is on Saturday, June 28th in their training space at 4000 Buena Vista Avenue. It’s $10 at the door, BYOC (bring your own chair). This is DIY wrestling and it is 100% BRUISER APPROVED.
If you’ve only watched pro wrestling on TV, you haven’t seen pro wrestling. Much like underground music (so lovingly documented for BRUISER by Tim Kabara), wrestling isn’t a passive entertainment medium, but an in-the-flesh experience, a community effort between performers and audience to make something special happen. At least live music has the benefit of readymade venues, low overhead costs and relatively compact equipment; even sustaining a wrestling practice space is a much more complex and costly concern than fifteen musicians splitting the rent on a 10x10 practice space. Wrestling has fewer viable performance spaces, with a much smaller pool of talent to draw from and much higher overhead costs—and that’s before you have to tangle with the Maryland Athletics Commission. Imagine, if you will, a world in which the state regulates hardcore gigs, and try to keep from shuddering.
In advance of their big show on the 28th, Dan and Saul invited me to a taping in their training space—an opportunity for EWA wrestlers and students from other schools in the region to work full matches in front of a tiny audience and get some footage for their showreels. I was fortunate enough to get photos of Kamen MK and Jarell Jonas’ exciting technical match, a bombfest between Eel O’Neal and David Moses, and a brief tag match that ended with Oldman Youngboy taking the pin from Pure Ignorance. Many thanks to EWA for having me and to the wrestlers for leaving it all on the mat.
