Today we’d like to introduce you to Iron Heart Pro Wrestling.
Hi Iron Heart, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
While our first show for Iron Heart Pro was in May of 2021, I think Iron Heart’s real “birthday” was in the fall of 2020 when I was able to convince Alison and Kaitlin – both wrestlers and both amazingly gifted minds – to come on board and form the core team of Iron Heart. Their insight and talent – more than anything I’ve done – has elevated Iron Heart to what it is today – a premier organization in Minnesota and the upper Midwest.
In the late spring, early summer of 2021 Louis agreed to come on and has taken over our social media work and has really given us a solid presence in the virtual space.
Everyone on the team is a specialist or has carved out a niche in an area of operations. Alison and I run the day to day operations of the company. Kaitlin is the showrunner, if you will, she writes our stories, brings in the wrestlers to make those stories reality but also mentors and coaches – leveraging her 15+ years of experience.
Louis has attacked social media furiously and in a very short time has given us a very stable and consistent presence in the virtual media realm.
I think one of the keys to our success is that we not only respect the talents and skills of each other – we all genuinely like each other. When we all get together for shows – it is very much a family reunion of sorts. I think we also are bound by a sense that what we’re doing is a little unique in the professional wrestling space in Minnesota. We want Minnesota fans to see wrestlers that they might see on YouTube or on TV but may never actually see live in a way where the full array of their skills are on display. We really also believe very strongly in bringing live pro wrestling to places in Minnesota and Wisconsin where companies don’t go. We believe that if you love pro wrestling you shouldn’t have to travel 2-3 hours into Minneapolis or up to Duluth to see it – you should be able to see it in your back yard. We’re very very proud of that aspect of our work.
We are also very proud of having a roster that is extremely inclusive and supportive of each other. We have a great team and a great spirit in the locker room. We have athletes from every walk of life, every community. We have strong representation from communities of color and the LGBTQ+ community. We are so proud of the fact that a wrestler can come into our locker room and feel respected and supported by the entire team.
We are also very proud of the fact that when and where we can, we work with community groups and organizations to provide some added value to their important work. We’ve worked with local fire departments and other charity groups to support their respective missions. We are also proud of the fact that, coming out of the pandemic, we have been able to help some businesses – breweries and venue spaces – get some business back after COVID 19. It’s not much, and one 2 hour show isn’t going to repair all the damage done by the loss of income COVID 19 and lockdowns caused – but we hope it helps a little.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It has not been a smooth road – that’s for sure. The team that we have at Iron Heart definitely makes those mountains into speed bumps.
I think we’ve had some of the challenges that any small business has when starting out – getting people to come to your business and see what you’re doing. We’ve continued to work with growing our fan base and we are making progress on that front with every event we do.
We’ve had to deal with our fair share of bad actors and unscrupulous people in the business and on social media.
COVID definitely has been a challenge for everyone trying to do work that involves live performances and we were no exception.
I think that the greatest challenge for everyone has been my own inexperience with professional wrestling.
Professional Wrestling is more than a business – it is an art form and it has traditions that go back to the first time a bell rang and a match started. When I started this I didn’t know what I didn’t know. Thankfully Alison, Kaitlin, and Louis have spent many hours bringing me up to speed and teaching how to operate in this environment while honoring the traditions of professional wrestling.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
So one of the great strengths of our team is that we have such an amazing mix of talent in and outside of professional wrestling.
I’m a physician when I’m not working on these shows and I work in the field of Hospital Medicine. So for me, these shows and being involved in the planning and organization of them is a happy escape from the hellscape medicine has been for the past 2 years.
Alison is a professional wrestler of 5 years experience but also an educator. She is absolutely the operational brains of Iron Heart Pro Wrestling – in the space of a week or two she took every aspect of our operations and made them as professional and efficient as any I’ve seen. She literally makes the company run and is the best operations chief I could ever have
Kaitlin is a professional wrestler of 15 years of experience. She’s traveled all over the world (Japan, Europe, Mexico, Canada) and the US. She has wrestled some of the best and brightest in the business – many of whom are at WWE or AEW right now. She is the right brain, creative mind behind the things that we do. She leverages her decade and a half of international experience in professional wrestling to create great shows that tell exciting stories that absolutely fire up a crowd. What’s amazing about her creativity is that it produces shows that even people who are not wrestling fans can understand, enjoy and get excited about.
Louis has been working in pro wrestling for at least 10 years having run a school and a promotion out in New England. He has taken charge of our social media operations and really made us a force. He is also – literally – an idea machine. He is fearless about putting forward new ideas or thinking outside of the box. He also has a ton of practical experience in sales and marketing – so we are absolutely shamelessly robbing from that fund of knowledge.
We have an incredible team but I would be completely remiss if I didn’t say something about our wrestlers.
The men and women we’ve asked to work with us are simply amazing. I work with these folks a lot and I am always left awestruck by what they do in the ring.
Consider what we are asking them to do in every match. We are asking them to fight each other, using a series of highly athletic and in many cases dangerous moves over the course of 10-15 minutes without breaks and with near absolute perfection. While these two athletes are engaged in an extremely physically challenging match, we are asking them to emote and play to a crowd to build their excitement and interest in what is going on. If a move is missed or a mistake made one or both of them could suffer serious injury or even be killed. Wrestling is in no way FAKE. The moves are real and the danger associated with them is no small matter. Precision and trust are essential.
The best part – often times these two athletes may have never met each other before that night and may have only 10-30 minutes to prepare for their match. An INSANELY short amount of time to prepare for something that requires so much precision.
Consider this when compared to ballet or MMA or any other sport where those participants may have weeks or months to prepare to not just physically but emotionally execute.
And they do this – every single time! I am completely awestruck by what these men and women do and I am beyond privileged to be a part of it every time we run a show. We have some of the best of the best in the ranks of professional wrestling working with us and we are incredibly fortunate to have them give 100% for our fans.
The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
I think that it is easy to focus on the negative.
What we learned is how important live entertainment is to people and how professional wrestling occupies an unique niche in the spectrum of live entertainment options. It’s one thing to see something on a screen, it’s another entirely to be at an event where all 5 senses are engaged and that experience is more concretely imprinted into memory. We saw people really hunger for this coming out of COVID and I think that people are going to crave these options going forward because we never know what tomorrow brings – with COVID or the next one.
What is amazing about professional wrestling is that it takes the competitive elements of a sporting event, elevates the energy to a rivalry game level, and then folds in the drama of a major action movie. It has athletic competition, heroic feats, and even a bit of villainy. Sometimes the good guy wins but sometimes the bad guy finds a way to pull it out.
It takes the fan on a roller coaster ride of emotion and excitement that isn’t really replicated anywhere – even in professional sports or combat sports.
I think that fans and people really positively respond to this. So I think coming out of COVID as businesses like venue spaces, breweries, and even organizations are looking for a way to bring a lot people into one place for a night – I think pro wrestling definitely is a unique option that will draw people in.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ironheartpro.com
- Instagram: @ironheartpw
- Facebook: iron-heart-wrestling
- Twitter: @ironheartpw
- Youtube: ironheartwrestling
