Why Pro Wrestling Needs Proper Media Coverage

This year, the Oklahoma State Athletic Commission threatened AEW with “punitive action” if they dared to use trans wrestler Nyla Rose again.

It’s an insane story for multiple reasons, not the least of which is the fact pro wrestling is scripted. There’s no advantage that Nyla Rose gains in her matches versus other women. It’s just another in an endless series of hateful attacks against the trans community from red states.

How did the world find out about this shocking story in pro wrestling? Real Rasslin, a blog with a few thousand followers, found the agenda for Oklahoma’s commission meeting in January, which listed the Nyla Rose incident.

The meeting minutes for the January meeting were not obtained by a pro wrestling news site or a pro wrestling news reporter. They were obtained by me, a wrestling fan with less than 1,000 followers on Twitter.

My tweet with the meeting minutes has now been viewed more than 3.3 million times, and stories have popped up in a multitude of mainstream outlets, including The Washington Post.

This is a problem

Pro wrestling is a billion-dollar industry, and that’s being conservative. According to Forbes, AEW and WWE alone combined to gross more than $1.5 billion in 2023. That doesn’t account for any other US-based promotions or any foreign-based promotions, such as NJPW in Japan or CMLL in Mexico. Globally, pro wrestling is easily grossing multiple billions worldwide.

So why does an industry this large have little to no proper media coverage?

Every other billion-dollar industry has entire media ecosystems dedicated to covering it, especially in sports and entertainment.

Pro wrestling, though, has only a precious few media members doing actual, honest to goodness reporting. I’m talking about Dave Meltzer in the Wrestling Observer, John Pollock with Post Wrestling, and a couple of others. These are people that do journalism. As a former newspaper reporter, I am all too familiar with what journalism does – and does not – entail.

In 2024, pro wrestling does not get the coverage it deserves.

No more dirt sheets

Instead, we have rumor merchants, most notably Sean Ross Sapp at Fightful Select, who have made careers by passing along rumors and leaking out internal details before they’re made public. In isolation, there’s no issue with these type of rumor mills, whether it’s pro wrestling, pro football, or the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The problem for pro wrestling is that these “dirt sheets” almost exclusively make up the “media” covering the industry. That’s why the post-event press conferences for AEW and WWE – though more prominent with the latter – are filled with “Why is this so great?” type of questions.

These rumor sites have no interest or desire in tracking down true news stories, like state-sponsored discrimination against an AEW wrestler. That doesn’t make them money. They want clicks and engagement. That’s why Fightful didn’t track down the minutes from Oklahoma, but they did have time to transcribe negative comments about AEW from WWE employee Booker T.

It’s a symptom of a larger problem across journalism – access. It’s infected political journalism. It’s infected tech journalism. It’s infected sports journalism. And it’s the defining feature of wrestling “journalism” in 2024.

No one wants to risk losing access. The goal is to keep sources happy, so they’ll continue “leaking” information to you. It’s why the New York Times has produced about a million “sources close to Trump” stories over the past 8 years.

At some point since I left journalism, there has been a shift to access journalism in lieu of traditional reporting. Why chase something down when someone can simply “leak” the information to you?

There’s no effort

Unfortunately, that has left our journalism severely lacking across the board. The differences for political, sports, arts, and technology journalism are those rumor sites are balanced out – at least to some degree – by strong reporting outside of access journalism that provides a robust picture of the industry.

Look at Vince McMahon. Outside of a tiny fraction of sites and reporters, how many continued to follow up on his payouts, misdeed, and federal investigations? The developments have come from mainstream outlets like the Wall Street Journal, not the “media” allegedly covering the industry that made McMahon famous and rich.

Right now, WWE’s efforts to cover up McMahon’s heinous acts are still being looked into. Did you know the entire company is under investigation for sex trafficking? Because for most pro wrestling media, the removal of Vince McMahon meant the end of them caring about the victims.

Do you think if the NFL were under investigation for sex trafficking that every single pro football news site would just…. ignore it completely?

Fans need to demand more

Nothing is going to change anytime soon because too many fans have come to accept this reality. For decades, pro wrestling fans have been told that pro wrestling doesn’t really matter, and they believe it.

They should stop believing.

Pro wrestling is far too popular, making too much money, and employing too many people to continue operating without a proper media covering it.

This doesn’t mean waves of negative coverage or publicity. It means that the industry deserves more than a handful of people covering the serious issues impacting the business.

It can’t just be me

When I received the meeting minutes in Oklahoma, I instantly knew that no other pro wrestling reporter had asked for them. Why? Because the only other person to post the minutes when I received them was a producer for a local Oklahoma tv station.

Like I did, the pro wrestling “media” knew that Nyla Rose had been targeted by the state of Oklahoma. But none of them cared enough to send the email I did to receive those publicly available minutes.

That’s not right. 

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