Photographing ringside for professional wrestling

Jaxon Argos w/RC Dupree vs Jonathan Gresham

In the past week, I had the most fantastic opportunity to go ringside at a professional wrestling event and photograph the matches. I've grown up a wrestling fan, and even reference it when giving artist talks about the photographic mindset I use when typically making images. At its core, wrestling is a theatrical show about fighting. More than that, the ring is the stage where the performers are finally given an audience for their craft.

A buddy of mine is a wrestler at IWC, an organization in Pittsburgh. He got me permission to go ringside so off I went. I got to hang out two hours before the show started, even helped set up the ring beforehand. Everyone I met was the nicest human imaginable. I was the new face backstage, so people were constantly coming up to say hi and introduce him/herself to me. More than anything else, it felt like a family of people working together for the common goal of putting on the best show possible!

Once it started, I had free reign to photograph wherever was appropriate. Sometimes I was stationary to catch the action in the ring. Other times, I was dodging flying chairs and avoiding having a 200 pound wrestler thrown into me while I crouched beside a guardrail.

People like to talk about how wrestling is fake. This isn't even the right way to approach the conversation. It's a dance. Inside the ring are people performing characters and playing roles, working together through various levels of choreography, to make the believable unbelievably entertaining. And even when everything is done to perfection, I still saw guys limping backstage after a stellar performance. The pain they go through for their craft is real.

Team Storm