Effy recently spoke with Wrestlezone’s Kevin Kellam ahead of his title fight against Nick Gage at GCW and Black Label Pro’s 2 Cups Stuffed in Chicago tonight. Effy will challenge Gage for the GCW World Championship on tonight’s show, and says the matchup between himself and “The King” is an interesting one. Effy says there’s a lot of mystery when it comes to Gage, who doesn’t shy away from his background as a convicted felon. He says Gage provides a good contrast to those focused on making their brand on social media, because he’s focused on keeping his title, while also making fans question what’s real or not.
“I think one of the best ways to look at it is—I put a lot into my social media. And it’s really helped me grow my presence and getting my name out there. Then I look at someone like Nick Gage, who is the opposite of a social media person, I think GCW made him get a Twitter just to make him have some presence, but I put out a video that got a lot of traction, and he didn’t Tweet anything for a long time. And the other day he just Tweeted, ‘Twitter blocked me out for a minute because they’re soft, I’m a convicted felon, I’m violent. It is what it is. Maybe I’ll Twitter for a while.’ And I thought, what a good comparison of—me I’m on Twitter all day. I’m always using Twitter to communicate with everybody. And Nick Gage is like, ‘Twitter or no Twitter, I’m a violent felon. I’ll do what I have to do.’
So it showed a good dichotomy to me to just be able to pay attention to the social media of this because Nick Gage is not a guy who is worried about what the people are thinking about him or what the industry is thinking about him. He’s thinking about keeping that GCW Championship. And I’ve heard him talking about it, I’ve heard him telling people, ‘Look, if you want to come take my spot, if you want to come take my main event here, if you want to step up to me, you better be ready to kill me.’ And a lot of people get lost in that. Everybody thinks they know what’s going on in wrestling, but Nick Gage is a mystery for a lot of people, in what’s legitimate and what’s not. Me being one of them at the current moment.”
Effy talked about his own background in hardcore matches, noting it’s a little more underground or “showy”, but it doesn’t mean he’s scared to “pour out a little more blood to get what I want.” In regards to GCW’s reputation for featuring a more adult-oriented wrestling culture, Effy says a lot of the ‘party promotions’ he’s worked for like a GCW have embraced a new audience that aren’t necessarily concerned with the exact traditions of wrestling. Naming a few that he’s worked for—including GCW—Effy says these promotions that are catching fire are interesting in that they make you question what audience they should be going after, the traditionalists or the everyday people.
“I kind of had a point where I was wrestling a lot in Alabama and Georgia and Florida, which, there’s nothing really wrong with it, but the shows I was going to were very much so wrestling crowds. And it was wrestlers trying to impress wrestlers and it was wrestling fans that were very in tune with product, and very in tune with what wrestling was supposed to be, and what the traditions of wrestling are, and you see crowds dwindling, and you see people not enjoying themselves, and you see people giving poor advice on how to perform wrestling. And then you start going to these ‘party promotions’ I kind of call them. You got your Bizarro Luchas, Southern Underground Pros, Freelance Wrestling, FEST Wrestling, Party Hard Wrestling, Hoodslam—and these are just a few that I can name off the top of my head.
People aren’t looking at it going ‘Okay, what has wrestling been, and how do we keep it to being that.’ It’s, ‘How can we take this circus of professional wrestling, and do whatever we want with it, and have fun with it, and make an environment that is less focused on, ‘here’s how tradition works and here’s how wrestling works’ and more focused on, ‘here’s a variety show centered around professional wrestling that we’re going to give to you, and if you’re a hardcore fan or if you’re someone who just showed up to drink beer, you’re going to have fun.’ I mean, I worked a Freelance Underground show in Chicago and they did it in a brewery and they just get a lot of regular people off the street. I saw two frat guys who were probably five beers deep, had the biggest good time of their life watching The Brothers Of Funstruction, which are two rodeo clowns, just doing crazy stuff in the ring. And you’re like, ‘Have we been focusing on the wrong things, instead of focusing on the audience that we could have, the potential audience?’ And bringing in people who just want to have fun, and not holding that against them, that they’re not the biggest pro wrestling fans in the world.”
