Local Wrestling Venues That Don't Get Used Anymore

[KAMALARAMBO: BOOMSHAKALAKA!!!]

Curious about some people's experiences with local venues. Also, for ones that don't get used anymore I was curious what the reasons were. Did the indie close or the venue itself?

[Lance Uppercut]

I wish that I was able to see Wrestling back when they were in the Great Western Forum in LA. I have fond memories of that place watching the circus and some other things. I wonder how Pro wrestling would have been there.

[MC Blowfish]

Veterans Coliseum used to be used before we got the Wells Fargo Center.

[KAMALARAMBO: BOOMSHAKALAKA!!!]

It's not local to my area, but to throw another one out there The Mid-Hudson Civic Center doesn't seem to get used nearly as much these days as it used to. The last one I recall to use it (other than WWE) was House of Hardcore. The WWF used to use it all the time back in the day.

My guess as to why is that like the Manhattan Center, cost to run it must have gone up. However, it's not in NYC proper so I don't think they could've gone anywhere near what it takes to rent the Manhattan Center. According to TNA numbers that place cost like $100,000 per taping to rent.

It would be cool to see the WWE use it again, perhaps for NXT. It seemed like it had a pretty good atmosphere, but the venue seemed a little too small for a regular WWE show, which they last had there in 2013.

[4TheGlory]

ECW's Elk's Lodge:

[Crusty Ruffles]

The Berwyn Eagles Club is pretty much losing all of their major shows. The owners jacked the rent way up, bought a ring, and are forcing the local shit shows to rent their ring too.

[funakifan88]

Oct 24, 2015 20:04:30 GMT -5 Crusty Ruffles said:

The Berwyn Eagles Club is pretty much losing all of their major shows. The owners jacked the rent way up, bought a ring, and are forcing the local shit shows to rent their ring too.

That blows.

[Stone Coke Miami Watson 🥃]

Civic Center in Stockton (california)....used to run WCW/NWA and the WWF (even had a RAW there)....now it's non existent in its use.

[4TheGlory]

Oct 24, 2015 23:33:35 GMT -5 Stone Coke Miami Watson 🥃 said:

Civic Center in Stockton (california)....used to run WCW/NWA and the WWF (even had a RAW there)....now it's non existent in its use.

The Stockton Arena that the Thunder play in pretty much rendered it useless since it's been built

[Stone Coke Miami Watson 🥃]

Oct 24, 2015 23:43:27 GMT -5 4TheGlory said:

Oct 24, 2015 23:33:35 GMT -5 Stone Coke Miami Watson 🥃 said:

Civic Center in Stockton (california)....used to run WCW/NWA and the WWF (even had a RAW there)....now it's non existent in its use.

The Stockton Arena that the Thunder play in pretty much rendered it useless since it's been built

True...they've had a few house shows there.
Still I miss the intimacy of the civic center.

[Dragonfly]

CCBC Golden Dome in Monaca, PA. Several ECW and indie events ran out of there, including November to Remember 1997 and the last gasps of XPW. The college stopped booking events (both wrestling and otherwise) in the early 2000s because the building is literally falling apart. I remember hearing that Heyman tried to book the venue for the 2006 ECW house show run, but he physically wasn't allowed to do so. (They ended up going with the criminally underused Rostraver Ice Garden instead.)

[Halloween]

There is a small auditorium near my house that has played host to wrestlers such as Al Snow, Chris Masters, Gamma, Kizarny, Masaaki Mochizuki, Ryo Saito Sabu, Shinobu, Sonjay Dutt and a host of top independent guys.

Company used to run there once every 3 months and they'd draw like 300-400 people with a "name". They stopped using the big names and started using guys like Kizarny and Sonjay Dutt and started to draw like 200-250 which was respectable. Stop using the names entirely and started coming only once a year and the numbers dropped down to about 100 and they stopped coming.

That company now runs shows out of a warehouse in a very high crime rate city.

[johnnyk9]

WWE rarely comes to Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City anymore, I wish they would come more often or at least give us a PPV

[drjayphd (feat. Pitbull)]

In Connecticut, WWE stopped running the Hartford Civic Center (and the New Haven Coliseum on account of it not existing) in favor of Mohegan Sun and whatever's in Bridgeport. Can't really blame them. The only other indie venues I can think of are the Wallingford Knights of Columbus hall (Chikara held Armdrags to Riches there, it's been demolished for condos) and Sports World in East Windsor (ROH had Destiny and Glory by Honor 5-1 there, the latter held outside because of permit issues). Anyone else up there know of any other venues I'm missing?

[Johnny Flamingo]

Would have liked to see the old Mid South shows in The Municipal Auditoriums in both Shreveport and New Orleans. Both are pretty good venues and I think would work good for a televised show.

With the CenturyLink Center in Bossier it eliminates the need for a promotion to run the Shreveport one.

Also not sure if they ever re-opened the one in New Orleans after Katrina. Combine NOLA having the New Orleans Arena, Superdome and LakeFront Arena combined with a ton of other venues and considering the fact that it is right next to a very sketchy neighborhood pretty much eliminates any promotion from ever running there again.

This is a picture from an MMA event at the Shreveport Venue.

[thegame415]

The United Center holds more people than Allstate Arena, but hasn't had a wrestling event in 15 years (almost to the date).

[Phil Parent]

WWE runs the Bell Center once or twice every year. Rougeau is working on booking it for his big end of the year show next year.

The Montreal Forum is now a movie theater. Yep. Home of 24 Stanley Cups victories, 60 years of wrestling... and now it's a movie theater. Of course, it's better than turning it into a parking, but still. Olympic Stadium has not been used for wrestling since the late 70's when Rougeau Sr. booked Martel VS Robinson there. Jacques has booked McGill Stadium at the height of FLI's popularity in the late 90's / early 00's...

Other than that, the local microindies book all the KOC Halls, community centers and church basements they can find and Rougeau books all the old hockey rinks. Nothing has stopped being used really. TNA booked the JC Malepart Center for the one show they did in Montreal, which I thought was a decent idea, never heard anyone booking it for wrestling before or since.

Montreal needs a big stadium to host WrestleMania, we have nothing that would work for that. Olympic Stadium can hold 90,000 people, but it's shaped like an alien toilet and it has a permanent roof. That would be a nice side effect of building a stadium for Major League Baseball and a return of the Expos, we could throw our name in the hat for WrestleMania.

[Can you afford to pay me, Gah]

In St. Louis we have the Family arena in Charles in the Subs of downtown that ECW did a show in during there last full year and TNA did two PPVs and a house show in it. The last time TNA was here they switched the Shavis Arena which is newer and about the same size but is in St. Louis City but built for SLU College basketball who used to use The Scottrade Center for games which is WWE's arena in St. Louis.

Honestly the Family Arena lost most of it's business to Shavis anymore. Since Shavis does concerts to raising big acts like Selena Gomez for example. Family Arena use to be that place. PLus now another local sub from St. Louis I think is building another like size arena.

I can see the Family Arena these days could be cheap to rent just to gain bookings. It could be a good test for ROH on seeing how well they can draw when a venue is bigger.

[KAMALARAMBO: BOOMSHAKALAKA!!!]

Oct 26, 2015 14:57:12 GMT -5 Phil Parent said:

WWE runs the Bell Center once or twice every year. Rougeau is working on booking it for his big end of the year show next year.

The Montreal Forum is now a movie theater. Yep. Home of 24 Stanley Cups victories, 60 years of wrestling... and now it's a movie theater. Of course, it's better than turning it into a parking, but still. Olympic Stadium has not been used for wrestling since the late 70's when Rougeau Sr. booked Martel VS Robinson there. Jacques has booked McGill Stadium at the height of FLI's popularity in the late 90's / early 00's...

Other than that, the local microindies book all the KOC Halls, community centers and church basements they can find and Rougeau books all the old hockey rinks. Nothing has stopped being used really. TNA booked the JC Malepart Center for the one show they did in Montreal, which I thought was a decent idea, never heard anyone booking it for wrestling before or since.

Montreal needs a big stadium to host WrestleMania, we have nothing that would work for that. Olympic Stadium can hold 90,000 people, but it's shaped like an alien toilet and it has a permanent roof. That would be a nice side effect of building a stadium for Major League Baseball and a return of the Expos, we could throw our name in the hat for WrestleMania.

Sadly, the Expos are never coming back. It's a shame because as terrible as the team often was it at least gave the MLB a little more of an international feel. Oh well, at least the Blue Jays were killing it for a while this year.

[Deleted]

Oct 24, 2015 20:04:30 GMT -5 Crusty Ruffles said:

The Berwyn Eagles Club is pretty much losing all of their major shows. The owners jacked the rent way up, bought a ring, and are forcing the local shit shows to rent their ring too.

Finally an explanation as to why AAW is leaving. I was blaming AAW for leaving Berwyn but now it all makes sense. Can't go to the Bourbon Street shows so this kind of blows but the company has been sucking big time since Mid 2014. Hopefully the Logan Square show is good for a change.