Smallest crowd you have seen personally at a wrestling show

[Ultimo Gallos]

Not that you read about online,not that someone told ya. But you saw with your own eyes.

For me it is a Southern Championship Wrestling event in Kiln MS back 4 or 5 years ago. SWA held an event in Ellisville that day around 1pm. Show was over at 3pm,and drew close to 200. Koby looked on his phone and saw that SCW had an show in Kiln starting at 6pm. Which gave us enough time to go eat then drive down for the show.

We got there 30 minutes before the show started and there was 10 people in the crowd. With 6 of those being wives/girlfriends/kids of the guys working the show. By the time the first match started there was 14 people total in the crowd.

[KAMALARAMBO: BOOMSHAKALAKA!!!]

Nothing too small. My guess would be the one IWA Mid-South show I went to. Even then there was 100 people or so. I know I’ve seen videos of some of their older shows where they drew way worse. They’d have future WrestleMania talent wrestling in front of like 20 people.

[Ultimo Gallos]

Oh yea seen a few IWA MS events with less than 20 in the crowd.

Years ago Last Rites held their first show in town. When the show started there was close to 80 people in the crowd. But every match ran long. Intermission started close to 10pm. After intermission was over there was at most 20 people left. So the last 2 matches happened in front of that tiny crowd.

[Xxcjb01xX [PIECE OF: SH-]]

Definitely under 100 people. We have local venues that run incredibly small but also have small venues that have drawn over 300 people packed to the gills.

The most recent event I went to was held in an auction house for Stand Alone Wrestling. Couldn't have been more than 100 people inside of it. But it was such a unique and fun location for a wrestling event.

[Ultimo Gallos]

For close to 3 years Powerslam Productions ran monthly shows at the community little theater in McComb MS. That place was tiny. And it held at most 90 people. But was a great place to watch wrestling.

[Oh Cry Me a Screwball]

Versus Pro here in Vegas runs shows periodically out of a small store in a shopping mall. During the pre-vax portion of the pandemic, they could only hold a couple dozen inside the store, and maybe another dozen or so would watch from outside the store for free.

[Ultimo Gallos]

Sept 23, 2021 1:07:01 GMT -5 Oh Cry Me a Screwball said:

Versus Pro here in Vegas runs shows periodically out of a small store in a shopping mall. During the pre-vax portion of the pandemic, they could only hold a couple dozen inside the store, and maybe another dozen or so would watch from outside the store for free.

Back in the summer Heavy Metal Pro was running shows in what appeared to be an abandoned mall. There was at most 15 people in the crowd. But the storefront they held the events in couldn't hold much more than that.

[Oh Cry Me a Screwball]

Sept 23, 2021 2:16:30 GMT -5 Ultimo Gallos said:

Sept 23, 2021 1:07:01 GMT -5 Oh Cry Me a Screwball said:

Versus Pro here in Vegas runs shows periodically out of a small store in a shopping mall. During the pre-vax portion of the pandemic, they could only hold a couple dozen inside the store, and maybe another dozen or so would watch from outside the store for free.

Back in the summer Heavy Metal Pro was running shows in what appeared to be an abandoned mall. There was at most 15 people in the crowd. But the storefront they held the events in couldn't hold much more than that.

It feels a little weird even mentioning pandemic shows, but I wanted to at least keep it to stuff the general public had the option to attend. Mostly because I did get the invite to a closed set show last December, where I could have cited less than a dozen people that weren't on the payroll in some fashion.

[Ultimo Gallos]

Sept 23, 2021 2:31:45 GMT -5 Oh Cry Me a Screwball said:

Sept 23, 2021 2:16:30 GMT -5 Ultimo Gallos said:

Back in the summer Heavy Metal Pro was running shows in what appeared to be an abandoned mall. There was at most 15 people in the crowd. But the storefront they held the events in couldn't hold much more than that.

It feels a little weird even mentioning pandemic shows, but I wanted to at least keep it to stuff the general public had the option to attend. Mostly because I did get the invite to a closed set show last December, where I could have cited less than a dozen people that weren't on the payroll in some fashion.

See around here the only fed running shows with fans during the lockdown was Battlezone. And they limited it to 30 people.

But starting in October last year the state was wide open again. So most feds were back to drawing their 70 to 100.

[cassonova]

I didn't know indie wrestling could hold hundreds of people until SCW Pro in the Quad Cities/Walcott.

Yeah...IWA-MS moved to central Illinois and outside of King of the Deathmatches, the results weren't great. Low teens.

[Dragonfly]

I posted a version of this a few years ago, but it's worth revisiting.

Before I go into detail, I need to dive into the backstory. Things started to go downhill July 2007, when their booker committed suicide. They were able to limp along until that November, mainly due to the strength of their two year-plus promotion-wide story. Once it ended, they were out of options. In an act of desperation, the owner talked Sterling James Keenan (Corey Graves) into jumping from IWC to PWX. (IWC and PWX exclusivity was a big thing at the time.) It was a big deal that he left. So big, he was treated like Hulk Hogan arriving in WCW. In his first match with the company, he beat three mainstays to get a shot at the NWA title.

He lost his match against Adam Pearce, but that didn't mean he didn't win any titles. By the time Burgh Brawl rolled around, he was PWX (then NWA East) Heavyweight Champion, FNW Heavyweight Champion (FNW was co-owned by his father), 1PW Heavyweight Champion, Zero1 United States Champion and the champion of some Ohio promotion no one had ever heard of. He had so many belts that he needed an entourage to help carry them. The show began with SJK, his real life brother Sam Adonis and top student Ashton Amherst coming out to deafening silence. The seventeen people (not an exaggeration) in that picnic pavilion (also not an exaggeration) could care less. It set the mood for the evening.

The first match was barely a blip on the radar. The second match fared a bit better, but was only due to Gregory Iron. The third match, a title match for the NWA North American Tag belts, tanked due to the fact the champs just didn't care. Hell, not caring and phoning it in was their gimmick at the time. (This is not a joke.) It just went on and on like this, match after match. There was a mid-card title change... nothing. Inexplicable fan favorite/walking sleeping pill/promoter's son Jim Ross gets his ass handed to him by the heels. Nothing. Supposed company savior SJK goes over the last two champions, one of which had held the title for a record 470 days, as clean as a sheet. Less than nothing. The only person other than Iron that was able to get anything resembling heat was the ring announcer, but that was only because he kept calling a well-known, "never misses a show" fan Super Mario.

The main event was Burgh Brawl, a Royal Rumble rip off match they had been doing for years. It was the worst Rumble-esque match I had ever seen. It was filled to the brim with people no one had ever heard of. There was at least a half a ton of humanity in that ring at one time, 750 pounds of it coming from two guys: Kid Cupid (450) and The Bulldozer (300). It was so bad that the ring started to break. The head ref had to go under the ring to fix it... while the two fat guys were still inside it. The match ended when future PWX champion/ROH seat filler Chris LeRusso eliminated Ohio-based journeyman Patrick Hayes. All seventeen of us turned to the entrance as SJK's music played. We waited for SJK to confront the new number one contender. And waited. And waited. He never showed up. Turned out that Sterling had left an hour ago. The show ended with LeRusso looking as disappointed and confused as we all were.

[Ultimo Gallos]

Sept 23, 2021 7:25:10 GMT -5 cassonova said:

I didn't know indie wrestling could hold hundreds of people until SCW Pro in the Quad Cities/Walcott.

Yeah...IWA-MS moved to central Illinois and outside of King of the Deathmatches, the results weren't great. Low teens.

For decades down here in MS getting 100 people was considered a great crowd. But that was cause there was so many crap indies that ran every week with the same 10 wrestlers,which drew the same 20 to 30 people.

But close to 10 years ago stuff changed. Mainly cause BIW and SWA started running shows in MS. BIW draws close to 300 every show in my town,and right at 250 every show in Natchez. SWA runs a circuit of 5 towns and draws at least 250 in each town.

We still got the tiny indies that don't draw much. Like SCW. Who runs every month in Kiln and gets maybe 50 to 75 people. Or Battlezone. Their big shows each year,Widowfest and the show in July,where they bring in former WCW/TNA/WWE names will draw close to 200. But their normal shows is 60 to 70 tops.

[4TheGlory]

I saw an ROH show in I believe 2009 around Pittsburgh that had no more than 250 people in it. Which is insane in hindsight, check out this card:

Delirious (w/Daizee Haze) defeated Sterling James Keenan
Rhett Titus & Kenny King defeated Matt Cross & Erick Stevens
Bryan Danielson defeated Mike Quackenbush
Claudio Castagnoli defeated Brent Albright and Jerry Lynn
Austin Aries defeated Roderick Strong
The Age of the Fall (Jimmy Jacobs & Brodie Lee) defeated Tyler Black & Necro Butcher in a Falls Count Anywhere match
KENTA & El Generico defeated Nigel McGuinness & Davey Richards

[Deleted]

I saw a women's death match tournament with that Moose Knuckles chick in it and there were probably more wrestlers in the tournament than fans in the crowd.

Like, legit there were about a dozen people there. It made these women mangling their bodies just look kind of sad instead of bad ass.

[KAMALARAMBO: BOOMSHAKALAKA!!!]

Sept 24, 2021 15:33:23 GMT -5 @therealoblivion said:

I saw a women's death match tournament with that Moose Knuckles chick in it and there were probably more wrestlers in the tournament than fans in the crowd.

Like, legit there were about a dozen people there. It made these women mangling their bodies just look kind of sad instead of bad ass.

Did they videotape it?

I know with IWA Mid-South, CZW, etc with those crazy death match tournaments they used to have, even when they drew really poorly sometimes the DVDs would be top sellers. With the decline of physical media I don’t know if it’s still the case though I suppose they could still be top sellers as digital downloads.

[Cyno]

I mean, it's not really a fair thing to say because there's obviously not a lot of room there for a crowd. But the Impact tapings have like maybe 100 people in the audience at most.

[David-Arquette was in WCW 2000]

Most of the shows I ran back in the day averaged about 50 people. Mostly due to venue size.. Mostly.

[Oak: Certified Jade Hater]

Won’t name the promotion, but there were two paying people in the crowd. Rest was either the wrestlers themselves or wives and girlfriends. This was the same day as Money In The Bank so I get why there wasn’t a big turnout, but two fans surprised me.

That said? One of the better shows I’ve worked. The wrestlers took it in stride and had fun, popping the other workers and really interacting with the fans. It was a fun show, all things considered.

[The Thread Barbi]

About 35 people at my local badminton centre where "Tribute Undertaker" headlined. My cousin and I had front row seats.

[johnnyk9]

Anyone know the attendance at that show in Florida where New Jack stabbed that guy