This one is really delayed, but since it’s one of my favorite subjects in the world, I wanted to post it anyway.

I normally go to wrestling shows at the Dorton Arena in Raleigh, but one of my boyfriend Daniel’s best friends, Randall, is a professional wrestler named Bobby Ballantyne and I wanted to watch wrestling see Daniel during the summer so I came down to take advantage of that sweet connection and go to a North American Wrestling Alliance show put on in Lenoir called “Patriot Pride.”

This. Show. Had. Everything.

It already fit the “bingo hall” indy stereotype by being in an American Legion hall in the middle of nowhere, but then you add the gimmick characters of an American redneck Kevin Owens, a Soviet Russian luchador, a frat boy rolling in on a cooler, a bald man whose entire ‘thing’ was cauliflower, a black man with an American flag mask and a noose and a huge white guy in far too little spandex wearing a numbers-covered lucha mask for no reason (that I know of). I came for the wrestling and moral support and left with that and so much more.

My pictures are a little grainy because of an issue with my lens, but if you’re looking for more of the same event, Daniel has a post up on his page for you to peruse (including some of my pictures, re-edited by him). His are watermarked and mine are not, but if you use any of my photos please credit me.