In 2024, as in many years, much of the professional wrestling discourse surrounded WWE and its unparalleled success.
Everything from gigantic media rights deals, record gates, and a turn toward more international growth with events taking place all over North America, Europe, and Australia, just to name a few, dominated fan discussion. You also can’t exclude the spectacular fall of Vince McMahon and his over forty-year influence on the industry.
However, that wasn’t all that was going on. There was actual wrestling as well.
Author and illustrator Matt Charlton chose to ignore the elephant in the room, instead choosing to tackle the year 2024 in professional wrestling by crafting a book showcasing matches by mining from a wealth of events outside of the WWE by looking at promotions such as New Japan Pro Wrestling, NOAH, All-Japan, AEW, WXW, Stardom, CMLL, BJW, GCW and so many more.
You will find many of the industry’s biggest moments here from Bryan Danielson capturing AEW’s World Championship over Swerve Strickland in front of over fifty thousand fans in London’s Wembley Stadium to Prestige Wrestling, to smaller glimpses of the artform, like an independent promotion in the Pacific Northwest of the United States and a bloody battle that took place between Evil Uno and Alan Angels. Time is spent in regions like Poland, China, Thailand, and Mexico, just to name a few.
That said, the bulk of the book seems to take place in Japan, where, outside of North America, wrestling arguably enjoys its highest popularity. It was really interesting to see highlights from promotions like FREEDOMs and BJW (Big Japan Pro-Wrestling), where deathmatches are often booked, juxtaposed against the cartoonish antics from Kaiju Big Battel.
Even if you’re a scholar of the art form and follow as much as possible, there is a good chance that you will uncover matches and moments that are new to you. Hopefully, that spurs on others to check out a few of these lesser known promotions.
While the art of professional wrestling is often dominated by the juggernaut that is WWE, it’s worth noting that THERE IS A WORLD OF WRESTLING GOING ON.
There is a World of Wrestling Going On is available now
