Picture this.
The year is 2035. It’s early April. You’re on your couch and you’ve just opened a window because it’s one of the first warm days since winter iced the outside over. Spring is here. You breathe in the fresh air and you feel the warm sun on your fingertips.
It’s WrestleMania season. Andre, Savage, Austin, Cena, Reigns, Rhodes …
You sit back down on the couch, grab your virtual reality glasses, and strap them to your eyes before lifting your hand up in mid-air to control the engulfing view of the Skydance streaming application. You command it with your voice … “WrestleMania 51” … and the surrounding screen around your eyes fades into a beautiful view of an alien-like stadium. Your pre-show options are endless. Time to choose. Which customized experience do you want to have?
WrestleMania 51
You’re the analytical fan, so you choose the option of AI personalities debating the booking of all the matches on the show. What storylines have worked? What hasn’t? Which WrestleMania star is pushed correctly? Who isn’t? The robots debate and debate. You speak back to them and they answer.
Eventually, the show begins. Roxanne Perez is the first star out and as part of the AI virtual WrestleMania experience presented by Progressive, you as the viewer are walking down the entrance ramp next to Perez in front of 60,000 strong. In the main event, that same experience puts you in the shoes of Bron Breakker as he crushes the soul of Dominik Mysterio with a spear to win the WWE World Heavyweight Championship.
Ok, pause. Stop picturing.
It’s not that far-fetched. WrestleMania could easily be consumed in that way at some point. I mean, the business has tried stranger stuff than that over the years. Tout? Selfie promos? Bubble letter closed captioning during recorded promos?
In fact, in the crystal ball that I just gazed into, the future of viewing pro wrestling will likely be more complicated and more jazzed up than is imaginable. Nine years is a long time. The technology that will bring WrestleMania 51 to the masses, more than likely, doesn’t even exist yet.
So, how does something that has been cutting edge maintain roots in it’s history and nostalgia. It’s a complex question and the only person for the job helped break it down.
“I don’t pretend to know what’s coming, but I know AI is going to have a big hand in wrestling,” Conrad Thompson said. “I know a lot of wrestling fans are kicking and screaming and dragging their feet on that. I understand it. But our global economy is largely propped up by AI right now and you have to acknowledge it’s inevitable. AI is going to touch pro wrestling.”
Pro wrestling nostalgia to pro wrestling AI
AI is going to touch pro wrestling. Says the man known worldwide for his pro wrestling history, nostalgia podcasts, and title belt collections. Who says you can’t look forward and back at the same time?
In an interview with Brass Ring Media, pro wrestling podcaster Conrad Thompson, spoke about the balance of nostalgia and innovation in pro wrestling. He also mashed both together for a state of the art experience around a very old championship belt that he’s auctioning off.
“I really thought the TikTok era was it,” Thompson said of what the technological turning point would be in wrestling. “I was saying behind the scenes in 2022 that whoever can be the first TikTok promotion has a real opportunity to pick up casuals. I don’t know that the masses care about psychology. I don’t think you can get them interested in a long storyline … We’ve got TikTok brain now. Can we do that? I know that goes against the way wrestling has been thought of and presented for a long, long time.”
Does that mean it’s wrong? Thompson’s look ahead at pro wrestling also featured a VR idea that put the viewer in the position of a Will Ospreay before a big top rope move or behind the eyes of Penta as he is about to hit a Mexican Destroyer on Raw. It’s all on the table and the future is cloudy because of the advance in technology that is upon the world.
The same industry that will be on the frontlines of the next avalanche of media consumption is obsessed with it’s history. Pro wrestling memorabilia is a sizzling business. Same thing with pro wrestling nostalgia experiences and historical podcasts. All areas of pro wrestling that Thompson has conquered and helped define.
“I think wrestling is really comic book-adjacent, so I don’t really compare it to traditional sports,” Thompson said. “With sports, everyone’s tuned in to ‘we’re going to win it this year.’ But I feel like a lot of people have wrestling as a bigger part of their childhood. In their rearview mirror. Wrestling is maybe still something everyone (reading) this consumes, but they really loved it when they were a kid. So I think we associate our wrestling nostalgia with our own childhoods, and with our friends and our relationships, whether it’s with our parents or grandparents or aunts and uncles.
“I had an uncle I liked to watch wrestling with, and he’s no longer with us. But I still remember watching wrestling with him. I remember who his favorites were. I remember him trying to get me to stay up late to watch Saturday Night’s Main Event, and I would always fall asleep. There are so many fun moments and memories we attach to it, and we develop an emotional attachment to those characters. With a sports team, you can keep watching the current Cowboys and remember, ‘My dad made me a Cowboys fan. I’m a lifelong Cowboys fan because Dad was.’ I don’t know who my uncle’s favorite wrestlers would be today. I don’t know if he’d prefer WWE or TNA or AEW. I don’t know what he’d be into today, but I know what he liked back then. So we have these shared memories tied to our personal lives and relationships, and we gravitate to that.”
Championship belts are the timestamp of wrestling memories
Championship belts represent the greatness of the wrestling industry, but they also timestamp the memories of fans. Thompson knows a little something about those. He’s been a collector of pro wrestling memorabilia since 2012 and the journey through the hobby started with a Ric Flair robe purchase. From there, the wrestling belts started rolling in.
Up for auction right now with Heritage Auctions is Thompson’s red-lettered WWF Intercontinental Championship belt. It’s the ring-used belt that was at WrestleMania 2, WrestleMania 3, the first Survivor Series, the first WWF Superstars taping, and the first Wrestling Challenge. Tito Santana held it first. Last was Honky Tonk Man. In-between were two legends that pro wrestling nostalgia is built on. Randy Savage and Ricky Steamboat. They battled for the belt in an all-time WrestleMania classic at WrestleMania 3 — the same show that saw Hulk Hogan slam Andre The Giant in the main event.
“Vince McMahon wanted to pay homage to his close personal friend Pat Patterson and celebrate him on SmackDown,” Thompson said. “The best way to do that was to have a featured Intercontinental title match and showcase the very first Intercontinental title. But the problem, of course, is they realized ‘we don’t actually own that belt.’
“And my pal Bruce Prichard spoke up and said, ‘Well, actually, I know where it is.’ So he gave me a call and said, ‘Hey, we want to buy the belt.’ I was in collecting mode, and when you’re in collecting mode, you’re not selling. So I said, ‘Well, I don’t really want to sell the belt, but you can borrow it.’ ‘No, we want to own it.’ ‘Okay. Well, it’s not for sale, but I would trade it.’ ‘What do you want for it?’ And I asked for the WrestleMania 3 Intercontinental title. I guess it was so fresh that Pat had passed, Vince was like, ‘Who cares? Give me Pat’s belt.’ So Randy Savage’s belt was shipped to me, they got Pat Patterson’s belt, and I’ve had it since 2020.”
That belt can now hang in your home. It’s up for auction at WrestleManiaBelt.com. The auction ends on October 24. The site is the intersection of pro wrestling future and pro wrestling past. It’s got an interactive history, timeline, and photo gallery that will take you down memory lane through the late-80s of pro wrestling. It’s a blast to click through and read even if you aren’t going to shell out the pretty pennies that it’ll take to win.
“I was thrilled to have it,” Thompson said. “WrestleMania 3 is one of those larger-than-life events that has been celebrated forever and I imagine it always will be. I just knew it was the right time. I looked at the auction on the calendar and it turns out that when our auction ends, that weekend will be the 40-year anniversary of when the Steamboat-Savage feud first started.”
Perfection.
How about 40 years from now?
40 years is a long time. Pro wrestling has a unique way of tying it’s timelines together. No other industry does it the same way. In 40 years, will pro wrestling fans want the memorabilia of today?
Picture this.
The Trick Williams white furry WWE United States Championship belt is available. You can have it for the cheap price of 50,000 robo-cyber-credits. It’s you vs. the wrestling fan robots for a piece of wrestling history — the last title belt that can actually be held with two hands. The rest are virtual tokens. Now is your chance to own pro wrestling nostalgia of today in the future.
Do you take it?
Are you a pro wrestling memorabilia collector? If so, what’s your most prized possession? Let us know in the comments!
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