On Friday the 13th IWA Midwest Wrestling hosted Indy Mania at Bellevue Plaza. There were 10 matches on the card, highlighted with young wrestlers Bucky Collins, Drake Younger, The Hooligans (Mason & Devon Cutter) and Jimmy Jacobs. A large majority of the crowd were there to see former ECW stars and hardcore legends Joey Grunge and Ian Rotten and his former Bad Breed partner Axl F/N Rotten. This is not your father’s professional rasslin’ from years past, it is a fast paced non-stop action between gifted athletes and tremendous entertainers who know what the fans love and they deliver it.
-Bob
Shot’s from Saturday Nights Clash at U.S. Cellular Coliseum III in Bloomington, IL presented by The Hive. The beautiful ring card girls were from Show-Me’s.
-Bob
This was one of the wildest event’s that I have ever photographed in my life. I spent an evening at the old Bellevue grade school photographing IWA Mid-South hardcore professional wrestling. There were several matches with both men and women wrestler’s. The one match out of the ordinary was called a lucky 13 match. The way to win the contest was to be the first wrestler to staple seven $1.00 bills to your opponent’s body. There was nothing “fake” about this. The blood was very real and it was spilled by each wrestler all over the ring and the floor of the gymnasium. The winner posed after his match with one lucky fan who collected a blood stained dollar bill in the match. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and luckily no one was seriously injured. on the technical side these images were shot with my new Canon Mark IV body at ISO 12,800 with my 135mm f/2.0 lens.
-Bob
