There came a point on Sunday, March 15, when a few thousand people in DTLA chanted “Fuck ICE” otogether on two occasions, just minutes apart.
This wasn’t at a protest at a political assembly, or even an action outside the Metropolitan Detention Center. It was at Crypto.com Arena with a sold-out crowd that spent nearly six hours watching their favorite wrestlers compete in All Elite Wrestling’s annual pay-per-view event, “Revolution.”
It wasn’t the first time the chant happened during an AEW event, nor will it likely be the last.
The chants were in support of Brody King (born Nathan Troy Blauvelt), a wrestler from Van Nuys who, besides being a big dude and frontman for the defunct hardcore band God’s Hate, is outspoken against ICE and has used his presence and platform to raise money for families affected by ICE in Los Angeles and Minnesota.
King is not the only outspoken wrestler on the company’s roster. The main event of the night featured “The Hangman” Adam Page (born Stephen Blake Woltz) facing off against MJF, aka Maxwell Jacob Friedman (born Maxwell Tyler Friedman). In October of last year, Page used his Bluesky account to share his disgust about HBO airing ICE advertisements during commercial breaks on AEW Dynamite, the company’s Wednesday night show.
Last summer, Page spoke to a crowd in Mexico about the six farmworkers from Nayarít who would work on his family’s farm every summer.
“They taught me that all of us are better off when we work together,” he said in his imperfect Spanish.
Meanwhile, his competitor, MJF, aka “Big Hebrew,” aka “The Salt Of The Earth,” has repeatedly defended AEW for how it supports the working rights of wrestlers, while also celebrating his Jewish identity.
In December 2023, days before the five-year anniversary of AEW, he wrote a lengthy essay in the Player’s Tribune praising AEW as “a place where, simply put, a 5'8" Jew can be world champ. If you know wrestling history, then you know that’s a big deal and why.”
In that same essay, MJF also wrote, “I don’t support terrorism, Zionism, genocide, war, bombs, genocidal governments, dead innocent Palestinians, dead innocent Israelis. I don’t support people—any people — dying because of hate.”
The topic of outspoken wrestlers came up during Revolution’s post-event media scrum. AEW founder and CEO Tony Khan broke it down as wrestlers being real individuals with their own individual views who also happen to wrestle. His main concern is on the wrestling and sports side of things.
“The wrestling company is a sport. I don’t have any views other than the sport itself, so that’s where it’s great for the wrestlers to be able to express their own individual viewpoints,” he said to a press audience. “The league just puts out the best wrestlers, puts out the best wrestling product, and a wrestling organization is not a political league. I think it’s one of the really great things about AEW, is the wrestlers have the ability to express themselves.”
That self-expression and independence have been key to the company’s success. Since its founding in 2019, the company has not only let its wrestlers speak their minds but has also, for example, embraced and celebrated numerous openly gay, bisexual, and queer wrestlers. Nyla Rose, aka “The Native Beast,” a black, Native trans woman, was the company’s second-ever AEW Women’s Champion.
The support never feels like cheap lip service or like it’s just ticking boxes on a demographics sheet, but is about allowing the athlete-performers to express themselves and embrace their own audiences.
The formula has worked. AEW turned seven this year and is already selling out venues like the Crypto Arena and, more importantly, helping to create a more competitive industry for wrestlers and fans alike.
“I think wrestling is the healthiest it's been in such a long time, and AEW should absolutely get credit for that, given that they are the challenger brand. They have helped make new stars,” Jesse Seilhan, a lifelong, though lapsed, fan of wrestling who drove up from Anaheim to watch Revolution, tells L.A. TACO.
“But even if AEW wasn't the competitor brand, you just need a competitor brand always,” he added. “Otherwise, you have what felt like 20 years of darkness, almost, when WWE ran everything.”
To make a long history short, wrestling in the U.S. is typically measured by the growth of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), whose roots date back to the early 1950s.
But it wasn’t until the 1980s that the company, then known as the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), grew its cultural cache thanks to its roster of stars such as Hulk Hogan, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, “The Macho Man” Randy Savage, the Ultimate Warrior, and many others.
WWE faced serious competition in the 1990s and early 2000s from World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW). Ask any wrestling fan about the “Monday Night Wars” of that era, and you’ll see a sparkle light up their eyes.
Both companies eventually folded, and WWE scooped up all their assets and brought many of their stars into the company, leaving them to run professional wrestling unopposed, stateside and worldwide.
Though WWE faced some competition from Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA) in the 2000s, it never truly threatened its monopoly in wrestling. It did, however, provide plenty of unforgettable moments, such as Kurt Angle’s 10-year run of matches and the infamous “Woo Off.”
That makes AEW’s rise all the more impressive in its short history. Fans consider the company the “number two” behind WWE and above TNA, which still exists. Other companies, such as Lucha Underground, were not so lucky and disappeared as fast as they appeared.
That leads us to the present moment. Wrestling fans today are completely spoiled for choice beyond WWE, AEW, and TNA. New Japan Pro Wrestling, based in Tokyo, is doing well and has an academy in Carson. The high-flying antics of masked luchadores at the Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL) and Lucha Libre AAA Worldwide in Mexico continue to be celebrated as well. (Sidenote: the CMLL has a working partnership with AEW, while WWE bought AAA outright last year.)
Fans also have plenty of options thanks to a boom in local and independent wrestling circuits and promoters, such as East Los Lucha, West Coast Pro Wrestling, Pro Wrestling Guerrilla, and many others.
“I think people want to have whatever kind of experience they want with wrestling, and they can find that in every version of every promotion,” said comics writer Henry Barajas, another lifelong, but lapsed, wrestling fan who came out for Revolution.
Barajas’ point speaks to another layer of AEW’s success, in that it provides another avenue for the fan experience. Wrestling is far more diverse than its detractors give it credit for and the same goes for the fans. The audience is markedly different from the jingoistic base of UFC, for example.
Furthermore, fans who have grown disillusioned with WWE’s expansion and business dealings can now look elsewhere. As a global corporation, WWE has direct deals and agreements with businesses and governments alike. The company, for example, makes billions from its lucrative contract with the Saudi General Sports Authority.
The McMahon family no longer fully owns and runs WWE, but it still has a stake in the company and has used its status, as well as its longtime friendship with the Trump family, to further its influence. Matriarch Linda McMahon is currently the Secretary of Education (we’ve all seen how well that’s gone!). Meanwhile, WWE Chief Content Officer Paul Levesque (fka wrestler Triple H), who married into the McMahon family, is a member of the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition.
It would be a mistake to simplify things as one company simply being more progressive than the other. AEW is still a business with a billionaire at the helm with a roster of wrestlers who don’t all think alike.
Case in point, MMA fighter Ronda Rousey made a cameo appearance at Revolution to support her real-life friend, wrestler Marina Shafir. As Barajas pointed out, Rousey has made anti-trans statements in the past, yet there she was at an AEW event.
“I understand that other people have different points of view, but that doesn't mean I have to support it. What’s awesome about wrestling is that I can tune in and tune out whenever I want,” said Barajas. “I try to just enjoy the wrestling and leave it at that. It doesn’t need to have any life outside of that. It’s like bubble gum. I chew it up and spit it out and I’ll get another piece later.”
“There’s plenty of folks who are looking beyond what’s happening on the TV screen who are like, ‘why would I ever support this company if that’s where my money is going?’” said Seilhan. “It’s pretty clear that your money goes to a maybe-not great place over here [gestures to his right], and over here [gestures to his left], it’s still going to a billionaire . . . but it’s a lot less gross.”
The good news is that there are plenty of “less gross” options to choose from as well as options in wrestling styles to choose from. Fans can choose between over-the-top pageantry and backstage drama, straight-up technical wrestling packed with holds and submissions, masked and unmasked lucha libre, violent, bloody extreme wrestling . . . the list goes on. Oftentimes, these styles overlap and are featured within the same company.
“There's more wrestling now than there has been for a very long time, and so much of it is so much better than it used to be, too,” said Seilhan.
Anyone who’s kept up with the industry would be sure to agree, and this month’s AEW Revolution was a great example of that. The action was practically nonstop, and the event card had something to offer everyone. For nearly six hours, thousands of fans, including Seilhan and Barajas, bore witness to one of the best nights of wrestling in recent memory.
