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THE LIGHTS IN Dublin’s Tivoli Theatre go dark and Maniac 2000 starts blaring on the speakers.
The crowd starts cheering as strobe lights illuminate the hall, with all eyes on the stage.
A blonde woman walks out wearing pyjamas to rapturous applause.
Over the next 20 minutes, she throws punches, kicks, and jumps off the top rope onto her helpless opponent. The crowd oohs at every punch and gasps at every near miss as the woman slugs it out with her opponent
“Session mot! Session mot! Session mot!” the crowd shout as she holds her hands aloft as the victor. That chant is followed by “OTT! OTT! OTT!”.
And that’s only the first match in this three-hour wrestling night that draws hundreds to its shows every month across the capital.
OTT
Over the Top Wrestling was started in 2014 by Joe Carberry, an Irishman and former WWE wrestler.
He told TheJournal.ie that it basically started because there was a load of very good Irish wrestlers around, and this would give them a good platform to showcase it. Indeed, Irish wrestlers have gone to have great success stateside with recent examples including Sheamus and Finn Balor.
“We came in with the aim of putting on shows of a high standard,” he said. “And it was the case that there was a lot of wrestling fans looking for a product that wasn’t WWE.”
World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), previously the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), grew hugely in popularity in Ireland in the mid-1990s with that generation coming to love characters such as Stone Cold Steve Austin, the Rock and Vince McMahon.
Over the past decade or so, however, the WWE has made efforts to become a more family-friendly form of entertainment with the kind of violent, foul-mouthed and adult-themed shows now largely phased out.
Carberry said: “It’s become more focused on a younger fanbase, and we wanted to create something for that older fanbase to enjoy.”
Performing live shows to an adult audience, which can also be streamed on demand on its website, means that OTT doesn’t have to confine itself to any broadcast conventions and can explore any themes it wants.
“I understand why WWE has to be PG now, they have a lot of heavy-rolling advertisers,” Carberry said. “We’re not confined by that and can make a product the fans really enjoy.”
Attendances have risen hugely in recent years, with social media and word-of-mouth allowing the event to catch on, as OTT taps into nostalgia for the old-style wrestling shows and puts an Irish spin on them.
Irish influence
Part of that appeal for fans is the very obvious Irish influence to the theme of many of their characters.
A common trope of wrestling characters is to create these very defined characters that people find easy to recognise and identify with.
The aforementioned Session Mot, whose character’s name is Martina, is the underdog fan-favourite.
She comes to the ring in her pyjamas to rave music, pretends to smoke during matches, takes risks and has a never-say-die attitude.
Earlier characters in the promotion were “The lads from the flats”. They dress in tracksuits and will pull all manner of tricks to win their matches.
There’s the Lord of the Manor Paul Tracey, who looks down on other competitors through a sense of superiority.
All stereotypes to be sure, but everyone in attendance is in on the joke.
“A big part of it was making Irish characters people can relate to,” he said. “Like these were genuinely two lads who grew up in the flats, were into wrestling and became very good wrestlers.
I don’t think it would translate well in different countries but, here, we had characters people instantly know.
Strength to strength
To supplement the Irish talent on show, OTT always aims to recruit well-known wrestlers from abroad to feature in its shows, even attracting Mick Foley (aka Mankind, aka Cactus Jack, aka Dude Love) to one of its events last year.
“We have a good relation with the top performers around the world,” Carberry said. “We’re now able to get guys a little easier now. People know it’s a good place to wrestle.”
The results may be scripted, but that doesn’t mean that these performers aren’t putting their bodies on the line.
“I was a wrestler myself and I know that the difference it makes to have a decent hotel bed to sleep on that night for example,” he said. “We’ve always done that here.”
There’s roughly one show a month but the depth of production and storytelling that goes into the shows means Carberry is constantly kept busy.
One aspect that’s presenting a problem is the closure of the Tivoli, which was its long-time home in Dublin.
Its bigger events draw thousands to the National Stadium, but finding a regular venue for its other nights has proven tricky.
“We have a major lack of venues in this country,” Carberry said. “The way the country keeps knocking down venues for entertainment isn’t good. And it gets even harder outside Dublin.”
A sold-out venue on Suir Road hosted Over the Top wrestling for the first time last night, with its biggest event of the year, Scrappermania, set to take place this May.
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RTE to hand out two abacus
.. and 6 Pencils (HB with Integrated rubber)
RTÉ deserve a few boots. This isn’t one of them however.
License increase first though. About €350 extra each should cover the €150 million consultancy fees in to what type of abacus. Wood or Plastic.
11 year old looks at this calculator-like device, then looks at his Xbox 360, then at this calculator-like device, then at his IPad….. 11 year doesn’t look at his calculator-like device ever again!
They would be covered in lead paint and cost 52 million squillion along with a committee to oversee this failure. Just don’t lick the paint
BBC hands out free coding devices to help children with programming and give them a leg up in future science.
RTE reminds children everyday at 6 that a primitive god needs his daily attendance.
“primitive” – there are modern ones I ought to know about?
There’s thousands of gods, all it takes is some imagination.
I think the Flying Spaghetti Monster is a relatively recent deity.
Step up to the plate RTE
Would you be willing to pay extra for your TV licence. You don’t think the overpaid Dobsons & Turbridys of this world are going to take a pay cut now do you.
Why is it their role to do this? If theres benefit schools should be the ones to recieve the funding to provide it. I dont immediately see that the national broadcaster and TV license money should be funding these resources as opposed to the Education Department unless as a rather quirky publicity stunt. If this is assessed as beneficial and worthwhile simply give the Department the extra budget. The BBC is fantastic but no need to ape their every move.
Someone has to pay for the new wine cellar
Fair play to BBC
If rte handed these out they would also implement the household coding device license fee
In a few years we will discover they were ‘accidentally’ collecting data on every home with one of these devices.
Maybe if they didn’t dumb down the curriculum the kids wouldn’t be idiots over there
Not to mention dumbing down the BBC itself.
The UK has consistently outperformed Ireland every year since records on education index. This kind of programme will ensure that this continues while the department of education and rte still make a mess of getting basic internet and IT to schools. Don’t mock our neighbours as a nation of UKIP following troglodytes when we are playing catchup.
I didn’t understand any of that.
They are going to give out little yokes to the kids to play with so they can get jobs doing same when they are big. Because the mines and shipyards are gone and the call centres are in Asia.
God damn I always hoped this age of coding, computers, AI etc would come after my time.
Well if it did you wouldn’t be able to make that comment just there, a touch ironic that eh
No it’s not ironic. You kind of misunderstood my point. I mean a world where everything is about computers, technology etc, which is the age we are about to enter/just entering. We’ve had commenting abilities on the internet for years.
You do realize that your commenting is enabled by coding and computers, – and lots of it? Probaby millions of lines of code, since you use Twitter’s oauth login to enable the post. Given that you are using our Twitter account to post, – its almost certain that some AI came into it too, for Spam and Web security filtering, especially since you sent your comment also to Twitter.
I would say it is in fact ironic by definition, since code,computers and probably AI enabled your comment.
Alan R
Can you read?
I am nit computer literate, as many pensioners/disabled, especially rurals are not.
No lessons available but an hour a couple of times per week and some buses and we could rectify this gradually.
BBC give out coders. Rte give out reminders on behalf of Irish water to sign up or else you will be reduced to a trickle and fined and a lein put against your property.
Have we not given up on rte yet?, apart from the odd decent thing like Notoriuos or L/H wouldn’t go near it!
Don’t understand why you need a device to plug into a computer to start coding. You can write code in any simple text editor.
That confused me also.
The point is for this thing to be a visual incentive to code rather than directly aid coding. It’s a wearable device with scrolling text, flashing lights and other things that make it very obvious what your coding changes are doing. I guess the idea is changing a sequence of lights or flashing your favourite sports team across a screen is more understandable and exciting for learning the impact of code than a hello world screen.
I’m not convinced. If someone isn’t impressed into coding by seeing games, the internet and everything else related then I doubt that piece of crap will inspire them, flashing lights or not.
It apparently needs to be plugged into a ‘real’ computer anyway so it’s redundant.
From the scant information provided in the article it seems to be a poor attempt to make it appear that the British government are doing something to improve their education system when all they are really doing is wasting money by handing out a bit of tat.
Combined with the fact that the average punter never has had and never will have the need or interest to program anything it looks almost totally useless.
Coding to be used in wars nice one lads
Can’t top that RTE, might as well close down now and save us that licence fee.
“Mein Gott! Der Tommy Trojan und der Englander fischingßcam!”
“Take that Fritz. His firewall has come unstuck chaps. Hurrah for our boys!”
Permission to shout “Bravo” at an annoyingly loud volume, sir.
TALLY HO!
Only a Winston could get away with that…lol +1
Fairly pointless. What eleven year old in Britain hasn’t already got at least one device that they can code on now if they felt like it?
And if RTE did do something like this everyone on here would be saying “waste of money” “typical RTE” “They should spend money on decent programming first” blah blah blah. RTE can never be right regardless in the eyes of the “this country is sh!te” brigade that usually comment on here.
There’s enough gadgets in the class rooms, alot of the kids can’t count without a calculator
Oh to have a broadcaster where folk dont pay a licence fee for the angelus
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