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Saturday September 1 2018 - ICW: Part deux	Wrestling shows
A good friend informed me that a Montreal wrestling association was holding an outdoor wrestling event with a ring installed in the middle of a park. He also kindly sent me the promotional sign that advertised them as such. Seeing near the bottom that ICW was the host of the show, I was a bit skeptical. When I attended their first show about two years ago, they had a strict policy of "no photographs permitted". I mean, it's like, come on, it's a wrestling show. Let your fans disseminate free advertising on your behalf to get a bigger crowd to your events. Bigger crowd means bigger chunk of revenue to support all those wrestlers. To be cautious, having being caught first hand by their rules, I've decided to let my Nikon camera at home... only to later determine that I did a big mistake once again. It turns out that since this event is outside and it's held right beside a sidewalk sale for the "Back to school" season with no perimeter fences and no admission fee, a large enough crowd of about 200-300 spectators showed up. Since these people come and go, mainly for shopping, some resting to watch a match or two, you can't really tell them to "NOT take any pictures". On the contrary, they were even encouraging the crowd that gathered around to share their photos and videos of the event on their Facebook. I was stuck with my LG G4 again with a decrepit camera that does not handle digital zoom very well. It does a bit better work outside because of better lighting: after all, the show started at 2 PM, so there was plenty of sun for the photos. And this is the reason why I tell you that the digital zoom is terrible. A lot of things here, in this close up shot, are blurry. Just click on the image to get a larger version. Never trust a cell phone to do a real camera's work. Overall, the show wasn't bad at all. They had big support for the crowd chanting them and expressing joy or horror at each piledrivers, bodyslams or clotheslines. They held a few tag team matches and finished off with a bang with a Battle Royale of a dozen wrestlers in the ring. The wrestlers were blessed with great weather that is not too warm, reinforced with nice breezy winds. You'd still have to find some shade though to be really comfortable. The show lasted more than 2 hours after all. I think they pulled out a good show this time. For some reason, they don't mention this event at all on their homepage. I find that a bit strange. My final understanding of this is that if they hold private shows in their basement rental of a church, then pictures are forbidden. However, if you pay for a public show, which is the case of the business association that hired them to entertain the public while they shop, then everything is permitted.
Blog ID 202