As wrestling continues to feel the effects of COVID-19, independent wrestlers are in an untested state of uncertainty as events everywhere continue to be postponed or canceled due to the outbreak.
Brian Pillman Jr. recently spoke to Spencer Love and discussed the impact the pandemic has had on his career and wrestling as a whole.
The following quote was passed along to Fightful by Spencer Love.
“It’s pretty wild,” Pillman began. “My final event this weekend just got canceled. It’s very hard financially right now; I had to cancel my Las Vegas show over this past weekend, and in hindsight, I wish I would have went to it because I could have made some money. But, at the same time, I think I made the right decision to protect myself and protect my peers and my fans.”
“It would have been irresponsible for me to go to Vegas at that time. I was all packed, ready to go, dressed and everything, I was about to call the Lyft, and I was just frozen. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I felt so, so bad. I was like ‘if I order this Lyft right now and I get on this plane and I show up to the show coughing and sneezing on people, I’m going to be the biggest asshole in the world, y’know? It was just a tough decision to make, unfortunately Matt Hardy couldn’t make it to the show either due to some travel issues on his part. Everybody’s just trying to make things work in this world and we’re all trying to get through this together. The best thing we can do is isolate ourselves, for at least for a couple weeks and see how things go. I’m very optimistic. I think a lot of these more developed countries are going to be able to get a grasp on things. I think more or less this is more just a disruptive thing. It’s tough. I can’t sit here and tell every fan to go out and buy all of my shirts and this, because a lot of those fans are losing work as well. A lot of people all around the world are losing work, so while it is helpful to say ‘hey, y’know, maybe buy an extra t-shirt here or there, try and help support,’ wrestlers aren’t the only ones losing jobs and losing work right now. A lot of people are going to be unemployed right now, a lot of bills are going to go unpaid and a lot of hardship. My recommendation to those fans that, maybe they do have a little extra disposable income, maybe their livelihood isn’t threatened whatsoever, if that’s the case, I urge people to reach out, maybe buy an 8x10. Maybe buy a t-shirt or something, but at the end of the day, when it comes to survival - that’s what this is, this is survival - we have to do our best to survive, we have to do our best to help one another. But at the end of the day, we all know our families are the most important thing so definitely take care of your family, take care of your children before you start thinking about helping others and buying stuff.”
If you would like to help out independent wrestlers, you can view a multitude of ways that you can provide assistance to them in these uncertain times at this link.
