Being The Elite's All-In show sold out in an astounding 30 minutes last weekend, making it among the largest independent wrestling events of all-time, but the weekend is looking to kick off a couple of days earlier with podcast convention, Starrcast.
Spearheaded by "Something to Wrestle With..." co-host Conrad Thompson, the Starrcast event features dozens of legends in wrestling, heavily focused on the personalities that have their own podcasts. With All-In creating the buzz it did, Thompson told Fightful.com that he'd seen an opportunity to make the convention happen last year in a different setting.
"I had the idea to do a podcast convention when I heard that Greg Price wasn't going to do the NWA Legends Fanfest in Charlotte last year, August of 2017," Thompson said. "Early in the year, I thought that could be kind of fun. Bruce and I had just started doing live shows, and I thought this was something we should try to put together. It didn't work out. The hotel was already committed, and I didn't want to step out and do something that wasn't already established. I thought if Fanfest was done, I could just piggyback those dates. It didn't work."
When asked how the event finally came to fruition after the missed chance in 2017, Thompson explained pitching the idea to Cody Rhodes, who is co-promoting 'All In". After reviewing the idea, Cody approved, but the inner workings of making the event finally happen were a completely different beast.
"Time goes on and this All-In thing becomes a real thing, and I hit up Cody and said 'WrestleMania has WrestleCon, what if you had a wrestling podcast convention?' He asked what it would look like and I sent him an itinerary and he called me back a few days later and said 'we love it, how do we do it?' I had to work on securing a hotel, which is something I've never done before, figure out the rooms, space and logistics. Then I worked behind the scenes to see what this would look like. What days, what times. Could I land the talent and get the commitments to do it, and how do they make money? We came down to the wire getting it all put together," Thompson told us.
Once the location issues were squared away, then came booking talent. Fortunately for Thompson, his connections served him well, and didn't seem to have a problem in that department.
"Either they follow me on Twitter, or somebody I do a podcast with has a contact with them," Thompson said. "Whoever we didn't, Ric Flair does. I was able to snag them, and introduce myself. The podcast has grown to the point to where even if they don't know me, don't know my name, don't know my voice, they know who Bruce is, who Tony is, and that they have podcasts. One by one I was able to introduce myself and lay out my idea and how we could make money on this."
Starrcast takes place from Thursday, August 30, to Sunday, September 2. Tickets will be available at Starrcast.com, and feature everything from daily general admission to platinum VIP bracelets. Bruce Prichard, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, Eric Bischoff, Colt Cabana, Jerry Lawler, Young Bucks, Cody, Hurricane Helms, DDP, and many other names are scheduled to appear.
