Keith Elliot Greenberg - Too Sweet

The Bad Boy Joey Janela was nervous. He paced. He sat. He stood up. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, tapping it against the inside of his palm. With the butt shoved under his lip, he stepped outside the Sears Centre Arena and lit up.

He could see the cars converging on the utilitarian glass and concrete building, angling for spots in the parking lot. From a distance, he heard the doors creaking open, slamming shut, voices talking, laughing, chanting.

Wooooo!

After 12 years in the wrestling business, the sounds were familiar to him. So was the general look of the crowd: long hair and shaved heads, motorcycle boots and sneakers, hard bodies bursting through muscle shirts and balloon-shaped physiques wedged into wrestling tees. Occasionally, an attractive woman tottered by on high heels, holding the hand of a boyfriend rushing to keep up with his wrestling buddies. The parade of fans didnt stop.

Janela pulled out his ponytail and shook his long brown hair from side to side. When the Most Badass Professional Wrestler in the World finally went back into the building, he passed the other wrestlers in the halls: Cody, the Young Bucks and Kenny Omega the biggest stars on the North American indie scene Kota Ibushi and Kazuchika Okada from Japan, Rey Fenix, Penta El Zero and Bandido from Mexico. Outside of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), these were some of the most important names in the business. And Janela, the five-foot-eight scrapper from South Jersey, who still lived at home with his mother, was among them. In fact, some of the fans had specifically come to suburban Chicago because Joey Janela who earned social media infamy by being tossed from a roof into the flaming bed of a pickup truck was included in this historic September 2018 show, known as All In.

Fifteen minutes later, Janela headed back outside for another smoke. The crowd had not abated. In fact, it had gotten larger. Wow, he said, the jitters again tingling through his body. This is big.

In fact, it was the largest show not staged by WWE or WCW WWEs chief rival until 2001 in 25 years.

Theres something happening here that hasnt happened in a long time, said Awesome Kong, the charismatic Amazon who later signed with All Elite Wrestling (AEW), the company that grew out of All In. Its kinetic. Theres an energy. Theres a sheer will of wanting something different to succeed. And this all started on a dare.

I first subscribed to Dave Meltzers Wrestling Observer newsletter in the 1980s, after I began writing for WWF Magazine, before the lawsuit with the World Wildlife Fund that forced the World Wrestling Federation to become WWE. Although the Wrestling Observer has a significant online presence, I still look forward to the paper edition each week, an exhaustive collection of wrestling history, match results, business analysis and gossip in single-spaced seven-point type. Meltzer, who has lectured at Stanford Universitys Graduate School of Business, also popularized a star rating system for major matches, one that even the performers who claim to hate him take extremely seriously. While I was working on this book, Meltzer and I were guests on a public access show in which he was asked about his taste in movies and bands. He paused and fumbled for words. A movie? But when it comes to professional wrestling, not to mention MMA and old-school roller derby, nobody knows more or ever will.

In May 2017, Meltzer was asked on Twitter about whether Ring of Honor, the primary American indie league at that time, could draw more than 10,000 fans. Not any time soon, he responded. Cody Rhodes the youngest son of the American Dream Dusty Rhodes and an indie prince since he parted ways with WWE the year before then tweeted, Ill take that bet, Dave.

For the next 16 months, Cody and the Young Bucks, brothers Nick and Matt Jackson, worked to prove that Dave Meltzer was wrong, as well as to create All In.

The effort became a worldwide movement for professional wrestling [and] everyone that wants an alternative, Kenny Omega, who went into All In wearing the vaunted International Wrestling Grand Prix (IWGP) Heavyweight Championship for the New Japan Pro-Wrestling promotion, told the groups website. Especially in America because in America, youre kind of forced to believe that WWE is the best. All In, he continued, was a rally to show support for people who have a different vision.

Initially, the three men rejected outside efforts to fund the experiment and relied on their families and friends. Codys sister, Teil, created the name All-In, the Bucks father, Matt Massie Sr., the musical score. Alabama mortgage broker Conrad Thompson, a wrestling podcaster who married the legendary Ric Flairs oldest daughter, Megan, coordinated Starcast, the fan convention surrounding the event. Codys wife, Brandi a WWE-trained wrestler herself and Matt Jacksons wife, Dana, were deeply involved in organizational decisions.

Like Cody, WWE Hall of Famer Jeff Jarrett had grown up in the wrestling business, learning promotion from his father, Jerry Jarrett, and step-grandfather, Eddie Marlin, in the old Memphis wrestling territory. I love to see guys take risks, he observed. Sometimes, that gets you into big trouble. Sometimes, it pays off. Reward is always measured by your level of risk. But when I saw All In lining up, I felt they had a pretty good chance. The concept was good. The independent wrestling revolution started quite a few years ago. Now we were on the cusp of a wrestling boom.

Since the advent of television, promoters had used the medium to generate interest in upcoming matches. But Cody, Omega, the Bucks and assorted friends had begun reaching their audience another way: through a YouTube series theyd branded Being the Elite, or BTE, all shot on the wrestlers cell phones as they traveled around the world. Each installment combined documentary elements the guys sitting on airplanes, lounging in hotel rooms and preparing for matches backstage comedy sketches and wrestling highlights. We didnt treat Being the Elite like pro wrestling, Matt explained. Ah, its just wrestling. You put together these angles, and theres plotholes, and you just dont care. Being the Elite was more like Netflix, HBO, Showtime. We tried to tie up every loose end, pay attention to every detail. When we started building the All In card, we said, [How] can we blow off the stories that fans have been following on Being the Elite? We wanted people to be satisfied after watching six months of episodes. We wanted them to feel rewarded in the end.

Former Ring of Honor owner Cary Silkin, a friend of the Jackson brothers, tried offering advice. They did everything wrong, Silkin said. I suggested they shouldnt put tickets on sale on Sunday afternoon. But it didnt matter. They could have put tickets on sale at three in the morning. They had the spirit of the people with them.

Within the first 30 minutes that tickets were available, 10,541 were sold. In total, 11,263 fans filled the Sears Centre Arena, the maximum that the fire department would allow. Even the suites were overflowing.