BY REV. ADAM MCKINNEY

Bah gawd! Weekly Volcano has been ambushed by an article about professional wrestling! Someone stop the press – that paper has a family!

Reader, it has taken me nearly 15 years to write a piece about professional wrestling in Weekly Volcano, but I’ve chosen the right time to do it, as the indie boom of professional wrestling has managed to spread itself to Washington in a way that it hadn’t previously been able to.

To get a closer look, we’re talking to Ethan HD, a professional wrestler and commentator who also owns and operates Tacoma’s Destiny City Comics.

“I did backyard wrestling, like I think every kid that grew up in the late ‘90s, early ‘00s did,” says HD. “Me and my friends, who were serious about it, decided we wanted to go pro, but we didn’t really know how to do it. ... We ended up coming across, online, a wrestling school that they were running out of a storage unit in Auburn.”

HD’s open about how sub-par the training he first received was – a common occurrence in an industry that doesn’t have much oversight. His follow-up was better, as noted industry professional Davey Richards took over his training, before HD moved on to PNW legend Buddy Wayne. HD, now 36, got his pro wrestling start at 18, and has only recently been put on the injured list.

To be a pro wrestling fan in Washington has been a difficulty for a while. As of a few years ago, Washington’s regulations made it so that smaller wrestling shows were incredibly hard to put on, with financial burdens placed on the shows that would make more sense for bigger sporting events.

“It’s definitely a lot easier now,” says HD. “You still need to be licensed and all of those things – have your physical and blood work up to date – but
the problem used to be that, no matter the size of your event, they expected you to have all the accoutrements that a big boxing event or WWE would have.

“That’s kind of what the laws were built around, a WWE-scale event,” says HD. “So, by the time you got everything set up, the state wanted their cut, so it was really cost-prohibitive for a lot of people to run a wrestling show.”

Nowadays, there are companies like Defy Wrestling, one of the most prominent indie wrestling promotions in the country, who have paved the way for pro wrestling in Washington to thrive. With Ethan HD injured, he’s recently joined the commentary booth at Defy, showcasing his ability both in the ring and on the mic.

For those who’ve only ever experienced professional wrestling by occasionally viewing a Wrestlemania sometime in the past 20 or 30 years, the notion of seeing it up close and personal might seem a bit unusual. What you first must understand is that the quality of performance that you’re able to see in a small venue, these days, is vastly superior to what you might’ve paid to see in Madison Square Garden in the ‘80s or ‘90s.

Beyond that, you need to know that pro wrestling exists as an artform alongside any of the bands or stage shows that you might come out to see, and the way in which you interact with it is roughly the same: be respectful, but expect an immersive, live performance.

“I think indie wrestling is the new punk scene,” says HD. “Show up; be aware that if you’re standing next to the ring, the action might spill towards you and you’ll need to get out of the way; bring like $20-$40 for t-shirts and stickers and stuff, so you have a cool memento; and really just go into it with an open mind.”

“My favorite people are ones who just went to their first show,” says HD. “Like, ‘What did you expect it to be, what did it end up being?’ I also think that live wrestling is just more exciting than televised wrestling. TV wrestling is fine, but I think wrestling was always meant to be a live spectator sport.”

HD also teaches the art form locally, at Grit City Wrestling School. As he says it, he had found himself at a time when being an active wrestler had burnt him out, but he was given the opportunity to teach some wrestling in India, which lit a fire in him. Soon after, he was teaching in New Zealand, and then eventually bringing it back to Tacoma, where GCWS was made as a sort of offshoot of the local SOS Pro Wrestling.

Beyond his wrestling life, HD has owned Destiny City Comics since the very end of 2019, ushering it into the pandemic in a particularly brilliant way: opening up their shop to mail orders, and lovingly filming those deliveries for their socials. Nowadays, even though the shop is open to the public, mail orders remain an attraction.

Additionally, DCC holds monthly events where you can play Magic the Gathering with wrestlers, and the store also holds monthly book clubs where you read graphic novels and – in the most recent edition – can talk to those involved in its creation, like the author, illustrator, colorist and editor.

If you want to follow Ethan HD’s adventures with his comics, you can tune into instagram.com/ destinycitycomics.