Josh Barnett has always been a purist. This was abundantly clear during his storied mixed martial arts career, but now, at 47, the former UFC heavyweight champion is preaching the gospel in pro wrestling, primarily through his latest endeavor, Josh Barnett’s Bloodsport.
And he’s having the time of his life while doing it.
“I enjoy being able to bring the spirit of professional wrestling that was instilled in me out to the broader, more modern wrestling space, which, to be honest, really doesn’t know anything about this,” said Barnett. “That’s not as an indictment against them, per se, it just wasn’t offered. They don’t, didn’t get that opportunity. So now I feel kind of obligated, but also excited, to bring it to them.”
Old school in the best way possible, GCW Bloodsport is a return to a different era in terms of the ruleset and atmosphere, so don’t expect high-flying acrobatics or flashy maneuvers off the ropes and turnbuckles…because there are no ropes or turnbuckles. And since matches on the open canvas can only end by knockout or submission, it’s as close to a fight as you can get. It might be a recipe for disaster in a world consistently chasing instant gratification and not something a little more subtle and a lot more hard-hitting, but the promotion has hit a nerve with fans in a positive way, and shows are routinely selling out as soon as the word gets around.
“I think we’ve done incredibly well with it, but we are well aware that your typical type of pro wrestling show is generally going to do better than us to some degree,” he said. “An AEW show, Ring of Honor, obviously WWE, they’re just so much bigger than us, and we realized that this style, while I think it’s pretty universal and people have been very easily picking up on it, it’s going to have a kind of a tint to it to those that are not accustomed to it. And let’s just be real: pro wrestling has really become very online driven.”
Which means that a lot of fans are content watching streams and arguing about the sport online without getting out to a live show. WWE is obviously doing well on both ends of the spectrum, but on the indie side, it’s often difficult to pack the house for the shows that are the ones that get young fans into the sport in the first place. I tell Barnett of the time when I saw a then-WWF house show at Bishop Ford High School in Brooklyn and was hooked for life after getting a high five from Johnny Rodz. You can’t get that connection through a stream or a social media account.
“A lot of people grew up in a new very online-driven type of society and approach to certain fandoms, and they’re not as used to being in person and even spending money on things in that way,” he said. “But ultimately, if you support, if you really like something, just put a buck into it, and man, even if you pirate it, find a way to spend money on the wrestlers on the show because it really goes a long way to help these guys out. And we’re not a show without our wrestlers or our fans. So, I always look at it as we’re a group project. I’m not driven by the fans in what I do because I don’t believe you should ever sit back and wait for what the audience has to say about something because that’s too slow. You’ve got to be ahead of the game and you’ve got to be thinking in a way where you can deliver something that even the fans didn’t know that they wanted. And that’s being a good promoter right there. But, at the same time, we want to deliver the best product we can.
Have you got your tickets to The Hardest Hitting Show in all of Professional Wrestling?https://t.co/iWe0lPjgp3 pic.twitter.com/Mlv98xrVzM
— 𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝖂𝖆𝖗𝖒𝖆𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖗 (@JoshLBarnett) November 20, 2024
“We want to keep these wrestlers employed and working and to help them move along with their dreams. And the more money we get, the bigger we can grow our product. And if we can grow, then that fan base will grow with us and we want to deliver the best product possible. And as we have more resources, we’ll increase what we do. We can expand upon the way we present the show and perhaps even how many we can have in a year and where we can take them. I want to make Bloodsport as big and as cool and as bad as we can for those fans that are there behind us. And for those wrestlers that really love it, too.”
Bloodsport shows have already featured Barnett, Davey Boy Smith Jr., Frank Mir, Dan Severn, Minoru Suzuki, Ikuhisa Minowa, Tom Lawlor, Killer Kross, Nick Gage, Jon Moxley, Chavo Guerrero Jr., John Hennigan, Shayna Baszler, Kazushi Sakuraba, “Rampage” Jackson and the Creed Brothers. This Sunday at White Eagle Hall in Jersey City, NJ, Bloodsport XII will see Barnett, MVP, Marina Shafir, and Myles Borne in action, proving that some of the biggest names in the game are on board with this style of wrestling. And while Barnett and company are entertaining fans from Jersey to Japan, he’s also educating them in something they may have never experienced before.
“I want people to understand the ideas behind Inokism; behind old school catch as catch can, behind the shoot wrestling from Japan of the eighties into the nineties. I want to broaden their horizons in that historical way and get them knowing and looking up people like Karl Gotch and Billy Robinson and Antonio Inoki just for starters, let alone Takada and Maeda and Funaki and Fujiwara and so on and so forth. But even if they don’t, I at least want them to see what it is that we do and know that this is something special. It is different and can’t be done by everybody. And that’s part of what makes it what it is.”
It is something special, and if you’re not one of those who jumped on board as soon as you heard about it, one dose should be enough to seal the deal. That’s music to the ears of “The Warmaster,” who has found a way to feed his competitive jones more than eight years after his last UFC fight.
Two heavy hitters.
One ring.
All guts.
All Glory.
Lou Nixon vs Calvin Tankman at Josh Barnett’s: Bloodsport XII
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— 𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝖂𝖆𝖗𝖒𝖆𝖘𝖙𝖊𝖗 (@JoshLBarnett) November 20, 2024
“We can set the stage with all the trimmings possible, but, at the end of the day, you got to get in the ring, you got to wrestle, and you got to show what it is that makes Bloodsport the hardest hitting event in all professional wrestling,” said Barnett. “You’ve got to do something that nobody else can do and you got to do it in a way that makes you stand out to not just the people that tune in on the pay-per-view on TrillerTV, but especially those people in the audience live. And the competitiveness that I had as an MMA fighter continues right on to getting in that pro wrestling ring. And I’m almost never satisfied with what we do out there, even though I know I’ve had some good matches myself and I know we’ve had a lot of great matches in Bloodsport.
“There’s more to come and there’s more we can do,” he continues. “It would obviously be a lot easier if we had a dojo system like the UWF and Rings and New Japan have had. But without that, we can still do what we can to try and bring up the wrestlers that already have the backgrounds and the capability of doing this style, but to also show a pathway to others and hopefully inspire them to up their game by going and training and developing those skills and that understanding of professional wrestling at its deepest level here. I’m not someone who likes to come in second place at anything.”
Josh Barnett’s Bloodsport XII takes place on Sunday, November 24, at White Eagle Hall in Jersey City, NJ. For tickets, click here https://www.seetickets.us/event/josh-barnetts-bloodsport-xii/622697
Bloodsport XII also airs on TrillerTV https://www.trillertv.com/watch/gcw-josh-barnetts-bloodsport-12/2pfo9/
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