A week ago I did an
interview with Ignacio Grifol from SoloWrestling about CAGEMATCH. It was published yesterday in Spanish, but I would like to publish the English version here for posterity. I would like to thank Ignacio and SoloWrestling for the interview!
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SW: Can you tell me your first memory about pro wrestling?PK: It was an Owen Hart match at the end of 1993. I was 12 years old and got hooked by the athleticism. Then I saw the Undertaker and my latent interest for dark mystery kicked in and from then on I watched it more and more until I became a full-blown fan with the Rumble 1994. While it seems silly looking back, as a kid I was fascinated by the Undertaker "resurrecting" after his casket match with Yokozuna. The Rumble match was fun as well and I became a fan of Bret Hart and the rest is history.
SW: Can you describe the German wrestling landscape before the wXw expansion?PK: Anything I could say would only scratch the surface of Germany's wrestling history, or more precise: "Catching" history, so I am not going to try.
SW: Pro wrestling in Germany has been growing since the expansion of wXw. What can you tell me about the current German Independent circuit?PK: Personally I cannot say much about this topic, as I do not follow the German independent wrestling scene anymore, but my dear colleague STRIGGA had this to say:
"The German independent scene is obviously heavily impacted by the pandemic as any independent scene worldwide. In Germany though the battle to get back where the scene has been before COVID-19 is unevenly harder than for example in the United States or even in the United Kingdom where wrestling simply is much more popular and going to wrestling shows has less of a "reputation" than it has in Germany. On the forefront of the scene are still Westside Xtreme Wrestling based in Essen and the German Wrestling Federation based in Berlin. When you look at both rosters, there's some overlaps - for example Axel Tischer being the champion for both. What's interesting though is that both groups have a certain core roster that is unique to them. That is basically how the scene is still working. Whether it's promotions in the North, South or Central Germany, they operate on a similar basis. There's a lot of talent coming not only from Germany, but also Belgium, The Netherlands, Austria, Italy, Hungary and so forth displaying that the Central European scene is still alive and looking do do well in a post pandemic world."
SW: What do you think about the WWE alliance with wXw?PK: On a business level I fully understand it and if it works well for them, I am happy for them.
SW: Why did you decide to start CAGEMATCH?PK: In 2000 I got my first broadband internet connection. I was a big-time fan of the Attitude era at that point and wanted to be creatively involved with the German wrestling website at that time. I worked a little bit on one or two sites, but in 2001 me and two acquaintances of that time decided that we wanted to do something on our own. So CAGEMATCH was born on 16 March 2001 and went public on 01 June 2001. It was a passion project from the start.
SW: How did you feel when your partners left the project?PK: I respected their decision to step back. I had already been the day-to-day team leader for quite some time before it happened, but in 2003 I also took over the programming of the website backend. It was a natural progression for me. As far as I know, they both pretty much left the wrestling fandom.
SW: Why and when did you started the Patreon?PK: I started the Patreon in 2020 as a replacement for earlier Paypal or Amazon partnerships. The reasons are probably a bit silly to almost everyone reading it, but I am quite a private person and respect other people's privacy as well, so I did not want to continue to entertain any sort of tracking on CAGEMATCH. Amazon and Paypal both track users across multiple websites and I no longer wanted to support that (even passively). Patreon obviously does some tracking of their users as well, but it is now just a link to the Patreon and CAGEMATCH is free of any 3rd party scripts or server connections.
SW: Can you explain the requirements to have a CAGEMATCH profile?PK: You obviously need to have been active in the wrestling business. Wrestlers need to be professionally trained to be acknowledged, otherwise there are really no other major requirements. However, there is a huge queue for new submissions, which are vetted individually by one of my long-time team members, Ray Robson, who has been doing a fantastic job since 2001. The more information there is about a person, the more likely it is to jump ahead in the queue.
SW: Did you think that CAGEMATCH would become one of the most visited websites in pro wrestling?PK: That is a really good, but also really hard-to-answer question. Let's say I always wanted the site to grow and gain a larger audience, but only to a certain extent. CAGEMATCH was many years old before "social media" became a term and when "web 2.0" was destroying small-time websites left and right, I mainly just hoped to stay relevant. We lost our discussion forums to the simplified and streamlined experiences on Twitter, Facebook and Reddit (and frankly we always had a hard time competing in that regard with other major German wrestling forums). What always set us apart and continues to drive me and my team members, however, is our database and the ratings system and the care we put into maintaining a high level of quality and interaction in both. When we started to support and use English more prominently, it obviously expanded our potential user base massively and from that point I knew that it was just a case of staying true to our values and giving it time.
SW: Why did you pull out the pictures of pro wrestlers from the website?PK: The internet 20 years ago was vastly different compared to today and private websites like ours have been mostly destroyed by big corporations, social media and website conglomerates. And like the internet, laws and regulations have changed a lot as well. Our website servers are located in Germany and German copyright laws are a huge mess in the best of times, often designed to limit the greediness of big corporations but stifling the growth or even existence of smaller, private websites in the process. Ultimately, since it was impossible after so many years to identify and contact the original copyright owners for all those pictures in hopes to attain permission to use them, I made the decision to avoid legal trouble altogether.
SW: When you include new people to work with you, what kind of profile are you looking for?PK: Our team philosophy has changed a lot over the past two decades. When we started, most of the team was young and ambitious, we talked every day, organized in teams and change came quickly. Nowadays, most of the team is older and average age is probably in the early to mid 30s by now, so priorities have shifted both on- and offline. With that being said, we are always looking for people who can and want to work on their own, but respect boundaries and interaction with other team members, if needed. Any sort of troublemakers or egomaniacs are removed from the team immediately, regardless of their potential contributions. Primary reason, honestly: We are doing this for fun in our free time and I and the rest of the team are definitely not interested in annoying or work-like drama in our hobby projects.
SW: How do you filter the information that the user give to you? What's the check process?PK: Every user submission regardless of type (email, suggestions, contact form, etc.) is put into our control center database and pops up for every team member to handle, discuss or dismiss. Depending on what the subject is, team members may be tagged to handle or comment on the topic and sometimes groups of team members decide on the best action in a sort of democratic process. Based on our current team composition, I think it works really well.
SW: How do you work when you have to include old events, like matches from 1970s or 1950s?PK: The process is not much different to current events, really. We are usually not adding individual matches, but looking for more-or-less complete events based on witness accounts, reports or other sort of reliable sources.
SW: How do you defend from trolls and bomb reviews?PK: That is a topic all on its own and one I have tackled many times on the website's news feed with articles and info posts. Needless to say, trolls and review bombing have always been an issue, especially with social media's disastrous effect on online interaction between human beings, but recently we have been very successful in introducing the 7-day grace period before new users can actually give out ratings. The review bombing after big events of WWE, AEW and NJPW have largely stopped. Nevertheless I spend time daily on that topic.
SW: You include the Dave Meltzer rating star in some matches. Why did you decide to include his stars and no others?PK: When CAGEMATCH was started, Meltzer's ratings were highly regarded and I believe they still are by a lot of people. Obviously it is just one person's opinion and Meltzer like any human being in history has shown to have moods, changes of opinion or style preferences. Nevertheless, I think he has been consistent and true to himself with his ratings system and I respect that.
SW: What do you think about Dave Meltzer and his star system, when he broke the scale with 6 and 7 stars?PK: I do not want to start or engage in a debate about what the change means to past and present matches, as I am not as emotional about that topic as other fans (and trolls) are. I understand perfectly why he did it and I accept it. I sure have changed my opinion and stance and approaches to how I handle my website many, many times in the past and can relate to not being able to make everybody happy. My current stance is: If he is happy with his star system, that is really all that matters. Anybody who disagrees can start their own.
SW: Did you have any problem with a wrestler or a promotion?PK: Not really. We have obviously had several interactions with wrestlers and promotions in the past, which have usually been respectful and cordial. Sometimes an independent wrestler wants their profile deleted, because it would be trouble for them if their real-life work or spouse found out or they do not like their rating. We generally respect those wishes, which is why some people just do not have profiles in our database, but that's about it in regards to "problems". I am fine with the idea that most people in the business view us as passionate fans and free advertisement. I am happy for any positive acknowledgement, of course, but I am not clamoring anyone's attention.
SW: As far as I know, you can only write on German and English. There is a chance that, in the future, will you accept comments in Spanish?PK: There were some initiatives to translate the site to Spanish or French in the past, but nothing came of it and it would honestly put a lot of additional pressure on the team and our ability to maintain the level of quality in the ratings system. I have learned Spanish in school, but that's so long ago and I need to be able to understand what users are writing on the website to be able to react quickly, if necessary.
SW: Have you seen Spanish Wrestling? White Wolf Wrestling, A-Kid.PK: Sorry, I have not. But A-Kid has had quite a few positive reviews in the team when I asked around. I wish every hard-working and decent human being in the wrestling business success in whatever form they want, though.
SW: Did you ever wanted to train and have a pro wrestling match?PK: Not really, no. I briefly had the option in 2006 while working in a very peripheral capacity with a small German independent promotion, but decided against it. I am a fan foremost and nobody would want to see me in a ring anyway. ;-)
SW: What's next for CAGEMATCH? Do you have new ideas for the website?PK: We turned 21 this year, so a lot of alcohol, I guess. ;-) But seriously, CAGEMATCH has and will forever be a passion project that at this point is probably not going to change too much in the way we do and approach things. It is working well and the team has fun maintaining the site, that's all you could ask for. That being said, there are hundreds of ideas floating around, all of which require some effort to bring into existence. I am 40 years old now and have a stressful real-life job, hobbies and a family. New ideas and changes will probably only be implemented when I have the time and motivation to do so. So I hope you are happy with CAGEMATCH the way it is, because it is probably not going to change too much in the next years and decades. ;-)
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Interview @ SoloWrestling.mundodeportivo.com
