Enjoy Wrestling began in 2020 with the credo “wrestling is for everyone,” and since then, says Kurt Hackimer, co-owner of the Pittsburgh-based independent wrestling promotion company, it’s kept to that.
At a recent sold-out show of Enjoy Wrestling: Odyssey at Mr. Smalls Theater, tag team act The Runway stood at a corner of the wrestling ring heckling the audience. The fashionable duo, made up of Calvin Couture, billed as “the fashionista of professional wrestling,” and Mr. Design Tyler Klein — known to pull a tape measure out of his trunks a la a disapproving Tim Gunn — jokingly scolded a group of fans, “Go home to your husbands!”
“We’re married to each other, we don’t have husbands!” one fan, wearing an Enjoy t-shirt, shouted back.
“The people that heckle us usually have our merch on, so they’ve already decided they love us enough to hate us,” Klein tells Pittsburgh City Paper with a laugh.
Being in Pittsburgh, it also didn’t take long for several “Cleveland sucks!” chants to break out, a taunt for Cleveland wrestler and heel, or “bad guy,” Derek Dillinger. Many in the crowd were also in costume, common at Enjoy shows. To the uninitiated (and instantly converted) fan like myself, the show combined the familiar parts of wrestling — sports entertainment and live theater — with less-expected elements evoking drag performance, reality TV, and the excitement of a concert.
“We wanted to make wrestling that our friends who don’t like wrestling can appreciate,” Hackimer says. “It’s awesome to have an environment where people feel free to be themselves.”
For Enjoy co-owners Hackimer, Maxx and Taylor Gregg, and Scotty Swemba, realizing that vision began with Enjoy’s talent roster, and, since launching four years ago, inclusivity has become the company’s calling card. All lifelong wrestling fans, the foursome aimed to break the industry mold and feature athletes and announcers of all races, genders, and sexualities.
Pro wrestling has had a long and complicated history with gender and sexuality in particular. World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), which puts on some of the world’s most popular wrestling shows, didn’t acknowledge the first openly gay pro wrestler, Pat Patterson, until 2014.
“Historically … [the] prototypical wrestler [has been] a big strong white dude,” Hackhimer tells City Paper. “[But] I think part of wrestling that is appealing is that you can see somebody that [you] might relate to out in the ring and be inspired by that.”
Enjoy showcases wrestlers who openly identify as queer, trans, and nonbinary — including putting on a Gay Wrestlemania event in 2022 — and also puts on mixed-gender matches. High production value is another essential component of their vision, says Hackhimer, and Enjoy releases all its video content, which it considers WWE quality, free on YouTube.
In turn, the company hopes to draw a similarly diverse fanbase and broaden their shows’ appeal.
“It’s a good marketing strategy and also something that we believe in,” Hackimer says.
Enjoy’s first recruit was current champion Edith Surreal, who’s been performing with the company since its first show; she tells CP that it’s her home promotion and “favorite place to work.”
Surreal, a Philly-based trans nonbinary artist and wrestler, previously competed as the character Still Life with Apricots & Pears (a nod to the genre of paintings). She became Edith Surreal at Enjoy’s first taped match, aired in February 2021.
Also nicknamed the “The Ephemeral Queen” and “The Exhibition of Intrigue,” Surreal believed the new character would showcase her “different approach to wrestling.” Known for her wrestling mask (similar to those from lucha libre in Mexico), Surreal’s costume was inspired by her artistic background and meant to evoke gold framed artwork.
“The costume is like the frame, and then my body and the movement is the piece of art,” Surreal says. “[So] I’m thinking of my matches in a very artistic way, not strictly … in a sports entertainment way. The type of offense I have is very technical or submission-based, and I think of my submissions as if they’re sculptures.”
Her entrance song into the ring is Grimes’ “Kill V. Maim,” which, in addition to having a good beat to pump up the crowd, has lyrics invoking “weird gangster vampires that [are] gender fluid,” a “weird little activation that … fit all the things that I wanted out of an entrance song,” Surreal tells CP.
Surreal credits Enjoy with promoting “more marginalized talent that doesn’t always get featured on other shows,” including LGBTQ wrestlers, which is “not always the case across independent wrestling.” An oft-repeated joke, Surreal tells CP, is that if a promotion has even one women’s match on their card, they book “25 dudes” to compensate.
By contrast, one of Enjoy’s first live shows in Oct. 2021 featured a match between Surreal and “scene queen” Ziggy Haim, with the event billed as “Edith’s mask versus Ziggy’s hair,” Hackimer recalls. It ended with Surreal driving Haim through two stacked tables — “still the craziest thing that’s ever happened at Enjoy,” Hackimer says — and chopping off Haim’s ponytail, solidifying Surreal’s status as a beloved babyface (the hero in wrestling lingo).
As for Enjoy’s fan-favorite villains, Mr. Design Tyler Klein (of The Runway), tells CP he was also a childhood wrestling fan, falling in love with the sport’s pageantry and “larger-than-life characters.”
He met Calvin Couture, the other half of The Runway, on Instagram in 2019, and saw potential to collaborate. Both wrestlers loved interacting with the crowd and wearing eye-catching costumes. Their tag team act features Couture, the fashionista, acting as a runway model and “screaming at people,” and Mr. Design Tyler Klein, as a demanding designer dishing out one-liners. Each wrestler has a signature look, much of which Klein actually designs himself.
“He likes to be very Marilyn Monroe,” Klein says of Couture. “I’m more like Lady Gaga.”
Of The Runway’s act, Klein tells CP, “We’re kind of the classic baddies [in] that we want you to hate us… [Mainly], we want you to know that you’re jealous of us that we’re up there looking fabulous.”
“Wrestling for me is kind of like an escape,” Klein says. “[I] get to be a facet of my personality that I don’t get to share every day … It’s bled into my real life a little bit, not heckling people, [but] just being more confident in myself, and it’s helped me be more confident as a member of the LGBTQ community.”
As LGBTQ wrestlers become more mainstream, Enjoy is “just something special,” says Klein. He also credits another Enjoy regular, Effy, for featuring LGBTQ wrestlers during his Big Gay Brunch events.
With the platform Enjoy provides, Klein says, The Runway succeeded and “just kind of took on a life of its own,” a relative rarity for a tag team act in independent wrestling.
Since creating The Runway, Klein and Couture have become close friends, live together in Pittsburgh, and work at the same day job. (Their coworkers know their wrestling characters, have their autographed merch, and come to shows.)
Klein also attests that Enjoy shows excel at “giving a melting pot of different styles, being LGBTQ, everything … and the fans are equally different, too.” Performing in Pittsburgh last summer during Anthrocon, he remembers looking into the crowd and seeing someone in a fursuit.
“And it was like 100 degrees outside, so kudos to that person,” Klein says. By coincidence, Klein later saw the same fan, who recognized Klein out of character, in Massachusetts. They told Klein how excited they were that they could fly into Pittsburgh for Anthrocon the same week as an Enjoy show.
“It’s really cool how [Enjoy’s] reach has gotten to all fans,” Klein tells CP. “No matter what you identify as, Enjoy feels like a home.”
Enjoy puts on its biggest show yet, Immaculate, on Sun., June 16 at Stage AE. According to Hackimer, it will mark the first time any Pittsburgh independent wrestling company has appeared at the venue, which is typically reserved for national companies. (Shortly before publication, Edith Surreal announced that, due to injury, she will not compete at Immaculate, relinquish the title, and put her in-ring wrestling career on “indefinite hiatus.”)
The Runway faces off against Dirty Breeze, another tag team previously promoted by WWE.
Klein is excited about his and Couture’s outfits, “and I guarantee you we’re pulling out all the stops,” he says.
Reflecting, Hackimer says the move to a larger stage reflects what they’d hoped when they created Enjoy.
“Every time I go to an Enjoy show, people come up to me, and they’re like, this was my first wrestling show, [and] this is awesome,” he says. “And that’s really what we do this for, because I firmly believe that there are so many more wrestling fans out there that just don’t know it yet.”
This article appears in Jun 12-18, 2024.
