The Gentlemen's Wrestling Podcast
Jun 15, 2026 · 2 hr 2 min · 14 segments
On the latest episode of the Gentlemen's Wrestling Podcast, Jesse Collings is joined by Joe Lanza of the Flagship Wrestling Podcast to discuss the current state of the weekly wrestling television…
Joe LanzaGuestSo I guess my, my general thesis on my, towards this podcast is TV wrestling is a historic staple of wrestling.
It, it dates back to, like, the 19- 1940s or at least weekly wrestling, you know, to the early '50s with the DuMont network.
But TV wrestling is an, goes back to almost, like, the ancient times of the wrestling industry, and for a lot of its history, it was viewed as kinda, like, this bonus kind of thing that wrestling companies would do, where the bread and butter was live tickets and then you could use your TV program to advertise yourself to get people to go to live shows.
And, you know, that changed in the '80s, and TV wrestling became, you know, became a weapon during the cable wars into the '80s and '90s that, you know, WWF used.
But we go back and talk about, you know, Georgia Championship Wrestling and Black Saturday and all that kind of stuff.
And we currently stand, here in 2026, where television wrestling has never been more important to the bottom line of these wrestling companies.
It is the number one revenue driver for the largest wrestling companies in the United States.
It is the, really, in a lot of ways, the pivotal difference-maker between, like, a company like AEW and a company like MLW, um, is the s- the standard of their weekly television and what network they're on, how much money they're getting, what does the product look like.
It's, it's so vital to the wrestling industry as a whole, is your weekly television show filling up those content hours for those networks that are desperate for live programming.
On the flip side, culturally, here in 2026, the idea of watching a live, weekly, you know, episodic television series has, feels outdated.
Uh, it's not in line with the way most people or a lot of people, especially younger people, consume, you know, television shows and content in general.
Do your kids watch any, like, shows weekly, like, at the same time every week that's on live?
Like, "All right, we're gonna watch a show, but it's only on at like..." You know, like, if your kids, like, it's, the new episodes were on, are on at like 10:00 AM on Saturday morning.
Um, and do, do you yourself watch any television, TV shows live, like, on a weekly basis at the time that those episodes air?
So I guess my, my general thesis on my, towards this podcast is TV wrestling is a historic staple of wrestling.
It, it dates back to, like, the 19- 1940s or at least weekly wrestling, you know, to the early '50s with the DuMont network.
But TV wrestling is an, goes back to almost, like, the ancient times of the wrestling industry, and for a lot of its history, it was viewed as kinda, like, this bonus kind of thing that wrestling companies would do, where the bread and butter was live tickets and then you could use your TV program to advertise yourself to get people to go to live shows.
And, you know, that changed in the '80s, and TV wrestling became, you know, became a weapon during the cable wars into the '80s and '90s that, you know, WWF used.
But we go back and talk about, you know, Georgia Championship Wrestling and Black Saturday and all that kind of stuff.
And we currently stand, here in 2026, where television wrestling has never been more important to the bottom line of these wrestling companies.
It is the number one revenue driver for the largest wrestling companies in the United States.
It is the, really, in a lot of ways, the pivotal difference-maker between, like, a company like AEW and a company like MLW, um, is the s- the standard of their weekly television and what network they're on, how much money they're getting, what does the product look like.
It's, it's so vital to the wrestling industry as a whole, is your weekly television show filling up those content hours for those networks that are desperate for live programming.
On the flip side, culturally, here in 2026, the idea of watching a live, weekly, you know, episodic television series has, feels outdated.
Uh, it's not in line with the way most people or a lot of people, especially younger people, consume, you know, television shows and content in general.
Do your kids watch any, like, shows weekly, like, at the same time every week that's on live?
Like, "All right, we're gonna watch a show, but it's only on at like..." You know, like, if your kids, like, it's, the new episodes were on, are on at like 10:00 AM on Saturday morning.
Um, and do, do you yourself watch any television, TV shows live, like, on a weekly basis at the time that those episodes air?
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