Extreme Rising Explains WrestleMania Week Cancellations

First, we made a hard business decision to cancel three events due to poor ticket sales. Why did ER have low ticket sales? We don’t know exactly, but we had a late start in announcing the WM weekend events where other promotions already had ticket on sale and alot of people already made their commitments to do other things early on.

We were damned if we kept the dates on the books and damned if we cancel –either situation leaving us in a major hole to climb out of. Keep in mind that the 3 Extreme Rising events Wrestlemania weekend probably cost more money than all the events combined running at Wrestlecon the entire weekend. Extreme Rising events are not cheap to do, even small events like the Staten Island double shot.

Extreme Reunion and Extreme Rising has been climbing out of holes since the first show, and it has not been easy, but we press on –just like we will now. Extreme Rising is not “over” –nor “out of business”. We have to regroup, pick ourselves up, and we will continue on. We have gone through a lot to this point, and we are not stopping now. There is ALOT to handle with the cancellations. Everyone who is due a refund –will get their refund. Refunds can be made a point of purchase through Paypal or even your bank or credit card company.

The last thing we want to do is cancel events. It hurts the fans, wrestlers, and the company –but if we ran those events, it very well could’ve been much worse! NO Extreme Rising event has had great walk ups! ALL of our events had great pre-sales! These 3 events did not. Some say DVD sales will make up for the loss. Those who say that do not know what they speak of of and are one hundred percent wrong. The DVD market for pro wrestling is not what it used to be (thanks to piracy and illegal “tape traders”), and is soft for most –if not all wrestling companies outside WWE and TNA, as they both have national retail distribution. We did not cancel events because we did not sell out, we cancelled because ticket sales were much lower than they have ever been and the budget for WM weekend was very expensive and risky –too risky!