All holds barred.
There’s little hope for top ropes anytime soon, so these wrestling fans are trading leg drops for laptops while in quarantine.
Unemployed bandmates Jimi Riddle and Casey Hopkins have been filling their time in coronavirus lockdown by running their Instagram-based Isolation Wrestling Federation, which bills itself as “the first ‘NO CONTACT’ wrestling federation.”
The account features videos of costumed, wigged and mulleted characters colorfully self-promoting themselves in front of low-fi digital backgrounds or their living room walls, an ode to the glory days of the gaudy sport.
The lifelong wrestling fans, both 30, were inspired by the iconic promo videos of the ‘80s and ‘90s. “There’s a history of doing green screen promos as vignettes that aren’t crowd-driven,” Casey tells The Post. “The beauty of what wrestling really was is just character-based storylines,” adds Riddle.
A number of amateur characters have even been born via the IWF — there’s Quarantine Dream, the Jim Reaper and Daddy Deltoids — and some professional wrestlers have also gotten involved, including former WWE wrestler Konnor (Ryan Parmeter) as well as Casanova “King of No Ring Deathmatch” Valentine.
The idea to create the contactless league came to Riddle in late March during “a moment of disturbed clarity,” he says, speaking from his hometown of Hastings, England, where he is currently stranded due to the pandemic.
“I felt like I should start doing training montage videos, which led to becoming a no-contact wrestler and challenging friends and later took the form of IWF,” he says.
Hopkins is in lockdown in Brooklyn, but despite being an ocean apart, they’ve been spending their every waking hour on the phone with each other curating the digital-only league. “If I’m not woken up by Jimi calling me, I’m not woken up,” says Hopkins.
To join IWF, aspiring wrestlers post a promo-style video of themselves as a character of their making, tag the Federation and use the hashtag #IWFpros. “So basically people do call-outs — that’s someone initiating a battle — and when someone responds to it, we put it up in the Stories, and then we run a poll at the end of the promos, and at the end of the battle we put it in the Memories,” says Hopkins. Sometimes, the musicians post segments onto the Instagram account’s grid.
So far, their internet league has only merited them positive feedback. “It’s obviously done by fans and people who love it,” says Casey.
While WWE was deemed essential in Florida and resumed shows back in April, live fans are not allowed, making the socially distant federation a unique way to not just stream but safely participate in the famously interactive sport. Plus, being online-only means wrestlers can get creative while working under the single rule of no contact.
“Anything can happen in the IWF,” says Hopkins.
