Sleep and wrestling. What more is there?

Before I start, let me just say how great sleep is. It is an utter miracle what seven hours of sleep can do, so you shouldn’t see any massively bad puns today (can’t make any promises though).

Where we left off yesterday, base was established, and my luggage was dropped off. With that, I set off to see my very first show of the Edinburgh Fringe 2018, which was (No) Money In The Bank.

Excited at the prospect of being an unashamed wrestling nerd for about an hour, I decked myself out in the only wrestling shirt that I have (a classic Dolph Ziggler aqua blue ‘Stealing the show…’ number).

Going up to the venue, I was interestingly the only one wearing some sort of merchandise. There was another gentleman who was wearing red flannel, but I don’t know if he was deliberately cosplaying as Mick Foley or not.

The show itself was a combination of stand-up and character comedy, with Thom Bee introducing us to the show and regaling the audience, with Andrew Marsh portraying “The Best Wrestler You Have Never Heard Of” Balthazar Dark.

The immediate thing that the show does well is letting the audience feel involved, whether you be a major wrestling fan or not. If you are a wrestling fan, however, this is a must see at the Fringe, celebrating the use of insider terms (we the audience were addressed as “Mark”) and these compliments itself well with Andrew’s (sorry Balthazar… gotta keep kayfabe) tales of veteran wrestler.

Both hosts were super generous in letting the audience interact and start chants, and their dedication to their act was amazing. One of the highlights included Thom getting hit with like a Walter-like chop (which of course resulted in a Ric Flair “Wooooooooooo!”), to which the audience (including myself) starting chanting “One more time! One more time!” Thom, like a trooper, did indeed take another one, if not more brutal.

Aside from wrestling, it was chockful of other counterculture references, including a Reel Big Fish and Ska reference, which got a pop out of me (Balthazaar then said that reel big Fish was the worst and in existent and Ska wasn’t even a real genre… what a dirty heel).

Furthermore, Thom’s stand up set covered other topics and how wrestling interlinked with all of them, including sexuality and toxic masculinity. As much as I love wrestling, it was interesting to hear about the more personal anecdotes, and Thom’s open and honest anecdotes were compelling to listen to.

In conclusion, (No) Money In The Banks highlights the weird and bizarre elements of the glorious sport of professional wrestling, but embraces with warmth and humour, and it is an essential watch to any wrestling fan.

After seeing a good wrestling comedy show, it was time for the sketch show I was involved in. Being the first night, I was very excited for it.

We had previously done some flyering before so spirits were reasonably high in getting a good turn out.

Sadly, we only got two.

They were the friendliest and best two people you can ask to sit in on a sketch show, however, who were very responsive and very kindly gave us some money after the show.

This embodies the spirit of the Fringe, and two ends of the spectrum in one. You have the devastation of a low turnout on a very worked on show, but then the friendliness of some very lovely audience members who just want to enjoy the Fringe.

Peaks and plateaus, as they say.

Up the Antics are performing TONIGHT! Get yourself down to Revolution Bar now!