There’s going to be a lot of professional wrestling in New Orleans, Louisiana next weekend. It’s really the ideal city for WrestleMania with 20,000 hotel rooms within walking distance of the Mercedes-Benz Superdome which is right next door to the Smoothie King Center, which is a short walk from the Convention Center.
But while you can see people drinking in the streets in the Crescent City, outside of bars that don’t have to close unless they want to, you won’t be seeing wrestlers bleed from taking chair shots to the head. And that’s just one of the rules that the Louisiana Wrestling Commission plans to enforce while the wrestling word invades its turf in 2018.
We already covered the reports that some things would be banned by the state, but now we’ve finally got the for-real, official list. This official document from the Louisiana Wrestling Commission outlines all the rules and regulations.
It’s a fairly daunting legal document, but luckily WrestleZone has condensed this bad boy to the pertinent bullet points:
1. All variations of the Pile Driver;
2. All variations of the Power Bomb [sic];
3. The “Moonsault”, “Shooting Star”, or “450 Splash” or any variation thereof which involves one wrestler, leaping or flipping off the ropes or turnbuckles to contact the head or neck of the opponent with any part of his body;
4. The “Stungun” of any variation thereof which results in the one fighter’s head or neck being dragged, draped or “closelined” [sic] across the ropes;
5. The striking of a wrestler’s head with any object, chair, trashcan [sic] lid, etc., and
6. No wrestler shall throw, push, shove or force another out of the ring or over the top rope.
TL;DR: piledrivers are bad, powerbombs are bad, chairs and trashcans to the head are bad, moonsaults are bad. Uh-oh, huh?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwHgqQYlGWQ
Indie wrestlers trekking down to The Big Easy to be part of the accessory events will need to adjust if they are taking these rules seriously. Take it from someone who’s worked indie shows in Louisiana — the commission has representatives at these shows checking for the proper blood work. They take these rules seriously. Whether or not they have the bandwidth and staff to regulate every move at every show happening in New Orleans at the same time is a different question. (Hint: they don’t.)
It’s important to note that neither WWE nor Ring of Honor are subject to these laws, as both are deemed “major league” by the Commission. Also important to note that if you’re attending WrestleMania in New Orleans, make sure you hit at least one indie event. If for nothing else, see how wrestlers creatively deal with these restrictions. That CZW show should be reeeealllll interesting.
