I took my 89-year-old grandmother to WrestleCore at Northern FanCon this weekend and she absolutely loved it.
My granny, Irene, loves to do traditional grandmotherly type things like knitting and baking but nothing lights up her eyes more than wrestling.
The first time I took her to a wrestling match was back in 2019 when Canada’s Wrestling Elite held a fundraiser at Ron Brent Elementary School and I couldn’t believe how happy it made her.
She was jumping out of her seat with excitement, rooting for the “good guys” and telling off the “bad guys”. Her only complaint was that she wasn’t ringside.
I had heard stories from my dad about how much she loved wrestling and how she was an incredibly passionate spectator — to put it mildly.
My granny and grandad moved to Canada from Denmark in the 1950s and settled in Mission before moving to Prince George.
She said they used to drive to Chilliwack every week to watch wrestling where the venues would be packed with people as B.C.’s local wrestling circuit in the ‘50s and ‘60s was very popular.
There’s an incident of legend in our family that details an incident in the ‘60s where my granny may have gotten a little too passionate at a wrestling match and tried to grab at famous Canadian wrestler Gene Kiniski — to my grandad's embarrassment.
When I found out that WrestleCore was coming to Northern FanCon this year I just knew I had to take her and we headed over to Kin 3 to take in some pro wrestling for the first time in years.
From the moment the first wrestlers, the Bollywood Boys, entered the ring my granny was ready for the action.
Being 89-years-old and a two-time cancer survivor her intensity has waned but she was on the edge of her seat the entire time even standing up at some points to get a better view as the fighting moved across the ring.
She was absolutely thrilled to be sitting not far away from G Sharp when he was thrown into the chairs and was blown away by the final match where Adam Ryder 'the Haida Hero' faced a multitude of other wrestlers.
“Oh would you just look at that,” she said when they brought out a ladder which you just knew would be used for some epic body slams.
I asked her what she loved most about wrestling and she laughed and said “It’s the bad guys. I know it’s not right but like the bad guys so I can yell at them.”
What I love most about my granny’s love of wrestling is that it’s an illustration of her passion for life.
Despite some real hardships over the past few years, my granny still finds immense joy in the things that she loves, which just so happens to include pro wrestling, and I hope when I make it to her age I can say the same thing.
When I told my granny that I would be writing a review for WestleCore I asked her what she thought I should say and she said, “You need to tell them how we felt about it and that we thought it was really something.”
So thanks to Northern FanCon and WrestleCore for bringing wrestling back to Prince George because my granny had a really great time.
