Beyond Wrestling revealed big plans for its future at Americanrana ’19

Beyond Wrestling’s Americanrana ’19 was a success and now it’s time for the promotion to set its sights on even bigger things.

It’s safe to say that Beyond Wrestling’s Americanrana ’19 was a success, with over 1,000 tickets sold and so many fans streaming on IWTV.live that it overwhelmed the system for the card’s first two matches. In a show that ran over five hours, it still did not feel overlong, with no single match emerging as the show’s weak link and no filler to be found.

Rivalries — some stretching only months, dating back to the early episodes of Beyond’s weekly show, Uncharted Territory, others spanning years — all came to a head, as they should in a promotion’s biggest event of the year. Joey Janela put the cherry on top of a two-year war with David Starr by beating him, five falls to four, in a 60-minute Iron Man match that then resulted in Janela passing the “king of the indies” torch to Starr.

Kris Statlander defeated Kimber Lee in a steel cage, capping off months of tension between the two. Bear Country defeated LAX, thus taking over as the company’s ace tag team. Solo Darling came up victorious in a 10-person ladder match, making her the new FEAST Wrestling Champion. Nick Gage and Thomas Santell teamed up and defeated “Filthy” Tom Lawlor and Bryan Alvarez and the face of Beyond, Chris Dickinson, came up victorious against one of his mentors, Daisuke Sekimoto, among the numerous matches on the stacked card. It was a thrilling night of pro wrestling and perhaps Beyond’s greatest achievement yet.

But Beyond’s big night goes well beyond the confines of Foxwoods Resort Casino. Since April, Beyond has been running the first season of the aforementioned Uncharted Territory, their live, weekly two-hour show that has of late been taking place at the White Eagle in Worcester, Massachusetts after outgrowing its old home at Electric Haze. That inaugural season ends on July 31. At Americanrana, Beyond founder Drew Cordeiro announced there will be a season 2.

It’ll be moving out of Massachusetts, as well. As part of the big announcement, Cordeiro revealed that, in concert with IWTV and Sports Entertainment Experience, Beyond will have a permanent live event center in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

Uncharted Territory will also air on a different weeknight — Thursday, beginning on October 3, meaning the one day that has been lacking nationally-broadcasted pro wrestling will now have its own live show. Additionally, Beyond will be running another show on IWTV, on Tuesdays (starting October 1) that will focus on the company’s Discovery Gauntlet and on introducing new talent.

While numerous promotions have weekly television, as of now just Beyond and WWE have been airing their television programming live. In October, AEW joins their ranks (and on the same week that Uncharted Territory returns). But unlike WWE and AEW, Beyond doesn’t have millions of dollars behind it, just word of mouth and the support of IWTV and SEE, and yet it has succeeded.

The scale of the ambition is not dissimilar than the larger companies, though, and having a dedicated Beyond home base should make the logistics somewhat less complicated. And it’s also clear that the word-of-mouth approach has worked, with the company, its shows and its wrestlers all starting to become household names in the business and Beyond’s YouTube page boasting over 1.5 million subscribers. There’s demand, and Beyond is clearly working hard to meet it.

So while Sunday’s Americanrana was a milestone for Beyond, it wasn’t the only one marked that night. Beyond has now positioned itself as not only one of the biggest and best of the American indie wrestling scene but also perhaps its most ambitious.