The Montgomery County Fair hosted pro wrestling for the first time: Here’s what it was like

The Montgomery County Fair hosted itsfirst pro wrestling event Wednesday evening with Wrestling Revolver.

Mark Jimison, Montgomery County Fair Board President, said the board was looking for something different and WR gave them an opportunity to enhance community interaction and bring people together.

“We’re always interested in attracting people that normally don’t hear about us,” Jimison said. “It’s community interaction, it’s kind of part of what our goal is. Meet new people, new friends and people of like interests.”

WR has performed in California, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and Iowa, where it was founded in 2016.

WR is owned by Sami Callihan, who is also the creative officer. Callihan has wrestled professionally for WWE, TNA and WR among others.

Callihan said being a native of the Dayton area made him want to start WR as a side project to highlight local wrestling talent on a national level.

“I wanted to give young, aspiring, up-and-coming wrestlers a place to shine,” Callihan said. “We always bring at least 10 television wrestling stars to Dayton every event to give the Dayton people good pro wrestling.”

Callihan also said that performing at the fair is an opportunity to prove that Dayton is still a “hotbed” for pro wrestling, noting that around 30 pro wrestlers live in the area.

“Revolver Roulette” was the theme of the show, meaning the wrestlers for each match were chosen at random and only announced right before the match.

Other formats like sudden death, single matches and men’s and women’s tag team matches were included. Myron Reed — wrestling under the name Young GOAT — defended his title as WR World Champion in the final match.

Fair officials urged the crowd to be active and engaged in the show if they wanted to see it return for another year.

In between the energetic music and wrestler introductions, there was plenty of fan engagement. Lots of boos, cheers and hollering was encouraged by the wrestlers during their matches and echoed throughout the fairgrounds all evening.

One of the wrestlers, Brandon Collymore (BDE), started wrestling professionally in January. Collymore has more than 1.4 million subscribers on YouTube and has created wrestling content online for about eight years.

Collymore said that performing at the fair is different from performing in an arena, but it’s a great opportunity for WR.

“It’s just a great way to get new eyes on Revolver,” Collymore said. “Wrestling in front of a fair, there’s definitely going to be some new people. Maybe even people who’ve never seen professional wrestling, so this might be some of their first impressions on it.”