Three women who know a thing or two about the pro wrestling business are working on a new concept for a TV show, and they want you to partner up with them on it.
Yesterday (Mar. 2), Amy “Lita” Dumas, Gail Kim, and Christy Hemme revealed a project they’ve been working on - KAYfABE, a dramatic series about wrestling that features actual wrestling. To fund production, they’re running a Kickstarter campaign with goals of $400,000 to fund the pilot and a stretch target of $4.6 million to pay for a full eight episode season.
Here’s the description of the show from the Kickstarter page, and the video the trio released explaining the project in more detail:
“KAYfABE is a one hour professional wrestling show that is 50 percent story and 50 percent in ring action. It is an edgy, racy, cinematic television series about a female led professional wrestling start up. This show is a dramatization and collection of female stories inspired by real life events.
AND YES, this is still at its core, a wrestling show with world-class, in-ring action!
But, in this unique narrative, we take you behind the curtain, into the locker room and outside of the arena. So what does that even mean? What are you watching? Why are these stories worth a shit!?
Because we present them with no filter! You get drama, passion, humor, love, anger, frustration and real life challenges. Plus, we address the 800-pound elephant in the room, and in the current landscape of the world... abuse of power, manipulation, injury, addiction, inequality and the euphoric high of pursing your life’s passion that clouds every damn decision.”
As you can see, Dumas, Hemme, and Kim have teamed with an impressive group of talent on the project, including well known wrestling names like Jimmy Jacobs, and Chavo Guerrero. With the women’s wrestling boom of the last few years, and the #MeToo movement continuing to raise awareness about issues like sexual harrassment & assault and gender inequality, KAYfABE could be the right show at the right time.
Nigel McGuinness tried a similar project back in 2015 with LA Fights, but failed to reach his Kickstarter goals. Other variations on the wrestling-drama-with-actual-wrestling theme like Wrestling Society X and Lucha Underground created passionate fans, but not enough of them to stay on our screens for very long.
But if this can be more like Netflix’s award-winning GLOW but with more in-ring action, maybe KAYfABE will be the product that breaks through.
If you think it can be, you can put your money where your mouth is here.