Wrestlers & wrestling companies diving into NFTs is the least surprising thing ever

I don’t know much about non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Or cryptocurrency, or blockchain, or Web3. Certainly not to give anyone any advice or insight into their merits or drawbacks as investment vehicles or technological advancements.

I do know that a lot of people who want to make money are dealing in them these days, and enlisting celebrities to help them do so. And when it comes to NFTs especially, some of those folks seem to be of the “get rich quick” variety.

Which is why it should come as no surprise that wrestling companies and wrestlers are diving into NFTs headfirst.

WWE’s got a new official NFT site.

This replaces their existing official website for NFT collectibles, I guess. Which makes sense, because that one... didn’t seem to be setting the world on fire. Again, I don’t know anything, but sorting by price tells me only one of the 1,699 items in “inventory” is selling for more than $1. John Cena is on a few of those offerings, and he called WWE’s SummerSlam 2021 NFTs “a catastrophic failure.”

Jim Cornette has some available on a similar site, but it doesn’t seem like anyone’s buying or selling them.

Others have gotten more creative, and are incorporating their offerings with storytelling. Paul “Big Show” Wight is a producer and cast member for GenZeroes, a show about humanity in the wake of an alien invasion. Deadline’s article about the project describes the NFT hook thusly:

To watch the GenZeroes series viewers will need to purchase an NFT via the House of Kibaa website. The GenZeroes Universe includes a live-action series, comics, and collectibles. Each level of NFT ownership will endow different benefits with the top level allowing fractional ownership of the series.

And today (Mar. 14), we’re hearing more about a wrestling cartoon called The Gimmicks involving Good Brothers Karl Anderson & Doc Gallows, New Japan’s Rocky Romero, and former WWE Cruiserweight champ nZo. The show, which has a look that fits its “South Park meets wrestling” description, will give NFT buyers input on the plot. From the project’s website:

The Gimmicks are a collection of programmatically, randomly generated NFTs on the Solana blockchain. The NFTs represent unique characters that live in the universe of our animated series called The Gimmicks. Each character is comprised of unique traits and will be a 1 of 1. The Gimmicks NFT holders will have early access to watch the animated short series we are creating, as well as participate in the creative process. The first season will be released weekly with creative input from NFT holders.

Is any of this a good idea? Will anyone selling or buying these things get rich off them? Will any of it be around (other than on a server farm somewhere) in six months time? For the third time... hell if I know.

What I do know? Folks in the wrestling business trying to get in on it is the least surprising thing. There’s also a lot of moves being made toward the metaverse, but that’s a whole ‘nother topic...