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Over the last several days, Adam Abdalla, head of NYC PR firm powerhouse Cultural Counsel announced plans to launch Produce, a new independent professional wrestling brand out of NYC. Abdalla, the publisher of Orange Crush, sat down with Mike Johnson to discuss his vision, the intersection of the arts and independent professional wrestling, how he plans to approach this endeavor, what professional wrestling needs right now, using his success in other realms to tailor Produce to the masses, names involved and what happens in the best and worst case snenarios. Enjoy.
Mike Johnson: Hey everybody, it's Mike Johnson in the audio section of PWInsiderElite.com. It is Monday, March 16, 2026, and AEW had a big show yesterday. Obviously, we're ramping up toward WrestleMania. There's a lot going on in the world of professional wrestling, but there's a lot going on beyond WrestleMania, AEW, and everything else, because the independent scene has a new player.
And that is a new series of events that will start in the New York City/New Jersey metropolitan area this June, produced by Orange Crush, the wonderful magazine that has also spread out into promoting and doing lots of cultural crossovers with museums and art and professional wrestlers.
They're going to be doing their first event starting June 29 in Brooklyn, New York, at Pioneer Works. It has been announced that Jonathan Gresham will be co-producing the inaugural show, titled very appropriately, Produce Volume One: The Octopus. And Gresham is also the first official Produce fighter.
We're going to get into what all this means, why this promotion is launching, why they are trying to do something different. And I'm very happy to sit down with Adam Abdalla, who I've known for many years. He's the publisher of Orange Crush. He's the head of Cultural Counsel in New York, which works with a lot of artistic institutions and museums, and someone who loves professional wrestling a great deal.
So, sir, my friend, it is nice to talk to you, although I wish I had set this up at a time where I wasn't up till four o'clock in the morning the night before, as it's 9:42. So how are you?
Adam Abdalla: I'm doing okay. I was up pretty late too, watching the pay-per-view. But I am excited, man. I think I've been waiting for this my whole life.
Mike Johnson: All right, so I want to do a little bit of prologue here. You had been booking JCW, Jersey Championship Wrestling, in conjunction with GCW, Game Changer Wrestling. What is the difference between this and running and overseeing JCW? And why should people be sitting up and taking notice of this beyond, "It's a new promotion that's going to be starting from scratch and it's going to be running in the New York City area?"
Adam Abdalla: Sure. So I was, and I am, the co-owner of Jersey Championship Wrestling. I worked collaboratively with Brett Lauderdale of GCW for five years, and I continue to be co-owner of JCW. For the last year, year and a half, we've invested a lot more into that promotion, and I had the book. Very recently we had probably two of our best shows ever, The Jersey J-Cup and at White Eagle Hall in Jersey City, New Jersey.
I'm a New York guy. My family's here, and I for many years have had the hope to promote shows in New York and beyond on my own. I've been the official partner and New York State promoter for GCW since 2021, so this is not new territory for me. And I am excited to launch my own brand under the auspices of Orange Crush, but also in the context of the work that I've done with JCW, GCW, and the Indie Wrestling Hall of Fame previously, but also with an eye toward the work that I do in my everyday life of bringing together top names in popular culture, art, music, and fashion to create really interesting interdisciplinary conversations.
So Produce is that. We're creating a new shingle that will have essentially an emphasis on the talent and highlighting professional wrestling's artistry and the talent themselves, trying to promote them as stars.
So we're going to do a lot of unconventional things.
Mike Johnson: All right. So one of the things that you noted, or I should say that Produce announced, is that talents are going to be signed to multi-fight deals. So explain what that means compared to someone signing a wrestling contract with a promotion or just working an independent company.
Why even make a big deal out of this? This morning, right before we recorded, you announced Mance Warner has come to terms on a multi-fight deal. What does that mean to the average wrestling consumer? Why should they even care?
Adam Abdalla: Okay, so this is what it means. I'm outside of any contracts with anyone in terms of talent, because historically what's been done in the professional wrestling industry, especially on a secondary tier, when you talk about promotions like TNA, like MLW, and others, they go out and they do a lot of PR and make a big deal of the fact that they have signed wrestlers to a multi-year contract. And essentially what that multi-year contract means is that they are locking them into a deal where they get paid per date, not that much more than their regular rate, but then they're now restricted.
And at the behest of the lawyers connected to those promotions, we've seen a lot of issues with this over the years with TNA, with MLW, with others—people getting pulled, there being conflicts of certain wrestlers being on certain shows where other wrestlers were.
And my understanding of the spirit of professional wrestling and this agreement that wrestlers have with promoters is that they're independent contractors, right? So at the end of the day, in wrestling, word is bond. And if you tell someone, "You're booked for a show," and they show up and they wrestle and you pay them afterwards, that is the general understanding of a contract in pro wrestling. It's in writing, it's in an email, it's legal, but in general, unless you are providing something above and beyond in terms of marketing value, merchandising, things that really move the needle in terms of putting money in the pocket of the talent, a contract between you and them is really just a restrictive one-way document, unless you're working for them.
So Produce, our ethos is we're going to work for the talent, but I don't need a contract, because my word is bond.
Mike Johnson: So how do you prevent the talent from no-showing when you need them to show up at a show they're advertised for?
How do you prevent them from taking a better deal from AEW or WWE and just blowing off the booking?
Adam Abdalla: How do you prevent them from doing that if they get signed by AEW or WWE anyway, if you're an independent promotion? I think at the end of the day, we're working in good faith, right? And if you treat people well and you treat them with respect and you treat your partners in the business with respect, that will come back onto you.
I've learned that in every aspect of my business and life, and I feel like that is something that the wrestling world could learn.
Adam Abdalla: When you think about the product that you're looking to produce here with Produce, that's—
Oh wait, Mike, just to go back a second, just to explain that a little bit further.
So when you ask, what does it mean when someone has a multi-fight deal?
Multi-fight deal means that I go to Jonathan Gresham or I go to Mance Warner and I say, "Listen, brother, I'm going to pay your full rate and we're going to work together for four shows at least." And you show up, you get paid. That's how wrestling works.
That's how wrestling has always worked, right?
Since the territory days, in exchange for that loyalty, right, I'm going to promote them on a regular basis. Not only the dates with me, but their dates with whoever else they're working for. But they're one of my guys, so they're a Produce athlete.
So we essentially—it’s akin to an agency model a little bit. If you have the tag, if you have the indicator of quality that you're a Produce fighter or a Produce artist or a Produce athlete, it means that I fuck with you. And that essentially we have similar values and we understand the sacrifice that these guys are making every day, and we respect it, and we respect that these are grown men making their own decisions on an everyday basis in terms of how they want to present themselves in the world, and they're independent contractors.
And we're going to treat them as such. I'm not going to keep anybody in a deal they don't want to be in. I don't want to restrict anyone from wrestling for another promoter who's paying them a living wage. But at the end of the day, my job is to promote my show and my talent to the best of my ability. And if that's the case, there should be acknowledgment in 2026 that there is an outside world outside of the kayfabe universe within a specific independent wrestling promotion that very few people watch.
So I'm trying to create connective tissue between the world at large and the world of wrestling.
Mike Johnson: All right. I'm going to play devil's advocate here because I have a question here.
Adam Abdalla: Yeah.
Mike Johnson: You're trying to build a new brand.
Adam Abdalla: Yep.
Mike Johnson: But at the same time, you're going to promote that your talents who have signed, who have agreed to multi-fight deals with you—you’re going to promote their other events where they're performing. What happens if they start taking bookings in another New York City show the night before your show? Don't you think you're splitting hairs there a little bit?
Adam Abdalla: No, I think that's great. My philosophy in terms of fan base here is that I want to treat this as something that appeals to people who love professional wrestling, who understand the value of good wrestling, but also present the product in a way that appeals to new fans in a way that they understand it.
Because in my experience, there's been a lot of attempts to try to use professional wrestling as a pastiche. There are things like Lucha VaVOOM. There are things like BAM!, which I've worked on. Those guys are great. There are things like Choke Hole, which is a drag show in New York that uses wrestling as its theme. These things bring alternative audiences into the wrestling space and people really enjoy it, and it's a great party.
But at the end of the day, if you're a fan of professional wrestling, you want to see the best wrestlers in the world. If you're a fan of music, if you're a fan of dance, if you're a fan of art, you go to a concert, you go to a museum, etc.
So you might go once, right? Because you want to be a part of the party and you enjoy the celebrity aspect of it. But if there is not an evolutionary storyline happening and there aren't matches of note that are relevant to the canon of professional wrestling, then wrestling fans will not be invested in you.
So I want to bring the curb appeal and marketing of things that essentially exist in everyday high culture and streetwear, music, and different subcultures that are parallel to the subculture of pro wrestling, integrate them into the product, but present wrestling at the highest level.
Mike Johnson: Let's talk a little bit about the product.
Obviously you've got Mance Warner announced, you've got Jonathan Gresham who's going to be the co-producer for the first show, you've got four dates on the docket so far, two in Brooklyn, two in Jersey City, so relatively in a small area where fans can conceivably very easily get to all four shows if they live in the New York City region. What are we looking at in terms of the product compared to what you worked on in JCW and collaborated with in GCW?
Adam Abdalla: Working with Brett and GCW and JCW is a great experience, and it's the ultimate DIY experience also. Brett really leans into a very raw aesthetic. The buildings are as-is. They do interesting production elements on the feed, but it's very raw.
This is going to be more produced, for lack of a better term. I have a major production partner, Fischoff, who has done incredible things in New York City, including the first drone show at Central Park with Studio Drift. He's worked on the Beyond the Streets traveling exhibition by Roger Gastman across the United States.
We worked with Harmony Korine to tour his movies last year around the United States at raves as well as in Japan. We did a thousand-person rave in Tokyo to debut Aggro Dr1ft in June of 2024. So I'm looking at this as something that will be independent in spirit, but have a high-end finish.
Mike Johnson: You're saying a lot of words.
Adam Abdalla: Okay.
Mike Johnson: So no, I'm just saying, the average person who's looking for a wrestling show and wants to watch wrestling with storylines and characters, what is your pitch to get them to come in the door in Brooklyn on that first date in June so that they know they're going to see something different that they're not already getting from GCW or House of Glory or anywhere else that's running the New York City market? Because we're talking about a pretty cluttered marketplace right now in New York City. There's tons of promotions that are running the city and Long Island. What is it about Produce that's going to be unique? That should make these fans want to jump on the subway or jump in their car to come to that first show?
Adam Abdalla: We're going to present it like a sport. The reason that I'm announcing things like multi-fight deals—when I come to an agreement with a wrestler and they're going to wrestle for me four times—if you're the UFC, if you're Bellator, that's the same kind of announcement that you make with the fighters that you have.
Some of them are under contract, some of them have certain restrictions, some of them don't. But at the end of the day, what matters to the fans is that they get to see these people where and when, and that they can be committed to their presence in the product, right? There's no guarantees. It's always cards subject to change with any promotion. But ultimately it's a stamp of approval from us saying these are the best independent wrestlers in the world, and it's them saying to us, "We trust you guys. These are people that we fuck with and that we want to roll with."
So how do we differentiate in terms of presentation? I would say that my vision for Produce is something at the annex of PRIDE and Mid-South. I think in terms of the way that we are going to present the athletes, it'll be a more realistic view. I'm investing in biographical documentaries about the talent who are Produce fighters. So you will learn more about the person behind the body within the ring, but develop a more kind of kinship and personal relationship.
The real thesis here, the thing that I'm really interested in, is moving away from this tribalistic, reductive conversation that's been going on online for the last seven years about professional wrestling where people just try to one-up each other over the stupidest fucking shit possible, and get back to a culture of what it was like when you and I started watching this, Mike—to tape trader culture, to connoisseurship, dating people to understand what a good wrestling match is and what the influences of the wrestlers that we are watching in the ring are.
So in the lead-up to a given show, I'll probably put out things like a YouTube playlist. Anybody who does a Produce show, I ask them two questions, right? It's: what are your best five matches that are free online for people to watch? And what are the best five matches that are free online for people to watch to understand you and to understand the wrestler that you are today?
So we will have an evergreen kind of stream of recommendations going on, publicly sourced matches to help initiate newer wrestling fans, as well as wrestling fans who are only used to seeing what they see on TV, to understand the history and some of the more special aspects of professional wrestling.
Mike Johnson: I love the sound of getting things back to the way they were. I feel, however, the genie's out of that bottle, and there are people who have made it their life's mission, for whatever reason, to be important because they're around professional wrestling, or to tweet more about the things they hate and bring attention to the things they dislike as opposed to the enjoyment of actual pro wrestling and the enjoyment of going to a show and the enjoyment of a match or an angle.
And I don't understand that mentality. I don't know how you put the genie back in the bottle. How do you put the genie back in the bottle?
How do you talk about—how do you put the genie back in the bottle?
Adam Abdalla: Yeah. You're talking about the tribalism. The culture has changed. How do you create a paradigm shift that puts it back to the way it was when you and I were going back in the day?
In reality, it's creating this bridge between high and low, and between wrestling and popular culture at large. Think about this for a second.
When I promoted Paul Walter Hauser against Matt Cardona at the Melrose Ballroom on February 1 at Superpower Slam, which was a benefit show that I put together for Little Essentials, my wife's autism charity here in New York, TMZ did a story about it, right?
TMZ didn't write about whether or not the fight was real or fake. They wrote about the fact that Paul Walter Hauser was going to fight this crazy guy in Queens as if it was kayfabe. I didn't pitch them that I was throwing a fake fight. I didn't pitch that I was throwing a real fight. I just pitched it as-is. And with the way the news is today, perception is reality.
So if you put out words into the world that say, "Jonathan Gresham has agreed to a four-fight deal with Produce," people interpret that 15 different ways. But in reality, I am saying that with conviction and truth in relation to his status as an independent contractor at the end of the day, right?
I don't believe in or respect restrictive covenants that are anti-worker, that are anti-talent. And I believe when we eat, they eat. So if we collab on merch and they get more popular because I'm promoting them no matter where they are, we're both going to make money at the end of the day. If they become bigger stars as a result of working with me and then go sign with WWE, that's a lifetime of goodwill that we have between the two of us.
It's not like I'm insecure about my standing in the world and what I can put out there. And there's no shortage of great wrestlers either to perform on an independent level at a high level, and probably higher than a lot of the level that you see on TV. It's just a question of how things are framed and how you put this information out into the world, and the respect you treat the talent with, and the respect you treat the fans with in terms of their intelligence.
So I think one of the things that we could do to bring back the intrigue is a little bit of blurring the lines between kayfabe and reality. I don't think things like WWE's—what's the show on fucking Netflix?
Mike Johnson: Oh, Unreal, WWE—
Adam Abdalla: Unreal. I don't think that's helpful at all. I think that's just self-congratulatory, honestly, being like, "Look what geniuses we are, we put on a wrestling show, and look how stressful the politics are," and then completely getting people to disengage from suspending their disbelief.
For me, if you're a normal person who comes in off the street to see a show, right, like you don't know anything about professional wrestling, one of the first questions—even though the answer is obvious—is still, is this real or fake? And everyone knows it's fake or staged. However, the moment it gets good is when people suspend their disbelief.
So I don't want to talk about the machinations and politics of backstage as if this is like a film production. The Produce Twitter feed is not the fucking Hollywood Reporter at the end of the day. We're not talking about who's getting fired and hired in terms of the creative of a show. We're talking about who's going to appear and who's going to fight and who they're going to fight and what you're going to see.
And I think that is something—in terms of the intrigue—that's been lost. And that's how you create news cycles today. This is actual news. We're servicing news. You're going to see this person who you haven't been able to see before at this time, on this day, in this exciting match, and we're going to make sure you know who they are, what they're about, what else they're doing in the world, what they're really like at home with their family, at work—almost taking a realistic documentary-style view, the way you would with a UFC-style promo package essentially—and then apply that to the promotion of professional wrestling.
Mike Johnson: All right. You've mentioned the documentary-style packaging, which I'm all well and fine with. And I like the idea of, let's obscure the reality and create an interface between the kayfabe and the reality so that the focus is on the product, not what's going on elsewhere.
What is the plan to distribute this beyond just running live shows in the New York/New Jersey area?
Adam Abdalla: We are currently in negotiations for a VOD and live-streaming pay-per-view deal. My goal is to have these shows be available for $14.99 each live. I've had a lot of good experience in the past streaming shows live on YouTube. However, for me, at the end of the day, I want this to be successful live-event promotion.
We're going to put out a lot of free content online in the lead-up to our shows. I have ideas for things like curated playlists, like I mentioned earlier, but also things like the equivalent of Wide World of Sports, where we go to other promotions around the country and do an edit of what are the best matches this week. And you don't have to go crawling around the internet to look for what they are. We'll cut them together in a 30-minute package essentially, if someone wants that exposure.
And I think a lot of people do, and a lot of people want to work collaboratively, because it's a passionate subculture that does a lot of cosplay as a business. There are a couple of pretty cynical businesses that own wrestling companies, but for the most part, it's people who are really passionate about professional wrestling and lose money doing it, or build a really grassroots business in their local area, focusing on local talents that have the ability to scale economically.
So what I'm trying to do is similar. We want to build a scene, but my scene is New York City. I live here. I'm very much embedded in the worlds of film, art, culture, music, and sports. I'm curating the first American conference about art, sports, and media at a major museum on Thursday in Miami, which Lee Moriarty and Thekla from AEW will be a part of. I'll also be curating an exhibition of their work in Miami as well.
So to me it's like, I've learned so much working with Brett and with JCW/GCW in terms of just the logistics—how to put together a show, how to engage with the audience, how to serve up news to them, information in a way that's useful. But I've also thought a lot about the logical aspects of professional wrestling.
For example, if you're at a fight, right?
At the Garden, you're at a boxing match. If you're at an MMA fight and two guys are fighting and somebody runs into the ring, right? What happens?
Mike Johnson: All hell breaks loose and security hits the ring and everything gets halted.
Adam Abdalla: Yeah. They get arrested. Whether or not they're another fighter who's under contract with the promotion or if they're a fan, that is a tenet of logic that I'm going to apply in Produce, for example. There's going to be a level of realism in promoting these matches like fights, because they are fights and they are artistic performances that peak at their very highest level when the two talents that you book come in and bring their vision to life for the audience—not when you get cute and try to interplay fucking bullshitty interference or gimmickry, etc.
Wrestling itself is already a very high-octane, high-risk, intelligent, and exciting presentation. We don't need to dumb it down. We don't need to put a fucking Prime Gatorade tank next to the ring. We don't need to put Slim Jim logos on our fucking tables so it's embarrassing when I bring a date to a wrestling show and Jelly Roll is pulling out a fucking Slim Jim table from under the ring.
That's not for everyone. That's for the "everyone" that people expect wrestling fans to be. And in some cases that may be the case. In a lot of cases, I think there are a lot of people who appreciate and respect the art form and the artistry and the excitement and adrenaline that you get from a performance who aren't enamored with the aesthetics, the commercial aspects of it.
So let's make something that's more talent-focused and really draws into celebrating wrestling as the great platform and really American art form that it is.
Mike Johnson: For you personally, what are you most looking forward to doing from a creative standpoint with this project that you weren't already being fulfilled with in JCW and with Orange Crush and some of the other projects that you've been working on that cross over with pro wrestling? What about this is going to be different for you, that you want to put so much time and effort into a different presentation and a different sort of outlook?
Adam Abdalla: My entire career has been predicated on my relationship with artists. I came from nothing. Mike, you know me. We've known each other for—
Mike Johnson: I know you since you were like 12 or 13 years old.
Adam Abdalla: Yeah. For almost 30 years. And I've never made a dollar in my life that I didn't earn. And at the end of the day, every dollar that I've earned in my life has been through creative collaborations with artists, directors, producers, architects, designers, musicians, etc., and philanthropists.
My superpower, my special power, my entire life is that I can communicate with artists in a very direct way that understands their process and respects the freedom that they deserve. So I'm bringing that mentality to wrestling.
It's always been—if you ask people in the industry what they think about me, they may think I'm a money mark or whatever, but what I've really been doing is research, Mike. At the end of the day I've been watching and studying. I have a successful business that I run every day. Wrestling doesn't pay my bills. So to me, wrestling is something that brings me great enjoyment in my life and has since I was a little kid sitting, basically raised by TV, single parent, moved out when I was 15, raised by myself. Wrestling's the thing that's always been there for me.
And I've always felt a compulsion to give back to wrestling because of that, because in my hardest times, wrestling was there as an emotional support tool. It was there as a comfort. It was there to help me think about how the world works, as I began getting Wrestling Observer Newsletters when I was like fucking 11 years old.
And in my current job as a publicist, it's hyper-relevant to my success because really, the ideas about promoting professional wrestling are really ideas about how do you differentiate personality from persona, right? When it comes to the talent, how do you have those people connect to the greater community, and how do you think about ways that they interact that feel organic, that create an emotional connection? Because that's the magic of professional wrestling—creating connection between the talent and the audience.
It's the only art form that I know of that changes on the fly based on the reaction of the audience. There's nothing more important than that relationship.
Mike Johnson: When it comes to people in the artistic community, what has been their reaction to you being so active with bringing professional wrestlers into that realm, and what's been the most surprising aspect of that collaboration, given that's the prologue for what you're planning to do here at Produce?
Adam Abdalla: At first people looked at me funny. When I launched Orange Crush in 2020, right around COVID, it was a passion project. It was an escape when we were in lockdown, essentially. And my wife and I created this magazine that focused on the intersection between contemporary culture and wrestling. And we did a lot of really great editorials and shoots, etc. We did three big issues, and then I slowly started to transition into single-artist projects.
In 2023, Nick Karp and I—who's a wrestling and concert photographer, he also works for TNA, he works for Hot Ones—went to Japan and did an incredible book called Visitors about deathmatch wrestling in Japan, the first time that GCW ran Korakuen Hall under their own shingle, which was the first time an American independent company ever ran Korakuen Hall under their own shingle as well.
And that led to me curating exhibitions, both in New York, New Jersey, and Tokyo, of those photos, which led me to other single-artist projects. So I worked with Lee Moriarty. Lee hit me up. He's like, "Yo, Adam, I went to community college for graphic design and I paint, and I'm just like, how do you get your foot in the art world?" And I was like, "Lee, man, you just do it. You just paint on canvas. We see what it looks like. Paint at scale, at least, to see what that could be."
Turns out the guy was a fucking savant. The paintings were amazing.
Mike Johnson: Yeah, I love his lucha paintings. They're incredible.
Adam Abdalla: Yeah. Without any formal art-world training. And I went and I showed them in Miami in 2024 at one of the biggest art fairs in the world. And the booth sold out. One of the elements of that was the Pérez Art Museum in Miami, which right now is hosting the biggest show at an American museum ever about art and sports. They acquired Lee's work in 2024, and in their iteration of the show, Lee's work will be on display, right? That's within a year and a half of me beginning to represent him.
Shortly thereafter, I started working with Thekla. This was before Thekla was signed with AEW and she was a superstar like she is today. She was still a superstar, but she was a superstar in Japan working for Stardom. And when I was over there doing the work I was doing—whether it was for GCW, whether it was Harmony Korine—I did studio visits with different artists over there, and Thekla was one of them.
And I was really impressed with her practice and her kind of punk-rock mentality and her approach to her practice as a whole. And we formed a relationship, and then I became her representative in the art world. And much like Lee, I did a solo show of her in New York at a major New York art fair.
And you know what? She became the second active wrestler to be acquired by a major museum, which was the MFA St. Petersburg, where I'm curating the first-ever large-scale exhibition about professional wrestling and art in 2027 called House Show, which will be like a 5,000-square-foot, 50-painting exhibition with everyone from Andy Warhol to Rosalyn Drexler, who was a pioneering pop artist, but also a Mildred Burke-era wrestler.
I'm working with Ted Lewin's estate, who was also essentially the—
Mike Johnson: Oh yeah, I Was a Teenage Professional Wrestler.
Adam Abdalla: Guess what, Mike?
Mike Johnson: What's up?
Adam Abdalla: Ted Lewin made dozens of oil paintings about professional wrestling that people have never seen in person before, and they're going to see them for the first time in my show in 2027.
Mike Johnson: That's pretty great. I mean, I have the book and the artwork in the book is incredible. I had no idea any of that stuff even still existed.
Adam Abdalla: Yeah. So you asked me how people reacted. At first they were like, "Ah, this is goofy, lowbrow shit." As time went on, when they saw more seriousness in my rigor and how wrestling stood up to other aspects of visual culture and performance art, they started taking it seriously.
And then in 2025, two things happened. There was a show at David Zwirner Gallery, 52 Walker, which is one of the top two galleries in the entire world, by an artist named Raymond Pettibon in collaboration with Darby Allin and Charlie Ramon from AEW, where they put a ring in the gallery and they did a show of his works about pro wrestling.
Raymond Pettibon was the artist for Black Flag and a lot of major punk bands in the '80s and is a world-renowned artist. And he's best friends with Darby Allin. The day Darby got hit by a bus, the next day he went to the movies with Ray, on Instagram. It was pretty well circulated.
And they put on this show at a similar time frame. Pioneer Works did a show with this drag troupe called Choke Hole that is basically a take on professional wrestling, using wrestling as a pastiche with which to stage their performance. The New York Times did a story about how professional wrestling in the art world started to become a thing.
And David Zwirner, who is probably the most authoritative voice in the commercial art world, said professional wrestling is a performance art, definitively. This was in 2025, because of the interest he saw that really prolific artists had taken in the platform.
So I got a call from The New York Times. It's ironic because I'm a publicist. I didn't pitch this story myself. They said, "We've been doing our research, and before these two things that happened just now in the period of three months, every other thing at the annex of fine art and professional wrestling you did." And I'm like, yeah, that's true. And also I'm curating the first museum show about it next year.
So that story in The New York Times became a story about how wrestling was entering its museum era, predicated on the fact that I'm doing this show. So I would say people take it pretty fucking seriously.
Mike Johnson: The Produce events—when are they going on sale? How can fans get tickets?
Adam Abdalla: We are going to put tickets on sale this week. Our first shows at Pioneer Works in Red Hook, Brooklyn, on June 29, and the White Eagle Hall in Jersey City in July, on July 16, which is a Thursday, will be on sale this week. And then subsequent dates are already announced, and those ticket on-sales will go on sale once we're already launched with the first dates in those venues.
Mike Johnson: As someone who loves professional wrestling as much as you do, what's your best- and worst-case scenario with this? What defines your personal satisfaction with running these shows, and what do you define as being successful? We've talked a lot about the creativity and your artistic outlook here, but this is also a business and you're also spending money. What defines success for these first shows for you?
Adam Abdalla: I look at every relationship that I have with talent as a new business relationship, right? I have the experience and wherewithal when it comes to things like promotion, marketing, merchandising, live events, etc., across all disciplines. So for me it's helping professionalize the industry a little bit.
Basically, when I say I'm going to promote other dates, I'm not going to go do social media content about other promotion's shows, right, unless we have a special relationship. But I will post the schedule of independent dates where wrestlers who wrestle with us can be seen around the country because they're Produce fighters.
No different than someone advertising an AEW wrestler wrestling on a show in Cleveland, Ohio, or someone from WWE wrestling on Bloodsport. What has been shown historically is that the independent contractor status of professional wrestlers is invoked when it's useful and revoked when it is not. And I reject that notion.
I think what we really need to do is work together, trust the workers, and honestly, for the health of the business, begin to trust each other a little more, because there are people out there who I think view wrestling and wrestling fans very cynically.
And I think you're seeing that happen right now with WWE. They have priced out their audience to a great extent in terms of what the cost is to see a live show. You can't get into WrestleMania for less than—I don't know—at some point it was like a thousand bucks, but now it's $150. They had to lower the prices more recently. And we've seen, on the opposite end, AEW do a lot of things to try to make it accessible to fans as well from a price-point perspective.
Because all of these companies are basically being propped up by media rights deals that are really paying the bills. Live events are an important aspect of the presentation and the production, but at the end of the day, we've seen the books—they're not what makes or breaks these businesses.
I'm looking at Produce as both a live-event experience and the building of a brand. I want people to associate it with quality. I want wrestlers to think they can come to us with ideas—wild ideas—that they want to put out in the world, whether it's products, whether it's digital media concepts.
It's really a hybrid agency and production studio, but we do shows. Think about PLEASURES or Blacksmith Apparel, people who associate themselves with the wrestlers because they associate with their aesthetic, values, and drive. That's going to be us, except we're also going to do shows.
Mike Johnson: Do you worry, with so many indie shows out there, that it'll be hard to—and I know you're a publicist by trade, and I know you've got connections—do you worry about getting lost in the white noise of the alphabet soup of 10,000 different promotions that are out there?
Adam Abdalla: I don't get worried about getting lost in the alphabet soup. I don't want to toot my own horn, but I'm a pretty good publicist. I know what creates news. I know how to infiltrate mainstream media with things that are at the annex of high and low. And I know a lot of the hacks, and I understand a lot of the cracks in the system as well when it comes to professional wrestling from monitoring it and watching it for 35 years, and being a promoter for the last six, and being an event producer and executive in marketing and public relations for 20.
If anybody knows how to do this in a humanistic way, it's probably going to be me.
Is it going to be successful? I don't know. I hope so, for the sake of the wrestlers, for the sake of the creative output. What's the best-case scenario? We sell merchandise, we sell at our shows, we sell pay-per-view, we bring people together, we make people feel good about the work they do. They get paid their rate, what they ask for, what they feel they deserve. They get flown in, they got a hotel, they're not at the hospital in the middle of the night worrying about who's going to pay this bill if something were to happen to me.
I think that's my goal—to create a more conscientious world of professional wrestling. The worst thing that can happen is that we do four shows and nobody comes and then we go out of business. But you know what? Artistically, what we do on those shows, they're going to be things that I'm proud to put my name on.
Mike Johnson: Okay.
What does Produce mean for your future working on the JCW brand or working in the role of a promoter for GCW in New York? Does this change any of those relationships?
Adam Abdalla: I'm no longer going to book JCW. I've handed the book back to Brett and let him undertake that. I will still continue to collaborate with GCW. I'm still the co-owner of the Independent Wrestling Hall of Fame. There's still a lot of talent that both of us will use on our shows.
I would say it's a continued friendly relationship, and I'm still a shareholder in JCW and other joint entities. And I put out an entire book about GCW's trip to Tokyo, which is going to be a room in my museum exhibition in 2027.
Mike Johnson: I was going to ask about the Indie Hall of Fame. Do you expect that there will be some sort of presentation this year in installing new members of the class?
Adam Abdalla: That's a conversation between Brett and me. I would like to do something. We've either done a full-scale event or, in some cases, when we've had an off year or it didn't make sense because of the geography of where the shows were, where there was a kind of mass influx of people or the timing of the schedule, we've inducted people individually, like Amazing Red at Hammerstein Ballroom last year.
So I think the brand will surface in some way. I can't tell you today what that is.
Mike Johnson: All right. For those who are interested, it's @ProduceNYC on Twitter and @ProduceWrestling on Instagram.
All right. Any final words that you'd like to pass along to everybody as you start to get the brand out there and start to figure out additional talent signings?
Adam Abdalla: Yeah. If you have more questions about who I'm working with, I'm a big fan of transparency in this. I've got Tom Lawlor and Walker Stewart to do the commentary on show number one. I've identified an incredible ring announcer, an MC named Drew Park. Mike, who—
Mike Johnson: I saw him at World Combat Sumo. Yeah, I know exactly who you're talking about.
Adam Abdalla: Yeah. Drew Park is going to be with us for the first four shows. He has a four-show deal with us. And we are really thinking about not only the talent that we're working with—and we have great talent signed up both as Produce fighters and appearing—and I don't know if we talked about this on air, but who are the curators of the first four shows? But I can reveal that.
Mike Johnson: Oh. Obviously Jonathan Gresham is the first, but if you would like, feel free to unveil who the others are.
Adam Abdalla: Yeah. So first show, June 29, The Octopus, Jonathan Gresham will be co-producing the show with me. What that means is that the wrestlers who I anoint co-producer of the show, and that agree to come on and do it, will be responsible for a major part of the undercard—probably about three or four matches—to give visibility to either wrestlers that are under-recognized that really speak to the influence of or relationship to the wrestler who's putting on that show, or a style that we're introducing into the world.
And then also on each show, we'll have either a DJ or a band that I'm going to select in partnership with that talent. And the branding for each show will be reflective of that wrestler. So the first one's The Octopus.
The second one will be TGA Style with Lee Moriarty. The third show, which I'm really excited for—things might change, but I think we're good to go—Rocky Romero is going to be co-producing the show for me on August 3 at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn. And then Janai Kai, Joey Janela, and Megan Bayne will be co-producing the show with me September 13 at White Eagle Hall in Jersey City.
I'm looking for people that have special relationships to the industry. By many accounts, people consider Jonathan Gresham to be the best technical wrestler in the world. He's an iconoclast. He's somebody who's had varied experiences in different promotions, either carrying the promotion on his back at a time when no one else would, or being under-recognized for the contributions that he made, which led to frustration and, I think, turning points in his career.
And ultimately he had a stroke back in September that was widely publicized—actually, a couple of them—that was COVID-induced, and he trained like hell to get back in the fucking ring. And if there's anybody who I love to watch wrestle on the independents, it's Jonathan Gresham. And if there's anybody I'm proud to stand side by side with and say, "Hey, let's give these people a little bit of your vision for professional wrestling while also putting you on a pedestal"—on our first show, he's going to wrestle Fuminori Abe from Japan, who is one of the best independent Japanese wrestlers in the world as well.
Lee Moriarty—my history with him, he's an artist, he's a kind of visionary creator, and he has a lot of investment in young talent from around the country. A lot of talent are being scooped up to either developmental deals, tier-one contracts, things like that, so the independent scene continues to have to be replenished.
And something that continues to happen is that the major independent promotions that have some level of budget continue to just show the same people over and over again because that's who converts to a ticket draw. I'm willing to take a little more of a risk and say, these are guys that are anointed by somebody that you care about, so come check them out and let's watch them grow together. That's part of the psychology.
Rocky Romero, I think, is the secret lifeblood of the wrestling industry. He has created this phenomenal partnership—or been a key component of this phenomenal partnership—between AEW, CMLL, and New Japan Pro-Wrestling that's allowed wrestlers to have their careers on their own terms, getting multiple streams of income or salary in concert, really being more respectful of these partnerships and also their independent contractor status while also fulfilling their commitments to those companies that are supporting them.
And I want to bring that flavor to New York City. I want to bring lucha libre, I want to bring wrestlers in Japan, and I want to bring wrestlers who Rocky's had a historical relationship with.
And then Joey Janela and Megan Bayne. Joey changed the fucking business, man. Spring Break was the predecessor to All In. No one was doing independent shows with really clever integrated digital marketing like he did with Brett Lauderdale and John Carlo Dimaio—who's now at AEW—until Joey did Spring Break one and sold 2,000 tickets in New Orleans for the show that he wrestled The Great Sasuke on.
And I’m proud to call Joey a friend and a collaborator. He's also an iconoclast, I think in the same sense as Gresham, where he doesn't fit nicely into the boxes that people want.
Mike Johnson: And not to cut you off, I don't think he gets the credit he deserves for trying to be a maverick in a world where all the mavericks have been homogenized.
Adam Abdalla: Yeah. And it's because Joey, like myself—Joey has interests outside of wrestling. Joey is a wrestler through and through, but he monitors pop culture, film, music, art, and he integrates a lot of those ideas into his presentation and also the things that he commissions around shows.
And sometimes it lands and sometimes it doesn't. But you know what? He fucking tries. And a lot of people are afraid to try. People with billion-dollar budgets literally are putting out generative AI slop for their promotional materials. WWE is—they don't even hire artists to do their shit. They just press a button, man.
And us doing it by the straps of our boots are trying to put money in the hands of designers, fashion people, T-shirt makers, pin makers—people who have given their life and their time to this industry because they love it, and it's never loved them back. So I think it's time to at least show some fucking appreciation. That's what the ethos of Produce is.
Mike Johnson: Produce will kick off in June in Brooklyn, with an event following in July in Jersey City, back in Brooklyn in August, returning to Jersey City in September. And it will be a new type of promotion with a different vision, with Adam Abdalla at the helm.
Sir, I thank you so much for the time today and I look forward to seeing how this continues to evolve and blossom for you. And I know that you put all of your effort into all your projects, and I expect this to be no different. And I'm very intrigued by what you're putting together here.
Adam Abdalla: Hey man, listen, if we can change things for the better, even incrementally—if I can get people signed faster, if I can get people a living wage through wrestling, not just from working for me, because I'm not running enough for that to be feasible, but through eyeballs that we create, through a more deliberate marketing strategy, promotional strategy, support structure—if it gets them in front of more people with regularity and creates more income streams, then I'll be happy.
I'm not doing this to get rich. I'm doing this to really not lose money at the end of the day, but just put on shows that I'm proud of and put on matches that the talent are proud of.
Mike Johnson: For full details on Produce, you can find links to their social media right under this audio, and we invite you to check it out as they begin their promotional run toward the debut in June.
And obviously there's a lot going on in pro wrestling. But as I said, Produce is coming in June, and it's going to be a very interesting line to follow as they draw their line in the sand.
So Adam, I really want to thank you for sitting down and talking to us for a little bit. I'm sure we will chat more in the future about this as it continues to evolve and some of your other projects going down in Florida and elsewhere. And I'm always happy for your success, and I hope we get to add another check to your checklist of great successes here.
Adam Abdalla: I look forward to many checks.
Mike Johnson: All right, so we look forward to many matches under the Produce banner. And until next time, here on PWInsiderElite.com, I am Mike Johnson.
Maybe I'll get some sleep today. Probably not. But I hope all of you are well, and I hope you are going to watch some fun wrestling and get ready for some great wrestling under the Produce banner, promoted by Adam Abdalla.
Until next time, I'm Mike Johnson.
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