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Throws of passion: Love takes wrestlers outside the ring


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The founder of Love Pro Wrestling is bringing his carnivalesque promotion to an unusual place — the Art Gallery of Alberta — as part of his mission to attract new audiences to the spectacle.

"One of my biggest goals for 2027 is to branch out and bring pro wrestling to where people would never really expect it," Spencer Love told Taproot. "When you see the best of the best in professional wrestling, which I believe we've got, you're going to fall in love with it — no pun intended."

Love Pro Wrestling brings The Joy of Grappling to the AGA on Nov. 7. The mêlée, whose title is inspired by Bob Ross's The Joy of Painting, is taking place in conjunction with two exhibits: Sports! The Art of Competing, a group show curated by Lindsey Sharman and Alaynee Goodwill-Littlechild, and Kim Parrent: Ring A Ding Dong Dandy, featuring portraits of stars of Stampede Wrestling. (Parrent spoke to Love Wrestling's Pluggo about the upcoming show.)

Love's fandom began not with Stampede Wrestling, whose heyday was a little before his time, but rather with a chance encounter with a different outfit.

"I didn't grow up watching professional wrestling," he said. "My first real impact with it was when I was 18. I was walking down Whyte Ave., and I saw a poster for the Prairie Wrestling Alliance … From there, I just tried to go as often as I could to the local, independent shows."

Love's own promotion started with fan content; he never imagined himself as a chaotic-good version of Vince McMahon. "It's very much been a case of falling up," Love said, "from going to shows, starting to write my own blogs, to interviewing, to media, to now running bi-monthly shows here at the Rec Room."

Love Pro Wrestling events began in October 2021, solidifying a regular cadence by March 2022. At first, it was a labour of love (pun absolutely intended) while he worked in marketing for the Sherwood Park Crusaders. Love later worked at a car dealership, but departed this year and made the wrestling promotion his full-time job.

"Part of the expectation for us at the car dealership was we had to make 40 cold calls a day — I don't necessarily care about cars; I couldn't tell a V6 engine from a V8 tomato juice," he said.

He's now transferring that sales-grind mentality into his true purpose, realizing he could "make 10 calls a day or send 10 emails, but about something I'm passionate about," he said. "Not just people on a call sheet, but foundational Edmonton community members."

That has led to collaborations with the Edmonton Oil Kings, Purple City Music Festival, and Winterruption, among others, plus sponsorships from Booster Juice, Sea Change Brewing Co., and Farrow. Love recently extended the catalyst agreement with The Rec Room in south Edmonton through 2027; the next main-season show there is an Ernest-inspired Halloween brawl on Oct. 30.

A man holding a microphone in a wrestling ring beneath a domed ceiling

Spencer Love hypes up a 1,200-strong crowd at West Edmonton Mall during a Love Pro Wrestling event in August 2024. (Supplied)

Pro wrestling (the spectacle-forward endeavour distinct from the sporting kind found at the Summer Olympics) has its own subcultures, but Love believes it's ready for a wider audience. Part of that is the adoption of more progressive values than, say, the Attitude Era proliferated by World Wrestling Entertainment (then called the World Wrestling Federation).

"The shittiness of professional wrestling at that time — bra-and-panties matches, blatant misogyny, blatant homophobia and transphobia, and anything along those lines — turned so many people off of professional wrestling, and rightfully so," he said. "I don't say this lightly: I'm a cis white dude, and I found my community with professional wrestling. For us as Love Pro, to be able to expand that community out to a lot of members of the trans community, a lot of homosexual individuals, and every creed and culture, has been foundational."

Today, a growing tapestry of Edmonton-based wrestlers are entertaining local folks and getting opportunities on the global stage. For example, Christian Starr is a Love-performing athlete who ferociously competes in the United States, Mexico, and Japan while decked out in vibrant pink-and-purple garb — some made by designer and fellow local wrestler Quin Hawksley. Their talent reflects a no-longer-untapped pool in Edmonton, Love said.

"There are so many people like that," he said. "When I was coming up, the (false) belief was that Alberta was a bit of a black hole for professional wrestling. Promoters weren't streaming events; there wasn't a lot of talent that was getting out and about to the scale that we see today."

Consider T.Y. Jackson, Michael Richard Blais, Steven Crowe, or Zoë Sager, who is now called Andi Summers as the first Canadian signed to WWE's independent development program, Love said.

While modest about his role as a taste-maker, Love relishes being a conduit for breakouts such as Sager and rising talent such as Taryn From Accounting.

"Love Pro is the only promotion in Canada that streams all of their events live," he said. "We get good viewership, and obviously they find out about us, but for me, the important part is … that they find out about our talent, and they get to see people like a Zoë or a Taryn."

Wrestling promotions don't always last. Love's initial inspiration, the Prairie Wrestling Alliance, tapped out after 21 years in 2022. Now that Love is relying on Love Pro Wrestling to pay the bills, he's got to make a business of it. But love is still at the heart of it.

"Whether you're a wrestler, whether you're a promoter, whether you're a referee, anything like that, nobody gets into it with the goal of it being a million-dollar money-maker," he said. "It sounds like such a generic answer, but to be honest, it is passion (that leads to longevity). You have to be in it for the love of the game, so to speak."

Want to see for yourself? Here's what's coming up on Love Pro Wrestling's card:

Ahead of those, you can replay the debut of Andi Summers for WWE from Oct. 8. And for even more wrestling, TNA is presenting Destination X in Edmonton on Nov. 15.