Many of you are right. Stress and frustration are a huge part of what’s going on in my life but it has a lot to do with how the business itself has changed, and in my mind, not for the better. I’ve always tried to be really fan friendly and YES, I have fucked up some things, but rumors and innuendos and downright personal attack lies have really affected me over the last four years. So many people hate me and think I am a scumbag for so many of these things that simply just aren’t true. I make fun of shit like “Blame John Williams” because shit became so ridiculous that to make fun of it was the only way I knew how to deal with it.

It’s very difficult to be the most hated man in indie wrestling. When you are hated for so many lies and just downright jealousy it wears away on your spirit. I don’t want anybody to think that because some people got upset over what would be the use of leeches in a deathmatch is the turning point of my love for wrestling because that is simply not the case. I don’t give a fuck, call PETA. PETA stands for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. A leech is not an animal. It is a creature at best. You can say it is one of Gods creatures and though I can see that, and respect your opinion on that, I don’t agree with that it matters whether it dies being stapled to someones face or on the end of a fishhook. However, I will change this stipulation because it just isn’t worth it to me to cause an uproar over using leeches in a deathmatch tournament. As soon as I make that statement, that I am going to change THAT, some asshole has to say they are offended by having syringes because of the HIV outbreak in SCOTT COUNTY. Now, this just becomes bitching for the sake of bitching. These two guys that are in this match are going to bleed on one another, both of which have clean blood tests. I am not going to give them dirty syringes, they’re not going to be injecting their blood into one another, things have just gone too far with fans thinking they know better than a promoter who has ran shows for over 18 years,

I understand Facebook is a necessary evil and I LOVE that I have been put in touch with people throughout the country that I have lost touch with, but there are no real boundaries between fans and wrestlers or even myself in a promoter. John Williams, book this, John Williams, do that. When it comes to wrestling, my name is Ian Rotten. Unless you personally know me outside of wrestling, you should call me as such. I am using this as an example, nothing grinds my gears more than a fan walks up to me, and calls me by my birth name. I have known Axl for 25 years now and have probably used his real name (other than on fucking Facebook) 4 times in my life,

I understand that IWA means so much for so many reasons to so many people but I need you to understand my frustration. I have given EVERYTHING (and I do mean EVERYTHING) that I have to the wrestling business and IWA. I have lost lifetime friendships over a woman scorned , who has nothing to be scorned about. I took Mickie Knuckles in and let her live her dream when her own family turned their back on her. I never beat up Mickie Knuckles. I loved Mickie. Hell, I would go so far as to say when having an affair with her that I was IN love with her. I did everything with her. I spent more time on the road and doing things with her than I did my own family. At one point in my life I considered her my very best friend. Then, in the end, my conscious just couldn’t keep it a secret any more and I felt the need to tell Patti and come clean. Anybody that knows my wife, knows that I would NOT make up an affair especially an affair with a girl that had been living my house for 5 years with us. Instead of coming clean with me, Mickie chose to make up horrible lies about me to try to save her own reputation. For years, it was “Ian and Mickie are fucking.” Then, when I finally said it was true, it was “Oh, he’s lying on that poor girl.” I have tried to be as copacetic about this as possible, but there comes a point where you just have to say fuck it.

Then, in 2006, I’m not really sure who started it. Whether it was Mickie telling Bull Pain or Bull Pain telling Mickie I don’t know, I had a false positive for Hepatitis C. Because of my diabetes affecting my pancreas to the point that I chronic pancreatitis. it affected the enzymes in my liver to the point I had to have a specific test, available only in certain hospitals by liver specialists, to determine my diagnosis. When I was diagnosed with this, I was supposed to wrestle Brandon Prophet that week and immediately pulled myself out of that match until I could get that testwork done, where it would be determined that it was a false positive and I did not have Hepatitis C. Much like the same situations that happened to Matt Tremont and Insane Lane. No body questions their health nowadays, it’s Ian Rotten, that fucking scumbag. Which is not the truth, but people aren’t interested in truth. The lie makes for a much better story.

People wanted to make fun of me for getting a job in fast food, working at Taco Bell. So it’s a shit job, right? Then others would go on with cowardly anonymous phone calls trying to get me fired from a shitty, minimum wagw job. Mind you, this has nothing to do with wrestling. this is a SHIT minimum wage job that I could try to hold down, take care of my family and do wrestling too. They went as far as to call YUM! Brands and tell THEM I had Hepatitis C, which I would be removed from the schedule until I provided YUM! with proof that I didn’t have it. When that didn’t work, they called the store I worked at not even knowing that it was my off day and told them they just purchased marijuana from me and the bag was short. Which my manager replies, “That’s pretty funny considering he’s not even here today.” They would make fake customer survey calls saying that I was rude to them. This is how far people took shit.

The fact that people still feel that the shit with Mike Levy was a quote-unquote “incident”, like he was actually hurt… be as smart as you think you are smart. Watch the footage of it. They’re all wrestling related moves to him. Tank practically breaks his own ankle taking weight off of him to NOT hurt him. Shit, the only one that came close to hurting him was Pondo with the suplex on the potty chair, almost impaling him. Wow, what an incident. He went to work for Pondo! Stayed and helped clean up, and watch King of the Deathmatches. I even heard one report that I flew Mike Levy in and intentionally beat him up because of the things he said on the internet! Once again, why bother with the truth when the lie is so much more entertaining?

I’m not even really going to get into the shit with the kid that happened at an EPW show but I will say I have heard some of the funniest shit off of it. Like, I pushed the little girl down to the floor that was really (once again watch the footage) just a swipe of the hand.

Now, some things I have brought on myself and by business standards, I know they’re not right. I will openly admit that I owe more than my fair share of guys money but guys I now have no intention of paying should have kept it between us and I would have done everything I possibly could have to get them paid back, I have taken gambles and risks that, well, maybe I just shouldn’t of took but I did them and there is nothing I can do to change that now. I have done more with less than anybody in this business, I do it because I LOVE this business. I have loved it from the time that I was 4 years old and my dad walked me in to a smoke filled Baltimore Civic Center.

I’m not looking for your sympathy, nor your praise. For the most part, I am really proud of the things I have done. I truly believe if it wasn’t for IWA Mid South, deathmatch wrestling in the States wouldn’t be where it is at. The phrase American Strong Style was coined because of IWA Mid South. We changed wrestling in this area from the Memphis Okey Doke same old old same old shit, to I guaran-fucking-tee you, you will never know what you are going to see at an IWA show. Fuck, we even changed the landscape of WOMENS wrestling… places like Shimmer and Shine exist today because WE gave womens wrestling a chance and it was the IWA fans that said good wrestling is good wrestling, no matter what the gender is,

Though I blow it off a lot, the last 4 years have been HARD on me. I have done shit that I am not proud of, for sure, but for the most part I also did them for survival. It would make me laugh when people would say, “Ian is threatening to shut down with his carny stunt of they need money.” Yet you would read all over the internet “I don’t know how they’re still in business with the small crowds.” Yeah, it was all some stunt for me to build a room onto my palatial mansion, or to buy all the drugs that I was using because I was such a drug addict. I have stuck with this and put up with this shit out of my passion and love for the wrestling business.

I have had other things said about me, like I was trying to make money off of Ted Petty’s name, or off of Chris Candido’s name when all I was trying to do was keep two people that I was proud to call my friends names alive and let people remember what great assets they were to this business. If they weren’t remembering, well, then I wanted them to know.

So. If you were me, and had been accused of everything from battering women, stealing from charities, ripping off your god children, killing someone that you considered to be like your child, spreading a communicable disease around, and over all just being a huge asshole… would you put up with it? What do you do when the game you love, stops loving you? I am not going to end with my tagline, because this isn’t my opinion. This is my LIFE, and IWA Mid South is my lifes work, I guess after all, if I go away, I make all the wrong people happy and all the right people sad. Take it for what you will.