No Canada: The Problem of Visas

Cherry Bomb can get her boot on people's faces, but not into the US with ease
Photo Credit: Tabercil Whom/Pro Wrestling Is Art

Cherry Bomb and Leah von Dutch were scheduled to be at Absolute Intense Wrestling's Girls' Night Out 7 event this past Saturday night. However, they had trouble getting across the border to the United States, and thus missed the show. Both are Canadian, and this actually isn't the first show Cherry Bomb has missed due to visa issues. In fact, her absence at GNO5 led directly to the main event of this past show. In a way, those issues helped shape the direction of AIW's women's division, but that's tangential at best.

If Cherry Bomb were the first ever wrestler to have problems crossing borders and staying in the US, it'd be one thing. However, she's part of a coed fraternity that includes Angelina Love, Wade Barrett, Drew McIntyre, Alberto del Rio and the Briscoe Brothers that has problems keeping their availability for shows and working outside their native countries open for whatever reason. Obviously, the impetus is to first blame the wrestlers themselves. It's their livelihood, so shouldn't they make sure that they can exit and enter the United States or other countries of work (in the case of Americans who can't work in Canada etc.)? Well, yeah, obviously some of the onus falls of them.

That being said, I have to wonder how much of a role the parent companies play in all of this and whether it's enough. Obviously, WWE and Impact Wrestling have monetary resources to be able to smooth the process along, or at the very least have people in the company whose job it is at least in part to remind people to renew said work visas. What about companies without the resources to hire people to look after their recidivist employees? Well, therein lies the problem with running an indie promotion. A lot of times, the people in charge handle everything (a big reason why Paul Heyman failed as promoter of ECW ultimately, because either he couldn't do accounting or the lure of having no one to answer to left too much temptation for him to be a thieving scumbag). Still, that's the peril of booking Canadian talent. If you want Cherry Bomb or Leah von Dutch or Kevin Steen, El Generico, Tyson Dux, Petey Williams, Portia Perez or any other Canadian wrestler, you have to be willing to deal with the hoops you need to jump through.

Obviously, cooperation is needed between both wrestler and promotion. All of the onus can't fall on the promoter because that would be unfair. Furthermore, I don't know what kind of role AIW played in trying to get Cherry Bomb and von Dutch available to cross the border. They could have done all they could have done and still had it not be enough. The disclaimer here is that I don't know what the inner workings of bringing those two wrestlers to the show are.

However, I do know it's a problem, and whatever the hangup, it needs to be resolved. Not every time that Cherry Bomb can't make an event can it turn out as fortuitously as it did at GNO5, and I'm pretty sure she would have had a spiffy match with Athena had she shown up.