As I sit to put the finishing touches on this piece, we are less than one week away from the first 365 show of 2025 in Victoria and there is ONE MATCH announced for the card. But it doesn't really matter because it's a title match, a dog collar match (A famously violent match type) between the living legend Devon Shooter and the champion, our beloved champion – and funnily enough, the most hated guy in Portland wrestling – Elliot Tyler. And when Elliot Tyler is in the main event, people are going to come out.

But it's not just 365 where he overcame the longtime heel champion, Devon Shooter, where he has become a staple. Tyler has been a force in PNW wrestling scene,. I've talked to multiple people who have been to one wrestling show here on the west coast who said that the wrestler that stood out – sometimes the only one they really remembered – was Elliot Tyler. There are few wrestlers I've encountered that just click with everyone in the audience, no matter who they are – be they younger, older or my mom. It could be the entrance music that makes you want to slide down a rainbow. It could be the barking – who doesn't love barking in a pack? It could be evident hydration on he is always displaying. It could be the opportunity to chant “BEEF!” - who doesn't love a good, strong one-syllable chant? It could be his Big E-like combination of an adorable face and silly-yet-hard-nosed demeanour. (I'm putting the following here because this is still a music blog, for now, and I'm not going to assume you know about non-Stone Cold/Rock-level WWE champions: If you need context for this, please do yourself a favour and do a search for former WWE hampion Big E. He rules so hard.)

Beyond all of that, the thing that stands out when Elliot Tyler gets between the ropes is a legimately radiating love coming from the man himself. He looks like he's having the best time, all the time, and it's a completely infectious energy. The kind of energy that drew all of us to our favourite wrestlers when we first started watching. Thankfully for all us watching independent wrestling on the west coast, in the pacific northwest and beyond, a young man stumbled across something that drew him in more than a decade ago. “Honestly, it was just an accident. I was having a sleepover with a buddy and he fell asleep, and I was flipping through channels and I found a rerun of Friday Night Smackdown! and watched it and I got hooked,” Elliot recalls, telling me about his entry-way into wrestling. “It definitely wasn’t the first match that got me hooked – I think the first match was someone who is cancelled now, and they were notorious for never being that entertaining, from 2010/2011, so I’ll let you pick out from the roster who that could be – the main event had Kane and Edge and Rey Mysterio. I was like 'This is crazy. This is everything I want in life. The absurdity of it all.' A lot of people go 'I saw this match and that’s when I knew.' I never had that. There was never a specific moment where I said, “I have to do this.” It just kind of started as me watching, and it turned into me hitting moves on my pillows, which turned into me hitting moves on my friends in the backyard and then it progressed to me getting into a school. It started with beating up pillows, and it went way too far.”