The Pro Wrestling Guide To Florida: America’s Limp Dong

This April, the wrestling world converges on Tampa Bay for WrestleMania. There is so much to see and do for those visiting the state for the first time, which is why we’ve compiled this pro wrestling guide to Florida! As an FL native, I know it isn’t just sunshine, beaches, bath salt zombies, and adorable alligators. It’s also got large scale corruption and easy access to strongly addicting prescription pills. Which make it the perfect place to host so much of professional wrestling’s rich tapestry of history.

Florida has it all—from the big attractions of yesteryear, like Championship Wrestling from Florida (which gave us the early exploits of Dusty Rhodes), to the delights of today, like the WWE Performance Center and the red-hot NXT brand. And of course, there’s fine dining at the Waffle House that Buff Bagwell currently works at, the Cracker Barrel gift shop that Hangman Page hung a guy at, and the Shoney’s that Scott Steiner for real owns. Oh, that’s in Georgia? Whatever, same diff.

I have so many memories in so many special places. Like the Sunrise hockey stadium where I attended my first RAW. I saw Al Snow cry outside his car in the parking lot for 45 minutes straight (while a crowd passionately chanted “HEAD HEAD HEAD HEAD!”). Or the Fort Lauderdale area War Memorial Stadium. That’s the first place another human being ever bled on me. His name was Tommy Dreamer and it was at an ECW show I had to lie to my mom about attending since I was only 15.

Florida even draws in the superstars of the squared circle. “Long Island Iced Z” Zack Ryder and “The Villain” Marty Scrull apparently spend every day at Disney World and Universal Studios, and that’s not weird at all. The Disney park there even has a ride called Space Mountain named after Ric Flair’s penis.

So check out the map below and visit all the wrestling landmarks of Florida!

Note: Each “Waffle House” and “Cracker Barrel” on map represents 7,000 Waffle Houses or Cracker Barrels, respectively, within a 50-mile radius, per capita.

Image: WWE/DonkeyHotey/Flickr