How did Joey Janela's Spring Break become a top attraction of WrestleMania week? One 'wacky' match at a time

Joey Janela (C) competes in Liverpool, England, on Sept. 17, 2023. (Photo by OLI SCARFF/AFP via Getty Images)

(OLI SCARFF via Getty Images)

It’s enough to make you wonder, how in the world did that ever happen? How is it that the same people coming into town for Brock Lesnar vs. Oba Femi could also get so genuinely excited about seeing The Sandman wrestle blank space?

According to longtime pro wrestling journalist and analyst Dave Meltzer, whose Wrestling Observer Newsletter has been a lynchpin of the industry for over four decades, a lot of it has to do with the show’s willingness to fill in the niches that bigger events like WrestleMania leave untouched.

“I think [Janela] was able to tap into something that’s a mix of a lot of different things wrestling fans want,” Meltzer said. “The mix of wackiness and nostalgia, you know, I think there’s this perception that hardcore fans only want one way of wrestling. In reality, I think most people want a million ways of wrestling. … I went to a show one time in Dallas at two-thirty in the morning and saw Kota Ibushi wrestle a doll, and the place went crazy for it. It was actually super entertaining. … There’s this idea that people want a certain level of believability in their wrestling, but they also at times want the opposite.”

Things like The Invisible Man, Meltzer added, might make zero sense to some people. But those inside the building who get the chance to witness it often come away surprised by how enjoyable it can be. The Spring Break events, he said, have found success by nurturing that experience over the course of several years.

“For a lot of people it’s become kind of the highlight of [WrestleMania] week,” Meltzer said. “It always draws better than just about everything else there, including when major promotions would run in conjunction. Except for the WWE shows, maybe the NXT show, it’s usually the biggest drawing thing of the week.”

This didn’t happen overnight for Janela and Game Changer Wrestling (GCW). Friday’s event at Horseshoe Las Vegas will be the 10th installment of Joey Janela’s Spring Break, and it might be the first one where Janela himself feels that every match has a narrative and reason for being.

“I’d say since Spring Break 3, it was hard finding that medium between making it this big GCW blowoff show and what Spring Break originally was, with these strange bookings and strange happenings,” Janela said. “It started off as us just doing viral marketing and announcing random matches. This year, I think we have a story going into every match, to where five of the six angles we’ve done leading into this show have gone viral on the internet, with millions of views. That’s something we’ve never had before at Spring Break.”

Another thing that sets this year’s event apart is that it’s the first one since the death of Sabu, the venerated wrestler who died several weeks after wrestling his final match at Spring Break 9 in 2025. This is still a sore spot for Janela, who feels he was unfairly blamed for Sabu’s death.

When he spoke to Uncrowned about that final match, Janela said, Sabu was still very much alive. It was only after the 60-year-old wrestler died — nearly a month after the event — that fans online starting accusing him of putting Sabu into an unsafe situation.

“I think there’s a Mandela Effect thing happening, where people on the internet will act like he went out like Randy the Ram [the ill-fated protagonist of the 2008 film "The Wrestler"],” Janela said. “But after that match, we had [emergency medical technicians] in the back, they checked him out and he didn’t even have a concussion. But whatever people think, I don’t care. His family and friends, I’m in contact with them and they know the truth. His nephews are coming out to Spring Break this year. That’s all I care about.”

For Janela, this annual event may have gradually taken over as the thing he is best known for among wrestling fans. That was never the plan at the beginning, he said, and it came as a big surprise when he showed up in New Orleans for the second edition and was met with great enthusiasm for the brand.

But it’s also become a source of pride for him, particularly as the events have rediscovered their footing following the COVID pandemic.

“This is one of the only weeks of the year where I feel like, damn, I’ve made it somewhat it this business,” Janela said. “Whatever the original Spring Break was, even though it was WrestleMania and the WWE’s weekend, now I walk around and people are coming up to me and saying, ‘I love this show, it’s the best thing I’ve seen in a long time,’ that makes me feel like we’re onto something.”

The big question is what comes next. WWE President Nick Khan confirmed this week that WrestleMania will take place in Saudi Arabia in 2027. That has the potential to seriously disrupt the plans of all the other players in the wrestling world, who have come to rely on WrestleMania week as a North American gathering of fans who show up hungry for a convention-like vibe that encompasses the entire industry.

With the WWE in a far off and not terribly accessible locale, what will become of shows like Joey Janela’s Spring Break next year?

“I can tell you we’re not going to Saudi Arabia,” Janela said. “No chance.”

With many North American wrestling fans likely feeling the same, does that open the door for GCW and others to establish a new, more easily reachable place as a gathering spot of their own that week?

“It gives us an opportunity,” Janela said. “Maybe we can do something over here and wrestling fans will travel for it. Who knows? I just feel like the momentum going into this show is big, and the momentum coming out of it will be even bigger.”