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An immediate warning, there will be spoilers here, so if you haven’t yet watched The Monster Factory on Apple TV+, you will be spoiled by this article, but with good reason. You’ve been warned!
Several weeks ago, Apple TV+ debuted a new reality series focusing on the professional wrestling world, Monster Factory, based on the well known New Jersey-based training facility that has churned out lots of well known students over its existence. While I was happy for Danny Cage, who now owns the facility, and those involved, I did not expect much, if I’m going to be bluntly honest.
If you’ve been around professional wrestling for any lengthy period of time, we’ve seen such reality fare before, whether it be the different iterations of WWE’s Tough Enough or scenes of the legendary Les Thatcher berating idiot would-be students in MTV’s True Life: I’m A Pro Wrestler or even Hulk Hogan’s Celebrity Championship Wrestling. Good or bad or indifferent, we’ve all probably seen the pro wrestling training reality series presentation.
So, I was enthused for Cage and company, but I wasn’t really excited to watch it.
That, my friends, was my mistake. Don’t let it be yours.
Over the course of six 30-minute episodes that eclipse the first (and hopefully not the last) season of Monster Factory, we are introduced to Danny Cage, the would-be and former 48-year old wrestler who had his career prematurely ended to injury and has instead taken over his former school. Cage is now obsessed with giving his 40+ students the opportunity to live the types of dreams that he wasn’t able to achieve for himself.
Cage is presented, much to my personal surprise, as he is - an asshole. I say that not in a derogatory manner, at all, but it’s true to life to him as a person. Cage can be abrasive and he can be blunt, not because he’s a malicious person, but like a lot of people in the moment with way too much to do and nowhere near the amount of hours to accomplish it, he doesn’t have the time to waste. He’s not going to say in three sentences what he can say in one, not when he has a saint of a wife at home, two daughters who need his time, a wrestling school to run, shows to edit, shows to promote, students to assist and an ailing mother fighting against inoperable cancer.
Time is a gift Danny Cage doesn’t have, because the time on his career ran out before its time and he doesn’t have enough for everyone else, not even himself - and he’s trying to get his students as ready as possible to get signed somewhere, so they can get out of the Monster Factory nest and go out on their own. If you can’t appreciate what he - and countless other trainers out there who are known and unknown - are trying to accomplish, I don’t know what else can be done to show you how much someone loves professional wrestling.
Professional wrestling is presented as it truly is. There’s no working the audience that this is a legitimate combat sport and instead it is shown for what it truly is, a team effort where everyone is putting the safety of their bodies and their lives on the line to entertain the audience and hopefully achieve their goals of putting on the best stories possible with a mix of theater, stunts and sports. If someone had no understanding of what professional wrestling is and the sacrifices that come with it - as well as the magic it sparks within people - well, you couldn’t ask for a better pro wrestling 101 class then you get over these six episodes.
Magic is probably the best way to describe the thread that connects the main cast of the series, who we all discover as students and over the course of the season, dive into their lives and backgrounds in a way that only open them up to us as people and make viewers hopeful that at some point, they can all live their dreams and succeed the way they hope.
There’s Twitch, a young wrestler with Tourette’s Syndrome, who gave up on his love of professional wrestling as a fan after being bullied for loving it. As he grew up, he found himself disenfranchised and unhappy in life and one night, happened to come across WWE's Monday Night Raw, just in time for the CM Punk pipebomb promo. Emboldened and inspired, he finds his way to the Monster Factory, where he continues to deal with his own self-imposed challenges and seeks to incorporate more of who he is into his character, whether that be his musical talents. In one of the strongest scenes of the series, as the story of encountering the Punk promo is told, Twitch’s mother, in tears while speaking to the cameras, says she just wants to thank CM Punk for saving her son’s life and giving him something to dream about.
In that moment, we are reminded of exactly how important professional wrestling has been for all of us at some point in our lives. It’s meant to be escapist fare for a reason - to help us get away from stress and sadness and stupidity that invades our lives and makes it ever sadder. The fluorescent, neon silliness that is pro wrestling, no matter how great the match is or how silly the characters are, is there for one primary reason - to somehow, in some way inspire and enrapture us all, to lift us up and distract us - and in its perfect moments, inspire us the way it inspired Twitch. If his mother believes pro wrestling saved his life, then it did, and there’s no greater ripple effect from CM Punk picking up the mic on Raw that night then inspiring Twitch and countless others.
That’s not to say Monster Factory is just a saccharine show celebrating professional wrestling. It’s not. There are lots of deep scenes of introspection diving into the doubts of the talents. Gabby Ortiz, who was making a nice name for herself in Ring of Honor and other independent promotions, seemingly stopped at one point. Over the course of the series, we learn that Ortiz, who had taken that ring name to honor her late mother, never actually took the time to process that happening so soon in Gabby's life. Now, the wrestling dream she decided to pursue may have kept her from properly grieving and the boomerang effect of that is that it’s likely curtailed her progress as a pro wrestler. This is a complicated situation handled with grace and respect by the series and one can help for Ortiz, whether it be on the series or not, to figure out the best path for her own personal health and happiness. You can’t but hope and want to push Ortiz to surge forward as a person and see her succeed after watching this series.
In a similar fashion, Goldy, who may be the closest in terms of athletic ability and even look to a young Danny Cage, battles with his own self-doubts and fears mentally while he strives forward physically as a talent. The presentation here is striking, because when one sees the physical attributes of this young man, they immediately look and think he’s the star waiting to be born, but instead even the idea of moving across the country to continue his career worries him, because it’s a shift away from his support team and family. You have to wonder how he’ll adapt to the nomad, vagabond lifestyle that is professional wrestling as he continues to succeed, because there’s so much more to that world than just taking the bumps, as Monster Factory expertly shows the audience.
In many ways, cast member Mimi has the easiest journey of everyone to the untrained eye. Beginning her training at 15, she finds herself going into a WWE tryout and getting signed at the age of 19 during the series. After 13 televised appearances on NXT and NXT: Level Up, she was later released and is back on the independents and at The Monster Factory, so one assumes that future seasons will document what it’s like to achieve one’s dream and then later get the news you are being released from your dream job. But, in this season, Mimi comes off extremely likable and when she shows up in the final episode in a cameo to support the school as it presents the biggest event of their existence, you feel she’s come a full circle.
Then there’s reigning Monster Factory Champion Bobby Buffet, a larger wrestler who has lost a ton of weight since coming to the school and has battled with a hard upbringing in what looks to be a pretty dangerous, downtrodden neighborhood. His upbeat personality and continued push to better himself just makes you want to follow his career, and I won’t even pretend to say that after watching the series, I had a big smile on my face seeing he worked for Wrestling Open in Worcester, MA last week, knowing that meant he was still going and pushing himself to further his wrestling career. The series made you feel as if you were one of his best friends and he was opening up to you about trying to better himself, become a healthier person, and figuring out the path to his wrestling dreams.
Of course, the series has to have a big climactic moment and that takes place in the sixth and final (for now) episode where the school puts on a big showcase event in Philadelphia’s 2300 Arena, hoping to get attention for the students and giving them a chance to have big matches against veterans like Crowbar and The Headbangers and Steve Maclin. For Cage, this is the most stressful event of his life, because it’s all on his shoulders and he’s trying to will it into existence not even for himself, but for his students. Even the day of the show, there’s things going wrong and fires to put out and talents late to arrive, but none of it feels manufactured. The pressure, self-inflicted and from beyond, is real, for Cage, his students and the school.
All of these episodes are expertly edited and presented with the right tone. It's the story of a group of students who want to make this happen for themselves, even if in the moment, they don't realize that at times, they are working against their own dreams. Then, there's Cage, who's always been on the fringes of the business in the shadows, watching and helping others achieve what he always wanted and now in a full circle moment, gets the spotlight shined upon him for just that moment - and becomes one of the most loveable assholes in pro wrestling history in the process.
At the end of the day, Monster Factory is the type of series everyone who ever cared about professional wrestling should be forced to sit down and watch. No matter how desensitized you may have become to the art and act of professional wrestling, no matter how jaded you are to the politics and stupidity, this series will hit you right in the core of your heart and remind you exactly why you fell in love with professional wrestling all over again.
It’ll shatter your outer shell and expose you to the hearts and souls of a lot of young, fledgling students who have been inspired and just want to manifest that inspiration into reality - and in the process, reboot your own heart and brain when it comes to professional wrestling, making sure you don’t take that next match, story or dropkick for granted, because every person in the ring was inspired to do this and in their best day, perhaps they’ll inspire the next person to do the same. If not, it should remind all of us of that moment where we loved pro wrestling and just NEEDED to watch or know more about it, and that's a great gift to have - to be reminded of that pure moment where you first fell in love with something.
If Apple TV+ isn’t inspired to produce future seasons of Monster Factory, that will be a true shame, on an almost criminal level, because I walked in unenthused about the series and by the end, I was totally head over heels about professional wrestling again - so I can only imagine what it will do to someone who find this series shaping their initial perspective of this insanely unique and strange genre we’ve all invested so much of our time, happiness and live into enjoying.
Monster Factory is now streaming on Apple TV+.
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