880 Wrestling — Thursday Night Fights | Work By Davey

The Punk Spirit of The South Side

If Tacomania was my baptism by fire, then 880 Wrestling's Thursday Night Fights became my graduate course in chaos.

Location: South Side, Pittsburgh. Freyburg Street. The kind of address that doesn't promise anything polished.

From the Uber window, the venue looked like nothing—just another darkened storefront in a neighborhood where the streetlights struggle and the night comes early. Sundown had already swallowed the sky whole. I followed my instincts: the unmistakable perfume of weed smoke, the thunder of bodies hitting canvas, both pulling me down the sidewalk like a tractor beam.

Then I found it. An open garage door. The old OneUp skate shop, its DIY DNA still embedded in the concrete and exposed beams, now reborn as a wrestling gym. The air hung thick and damp, that specific humidity that makes you check if it's raining or if you're just that close to everyone else's sweat. This is the grind. The unglamorous bottom rung where local wrestlers claw their way toward becoming somebody—even if that somebody only matters within a fifty-mile radius.

Walking Into Uncertainty

Being visually impaired means every new space is a gamble. Will it be cramped? Chaotic? A sensory nightmare I'll have to white-knuckle through?

But once the bell rang and those first bodies collided, none of my anxiety mattered anymore.

The grit wasn't a bug. It was the entire feature.

Up Close and Uncomfortably Personal

Thursday Night Fights didn't have distance. No buffer. No pretense.

The ring sat maybe eight feet from the crowd—close enough to taste the adrenaline, close enough to hear the plywood under the mat crack and groan with every impact. Fans weren't spectating, they were participating: shouting, cursing, their breath mixing with the sweat flying off the ropes.

For me? Heaven.

Every face was accessible. Every expression sharp and immediate. I just had to learn how to shoot fast-paced violence in lighting that barely qualified as illumination. I cycled through manual mode, aperture priority, trial-and-error shutter speeds, trying to find the sweet spot where motion freezes but the mood stays raw.

And there was no guard rail. No barrier between me and the action. If a body came flying toward me, the protocol was simple: move or get wrecked.

I wasn't going home saying I quit. This was a whole new arena, and I was all in.

The Home Run Derby

880 Wrestling was mid-tournament—their Home Run Derby—a bracket-style gauntlet where points determine who gets the spotlight at their big live event at Penn Brewery come late October.

I watched several matches that night, but two tattooed themselves into my memory.

Blizzy Blake vs. Sammy Suntheimer (1/2 of Psychedelic Dream)

Blizzy Blake's entrance was poetry: a giant inflatable Raw Papers joint held high like a trophy, fake-toking for the crowd, dapping up fans (including me) on his way to the ring.

Sammy Suntheimer brought long hair, high energy, and the kind of fun that's infectious even through a viewfinder.

The match itself? Pure 2000s WWE Ruthless Aggression-era cruiserweight chaos. High-flying. Fast-paced. Reckless in the best way.

Blizzy won. Gained his tournament point. Celebrated by lighting up a joint with Sammy in the ring.

As a photographer, these are the moments that matter—the candid, unscripted, beautifully weird shit you'd never catch at a corporate show.

Make it stand out

MV Young vs. Bearcat Keith Haught

Two heavyweights. Big meaty men slapping meat, as the internet wrestling community would say.

The match ended in a draw, but watching these two absolute units trade chops that echoed like gunshots off the garage walls? That was the whole story.

The crowd felt every impact. I leaned in, chasing that exact microsecond when pain and adrenaline collide on someone's face.

My biggest failure that night? Not understanding that lower aperture + higher ISO = clearer images in dim-as-hell conditions. Also, not anticipating how fast I'd need to adjust when the lights cut out for an entrance or a sneak attack.

Live event photography—especially combat sports or concerts—is about anticipation. You have to be in the moment and three seconds ahead of it simultaneously.

Learning to Anticipate

At Tacomania, I got lucky.

At 880, I learned to hunt.

I started predicting where a wrestler would land mid-flight. When the ref's hand would slap the mat for a near-fall. I crouched, shifted, repositioned—moving like I was part of the fight.

The difference showed in the work. Less accident. More intention.

Being Seen

After the show, a few wrestlers followed me online.

It sounds small. It wasn't.

It was proof that my work wasn't just a personal experiment anymore—it was being noticed, respected, and shared within the community.

Why It Mattered

Thursday Night Fights wasn't polished. It was gritty, raw, unpredictable and exactly like my way of seeing.

I don't chase perfection. I chase realism without gloss.

And in that converted garage on Freyburg Street, surrounded by sweat, smoke, and the beautiful chaos of independent wrestling, I found exactly what I was looking for.