This Is Awesome

The Hammerstein Ballroom is a beautiful place to watch wrestling. The ring is surrounded on three sides by multiple tiers of scalloped balconies, blue with gold trim, a prestige-TV color palette. From the vantage point of the TV viewer, the audience looms over the action in ornate concentric circles—Dante’s Inferno for people who like a good German suplex. Seated on one of the venue’s upper levels, every seat feels close enough to the action for you to fall into the ring if you lean forward far enough. In events dating back decades, the independent wrestling promotions ECW and Ring of Honor helped make the place a mecca for the sport.

My 14-year-old kid, H, has heard me give variations on this spiel for over a year now. (They’ve also heard me explain it’s owned by the Moonies; they’re big on religious cults.) Now, the Saturday before Christmas 2025, they could finally see for themselves. By the time we made it up to our second-balcony seats for “Dynamite on 34th Street,” All Elite Wrestling’s now-annual holiday stopover at the Manhattan Center, however, H was mostly just winded by taking the stairs. They’re the kind of kid who was born to complain about having to run in gym class; they’ve told me repeatedly they’re physically afraid of volleyballs. We have that in common.