| --- |
| license: cc0-1.0 |
| task_categories: |
| - tabular-classification |
| language: |
| - en |
| tags: |
| - sports |
| - wrestling |
| - wwe |
| - aew |
| - wcw |
| - ecw |
| - match-data |
| - relational |
| pretty_name: Ringside Analytics — Pro Wrestling Match Archive |
| size_categories: |
| - 100K<n<1M |
| configs: |
| - config_name: matches |
| data_files: matches.parquet |
| - config_name: match_participants |
| data_files: match_participants.parquet |
| - config_name: wrestlers |
| data_files: wrestlers.parquet |
| - config_name: events |
| data_files: events.parquet |
| - config_name: promotions |
| data_files: promotions.parquet |
| - config_name: wrestler_aliases |
| data_files: wrestler_aliases.parquet |
| - config_name: titles |
| data_files: titles.parquet |
| - config_name: title_reigns |
| data_files: title_reigns.parquet |
| - config_name: alignment_turns |
| data_files: alignment_turns.parquet |
| --- |
| |
| # Ringside Analytics — Pro Wrestling Match Archive |
|
|
| A relational snapshot of professional wrestling history from 1980 to the present: |
| **292K matches, 611K wrestler-match participations, 35K events, and 12.8K |
| wrestlers** across WWE, AEW, WCW, ECW, NXT, TNA, and others. Sourced from |
| public Cagematch.net scrapes and the alexdiresta profightdb dump, normalized |
| into a Postgres schema, and exported as parquet files that preserve the |
| relational structure (one file per table, joinable by `id`). |
|
|
| This is the source-of-truth companion to the trained model at |
| [theodorerubin/ringside-wrestling-archive-match-winner](https://www.kaggle.com/models/theodorerubin/ringside-wrestling-archive-match-winner). |
| If you want to train your own model, reshape the features, or just explore |
| 40+ years of booking patterns — start here. |
|
|
| ## Files |
|
|
| | File | Rows | Description | |
| |---|---:|---| |
| | `matches.parquet` | 292,780 | One row per match. Type, stipulation, duration, title match flag, Cagematch rating. | |
| | `match_participants.parquet` | 611,515 | One row per wrestler-per-match. `result` is the label for outcome prediction. | |
| | `wrestlers.parquet` | 12,814 | Ring name, real name, gender, debut date, status. | |
| | `wrestler_aliases.parquet` | 13,230 | Alternate ring names with active-period bounds. | |
| | `events.parquet` | 35,064 | Event name, date, venue, city, country, event type. | |
| | `promotions.parquet` | 6 | WWE, AEW, WCW, ECW, NXT, TNA with founding / defunct dates. | |
| | `titles.parquet` | 121 | Championship belts per promotion. | |
| | `title_reigns.parquet` | 1,753 | Reign start/end + number of defenses. | |
| | `alignment_turns.parquet` | 631 | Face / heel / tweener transitions per wrestler. | |
| | `manifest.json` | — | Export manifest: row counts, columns, UTC timestamp. | |
|
|
| ## Schema (join keys) |
|
|
| ``` |
| promotions.id ─┬─< wrestlers.primary_promotion_id |
| ├─< events.promotion_id |
| ├─< titles.promotion_id |
| └─< wrestler_aliases.promotion_id |
| |
| wrestlers.id ──┬─< match_participants.wrestler_id |
| ├─< wrestler_aliases.wrestler_id |
| ├─< title_reigns.wrestler_id |
| └─< alignment_turns.wrestler_id |
| |
| events.id ─────┬─< matches.event_id |
| └─< alignment_turns.event_id (nullable) |
| |
| matches.id ────── match_participants.match_id |
| |
| titles.id ─────── title_reigns.title_id |
| ``` |
|
|
| ## Starter queries |
|
|
| ```python |
| import pandas as pd |
| |
| matches = pd.read_parquet("matches.parquet") |
| participants = pd.read_parquet("match_participants.parquet") |
| wrestlers = pd.read_parquet("wrestlers.parquet") |
| |
| # Every match The Rock has wrestled, with opponents |
| rock_id = wrestlers.query("ring_name == 'The Rock'")["id"].iloc[0] |
| rock_matches = participants[participants["wrestler_id"] == rock_id] |
| ``` |
|
|
| ```sql |
| -- If you load these into DuckDB: |
| SELECT w.ring_name, COUNT(*) AS wins |
| FROM match_participants mp |
| JOIN wrestlers w ON w.id = mp.wrestler_id |
| WHERE mp.result = 'win' |
| GROUP BY 1 |
| ORDER BY 2 DESC |
| LIMIT 20; |
| ``` |
|
|
| ## Provenance |
|
|
| - **Cagematch.net** (public HTML scrape, non-commercial use): the bulk of |
| match-level data for 1990-present. |
| - **alexdiresta/all-wwe-and-wwf-matches** Kaggle dataset (profightdb dump): |
| cross-validation + pre-1990 coverage. |
| - **Normalization + dedup**: entity resolution on wrestler names, |
| match-type classification into a fixed ENUM, and natural-key deduplication |
| to collapse records across sources. |
|
|
| The ETL code and scraper are open source at |
| [tedrubin80/wrastlingfirst](https://github.com/tedrubin80/wrastlingfirst). |
|
|
| ## Caveats |
|
|
| - **Kayfabe, not athletics.** Pro wrestling is scripted. A `result` field |
| records *who was booked to win*, not who would win an athletic contest. |
| - **Temporal coverage is uneven.** 2000-present is well-covered; 1980s are |
| thinner, especially for regional/territory promotions. |
| - **Gender imbalance.** Women's division sample size is smaller — expect |
| wider confidence intervals for any women's-division model. |
| - **Ratings are crowd-sourced** (Cagematch user ratings). They're a proxy |
| for match quality as perceived by Internet wrestling fans — biased toward |
| work-rate and away from entertainment/story. |
|
|
| ## License |
|
|
| Released under **CC0 1.0** (public domain dedication). Attribution is |
| appreciated but not required. Note that the underlying sources |
| (Cagematch.net, profightdb) have their own terms; this archive is a |
| derivative work made available for research and entertainment. |
|
|
| ## Citation |
|
|
| ```bibtex |
| @dataset{ringside_analytics_2026, |
| author = {Rubin, Theodore}, |
| title = {Ringside Analytics: Pro Wrestling Match Archive (1980--present)}, |
| year = {2026}, |
| url = {https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/theodorerubin/ringside-wrestling-archive} |
| } |
| ``` |
|
|
