wXw 16 Carat Gold 2018

wXw 16 Carat Gold is Europe's biggest wrestling tournament. Over three days (or four, by now) Oberhausen, Germany is turning into the wrestling capital of the continent with well over 1,000 fans travelling there and tons of media outlets focussing on those days. Last year #wXw16Carat has been trending for about 48 hours both in Germany and in the UK as one of the top 5 trends of the day nationwide.

What is there to do?

THURSDAY
There's 'Inner Circle'. It's an event held at the wXw Wrestling Academy in Essen, about a 15 minute train ride from Oberhausen. It's an exclusive event with a maximum of 120 fans. There is very little production and a very pure, intimate wrestling experience.

FRIDAY
The opening night of 16 Carat starts at 8pm in the evening. Doors open at 6pm with an official warm-up show starting at 7pm.
Afterwards you might want to have a drink, join us at midnight at Hotel Haus Union for our exclusive wXw Giftschrank event or you might want to head to bed early because Saturday there are events to go to for well over 15 hours back to back.

SATURDAY
We start around noon with AMBITION. AMBITION is a shoot-style wrestling brand, think Battlarts, UWF-I and such. There are a couple of matches on YouTube to check out whether this is your cup of tea. One of those matches is Aleister Black vs. Daniel Bryan.
Afterwards you can head over next door to the Kulttempel for #WrestlingDeutschland. It's an offer show where seven German promotions introduce themselves with one match each.
Following this it's the second night of 16 Carat Gold, quarter final matches and traditionally the biggest Unified title match of the year.
After that there's the official after show party at Turbinenhalle which is usually utter madness.

SUNDAY
You should get out of bed for the fan expo at noon. Up until 2017 this has been a couple of younger wrestlers in matches, meet and greets, photo op's, q&s sessions. 2018 it is also going to be wXw Shotgun tapings which means more high profile matches and names wrestling there.
After that it's the final day of 16 Carat Gold with semi finals and finals. Event ends before 9pm.

How do I get there?

Really easy. Fly into Dusseldorf, preferably DUS (International) rather than NRN (Weeze). From there it's a 20 minute train ride to Oberhausen. Oberhausen does have plenty of hotels and a lot of them are walking distance to the venue. As a ton of fans come to 16 Carat every year and book their hotels early, don't be last minute for that.

Which tickets do I need to get now?

With a couple of tickets you need to act now. I am writing this on a Friday and right now we have 7 tickets left for Inner Circle and 25 for the After Show Party. This is after we have released a second batch of tickets, both events have been sold out. It is very safe to say that a lot of fans won't be able to attend those events since they will have waited too long. Act quickly for those.

Also, right now well over 50% of all 16 Carat tickets have been sold out. As last year's events had no more tickets left at the door and presales this year have been a lot stronger, you might want not to wait too long here as well. Seats & VIP tickets have been gone for months, standing room is still available.

The Kulttempel for #WrestlingDeutschland has a capacity of only 300, so go figure.