Wrestling Ring Lights

[Mike85]

Hoping some kind person could help with a total lighting novice with a bit of advice. We run a small touring Wrestling show and are looking to add some very basic lighting to our presentation. The atmosphere with lights when we tour theatre style venues is much better than our set up in town halls and sports centres. Our smaller events attract around 200 people so we can’t invest a great amount, particularly at the moment due to lack of income due to the pandemic.

 

We are going to set up high T-Bar stands pointing down from each corner of the ring.

 

Please don’t think WWE when recommending a set up – we need something simple and basic. Not to be TV quality but to add a little more to our live experience. Although being able to film the events without the lighting making that impossible with glare is still a concern (perhaps I need advice on our camera lenses too!)

 

Working on the assumption that we can get lighting that connects to a central controller (DMX ???) I’m looking to find out –

 

What type of lights we should buy, and how many would be needed pointing down from each corner to cover our 15 foot sq ring?

 

I’m also looking to establish if we could go a little fancier by being able to program them to change colour etc for wrestler entrances or if this would mean much more expensive light or an additional set as well as the white ones.

 

Any advice would be massively appreciated.

 

Thank you!

 

 

[Junior8]

The equipment you want is readily available but if I've found the right website and your sports centre and town hall set up is in the round in the normal ambient lighting as shown on the youtube channel to be honest I wouldn't bother. Without the infrastructure you find in a theatre type venue and especially a decent blackout you'll be adding a lot of extra get in work and I suspect, given the average council venue, hassle in RA terms for very little gain as far as the product goes. Edited March 20, 2021 by Junior8

[Mike85]

Thanks for your reply. For RA we had planned on putting a security railing around each of the 4 stands.

 

We do appreciate that there will be extra work involved but are effectively looking for an "inbetween" stage before investing in a more quality set up a few years down the line. Any advise on the most basic of lights we could use would be greatly appreciated. Someone suggested using regular flood lights, whilst I could imagine its the cheapest solution I think the glare off them for the audience and on any camera / pictures would be horrible. I've read that LED's would be the way to go, but then also read that they wouldn't be strong enough unless they where super expensive ones... I am just super confused as there seems to be hundreds of different styles of lights to choose from.

 

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

 

Mike

 

 

The equipment you want is readily available but if I've found the right website and your sports centre and town hall set up is in the round in the normal ambient lighting as shown on the youtube channel to be honest I wouldn't bother. Without the infrastructure you find in a theatre type venue and especially a decent blackout you'll be adding a lot of extra get in work and I suspect, given the average council venue, hassle in RA terms for very little gain as far as the product goes.

[Junior8]

Right Let's get down to basics of what you are asking. The lighting sources are only one consideration far more important is how you rig them. Assuming the mat is 1.06m off the ground and the average wrestler is around 1.8m then their eyes will be very nearly at the same height as any lighting source hanging off a 3.8 m lift stand (at its maximum) as will anybody in an audience sitting at the top of raked bleacher seating. To avoid dazzling contestants and light them and the ring from above that height you'll need something uber stable like a 5/6m Doughty Zenith stand which if memory serves me right come in at over £1100 a pop. Call it the best part of £5000 for the ironmongery. You simply can't do this sort of job properly on the cheap. Edited March 20, 2021 by Junior8

[J Pearce]

The classic wrestling and boxing setup is as many PARs as you can hang down each side of the ring.

 

If you’re stuck with stands then the 4 corners is obviously preferable, without going to a ground support truss.

 

Some of the LED PARs are very bright now, look for RGBW to get a good white as well as colours for intros. Mixing white with RGB will look awful.

Keep an eye on beam angle, you’ll want fairly wide beams and a lot of the cheaper units are quite narrow.

 

An alternative thought - split lighting the ring from the visual effects, and use some LED Bars/totem type things for the visual eye candy for the intros (think led pixel tape’s big brother), and then either rely on the venue to light the ring or use some big white floods.

[Jivemaster]

First I'd look at the sport's ruling body and it's suggestions and requirements. (Semi)pro fighters will want the right lights.

 

Second I'd want the lights away from the ring, that's where the action is and stands get in the way, may become weapons for the crowd or may become props for the fighters.

 

I'd suggest considering some stands at the walls pointing narrow spot beams down into the ring, but in a fight environment these must be totally stable and totally un-climbable. The lights would probably be LED follow spots.

 

 

However you get to the point where touring your own full pro light rig with different spot lit entrances for each fighter costs much more than a fair share of the door take.

 

You don't give your location, Battersea Arts Centre certainly used to have a Boxing ring lighting truss square in the roof, maybe looking out venues with the right fittings already would help with rigging and.

[kerry davies]

We have had this type of question before; boxing, wrestling, MMA even cage fighting and the answer always, always comes down to "do it full-on professional or don't bother". The rigging is 99% of the problem in that you need lights directly over the ring or you blind your audience if not the fighters. This means that normal venue overhead lighting is better than stands, however tall. Stands and especially tall ones introduce H&S plus security in that fight fans tend to like fights and have been known to do a bit themselves when excited.

 

The lanterns themselves are a tiny part of the issue so worrying about which ones or how to control them before you solve suspension is putting the cart before the horse.

[sandall]

Flood lights are the answer, but the light-spread needs to be controllable. I use 500W security-type floods, fitted with 4-leaf barn-doors, for orchestras & choirs & for general outdoor lighting, & they work pretty well. Mounted high enough they give a very wide spread, & the barn-doors keep most of the spill out of audience eyes (& camera lenses). The linear bulb is effectively a point-source in the vertical plane, so it is very easy to control the vertical spread (there are various DIY alternatives to proper barn-doors, but probably not suitable for quick set-ups). LED floods using a bank of small LEDs won't work, because there is no easy way to control the beam - there may be professional LED floods that would do the job, but they will not be cheap. You could use theatre-type spotlights, but they are heavier & more expensive, & really need a proper "lighting-person" to rig them.

 

You could just run your lights off the nearest 13A socket, or you could connect them to a simple 2.5kW portable dimmer, which allows fading up & down. If you want to add some colour rig a few cheap LED PARs as eye-candy.

 

For the height you need (a minimum of 15') I would avoid "budget" stands, & I would also recommend sand-bagging the bases - it can't totally prevent a stand being pushed over, but does make it less likely.

 

I see that other suggestions have come in while I was typing this - I'll stick to what I know. Ultimately it will be the venues' rules that dictate what you are able to do, but I think Kerry says it all.

Edited March 20, 2021 by sandall

[sunray]

Plus one for Kerry.

Flood lights are the answer, but the light-spread needs to be controllable. I use 500W security-type floods, fitted with 4-leaf barn-doors, for orchestras & choirs & for general outdoor lighting, & they work pretty well. Mounted high enough they give a very wide spread, & the barn-doors keep most of the spill out of audience eyes (& camera lenses). The linear bulb is effectively a point-source in the vertical plane, so it is very easy to control the vertical spread (there are various DIY alternatives to proper barn-doors, but probably not suitable for quick set-ups). LED floods using a bank of small LEDs won't work, because there is no easy way to control the beam - there may be professional LED floods that would do the job, but they will not be cheap. You could use theatre-type spotlights, but they are heavier & more expensive, & really need a proper "lighting-person" to rig them.

 

You could just run your lights off the nearest 13A socket, or you could connect them to a simple 2.5kW portable dimmer, which allows fading up & down. If you want to add some colour rig a few cheap LED PARs as eye-candy.

 

For the height you need (a minimum of 15') I would avoid "budget" stands, & I would also recommend sand-bagging the bases - it can't totally prevent a stand being pushed over, but does make it less likely.

 

I see that other suggestions have come in while I was typing this - I'll stick to what I know. Ultimately it will be the venues' rules that dictate what you are able to do, but I think Kerry says it all.

Many years ago [Edit: Crikey just realised it was 1973!!] I did casual work in a theatre and the ringwould be set-up in front of the stage with audience on the stage too, Wed point 2 FOH 263's on front of balcony to the ring from each side.

It was pants, first it was pointing almost directly into stage publics eyes and ditto for the wrestlers. A chat with the promoters confirmed they prefer overhead flood. Next time I rigged a 1KW flood [normally used for uplighting the facade of the theatre] in addition, using a rope through a ventilation hole in the ceiling. The spread was far too wide and lit the audience and for the next show we got the chippy to build a 'tube' around it, maybe 3ft sq x 4ft tall. After that we got a chain and installed a hook,socket and dedicated extension lead in the 'loft' space, from the top we'd drop chain and cable down to floor level, rig light and box and lift to appropriate height.

Last time I went to a show there I noticed the box was hanging up at ceiling level so I imagine still in use.

 

This doesn't solve OP question but memory lane never hurts.

 

[Jupton24]

I have to agree with all the other members about the H&S side of things. It depends on where you are going to put the stands. If you choose to go right on the corners of the ring I've used these before Floods I have had absolutely no problem with these before. Though like the other members have said it is about getting the structure sorted first before you look at lighting and controlling them.

[Junior8]

A chat with the promoters confirmed they prefer overhead flood. Next time I rigged a 1KW flood [normally used for uplighting the facade of the theatre] in addition, using a rope through a ventilation hole in the ceiling. The spread was far too wide and lit the audience and for the next show we got the chippy to build a 'tube' around it, maybe 3ft sq x 4ft tall. After that we got a chain and installed a hook,socket and dedicated extension lead in the 'loft' space, from the top we'd drop chain and cable down to floor level, rig light and box and lift to appropriate height.

Last time I went to a show there I noticed the box was hanging up at ceiling level so I imagine still in use.

 

This doesn't solve OP question but memory lane never hurts.

 

Many years ago Strand used to specify a rig of acting area floods or maybe Patt 35 Arena Floods pointing straight downwards over the ring for both Boxing & Wrestling!

[Dave m]

Not much help for the OP but when I worked in a place that hosted wrestling. (Big Daddy and co)- the ring sat on car tyres for a bit of bounce.That probably excludes using the ring structure as lighting support or it will flop around like a pair of 70's flares.

From memory we used to hang a couple of colortan 5k's on trapezes but obviously that involved a grid.

Possibly some kind of truss that sits on legs on the floor might work but you're going to need a budget and bigger van.

[paulears]

You can get some quite tall (3m) wind up stands from our German friends for less than £300 now with quite decent head load too.

[Mike85]

The classic wrestling and boxing setup is as many PARs as you can hang down each side of the ring.

 

If you're stuck with stands then the 4 corners is obviously preferable, without going to a ground support truss.

 

Some of the LED PARs are very bright now, look for RGBW to get a good white as well as colours for intros. Mixing white with RGB will look awful.

Keep an eye on beam angle, you'll want fairly wide beams and a lot of the cheaper units are quite narrow.

 

An alternative thought - split lighting the ring from the visual effects, and use some LED Bars/totem type things for the visual eye candy for the intros (think led pixel tape's big brother), and then either rely on the venue to light the ring or use some big white floods.

 

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply.

 

 

Am I correct in saying the LED PARs (noted RGBW would be the desired spec, thank you) would be light that we would be able to programme for a variety of effects as well as lighting the ring? If you have a moment could you please advise what additional specs I would be looking for if we went this route? e.g. is there a wattage I should be looking for. How many would I require on each corner pointing at the ring? What measurement is considered a wide beam?

 

 

If we went the "big white flood" route - what type of spec would I look for in this? I am assuming for the purpose I'm looking at we wouldn't be buying the same type as a building site. Also would these be LED floods?

 

 

Sorry for all the questions.... I’m doing this research from scratch to try and find a workable solution. Thank you.

 

 

 

 

Flood lights are the answer, but the light-spread needs to be controllable. I use 500W security-type floods, fitted with 4-leaf barn-doors, for orchestras & choirs & for general outdoor lighting, & they work pretty well. Mounted high enough they give a very wide spread, & the barn-doors keep most of the spill out of audience eyes (& camera lenses). The linear bulb is effectively a point-source in the vertical plane, so it is very easy to control the vertical spread (there are various DIY alternatives to proper barn-doors, but probably not suitable for quick set-ups). LED floods using a bank of small LEDs won't work, because there is no easy way to control the beam - there may be professional LED floods that would do the job, but they will not be cheap. You could use theatre-type spotlights, but they are heavier & more expensive, & really need a proper "lighting-person" to rig them.

 

You could just run your lights off the nearest 13A socket, or you could connect them to a simple 2.5kW portable dimmer, which allows fading up & down. If you want to add some colour rig a few cheap LED PARs as eye-candy.

 

For the height you need (a minimum of 15') I would avoid "budget" stands, & I would also recommend sand-bagging the bases - it can't totally prevent a stand being pushed over, but does make it less likely.

 

I see that other suggestions have come in while I was typing this - I'll stick to what I know. Ultimately it will be the venues' rules that dictate what you are able to do, but I think Kerry says it all.

Thank you for your reply.

 

If we go the route of flood lights the specs you mentioned with barn doors etc will be very handy to note. Sorry this is probably a silly question, I see you saying that the LED floods wouldn't work.... can I confirm what the correct term for the non LED flood lights would be? I'd already thought of the sandbags so its good to know I'm on the right lines for safety there (we are going to baricade the stands as well.

 

Thanks again!

 

 

I have to agree with all the other members about the H&S side of things. It depends on where you are going to put the stands. If you choose to go right on the corners of the ring I've used these before Floods I have had absolutely no problem with these before. Though like the other members have said it is about getting the structure sorted first before you look at lighting and controlling them.

 

Thank you. It's helping seeing all the different suggestions and noting the specs.

 

[sandall]

If we go the route of flood lights the specs you mentioned with barn doors etc will be very handy to note. Sorry this is probably a silly question, I see you saying that the LED floods wouldn't work....

They may exist, but I am not aware of any LED floods which can give you an adjustable hard-edged pool of light without some form of mechanical beam-shaping. Basically you are looking for Theatre floodlights. Because I needed mine to be weatherproof I couldn't use off-the-shelf theatre floods, so they are modified 500W halogen security floodlights, but if you google "Theatre-Studio-Lighting-Set-of-4-units-Professional-IADI-FILL-MK-2-1000w" a set of 4 similar ones should appear on a well-known auction site.