Who goes to WWE WrestleMania AXXESS?

So what kind of people make the trek every year? I talked to some of them during a few AXXESS sessions at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center this past weekend.

This is Phoebe. This is her first WrestleMania and Fan AXXESS. She and her father, Chad, made the trek up from the Los Angeles area. Phoebe is 14 years old and discovered wrestling almost three years ago, when she was just flipping through channels. She soon found out that her father was himself a lapsed wrestling fan, having stopped watching right before Phoebe was born. After discovering they had wrestling fandom in common, it became something for the two to bond over. They like “about 90 percent” of the same wrestlers, but there are good-natured conflicts every now and then. Chad likes Rusev and dislikes Daniel Bryan. She doesn’t like Bray Wyatt or Brock Lesnar, but they think it’s good to disagree. They make up for it by both being big Lakers and Dodgers fans.

When I talked to Phoebe between AXXESS sessions, she had already met and gotten autographs on her Divas replica title belt from Charlotte, Cameron, the Bella Twins and more.

AXXESS can be an autograph hound’s dream, or their nightmare, depending on how anxious they are. Unlike most conventions, where you pay for admittance and then pay each celebrity or notable for a photo opportunity or autograph, the (approximately) $45 ticket for an AXXESS session features 10 stations, with one-to-three Superstars at each, offering autographs and photos, completely free. Only two caveats: you must be willing to wait in lines that can be extremely long (like the one pictured above, for Ron Simmons) and you must be aware that there is a talent changeover halfway through each session’s four-hour duration. As such, it is possible to wait in a line for, say, AJ Lee and instead wind up near the front of the line for Kane, despite every star and handler working very hard to accommodate as much of the line as possible while still providing an ideal fan experience.

Make no mistake, each WWE Superstar is a world-class expert in doing everything they can to make every fan feel special and have a good time. Granted, most AXXESS attendees are there to meet wrestlers, so it doesn’t take much to send them away happy. But sitting back and watching wrestlers interact with fans is one of my favorite parts of WrestleMania every year.

Autograph seekers come in many forms, from fans who carry entire plastic file cabinets with them that house individual 8x10s of any wrestler they may happen to encounter, to fans who own the WWE Encyclopedia coffee table book and are working over a number of years to get as many autographs next to wrestlers’ profiles as possible. I also saw at least one person who made their OWN scrapbook of WWE photos and memories and got wrestlers to sign on their own personal handcrafted page.

Regardless of their method of attack, all of the autograph seekers, given the correct amount of patience and/or comfortable shoes, will walk away with at least a few signatures per session.

(Of course, if you’re determined to meet one special headliner, there are “VIP” signing and photo sessions that you can buy for an additional fee. These sessions are for the main event superstars ... and are, in fact, the only way you can meet stars like John Cena, Daniel Bryan, Roman Reigns, Bray Wyatt, Randy Orton, Sting, Ric Flair or Triple H at AXXESS. Still no Brock Lesnar, though. There’s no telling WHAT you have to do to get a picture with THAT guy.)

This year’s costume of choice was “Macho Man” Randy Savage. Fitting, given his induction into the WWE Hall of Fame on Saturday. Another extremely popular costume at AXXESS for the second straight year was Bray Wyatt, which is fun and also simple to pull off if you own a Hawaiian shirt and a beard and are willing to wear a hat for a short length of time.

These three friends dressed up as The Shield, now disbanded but forever in the hearts of wrestling fans. Denny on the left is from New York City, while Jordan and Amy are from Delaware. They go to AXXESS and WrestleMania every year and do different cosplays every time. Last year, for example, Jordan was Fandango, while Denny and Amy were CM Punk and AJ Lee, respectively.

Denny and Jordan have been wrestling fans pretty much all their lives, while Amy got into it about three or four years ago. As she tells it, “My friend was watching it. I saw these dudes with big yellow ‘N’s on their shirts [the Nexus] and I was like, ‘Who is this?’ Ever since then, I could not stop watching, somehow.” The trio says they tend to meet a lot more wrestlers outside of the convention, just walking around. They just like to hang out and have fun doing cosplay, although Amy was hoping to meet Sami Zayn.

One thing that may surprise non-wrestling fans is the prevalence of happy wrestling-fan couples strolling the carpet at AXXESS, hand-in-hand and often in matching shirts. Matt and Alicia, one of these happy wrestling-fan couples, came to AXXESS from California’s central valley, near Modesto. I ran into them while they were walking around the convention, Alicia sipping from a souvenir WrestleMania 31 cup and wearing an Ultimate Warrior shirt, holding hands with Matt, wearing a black shirt that read, simply, “JOBBER,” in white block lettering. Alicia admitted that people are often taken aback when she tells them she’s a pro wrestling fan. “Very much so,” in fact. Randy Orton is Alicia’s current favorite wrestler, but she grew up watching -- and loving -- Hulk Hogan and, of course, the Ultimate Warrior. This is Alicia’s first WrestleMania, Matt’s second.

Much like the Shield cosplayers, Matt and Alicia were not at all concerned with waiting in lines or trying to meet wrestlers. They were having a great time just wandering the hall, taking it all in, being immersed in the sights and sounds of all the WrestleMania ballyhoo.

Pro wrestling fans often get a bad rap, or receive the stigma of being a weirdo because they like serialized fighting that may have more in common with Days of Our Lives than UFC. The truth is, while -- as in the rest of sports, or video game culture, or comic books, or really anything at all -- there are people who may cause a double-take from certain “normies,” wrestling fans are just people who found something they like. And some of the people at AXXESS may not consider themselves “wrestling fans” at all, they’re just people who happen to enjoy pro wrestling.

I can’t tell you how many times over the course of my two days at AXXESS I found myself engaged in pleasant and wonderful conversations with people around me, whether they were from California, Florida, the east coast, London, Canada or Germany. We shared stories and opinions and jokes and anecdotes, in part because we spoke a common language of pro wrestling, but mostly because we were all just happy to be there.

It’s pretty hard to have a bad time at AXXESS, which is ultimately the beauty of the thing. It’s a convention for everybody. Which is good, because that’s exactly who shows up.