Meet Spenser Hunt

We were lucky to catch up with Spenser Hunt recently and have shared our conversation below.

Spenser, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.

In a lot of ways, the 31-year-old version of myself is who the 12-year-old version of myself would have wanted to be. There are plenty of things the current version of myself hasn’t accomplished or that look differently than my younger version would’ve thought of course, but if someone would’ve told me at that age that I would be making a living hosting game shows, running trivia nights and spending my weekends working in professional wrestling, I think I would’ve been thrilled about what the future would have in store for me.

As a kid, I was always enthralled with games. It felt like one of the few things that could bring people together with the singular goal of spending time and having fun together. My family could attest that I was frequently trying to rope them into playing games at holiday gatherings, whether it was the newest addition to my board game collection or a board game adaptation of one of my favorite game shows.

Somewhere near the end of high school and throughout college, I lost the confidence in who I believed I was. I started playing my life safely. I began to make the easy choices and stick with job security and change my major in college to become a teacher. I feared failure and began going down a path that put passion in the background and based the big decisions in my life on what I thought I “should” do and what was expected and easy. Eventually, I became a teacher. I loved being a teacher for the ability to connect with students and give them a space to think for themselves. But I knew teaching was never the end game. It just took the perfect mix of events and people in my life that led me back to my purpose.

During the pandemic, I began building a game show from scratch as somewhat of a passion project and that led to the formation of my company Suspense Games, alongside my cousin and a tremendous family friend. In addition to that, I began meeting new friends in my life that were reminding me of the joy that can come from a life that isn’t played by making the safe choice all the time. Slowly but surely, I made the decision the pursue the passions in my life. To make the choices that are difficult and ultimately, to bet on myself.

It wasn’t until I decided to bet on myself that I realized what my purpose truly was.

I think a misconception about why I do what I do might be that I enjoy the spotlight, or I enjoy being in front of a crowd. The reality is, as I began to learn when I was younger, creating spaces and leading events to bring people together was the feeling I was truly chasing. There are few things stronger than human connection and shared emotion that people feel when they are feeling the excitement of participating themselves or rooting for others to play and win one of their favorite games. The shared connection of an audience in a theatre who are laughing together or crying together over a well-told story on stage. The chills an audience feels when they are at a wrestling event rooting for their favorite wrestler who is trying to gain that championship win over the evil villain they’ve been battling against for so long.

All I ever want to do is provide a space for friends and families to come together and enjoy themselves. Escape from the mundane and jump into the excitement of life.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

I make my living as co-owner, creator and host of Suspense Games, a live trivia and game show company in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. During the week, we host trivia nights at restaurants throughout the city and surrounding areas. We also host private events, whether for families or corporations, throughout the week and on the weekends where we provide Suspense the Game Show. This is our live game show experience that we created as an event to bring the excitement of a real tv game show that was adaptable for small family occasions in a living room, or for conventions of hundreds of people or more to play.

We offer three unique live game show experiences including: Suspense the Game Show, Suspense the Quiz Show and Suspense Surveys Live! Suspense the Quiz Show is our twist on Jeopardy! We want a game that feels like one of the most iconic tv game shows in our lifetimes, but also has a real Suspense feel in that the trivia is doable, and teams feel like they have a chance to win throughout the entirety of the game. Suspense Surveys Live is our twist on Family Feud! We survey our own trivia players here in Baton Rouge, and we have teams compete with each other for a chance to get on stage to play the game, as well as against each other for a chance to win prizes and glory as champions of the game. Finally, Suspense the Game Show is a game of our own creation that serves as a great hybrid between our two other games. Three teams answer list-style trivia questions to rack up points and earn their way to our bonus round, “Super Suspense” for a chance at $1,000 cash. What’s a game show without prizes, right?

We pride ourselves on offering authentic, exciting productions that get friends, families or coworkers working together and having fun as they make memories! Throughout our four years, we’ve been able to host events for several conventions and now we have hosted multiple live events in community theatre spaces. These ticketed events allow us to give away prizes throughout the event and through our mini-game “Suspense Connect,” we can give every person in attendance a chance to play on their phones to earn their way onto the stage to play our main game show.

In addition to Suspense Games, I am lucky enough to work in the wild world of professional wrestling. I have been grateful to work as ring announcer for multiple promotions in 2024. Being able to set the stage for big time matches and give the talented performers some shine in making them sound as good as possible is not just a lot of fun, but also a job I’ve felt lucky to have because the hard work the men and women do in that business deserves to be highlighted as strong as possible.

My home promotion is Pro Wrestling 225. I have been on the production team for three years now alongside some of my favorite people in the world, including my commentary partner Landon Corbin. Over the last two years, we have produced a weekly YouTube wrestling show that showcases the action from our live events called Pro Wrestling 225 Unleashed. With episodes releasing each and every Friday night, we have grown our subscriber and view count over the past two years and have been able to shine a light on the incredible stories being told by the terrific athletes we get the pleasure of working with in PW225. We want to help grow the brand as much as we can by providing additional context to the action of the live events by adding additional promo work, interviews and commentary that can only be seen on PW225 Unleashed. Unleashed can also be seen weekly on local television here in Baton Rouge thanks to our partnership with Maddgame Entertainment. PW225 is no doubt a passion project, but one that is deeply fulfilling as we try to do our small part to shine a light on the incredible performers, and now friends, that sacrifice so much time and put in so much hard work to entertain Louisiana wrestling fans.

We have an exciting future ahead with our live events at Suspense Games, so please following along @suspensegames on Facebook and Instagram and join in on the fun! Also, subscribe to PW225 Unleashed on YouTube and get ready for a 2025 full of incredible new events!

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Above all, you need support to be able to follow your dreams. Betting on yourself and being confident in your abilities is great, but to really achieve any major big picture goals, you can’t possible do it all on your own. Finding friends and family that support you in your endeavors and cheer you on and continue to have faith in you is truly what helps keep the light on the path moving forward.

Additionally, we live in the age of social media. If you are going to get into any form of entertainment or business ownership of any kind, there is NEVER enough you can learn about marketing, promotion and social media. It is crucial to not only be able to spread the word of what you’re working on, but to also be able to connect authentically with your audience. In a world that is easy to fake sincerity, honesty shines through and people will connect to the passion you have for your art/work.

Finally, I couldn’t have gotten even to the point where I am without trust. Trust in myself. Trust in those working around me. Trust in my product and my abilities. Trust in being able to make choices that aren’t the easy ones. Choices that ensure that you have a lot of work ahead of you. Trusting in yourself that working that hard is worth it for what you’re passionate about.

Okay, so before we go we always love to ask if you are looking for folks to partner or collaborate with?

Creatives should always be looking for collaborators and should always be looking for ways to grow and improve! We are absolutely looking for business-minded folks to help with Suspense Games. We are focusing on diversifying what we offer while being able to grow financially to provide stability for our team to be able to spend as much time as they want on Suspense Games. Additionally, we are running more and more live events in bigger and bigger spaces and would love feedback and input on how to make those types of events work in efficient ways and ways that continue to overdeliver to our clients on the experience. Please reach out through our social media @suspensegames or through our website www.suspenseevents.com.

In terms of pro wrestling, it is such a deeply creative space. We can’t do what we do without collaborating each and every day. There are plenty of passionate people in wrestling, but the magic happens when you find selfless people who want to help carrying the group as a whole forward. Anyone that might be interested in sharing some production tips, or anything really please feel free to reach out to our team through email at lastmatchstanding@gmail.com.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.suspenseevents.com
• Instagram: @suspensegames
• Facebook: Spenser Hunt for personal/Suspense Games for business
• Twitter: @suspensegames
• Youtube: @pw225unleashed