by Carrie Dunn
Baker found himself in a power struggle for his own company at the end of the 1990s as some of his top talent started to yearn for television exposure and doubted that Hammerlock would ever deliver it. This inevitably resulted in a schism, with the bigger names, such as Shane and Doug Williams, opting to leave Hammerlock and set up their own promotion and try to do things their own way.
“Half of the locker room went one way and formed the FWA, thinking they could get TV on their own and do it slightly different, and they’d want to wrestle on other shows,” says Dean Champion.
Williams explains: “I was the cause of everyone leaving. I was the first person to do it, I think. I didn’t expect anyone else to do it, to be honest with you. I don’t know if scared is the right word, but I don’t think anyone really trusted anyone else. We were all friends, but we didn’t really know who was saying what, so you kept your ideas, your plans to yourself.
“I knew that in order to progress, I had to get out and work with people I wasn’t comfortable with working with. That was basically why I left. The only reason I stayed as long as I did, five years, was that I was working elsewhere anyway. It was trying to break out of that bubble you’re in when you’re there. I left, and then shortly after, everyone realised that if Andre’s main guy at the time can leave, then we can as well. They left en masse after that.”
“When we fell out, I basically said to him: ‘Look, I’ll still work for you, for free, everywhere I go I’ll wear a Hammerlock t-shirt. You can’t stop me, it’s been five years, I’m wrestling for you for free, I’m paying to train, and I’m not allowed to wrestle anywhere else, it doesn’t work, it can’t work,’” recalls Alex Shane.
“Everything we’re doing is part of history, and one day someone will make something of British wrestling. There needs to be the truth out there so that we don’t make the same mistakes again. There are companies now where you can’t wrestle for anyone else and you can’t do this and you can’t do that. Well, don’t you learn from history?”
He clearly remembers how angry Baker was when Williams left Hammerlock. “I had seen how much Doug had done for Andre, and we were at a service station after a show and Andre did his old thing of burying [criticising] the guy that had left, but this time I could not not say anything – and my card was marked.
“In front of everyone I said: ‘Andre, you can’t say that. You said he was disloyal and never committed to the cause. I’ve seen him do this for years and years and years: how can you say that he’s not? Do you think that maybe he’s paid you every week to learn to wrestle? At what point does the money that he’s paid you become enough that he can cut these chains that he never asked to be placed in, and go and pursue the dream that he first came to you with, which was learning how to wrestle? You should be happy.’
“I knew in that instant, it doesn’t matter what anyone does for him, that will be what we get as loyalty. He gave us a platform and we’re thankful for that, it’s why we did all that stuff for free. When I saw him do it with Doug, that’s when I knew.
“But none of the others wanted to leave, and then I told a load of them: ‘Look, I’m going, do you want to go?’ Jonny Storm was going to quit wrestling. But nobody did want to say anything. He [Andre] painted such a bad picture of the others, and then we got that heat as well. We left Hammerlock and then we became the biggest enemy of all the other old schoolers – they hated him, they didn’t hate us, but we were his boys, so we’d been cut off from him, and were getting beaten up by them.”
Ironically, it was at this time that Baker was about to put pen to paper and sign the contract for Hammerlock’s talent to appear on ITV’s Transatlantic Wrestling Challenge, where his British wrestlers would take on some of the best from overseas.
“When TV production came to Andre, he was quite willing to let them come backstage,” says Dean Champion. “The others were all like ‘you sit out the front, you watch the show, you want to do any filming you come and run it through me’, whereas Andre was like: ‘You want to film anyone, this is the business, this is how it is.’”
Yet with some of Hammerlock’s leading names gone, the series, like the house shows, featured some more junior talent, because Baker was still so adamant that he would only ever use the wrestlers who were loyal to him. Williams maintains that the exodus of the senior talent was a good thing for Hammerlock because the younger wrestlers finally got a chance to headline. “It allowed the next wave of guys to step up, guys like John Moss, Zack Sabre, Jon Ryan, they took the places that we vacated,” he says.
But that also meant that these younger wrestlers didn’t have the same kind of experience as their former colleagues – and it showed, particularly on the television screen.
“When Andre got TV, he didn’t call back the good people or bring in any good people – other people,” says Shane. “Kat [Waters, then known as Nikita] had been wrestling for two weeks and she was on national TV. It got ruined. That could have been it. Yeah, they [the wrestlers used on the programme] were going to be really good but they just weren’t at that point.”
“When TWC went out it wasn’t the best talent,” admits Champion. “A lot of the guys on there were all very green, including myself, to be thrown into that spotlight. I think that’s the only thing that held TWC back, the British talent. We had Gary Steele, who was great, Johnny Moss…but even Johnny Moss was only a year into his wrestling when he was thrown onto the TV, and Jon Ryan – we were very green. Going on with these Americans who’d been working for the NWA in America, they kind of knew how TV worked and where the cameras were and stuff, they were used to working in front of a live audience and a camera. That was the biggest regret with TWC – the split had come just at the wrong time.”
Moss agrees totally. “It was tremendous fun at the time,” he recalls. “I had only been in the business a couple of years, and here I was spending five nights in the five-star Hilton going to a TV studio every day to do what I loved to do. The experience was so rewarding and I learned so much in regards to working a TV match and meeting time cues.
“The one problem with the show, though, that I think most people will agree with, is that a lot of us were very green at the time and I think it hurt the product. Also having non-wrestling people editing the show wasn’t good either – they thought it was more beneficial to show you tripping up and falling on your arse than airing the asai moonsault that you did – cheers, fellas!
“However, for all its faults, you still can’t take away the fact that it aired on five regional ITV channels and on ITV2 – a feat that has not been repeated in British wrestling since.”
“It was an amazing experience,” says Majik, another of the featured wrestlers. “But looking back, half the people, and that includes me, should never have been on television. We were too small, we didn’t have the physiques – even if we were the weights that we were [billed as], we didn’t have the physiques to be on television. People were used to two things, which was either the old-style British, where even the 12 or 13st middleweights looked like they could handle themselves, and then you’ve got the American style, where they look like bodybuilders.
“It was an incredible experience, and I will be eternally grateful for it because it’s something I can show the grandkids, but in retrospect I don’t think half the roster were ready, and I think if you asked more people that were on TWC, I would like to think they’d say the same thing. There are some exceptions to that, that should have been on there and were on there, but I would suggest that some of the roster would admit they shouldn’t have been.”
Transatlantic Wrestling Challenge ran for a single series in 2000 and its disappearance has been blamed on lack of finance.
“The ratings worked out very well for Andre,” says Champion. “I think the only week we got beaten was the snooker finals, which was week five. But at the end of the day it was just cost, I think. The TV company sat down with Andre and said, look, is there any way we can do this cheaper? And he said if you m
ake it look cheaper, you’re not going to compete with the WWF. If anything, you need to throw a little bit more money at it.
“I don’t think the TV company realised how much money they needed to put into the project. We filmed six weeks down at Meridian, and they actually had to hire the hall out, they had to bring in workers from America, it was so much cost, it was more than just one camera, they realised that they needed five or six cameras around, and it just kind of snowballed. Even though the ratings were good, I think that’s what put them off – they can buy this ready-made product from somewhere else [ie WWE], but the actual outlay and the wages for a floor manager far outweighed what they could buy in.”
“We actually got a 26 per cent share of the regions we aired on, as I remember, which is almost unheard of for a brand new series,” says Jon Ryan. “The way Andre put it, if we’d hit 28 per cent share we could have gone into the producers’ office and said: ‘Right, d***heads, this is what we’re going to do.’ As it stands, we found out many years later from one of the producers of the show that Meridian really wanted to do something with the concept and take it further, but didn’t know how to differentiate it from Vince’s stuff [the WWE programming]. Great knowledge in hindsight!”
Baker died in 2010, having taken a firm step back from the wrestling industry. “He just lost his motivation for it,” suggests Jimmy Havoc.
“I got on very well with Andre,” recalls Moss. “We became very close and remained good friends right until his death. I had spoken to him only the day before; that was a hard blow to me and to anybody else who had been close with him. A lot of people don’t realise but he was actually wanting to make a comeback and had even asked me to approach Alex Shane about working an angle with him and the newly re-formed FWA.”
“We didn’t talk for years, maybe ten years,” says Shane, “and then Johnny Moss talked to me and said: ‘I talked to Andre the other day, he was thinking maybe he could work with you in FWA.’ I just laughed it off, I didn’t think he meant it. Then a couple of weeks later I heard he was dead. Johnny Moss said to me that he felt the bridges were burnt, he couldn’t rebuild. I’ve lived with that, that happened. I had my personal grief and my personal anger still; it wasn’t going to change that. I don’t know if he wanted to get back into wrestling. If he definitely meant it I would have spoken to him and I feel bad that I didn’t, but that’s something that can’t be changed now.”
“Please don’t get me wrong and think I regret my time there because that couldn’t be further from the truth,” says Moss. “In the years I remained faithful to Hammerlock I got more TV and national exposure than with anyone else since. I’m talking legitimate TV too, not p***pot channels: I was featured on Channel 4 programmes such as Scrapheap Challenge and Faking It, ITV2 series Transatlantic Wrestling Challenge and when I was only 19 I went over to Charlotte, North Carolina, to film WrestleManiacs, a documentary that followed a group of us trying to make it in the States, so I certainly wasn’t complaining.
“However, the time came, as it did for all of us, to move on, as the only way to really improve your craft was to work with as many different people in as many different places as you can and unfortunately you can’t do this working the same guys every night.”
So now the best UK wrestlers are free to travel round the country – or the world – picking and choosing their bookings, meaning that promotions also have a wide range of talent to select from. Today, UK promotions tend to focus on quality of shows; many of them look to produce a quarterly ‘event’ rather than taking a loyal hardcore of fans for granted.
Fan Luke Wykes thinks this is a smart move. “The British wrestling scene, at least to my eyes, while resurgent, is still faced with a couple of problems: firstly, the higher production values adopted by the American product; when there’s so much spent on the glitz, glamour and pyro in the WWE and TNA, turning up at a British wrestling show can be a bit of a let-down to some kids; just not what they were expecting in the slightest.
“To create a bright future for the British product, there has to be an audience that desires and craves what the product itself offers, which is top-quality wrestling. The quality of the in-ring work has improved so much over the last few years, and has borrowed so much from more eye-pleasing styles than traditional ones that it can now be considered the main selling point.”
Hammerlock has been reborn in the past few years, with Dean Champion and Tony McMillan taking on the name and restarting the promotion initially as a tribute to their mentor.
“Me and Tony had bought the Hammerlock ring when Andre was winding down,” says Champion. “He had other things on the go, he had a lot of family problems and stuff. He contacted us and said, look, I’ve got the ring sitting here, if you want the ring, a few hundred pounds, you can come and take it, do what you want to do, when I get back into wrestling I’ll come and get the ring back off you and we’ll start Hammerlock again.
“Unfortunately, he passed away, and that never happened. At the funeral – it was an amazing funeral, there were so many people from British wrestling there – people got talking and they really just didn’t want it to die. At that point, it had been running for 16 years, and it had brought so many people through on the business, that they said for it to just stop would be criminal. So me and Tony said we’ve got the ring now, we’ll do a show, the Andre Baker Memorial Show, we’ll see how it goes, we’ll see the feelings of the guys after the show, see what the fans think, and it just spiralled.
“It was a great show, the first one, everyone loved it, all the old Hammerlock guys said you ever want us, you’ve only got to ask. We had so many e-mails from fans asking when the next show is, and it’s just gone from there.”
They have since run memorial shows in Baker’s honour plus some additional events, and it seems like the old family feel of Hammerlock is still there. The roster includes those trained by Baker plus some of the best new UK talent, and there’s a strong camaraderie – there will be beers in the locker room after the show, and the only bickering will occur as they squabble over the spoils of the confectionery provided for them to scoff.
One of its most famous alumni, Prince Fergal Devitt, couldn’t be happier about the promotion’s rebirth. “I’m delighted to see that the Hammerlock name will continue, as it is something I hold very close, the place that gave me my start. There was almost a sense of rebellion at the original Hammerlock, and that I think was inspired by Andre. It will be very difficult to try to capture those same feelings again, but I know that the reborn Hammerlock could not be in better hands and I’m really looking forward to seeing how it develops.”
Although Tony and Dean have endeavoured to run Hammerlock in its best tradition, there is one big difference.
“Me and Tony always say we’re not going to hold anyone to Hammerlock,” says Champion. “What we want to do, we want to work with as many British wrestling companies as we can. We don’t see anyone as competition, so to speak: it’s British wrestling and we’re all here to try and keep it going.”
One of the biggest issues with British promotions has been their failure to run as proper businesses, sticking to a budget and booking only talent they can afford. Those promotions who quietly go about their business successfully, using good wrestlers and making money while attracting crowds – such as Dixon’s All-Star, or John Freemantle’s Premier Promotions – don’t get much written about them. After all, where’s the excitement in a balance sheet that actually balances, a budget that’s met, or a card where all the talent turns up? Indeed, the best-known companies of recent times have been those that have imploded in a spectacular fashion.
Frontier Wrestling Alliance, the breakaway from Andre Baker’s old-style Hammerlock promotion, doesn’t really exist any more. Many of the people who once played key roles in its running have now moved on to other things – Doug Williams, for example, has been appointed as head trainer for TNA’s development territory OVW. However, Alex Shane, one of the driving forces behind its
operation, is one of the most divisive characters on the British scene at the moment. He is famous for having big ideas to revive wrestling in the UK, to bring it back to the mainstream, and for securing himself and his projects a high media profile. He remains proud of his achievements at FWA, pointing particularly to the staging of shows and its use of multimedia, especially the DVDs the company produced, which he still feels are ground-breaking.
“I experimented with FWA,” he says. “If you watch the boxset of FWA, it’s like a masterpiece, because it was layered. Wrestling’s never booked that way. When you watch that boxset, if you watched it the whole way through and you’d never seen it before, if you watch it again you’ll see subliminal clues and messages and things built in that are done not to enhance the story – in fact, they seem completely oblivious, in fact, they’re completely hidden. It’s so hidden, but when you’re watching it back, a bit like The Matrix, you go ‘oh my God!’ and that’s why the DVD market today is relevant. Right now, the DVD market is dying, because you can watch it online or on a torrent site, but a lot of films layer now because they want people to watch the movie – and then buy the DVD.”
The size of FWA’s live shows, however, is what keeps them so fondly remembered. Shane combined American talent with his British roster, and staged ‘supershows’ at massive venues, attracting thousands of fans.
“When I did my first supershow, International Showdown – that’s still the biggest British show of all time – PowerSlam called it ‘as good as it gets’,” he grins. It did mean, however, that liaison with TNA, the second-biggest global promotion, was necessary in order to secure their top names as guests on the bill, which proved problematic both in terms of negotiations and fees. Then when other British promotions tried to emulate the ‘supershow’ concept and set-up, this inevitably meant wage hikes for wrestlers due to the competition for their services.