Spandex, Screw Jobs and Cheap Pops

by Carrie Dunn

  Greg Lambert became involved in FWA after meeting Shane, who was then co-hosting a wrestling show with TV presenter Tommy Boyd on talkSPORT radio. Lambert trained as a journalist, and as a wrestling fan and website writer created a character for himself – a know-it-all expert – who turned out to work well on air as someone who fans loved to hate. Shane saw further potential.

  “He said: ‘Right, well, I’ve got FWA, FWA’s going really, really well, we’ve got a vacancy for a new heel manager, I think you’d be great at it.’ That’s how it all started,” says Lambert. “I debuted in FWA in February 2003, and I was around then for the glory years of the FWA, when it was on The Wrestling Channel and it was running the big shows at the York Hall in Bethnal Green, the Coventry Skydome, and bringing in some of the big names from America – people like AJ Styles, Samoa Joe, people who were underground heroes at the time but are now big stars. It was an exciting time, really. I couldn’t believe it. All of a sudden out of nowhere I was in the middle of it, and I thought: ‘How the hell did this happen?’”

  Lambert remained involved with FWA until they went out of business in 2007, when he admits he was basically running the shows, and was then part of a resurrected version of the promotion two years later, as a commentator.

  “The big lesson from FWA: anybody can put on a great show with a lot of great matches and a lot of great wrestlers, but it takes skill to do it in a budget,” he says. “That is the main lesson. It wasn’t just FWA who did that, they weren’t even the biggest culprits in terms of spending ridiculous amounts of money or bringing in overseas imports to the point that the company wasn’t sustainable because you’re losing money every show, and eventually the money runs out.”

  One of the most fondly-remembered British promotions of recent times was 1PW, who ran shows in Doncaster from 2005 onwards. They had similar sustainability issues to FWA – but on a grander scale, going out of business in 2007 only to be resurrected a few months later, and then finally shutting up shop in 2011.

  “1PW were FWA magnified by 1,000,” scoffs Lambert. “Although Alex [Shane] did used to spend a ridiculous amount of money – too much – Alex never flew in commentators, referees, ring announcers from America. 1PW did that, it was stupid.”

  Lionheart, aka Adrian McCallum, worked hard to get himself booked on the 1PW roster, sending across some footage of his matches as well as some promotional images.

  “They were very different to any other promotion in the UK at that time, frequently using big-name international talent so it was something really great to be a part of,” he says. “It was a very different style of crowd than I had been used to working in front of so it was all a very new but ultimately great experience. As a company, they were fine to deal with, like any other promotion, you got booked, turned up and did your job. They were always open to ideas from talent and it was a decent place to work.

  “The shows I was on were a mixture of large arena shows and smaller local venue shows. Both were fun for different reasons. The arena shows were great as it was my first experience of working in front of crowds of that size, around 2,000, I think; and the smaller shows were a lot more intimate with the crowd and really gave you a chance to learn from the guys already regular there.”

  Tom Smith was a big fan of the promotion, praising the in-ring product and UK talent such as Jody Fleisch, Jonny Storm, Martin Stone and PAC (known in WWE as Adrian Neville), as well as imports such as AJ Styles, Christopher Daniels, Abyss, and Christian. “From a fan’s perspective, 1PW was great. You got home-grown talent, rising stars from America such as Sterling James Keenan, who I believe is under development with WWE at the moment [as Corey Graves on the NXT brand], and former WWE stars and current TNA stars. But it can’t have been a good business.

  “If you have Christian and Abyss on the card, why would you fly over the Blue Meanie and Al Snow to play comedy roles on the undercard? I feel they gave the fans too much and that was to their detriment. Maybe they thought if they fill the card with recognisable names and sprinkle home-grown talent in then gradually they could lose the big names as the fans became more aware of the UK talent, but that didn’t happen unfortunately.”

  Smith points out: “At one point they booked Bret Hart and Ric Flair – although not on the same show – and Hart couldn’t wrestle because of medical reasons and Flair had a no compete clause in his WWE contract – I believe he was just released from WWE. I’m not denying their combined worth to the business but was it worth the fee, I assume it was substantial, to bring them over for a meet and greet when talented British guys were wanting the work?”

  He also suspects the promotion spent too much money on talent that wasn’t that much of a draw to start with: “I’m not sure but it seemed to me they were trying too hard to book people who may have been on PPVs in the past, but had nothing to offer 1PW.”

  Lambert agrees, and suggests 1PW had a damaging effect on the UK scene as a whole. “It’s possible to draw a big crowd to an all-British show if it’s booked properly. If you’re going to bring an import in and you do it selectively, at the right time, make it somebody who can put one of our guys over, or someone who our guys can learn from.

  “When they first started, they had a couple of Brits on the show. They had [Darren, now Greg] Burridge, they had [Andy] Simmonz, they had Jody [Fleisch], Jonny [Storm] and Doug [Williams]. The rest of them were all from overseas. How’s this going to help? I could see from the very beginning that 1PW would have a very short shelf-life. They’d be short and spectacular. There was no way that was sustainable. I’m sure it was great for the fans at the time, but it was never something I would particularly want to do myself.”

  Fortunately, Lambert – and lots of brave people – have their own ideas of how to run a decent wrestling company and how to stage shows that will appeal to British fans.

  Chapter 8:

  Creating a promotion

  IT is not surprising that lots of fans decide to set up their own companies as a way of putting on shows they want to see, and lots of wrestlers set up their own companies as a way of putting on shows they want to be part of; but what is surprising is the amount of work that goes in to running a successful show. It is not just a case of booking wrestlers, setting up a ring and then taking the money at the door – there is all sorts of bureaucracy prior to the big day, and you need a unique selling point, and convincing, compelling stories behind your matches. What makes your show different to any of the others out there? Can you find your own niche in the market? And how can you overcome all the problems that are bound to arise?

  One fan-promoter who now knows through experience is Graham Beadle, the owner of a comic book store in Maidstone, Kent, who has been a wrestling fan on and off for years. He and his friend Jack Lawrence, a comic book artist, had been recording a podcast, Demon’s Pit, as a thank-you to all the wrestling federations in the south-east whose shows they enjoyed, and that meant they interviewed wrestlers from the various rosters, all in character. That is where they got the idea for their own promotion with a unique selling point.

  “Whilst talking to guests like Jimmy Havoc and Terry Striker about their experiences, we just thought that we could book the kind of show that I’d like to take my kids to see and from there it was a natural progression for us to combine it with the comics angle, what with Jack being a comic artist and me owning a comic shop,” said Beadle in the summer of 2012.

  “There will be comic artists present on the day, to draw wrestlers, superheroes and celebrities for those in attendance. The programme will contain comic art match graphics as well as a six-page comic featuring the story of roster member Marmot – and also we’re going to be big on factions, with heels stables initially, then face factions forming to counteract. To be honest, we’re looking to become the UK equivalent of Chikara, but definitely with our own stamp.”

  The pair combined their two passions to create the Comic Wrestling Alliance – and subsequently found that setting up a wrestling promotio
n as a long-term venture is not a simple matter at all.

  First of all, they had scheduled their first show for the end of September 2012 to coincide with Demoncon – a comic convention that Beadle runs in Maidstone. However, another wrestling promotion had a show in the area in the same week, and weren’t happy with the possibility of losing business. “Personally I wasn’t fussed but the venue, under pressure, asked if we’d consider moving date, so we obliged,” he says now.

  Switching to a date four weeks earlier, though, meant that some of the talent originally booked for the show had to pull out due to clashing commitments. The CWA, still in its infancy, had to pull in as many favours as possible from their contacts on the UK scene to build up their card again.

  “Initially when the date changed there was real panic from us,” says Beadle. “We’d lost a number of guys who we were centring the federation on, such as Mark Andrews, Nathan Cruz, Colossus Kennedy, Devilman, Terry ‘Moose’ Frazier, but with the help of some UK wrestling folk, we found suitable replacements in the shape of Jon Ryan, Iestyn Rees, Project Ego and the Bhangra Knights.”

  Then, due to the UK scene pulling together and rallying round to fill the card up again, CWA found themselves with the opposite problem – lots of great wrestlers and not enough matches to squeeze them into.

  “We were settled on seven matches, but then the opportunity to book Noam Dar vs Zack Sabre Jr came up and we thought it’d be madness to pass it up, hence the dreaded eight-match card,” says Beadle.

  He had found himself relying on the help of other promotions right from the outset – “the initial outlay for a start-up fed would be massive,” he says, pointing to the cost of essentials such as a ring. “The one thing that has helped is everyone’s rallied round. Even though they might not consciously help in that they alleviate the problem, it’s the moral support that’s made me think, well, f*** it, I’m doing this regardless.”

  Then Beadle had to cope with the stresses of running a promotion alone. His colleague was concerned at the possibility of losing money on the show having lost a block booking of 80 tickets when the date changed. He suggested pulling the plug on the show altogether, but Beadle was determined to make a success of it – “I said I’d bust a gut to make it work.”

  So he found himself a month before the show working alone – liaising with the wrestlers, the venue and the artists producing the comics accompanying the show, and marketing it as hard as he could to ensure a sell-out. That involved travelling to nearby towns such as Chatham and the Isle of Sheppey, putting up posters and giving out flyers, and badgering the local paper to write a piece about the promotion.

  “It’s just the fact that it’s so much, and I’m one person. If it had been [scheduled for] September still, it’d be no problem. It has felt like the world has fallen on my shoulders,” he said a fortnight before the August date.

  “It put a strain on the family situation. It was every day – I get in, I’m online, doing as much as I can by as many means as possible to get the tickets sold,” adding, “If you asked my wife what she thinks about wrestling, you’d probably get some choice words.”

  It was a time laden with problems, and Beadle confesses now: “I felt a bit cursed.”

  Even on the day before the show, he found himself feeling very apprehensive, primarily about selling enough tickets. The date change may have avoided a clash with another promotion in the area, but it created another clash with the relaunching Triple X Wrestling making their comeback in Coventry, with a hard-hitting show for over-18s.

  “I’ve made lots of rookie booking mistakes,” Beadle said 24 hours before the show. “There are lots of things I’ve done wrong – it’s a live and learn. If we’d had the original date and our block [ticket] booking, our card at that stage was smaller and quite a bit cheaper. I went with my heart instead of my head when I heard that Noam was available to face Zack – and I don’t think I’ve made a single ticket sale based on that wrestling match.”

  And to top it all off, right at the very last minute, the show was cancelled anyway. All the paperwork needed to put on a wrestling show was still stamped with the original date, meaning that it couldn’t go ahead.

  Despite the problems, Beadle was still viewing CWA as a long-term project as a promotion – right from the off, he was planning the second and third shows, including the introduction of a tag-team championship.

  “It’s a learning curve. It’s made me realise who the guys are that are genuine, and who aren’t,” he said after the second cancellation.

  “The thing I’ve got to learn is not to book with my heart. When I’m doing this, I’m doing this in a professional capacity, I’m not going to be in the front row going: ‘Oh, that’s so cool!’ That’s the biggest mistake I’ve made. When we had seven matches, I shouldn’t have added that extra match, even if it was a coup.”

  He decided to give up on 2012 and focus all his efforts on producing a show at the start of 2013, but it turned out that in the months since the launch of the CWA concept, the venues in the Maidstone area had opted to reject any potential wrestling bookings.

  “The original venue had decided that they wouldn’t run with wrestling again so I was left trying to find somewhere else in Maidstone,” he says. “There are a number of venues further afield but I don’t think with other work commitments I could manage the promotion work that would be involved. I thought we’d secured a venue, a local grammar school, so pencilled in a February date, only for that to fall through because the venue didn’t want to be associated with wrestling due to ‘image conflict’.

  “So for now, until we find somewhere appropriate to run one of our shows – it needs to hold 140 to 200 – we’re on permanent hold.”

  Instead, until a venue is found, Beadle and the CWA intend to operate as a support organisation for other promotions on the UK scene. Recently he and his artist contacts have produced comic cover art for Hammerlock, the art for PROGRESS Wrestling’s second and fourth shows, and sketches of the FPW roster. They are also producing bespoke artwork featuring some of the top names, and planning to launch a merchandise range with these images.

  That doesn’t mean, though, that Beadle is ruling out the possibility of actually putting on a show. At the start of 2013, he was, however, much more wary and, it seems, much less optimistic than he was when we spoke as he first mooted his idea for CWA. It is not surprising. It takes effort to put on a show, but creates a lot of stress for the promoter and the people close to them. Of course, usually the reward comes with the buzz of seeing a show run successfully, with an audience who enjoy what they see in the ring. Beadle has planned three shows and has not yet had that pay-off.

  “If we do get up and running,” he concludes, “it won’t be until I can produce something I can be proud of.”

  Beadle’s emphasis on the need to put on a great show is interesting. There are scores of wrestling companies operating in the UK at the moment, all making the most of the liberation from the old monopoly system.

  “Because of the way the wrestling business was, it wasn’t as easy to get into as it is now,” says Dann Read, looking back at the turn of the millennium when he first made the step into promoting. “Everyone was chomping at the bit to be involved, and so established promoters had the ability to bring in anyone to help him out as they wanted, whereas now because you can get involved in any promotion you really want – there’s so many more promotions now than there was back then, so many more.

  “It’s ridiculous. Everyone’s learned, who’s still around. Everyone can get on any promotion – there’s not that loyalty. Not many people come into the business now with quite the work ethic that I think the people who came in before me and when I came in had – I think that was the last wave of people who had quite that work ethic or dedication. Now there’s always another promotion nearby that you can just f*** off and do bits and pieces for.”

  Or, alternatively, if you think you know better, you can set up your own promotion and r
un it however you want. That’s something that wrestlers are frequently considering. Samson, aka Steve Biggs, took a break from wrestling after his initial training with Hammerlock, but when he found himself wanting to get back into the ring, he was disappointed with what he saw.

  “Everyone liked the idea of wrestling but the promoters didn’t want to promote. It takes a lot of work to let people know you are running a show and to get them to spend their time and money on watching it,” he says.

  He then decided to go into promoting himself, and now runs shows around Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire under the banner of Total Action Wrestling. “When I ran my first show I just wanted to prove it could be done. One hundred people wasn’t a massive crowd but back then it seemed it compared to everyone else, and we made a small amount of money to invest in another show, rather than running at a loss.

  “The UK scene is funny, I’ve met loads of great people, also a few not so great people, but on the whole it’s very positive. We have talent that can match any other country hands down. It just never seems to all come together, or people work against each other which is frustrating because if everyone pulled in the same direction, the UK would be right up there and we’d all be working full-time and earning a living from it.

  “At the moment there seems to be a reduction in the poor promotions around and now there are some really decent promotions about really working hard to improve and you have to respect that and I wish them all the best. Seeing them and hopefully they will see us and drive each other to be better.”

  Luke Douton, another wrestler himself, is part of a collective running G-Ring Promotions, and agrees that in the lull between the World of Sport days and the current resurgence, the product on offer around the UK has typically been very poor.