by Carrie Dunn
“A few promoters are involved in G-Ring Promotions, the reason being that the wrestling business over here is often simply one-man bands putting on very low quality shows,” he claims. “We feel working together we can build a brand that fans know what they get for the price of a ticket, and can really look forward to a great card every time all presented with a great production value – I think we can all admit that is the key factor missing from the UK product as a whole.”
Wrestler Phil Ward is unimpressed by the small-time, parochial nature of many of the British promotions. He thinks that the lack of professionalism shown by lots of promoters has led to American companies stealing both talent and fans from the UK scene.
“If you’re not expanding, you’re probably being left behind by your competitors,” he says. “In British wrestling it doesn’t seem that anyone’s expanding, apart from TNA, who keep coming over here and taking all the fans that we should be getting to their shows, and then they do their Gut Checks [try-outs for wrestlers with some experience] and all our best wrestlers try and go to there or WWE, because that’s all they want to do. They’re the only people making any money because no one’s giving a viable alternative.
“I would prefer not to ever have to go to America, not to live in America to work there, because it doesn’t interest me. I like England, I like the country, all my friends and family are here, I like the football, I like the rugby, and the teams I support. I’d rather be able to work as a full-time professional wrestler in Brighton. That’s the ideal for me. No one seems to want to take it to that stage.”
He is pragmatic about the limited possibilities for promotions that are run by people who have full-time jobs outside of wrestling, but says this is not really an excuse.
“I’m not trying to downplay anyone’s efforts, because it’s obviously difficult – it’s difficult to have a business that takes you to that sort of level,” he says, “but at the same time there doesn’t seem to be that planning. It doesn’t seem that people are really looking to do it, they’re just hoping to do it, which to me is the wrong way to do it. You need to plan it. You need to know where you want to go, and work out ways to get there.”
Wrestlers are very honest about the poor promotions operating in the UK – but although they tend to get riled by lack of organisation or nonsensical storylines or ignorance of health and safety, often they’ll wrestle on the card anyway, simply to get the cash or the profile that they hope will ensue, or sometimes both.
One British wrestler told me after one small-town show with a tiny crowd and little reaction that he finds his work “easy money – except when I get a show like this”; and another criticised some of the promotions he had worked for as he felt they booked wrestlers the owners wanted to see rather than what their audience wanted to see.
All harsh words, but that is definitely changing. Sure, top talent from all over the world have always been guesting on UK bills, which has secured some media coverage; but now we’re seeing celebrities looking to raise their profile or stay in the spotlight with a link-up with a local promotion; 2012 saw former MP Lembit Opik team up with Iestyn Rees and enter a feud with Kade Callous of Welsh Wrestling.
“That was very interesting, to say the least!” laughs Rees. “It’s the strangest experience I’ve had in wrestling to date.”
Yes, it was a publicity stunt – but one which got UK wrestling mainstream press coverage for the first time in ages. Even so, Rees was unsure at first. “I was worried for the business,” he admits. “Every time wrestling gets mentioned in the national papers, it has the p*** taken out of it. I was concerned.”
Alan Ravenhill, owner of Welsh Wrestling, assured Rees that the angle would work, but he still wasn’t convinced. “I said, look, I’m happy to do it, but if it backfires I don’t want to be held responsible!” he laughs.
So Rees agreed to take it on, and of course the first step was talking to Opik. “When I met Lembit, I knew that he wasn’t there to take the p***. He understood wrestling, he understood the showmanship and all that, so I knew it wasn’t going to be laughed at,” he says.
Despite the acknowledgement of the showmanship required, wrestling is tough physical work, and for an untrained amateur, the risks could be immense in the ring opposite a monster like Callous. With this kind of guest appearance, the training hours are by necessity going to be limited, but Opik did do some preparation.
“I didn’t allow Lembit to get in there very much,” says Rees. “You put someone in there untrained, it could be potentially very dangerous, so we decided to keep his input to a minimum. There was some stuff he could do, stuff that we planned with myself and Kade. He did his job very, very well – he didn’t take the mickey out of it, he didn’t get a beating and no-sell it, he did his job very well.”
With his eye for the media, it’s perhaps not surprising that Ravenhill’s Welsh Wrestling is one of the promotions with the most longevity. He has been running the company himself for the past decade, and takes great pride in his work; Rees praises him as “one of the hardest-working blokes and one of the most successful blokes in British wrestling at the moment”. Rather than having one big show every quarter, he runs several smaller shows a month, and wonders how other promotions are making money.
“This is a business,” he says. “BritWresFest [a charity event, featuring several promotions from around the country] bill themselves as the biggest show in the UK – really? Is it the biggest show where people work and watch for free, or is a bigger show one which is a sell-out that makes money?”
The concern with selling tickets is unsurprisingly an overwhelming one for Ravenhill. “A lot of people in the business like technical wrestling, but the fans make the business, so you have to entertain them – throw in a bit of pantomime,” he says. “I use good old-fashioned posters and flyers in a town where we’ve got a show to bring fans in – it’s like a circus, we come back each year with a different show.”
His concern is not simply for his own profit. He makes sure that everyone working on his shows gets paid – perhaps that sounds obvious to an outsider, but in the business, as Jimmy Havoc has already complained, it isn’t unheard of for people to work for free, claiming to love wrestling so much they don’t require payment.
“That annoys me,” says Ravenhill. “Those guys say they don’t care as long as they’re wrestling. They’re young lads – when they mature, they’ll realise that if you actually respect ‘the business’, you have to treat it as a business. Of course, by then, there will be new young lads coming in who’ll be willing to work for free – it’s a vicious circle.
“I don’t like when some of the guys post videos of themselves online doing hurricanranas in train stations or whatever – yes, they’re good wrestlers, but that’s just exposing wrestling. And I don’t like when people run shows in venues with a limited capacity, selling tickets for £5 – they’re making maybe £500 or £600 for that show, so they can’t market it and pay their talent. My shows cost about £1,000 to put on, but I always pay my wrestlers. I risk money – they risk their health. Even for charity shows, I’ll pay expenses – nobody ever loses money to wrestle for me. Everyone gets paid and we all enjoy what we do.”
Turf wars
Summer 2012 saw one of the biggest battles in UK wrestling – and it all centred on the behind-the-scenes problems of a promotion rather than a feud played out in the ring between talent. Future Pro Wrestling, based in South London, had booked a charity show at Wallington Hall, a theatre owned by Sutton Council. Then, the day before, it was moved to a different venue due to what was described officially as a licensing ‘technicality’.
The council worked with FPW to find a new venue at the very last minute, and the Canons Leisure Centre, Mitcham, just over the borough border in Merton, agreed to be the show’s new home. Then a few hours before the first bell, citing another licensing issue, the leisure centre too had to cancel the show.
Instead of cancelling altogether, FPW took the ver
y brave step of staging a guerrilla wrestling event at an anonymous venue, with fans tipping each other off by phone (strictly no social media allowed) and meeting up to be driven to the top-secret location.
A source in Canons Leisure Centre explained at the time that they had liaised with the local police as well as senior management and it had been brought to their attention that the venue had not gone through the correct “box-ticking” exercise to host a wrestling show – although it was licensed to hold other sporting and artistic performances.
Wrestling shows in the UK require a special licence, which can be held by the venue, but if they do not have one then the promoter must apply for a temporary events licence; neither Wallington Hall nor the Canons Leisure Centre held the relevant licence, and FPW had not applied for a temporary licence either.
FPW’s Steve Evans explained at the time: “We have public liability insurance in place and have done since our first show. We enquired a year ago whether or not we could host events there [Wallington Hall] and were told by Sutton Theatres that we could. The venue hosted boxing there a few months before so Sutton may well have thought that their licence included wrestling. The first time we were made aware that it was not the case was when I took a call from them at 4.45pm on 4 May 2012.
“I would not knowingly put on an event [without the correct licensing], and had I been made aware by Sutton Theatres that this had been the case, I would not have used the venue in the first place over 12 months before. This oversight was one that Sutton Theatres has taken full responsibility for.
“When we approached the [Canons] leisure centre on Friday night, still having our public liability insurance, we again asked the centre to host the event. Calls were made by staff and we were told that we could. Being a sports centre, again staff may well have assumed that wrestling would be covered on the licence for the venue.
“When we were made aware that they could not find the licence again, this was only made clear at 3.15pm on 5 May 2012. We cannot be held accountable for these venues not knowing their own licences; that is the responsibility of them and the management teams who run them.
“Again I would not knowingly hold an event without the correct licences, and if I had been made aware in good time I would have acted accordingly within the legal parameters of holding wrestling events.”
Indeed, Evans said that after discussions with Sutton Council he had only just been made aware of the possibility of applying for a temporary events licence, which would take ten days to process.
He added: “I would not knowingly break the law, as that would not only harm FPW as a company, but also harm the way we are working with other promoters to ensure we help to build the reputation of British wrestling.”
Ironically, sources close to the UK scene indicated at the time that Sutton Council and the management of the Canons Leisure Centre were made aware of their venues’ lack of licence not by anyone on their staff, but by an individual within the wrestling community.
“The old trick of contacting local councils to get shows pulled on licensing ‘technicalities’ is hardly a new thing,” one source said at the time.
“Licensing has some complicated fine points, and if you’re not deeply in the know, you can be easily tripped up by someone who is – even if you have the best intentions that you are doing everything ‘by the book’.
“I can see some sense in an argument that ‘new’ promoters need to assess these things in greater depth. It is the sort of thing that a dialogue with a local council far enough in advance should be able to resolve. But it’s just not a hugely obvious point to get tripped up on, unless you already know of it. Unfortunately, there are those that will act to protect their best interests – and will do so without regard for the moral implications.
“If you’re a promoter, and some terrible non-pros set up a terrible show and potentially turn part of your audience off local wrestling, that’s a problem. You could suggest that removing the potential damage in these cases might be justified, and if you have to pull them up on legal technicalities, so be it.
“But there’s a line in there somewhere – and I guess it can be hard to define where it is. In my opinion, in the case of FPW – a show containing a number of recognised professionals – it’s a case of straight-up competition. And what the rightful way is to deal with that competition would depend on your ethics.
“Some in business would probably argue nothing is off limits, whilst others would likely be of the standpoint that you compete on a more moral footing, and do so by putting out the better product.
“I think in the eyes of most, though, getting a show pulled when it’s in aid of charity [as FPW’s show was, fundraising for Cancer Research UK] is very low indeed.”
Welsh Wrestling’s Alan Ravenhill is unequivocal on best practice, regardless of whether or not a show is for a good cause.
“If a show hasn’t the relevant licence, then it absolutely cannot go ahead,” he says.
“I had a fundraising show booked [in summer 2012] which I cancelled the week before, because the venue’s licence had expired. If I’d gone ahead with that show, that would’ve been illegal, and more importantly, my insurance would’ve been void. So, in my opinion, anyone who backs an unlicensed show is endorsing an event not insured to protect fans and wrestlers.”
Ravenhill does think, however, that there is a problem here with some promotions having good intentions but simply not understanding the necessary bureaucracy.
“There’s promoters who maybe don’t realise these licenses need to be in place to legally run events. But there are also promoters who know this but deliberately ignore it to save a few quid.”
He doesn’t agree, though, that he as a promoter has any responsibility to any others; if he knew another promotion was under a licensing misapprehension, he would not notify them directly.
“If an unlicensed show was taking place in Wales, I would report it. Wrestling is a business and should be treated as one.
“If they’re in Wales then I treat them as competition. Any real promoter who says differently is an idiot or a liar. This is a business – just like if I owned a chip shop and someone opened one across the street, they would be business competition.”
Wrestler Mark Andrews now co-runs ATTACK! Pro Wrestling, but happily admits that he is not a promoter by trade. Unsurprisingly, he has come up against similar licensing problems to FPW when trying to organise a show. He thinks that most wrestling companies think they have the right paperwork in place, or assume that venues have the correct licences when they accept a booking for a wrestling event, but the complex nature of licensing means that often there are glitches in the system.
“It’s really annoying,” he says. “When you get a show cancelled because of licensing, it seems really unprofessional, as if you hadn’t considered the licensing, but when you speak to venues about it, a lot of venues should have those licences and you assume they have. We’re working in a little community centre which does little gigs all the time, and because they did those gigs, we assumed they had a licence, but it turned out at the last minute they hadn’t. It’s really complex with wrestling. It’s such a specific entertainment that you have to go to the deep corners of the licensing office to find out what you actually need.”
When it comes to promotions who don’t have the correct paperwork in place, Sanjay Bagga of LDN Wrestling is very blunt indeed, and agrees with his friend Ravenhill: “I hope the council do everything in their power to shut them down.”
Bagga is well and truly set in his ways, having got into promoting as a teenager studying for his A-Levels. Ever since then he has been adamant that the way to succeed in wrestling promotion is to try and ensure exclusivity in your area and on your roster.
“I wanted to have a roster pretty much you couldn’t see anywhere else, I’m very much into building a brand,” he says.
And he’s not into motivational quotes or inspirational mottoes. “We just get on with making money, like
the rest of the world we have bills to pay. It’s not a hobby for me or Alan, it’s a business.”
Unsurprisingly, Steve Evans of FPW doesn’t agree with the territorial mindset. “Rather than trying to sabotage other promotions, why not assist them in ensuring what has to be done is done? Why act in a way where it could cause harm to the business? We have had so much support from other companies and wrestlers alike – and the intentions of what we have done have all been to ensure we help British wrestling back to the lofty levels it used to be at.”
BritWresFest
Despite Ravenhill’s criticism, the one time in recent years that most promotions put aside their differences was for 2012’s Wrestling With Ethics’ BritWresFest charity show. Some of the top UK promotions put together showcase matches, with titles on the line all round, and it was great for fans to see some of the best British talent on the same bill.
It took place at the Coronet in Elephant and Castle, South London, on the same day as WWE’s WrestleMania, meaning that British fans could spend the afternoon watching British wrestling in person before going home to watch the Americans’ showcase event on television.
Stand-out matches included NGW’s opening bout between Nathan Cruz, Rampage Brown and El Ligero and IPW:UK’s tag-team match-up between the LDRS and Dean Allmark and Jonny Storm. Elsewhere, Jenny Sjodin lost her Pro Wrestling EVE title to the Alpha Female; and RJ Singh faced Rockstar Spud (who came to the ring performing a karaoke version of ‘Livin’ On A Prayer’, which bore no resemblance to the key his backing track was in), and employed his usual heel tactics, including using his megaphone-wielding manager to attempt to nobble his opponent. The main event featured a six-man tag match, and was basically there only for the crowd to welcome returning hero Doug Williams, making a guest appearance as part of a faction, The Resistance.