by Carrie Dunn
Mark Andrews agrees.
“I think that the internet is literally the best way to market yourself in pro wrestling in this day and age,” he says. “I used to get totally ripped on backstage for filming all my matches and making little music compilations of them to put online, but I figured that the local match I would have had in front of 50 kids could be viewed by thousands of wrestling fans around the world online. It all helps gain exposure, which is what’s needed in pro wrestling to be successful.”
UK wrestling – online
“Being a British wrestling fan is like being a fan of a band that nobody knows,” reckons Chris Pilkington, who writes for the UK wrestling news site Collar and Elbow. “You go to the gigs, buy the t-shirts and tell everybody you know that it’s the greatest thing ever. We conversely want our favourite wrestlers and promotions to make it big and get on TV but are so wary of outsiders that a large part of us wants it to stay an exclusive indie club.”
His views are interesting. There has been a fierce debate in British wrestling for years about whether or not more media coverage of the scene is needed, or whether promotions should concentrate on putting on great live shows for the crowds that attend in person before they worry about wider audiences.
“Until there is a promotion with top to bottom great talent and amazing productions, then I don’t think it helps British wrestling in the slightest,” says wrestler Kris Travis.
With a limited media interest, it’s inevitable that much of the reporting on British wrestling is done by fans like Pilkington – often online with their own websites.
Pilkington says that he began writing for Collar and Elbow “by accident, really” and puts it all down to Twitter. “I saw somebody re-tweet that they were looking for writers so I sent Ben Veal, the head honcho, a quick e-mail saying I’d be interested. Since then I’ve become a little more involved, running the social media for the site along with Ben, and chipping in ideas here and there.”
Veal has overall editorial control, but his writers have a certain amount of leeway, and try to present their work in as readable a format as possible prior to upload. “We mostly just say we’d like to write about a certain subject and he lets us get on with it,” says Pilkington. “There are times when he will ask me to do certain things, and sometimes opportunities arise such as interviewing [TNA star] Austin Aries. He’s never really stopped me from writing anything yet but I respect his decision should he ever do so. It’s his site after all.”
“I set up the site because I have been an avid fan of wrestling for 20 years, and I wanted to try to offer something different to a number of sites out there – a site that features well-written, in-depth articles from a team of passionate writers and which, for the most part, endeavours to focus on the positive side of the industry, rather than the negative,” says Veal.
“I am the ‘editor’ of the site in as much as I am ultimately responsible for all of the content that is published, but my writers have a great amount of freedom regarding what they write about – I would only say ‘no’ to an idea if it was distasteful.”
From his team, Veal requires only “a passion for the wrestling industry, and a desire to share the site’s vision. I am blessed to have found a small team of dedicated writers from across the UK, whose interests vary from the indies to the ‘big two’ to the UK scene, so between us all we are able to cover a lot of ground.”
Veal edits the articles received himself to ensure readability, and then uploads them to the site, as well as writing some content himself and promoting his site through social media. He also works to ensure the quality of the writing on the site, as well as the veracity and objectivity of stories.
“That has been the objective from the outset,” he says. “It’s not always easy; sometimes a rant is justified, such as one I had a few months back regarding TNA saturating their product with social media plugs. That’s a big bugbear of mine, and something that WWE has pushed way too hard in the past six months, in my opinion. But for the most part, we try to be objective, and to focus on the positives – of which there are still many.”
European Uppercut is a site with a difference – they’re not text-heavy, they simply focus on video interviews. It makes for an interesting watch because wrestlers tend to be good and charismatic talkers, but their delivery and personality doesn’t always come across well in the written word.
Co-creator Chris has previously run a football blog, but had no other journalism experience. “We have probably put more of an emphasis on video interviews as we wanted to get the faces of the British wrestling scene out there as well as their knowledge. You can see off the top of their heads they can talk about the UK, US and Japan scenes right off the bat. It really shows how dedicated they are to the scene and probably gives an extra layer to them that perhaps you can’t get from a text-based interview. It also helps to create a USP from other sites out there.”
His collaborator Joe had even less experience. “I’ve interviewed people for my uni dissertations but that was it,” he confesses. “We didn’t want to be word-heavy and we wanted something different. I think with writing sometimes it can become edited and the little nuances that people have can get overlooked – and with our videos you get to see the workers and promoters and how funny, witty and intelligent they all are.”
Chris and Joe have been friends since school, when they also started their wrestling fandom.
“One of my first memories was at a primary school fete and the face painter looking bemused when I asked for Sting face paint [the legendary face-painted WCW and now TNA wrestler], and then one of my parents having to describe it to them,” admits Joe.
“I have been a fan of wrestling and had an opinion on it from since I can remember. I was always a fan of workers – the Bret Harts, Mr Perfects, the British Bulldogs – and I’ve never grown out of it, much to the chagrin of my parents at times!” says Chris.
“At school Joe and I had debates over which was better, WWF or WCW, and then we both fell in love with ECW which came around exactly at the right time for us being teenagers at the time and wanting a more adult product.”
Then they decided to set up their website at the end of 2011. “We always knew we wanted to do something involved with wrestling,” admits Chris, but that doesn’t mean their ambitions begin and end with European Uppercut – “A blog is a good start to perhaps something more hands-on later on in life!”
“We always wanted to do something with wrestling whether it’d be wrestling or booking or whatever,” says Joe. “But over a few pints, I think it was, we thought about making a website – Chris had the know-how as he had already done his website for a football blog. But that was it until we went to TNA Impact at Wembley Arena [in January 2012] – we had floor seats and we got handed these flyers and I stuffed mine in my pocket – and Chris went: ‘Oi, Joe, look, these guys are near where you live!’”
The flyers were for Future Pro Wrestling, and the man who had handed them out was co-founder Lee Elmer. “It was that random encounter that got the ball rolling,” concludes Joe.
They weren’t the biggest fans of British wrestling at first. “My experience of British wrestling was that it sucked,” admits a candid Joe. “I had seen a couple of sub- par promotions and didn’t really want anything to do with it. These were the holiday camp-esque crappy belly-butting style wrestling that I wasn’t into. I’m a strong-style guy – and I didn’t think British wrestling had much of it.”
Initially they opted to cover just UK wrestling because so few websites focus on that as opposed to the massive American promotions, but that has changed as they’ve become more involved, met more people and seen more shows. “We went to the FPW show and were amazed at the standard of the wrestling but also the work ethic of the owners: Matt, Lee and Steve are so ambitious,” says Chris. “I think Joe and I realised then that we were onto a good thing and we could do our part to help the scene get recognised like it was in the 1980s.”
“Aft
er a while we set out to promote British wrestling – because the professionalism and passion is second to none,” adds Joe. “These guys deserve to get more publicity for the effort and quality that they show in and out the ring. So that’s what drives us on – plus we love being part of the scene!”
Their initial contact with FPW has helped them build links with other promotions too, opening doors for interviews. “Matt, Lee and Steve have treated us as friends from the start and have done all they can to help introduce us to the wrestlers, same as the PROGRESS guys,” says Chris. “Also the feedback we have had from Twitter from other promotions and wrestlers has been overwhelming. You can really see a collaborative nature to the UK scene to get the industry more into the spotlight. As discussed the standard is unbelievably higher than I expected and if we can help put more bums on seats by pushing them then we will!”
The US focus of the wrestling media
When Lee Tyers isn’t on the air, he works in home insurance – not necessarily where you might expect to find the creator and former host of one of the world’s most popular wrestling broadcasts, Ministry Of Slam.
“Most of my colleagues know about the show and some of them even tune in from time to time!” he says. “A lot of them don’t understand the fascination and when trying to get them to visualise what wrestling is I more often than not use the phrases ‘WWF’ and ‘Hulk Hogan’. This usually brings back childhood memories when they watched their favourites on a Saturday morning many years ago.”
Unsurprisingly, his show was inspired by shows across the Atlantic.
“Back in 2005 I stumbled upon the genre of ‘wrestling radio’ via a couple of American shows that I’d listen to every week,” he recalls. “Up until then I’d trawled wrestling websites for spoilers and insider facts, so the new medium of audio was fascinating to me. One of the shows I listened to aired very late UK time on a Monday night and I can still remember getting up every Tuesday morning, hoping the download link was available. To this day I know how frustrating that can be, so I always make sure a download is available as soon as possible after the live show has finished!
“After a few months of listening I decided I’d like to give it a try. With very basic equipment and quality I launched my own show late in 2005. It was horrible. My first guest was Lanny ‘The Genius’ Poffo [a former WWE star, and the real-life brother of the late Macho Man Randy Savage], who was very patient with me and we remain friends to this day. The show evolved, went under a couple of different names and finally settled on Ministry Of Slam in January 2009. Hopefully we’ve improved a lot since 2005!”
Tyers says it takes around a week to plan each broadcast, and significantly more time to get a particular guest signed up. There is also a lot of research involved, meaning that he and his co-presenters have to be up-to-date on the latest wrestling news; and sometimes they pre-record skits or sketches.
“No show is ever the same so we build a timeline from scratch each week rather than use a generic template of slots or timings,” he explains. “Then I forward a copy of our finished run-sheet to the other hosts on the show, get the studio ready to go and then we’re on live at 8pm! The studio we have now is such a great set-up and a far cry from what I started out with. We have two PCs, an audio mixer, four in-studio live microphones and a great system for patching in live calls. It takes a lot of planning and preparation to put the whole thing together but after all this time we’ve got it streamlined to an art form.”
Lee and his team have had some great guest stars over the years, mostly from the US promotions – people such as Mick Foley, Bret Hart and Chris Jericho. They still have a wish list of people they want to interview though.
“I’ve always wanted to get Hulk Hogan on the show. One day it WILL happen!” he says. “I’ll always regret never having Randy Savage on too. He was a very private guy and always wanted to stay as far out of the spotlight as possible. I think John Cena would be fun. I’ve heard he takes himself very seriously with the media so I think we could have a lot of fun with that. There are some people we’ve interviewed already that I wouldn’t mind having another shot at – Randy Orton, Ric Flair and Steve Austin immediately jump to mind.”
Even though the show focuses mostly on the American scene, Tyers still considers his show British – not in its content, but definitely in its operation. “As Ministry Of Slam is a British show, we do take a different approach to the way we put it together,” he says. “One of the big factors is that in the States, sports/talk radio is a big concern. Lots of radio networks exist that carry either FM or satellite-broadcasted shows. Over here we only have two main networks that cover sport 24/7 and they don’t consider wrestling a big enough concern to have a regularly scheduled spot. That leaves us as a strictly online show, and even though more people have access to a PC than an FM radio nowadays we’re still looked at as the red-headed stepchild of radio.
“The one thing it does allow us though is the opportunity to be a bit edgier and free-format with our programming. Whilst the Americans are having to stick strictly to timings and ad breaks governed by their network, we can take our time and go with the flow. Another issue is the time difference. It’s difficult to contact live guests sometimes when they can be up to eight hours behind us and are also on the road travelling between shows. Pre-taping gives us a lot more freedom so most of our interviews are done that way these days.”
Tyers can’t see his show ever changing direction to focus solely on the UK scene simply because he doesn’t think it would draw an audience. “I for one would like nothing more than to see British wrestling reach the heights of the US product. Seeing Wembley full up with UK fans to watch a UK show would be amazing. Unfortunately, I cannot see it happening any time soon,” he says. “There is a massive lack of money in the industry over here so the probability of a Vince McMahon type creating a national company that could make waves is very slim. So we’re left with lots of independent companies, most of them using the same workers who end up completely over-saturated in the marketplace. I’ve tried to keep up with the scene in this country but it hasn’t done anything to grab me for quite a few years now.”
That being said, it’s no surprise that Tyers is looking to the future complete with expansion plans. “We are currently in preparation for expanding our show from internet-only to being broadcast on FM radio up in Scotland,” he says. “It’ll mean a small change in the hosting line-up due to location; however, it’s always where I’ve wanted the show to be and I’m sure some of the bigger US companies will use the show more frequently for promotion of upcoming events.”
There are two major UK-produced wrestling magazines in print at the moment – Fighting Spirit and PowerSlam. Both, however, are operating in a competitive marketplace, and so they need to ensure that they appeal to the widest audience possible – and that usually means stressing the WWE and TNA element of content over any coverage of the British scene.
“The content of the magazine is based on what is current and what readers request or react to. It’s a case of supply and demand,” confirms long-serving PowerSlam editor Findlay Martin.
Brian Elliott took the job as Fighting Spirit editor at the start of 2011 having been a wrestling fan since childhood. He has the tough task of balancing professional wrestling coverage with material about MMA (mixed martial arts) which also falls within his magazine’s remit – and then splitting the wrestling coverage between the British scene and the big American promotions, which are likely to appeal to many more readers.
“If you want to look at it from a complete business point of view, it makes sense for me to push that talent because if there’s good talent out there and we can let people know that British wrestling is actually really good, then we’ll get more people to British wrestling then by proxy get more people towards our magazine,” says Elliott.
“There are a lot of good promotions out there: Preston City Wrestling have got a very, very loyal fan base in that area. There’s the three Scott
ish promotions: Insane Championship Wrestling, Pro Wrestling Elite and Premier British Wrestling. IPW:UK have had great shows for a long time; Next Generation Wrestling – El Ligero is often on their cards, he’s involved with the training centre there.
“There are many more good wrestling companies at the moment in Britain, especially high-profile ones, as opposed to bad ones. It’s really good to have good promotions there, none of them are huge mega-promotions or anything like that, but they’re all doing a really good job and they can only build over time because the wrestling is really good.”
Working with so many UK promotions on a regular basis, Elliott has an interesting perspective on the way they work. “Most of them are pretty smart in that they will work together,” he says. “Very few of them are saying ‘no, we won’t do this, or no, we won’t do that’. They try and share talent and what have you. Of course there’s competition to a certain extent, but they’ll make sure that they don’t run on the same dates, and they all talk to each other all the time. They’re all sensible enough to work out that there’s no point. As long as people can be sensible, it’s not that hard.
“There always ends up being someone who’s too big for their boots and loses sight of what they’re trying to do. Everybody wants to be Vince McMahon, and there’s only ever going to be one, but if you put on a good product and it’s enough to make you a full-time living, there’s plenty of room there – as long as you’ve got a good product.”
He suggests that for the time being promotions should concentrate on perfecting their product rather than setting their ambitions too high. “It’s not on TV, and let’s be honest, TV is the be-all and end-all if you want to run a mega-successful company,” he admits. “But the TV world is a funny place right now. It’s not getting back on ITV, for many years, one would think. You only have to look at TV now. The only stuff that gets on TV now is stuff that’s supposed to be shocking. But good things can come in small packages sometimes.”