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Nathan Jones was great. Awful, obviously, but great. Had the look and had a weird sort of charisma to him. I'm not convinced that they couldn't have worked around his shortcomings and still had something if he'd have stuck around. Although he probably wasn't worth the bother. There's a (better) universe out there where he's a special appearance megastar.

Big fan of Swerve going full Father-Ted-wins-the-golden-cleric. And now, onto the liars…

Shamelessly C&P, "Holy Grail: The True Story of British Wrestling's Revival" Then in 2008, Hollywood movie star turned WWE scriptwriter Freddie Prinze Jr. sat the former FWA and All-England Champion down at a SmackDown TV taping, and gave him some life-changing news. "They were going to put me in a big storyline with The Undertaker. I was going to lead a gang of X-Men style mutants. Every week, I would send one of these guys after The Undertaker. After he had beaten them all, he would eventually face me at WrestleMania 25. It was f****** incredible. Freddie was really excited about the idea, he'd cleared it with Stephanie McMahon and she loved it." On December 13th 2008, Hade made his debut on SmackDown, cutting a shadowy, sinister and cerebral speech. It was supposedly the first of many to set up his mega-money feud with the legendary Dead Man, one of the biggest superstars in American Wrestling of the past 20 years. As far as I [writer Greg Lambert] was concerned, my old buddy performed extremely well for a debutant, showing all the verbal confidence and charisma I'd always known he possessed in abundance. But then? "Then they told me they were putting the storyline on hold. I went home for Christmas, and within a week I had been let go. They fired me." Hade's is the most frustrating story, and a perfect example of the fickle and unforgiving nature of the wrestling business and especially its market leader, the global beast that is World Wrestling Entertainment. He left British Wrestling and seemed to have it made in American Wrestling. But in the end, American Wrestling chewed him up and spat him out. Vansen was always a survivor though, with a "que sera sera" attitude to life which served him well after this heartbreaking rejection. "Nobody ever gave me a reason why I'd been released, but there is one story that keeps doing the rounds, and I don't know if this is true or not, and that is Vince McMahon saw me backstage and thought I was way too small to be hanging with The Undertaker. But I wasn't devastated. When Freddie first told me about The Undertaker feud, although half of me had fireworks going off inside, the other half thought: 'Hang on a minute, this is too good to be true, you're not at WrestleMania yet, boy!' So when they said they had nothing for me, I decided to shrug my shoulders, have a cup of tea, and move on." Shawn Michaels ended up taking Hade's spot as Taker's Mania opponent, not a bad substitute at all. Meanwhile the South City Thriller quit wrestling altogether and went to seek his fortune in sunny Los Angeles, the ideal home for his Hollywood looks. The real-life Hadrian Howard still lives in LA and has no intention of coming home, or returning to the squared circle, any time soon. "I'd been wrestling for ten years and kind of gone as far as I wanted to go. I didn't want to work on the American independent circuit and wait for WWE to come along, pat me on the head and give me another go. So I thought I would be my own boss. I've done some acting in commercials, small film roles and appeared on Days of Our Lives, and I run a head-shot photography business as a sideline. I have my own flat in LA, I'm 20 minutes from the beach, the sun is always shining and you can't beat the women in California. I'm living the American Dream!"

It certainly was - in that he literally never wrestled again. His last ever match according to Cagematch was on FCW TV Dec 18 2008, which was around the time the vignettes aired. I know HHH and his shovel were powerful but to end a guy's career? I reckon there must have been something else, unless Vansen literally thought "fuck this" and retired on the spot.

Apt seeing as they're all wankers waaaaaheeeeeeeeeeeeeeey.

We all know it means an Arsenal fan but to a lot of not British X..

Ha, never knew that about TNA, as Merz said.

Aye.

A truly great worker! A shame it didn't work out as he seemed like the second coming of Sid and in a weird way he was..

I think it was an Australian tour as well, so he could get a free flight home.

It was Freddie Prinze Jr's big idea, during his brief stint as a writer, and if I remember rightly at the same time they put Hade on ice they took Freddie out back and shot him. Seems like FPJ came in, they were starstruck so gave him everything he wanted... then realised that actually he wasn't what they wanted so threw the baby out with the bathwater.

Didn't Nathan Jones also just walk out on the company in the middle of a tour, Road Warrior Hawk style?

Did they have extra training / rehearsal at Takers ranch as well but he still couldn’t get it? Or have I misremembered that.

They had him on the road for the first quarter of 2003 beating low level heels like Matt Hardy, then him and Taker doing dry runs of the tag vs Show and A-Train. Which was so bad they decided they couldn't do it on Mania. I'd not heard that he was pencilled in to fight Taker, but it wouldn't have surprised me either.

There must also be more to his story. Built up and then released like that, something must have happened for them to drop him like a hot brick and never touch him again surely? You're right though, the Streak rumour has to be bullshit. I do believe the one that Nathan Jones was going to end the streak but then Taker got cold feet after having wrestled the guy.

You're hovering around the truth of the matter, and it's not bullshit that there were Taker vs Vansen plans. They aired the vignette late 2008 with a view to Hade being a potential Taker opponent for Mania 25. However, a lot of the office had been told good things about Hade without realizing he wasn't that big of a bloke. Freddie Prinze Jr tells the story that Triple H saw Hade, said "He looks like the guy that mows my lawn" - lots of people laughed, Vince heard it, and that was that.

Hade Vansen ending the Undertaker's Wrestlemania Streak. Around 2003/4. I think they aired one video promo and he never wrestled on TV.

It most likely won’t negatively impact sales here no, I fully expect this to sell out regardless. But it will have a positive impact on US sales being on PPV in a prime time slot over there. If they’d had this show on a Euro friendly time zone it’d mean an afternoon start time in the US and would’ve hurt the buys. So I get the decision from the UFC’s POV. It’s just shite as a fan that a UK card isn’t gonna be on at a decent time in the UK. Always the chance it has a negative effect on the crowd as well. No doubt a lot of them will be on the piss in the early evening and will be tanked up by 11 when the prelims start. By 3am when the main card kicks off, it’s probably safe to assume a fair percentage of the crowd is not gonna wanna do anything but either fight, vomit or sleep.

I've just gone from stupid levels of excitement to absolute shock and disbelief. They admit we are long long overdue a major UFC ppv here in the UK, they finally move out of London and bring it to us in Manchester...... The top two fights will be Leon Edwards and Tommy fucking aspinall defending their belts on home soil...... But it's still happening at American start times meaning the main card will start at fucking 3 in the morning and won't finish and us fans leave the building for at least 6 in the morning on a fucking Sunday which is the worst day to travel. I truly can't understand this decision it won't impact sales not slightly but the city and now normal patrol with police and whatnot who are outside the arena after shows for obvious reasons post Saturday night logistically seems gigantic

One of the things UK people miss when they get all wound up about US non-competes, is that they're essentially notice periods or gardening leave, which we don't bat an eyelid at. The US get so wound up about them because they don't really do notice periods (when I worked in the States, my notice period was 'at will' but the courteous thing to do was offer a week or two), so these 'non competes' fill that gap in industries where talent poaching is common. But you get paid, and they very rarely lost longer than 90 Days unless you're a mega-baller. The UK style non-competes are far more pernicious, where you have an unpaid non-compete that lasts far longer than your paid notice. That's proper bullshit.

I guess the positive is that they’ll have to bring a stronger card than the usual Fight Nights they do over here. And I usually enjoy the UK shows anyway, to be fair. Gotta be a double header with Tom Aspinall and Leon Edwards defending their belts, right? I’m guessing it’s almost certainly gonna be Leon vs Belal 2, and maybe Aspinall vs Blaydes 2. I read the other day that Ciryl Gane was offered the Aspinall fight and turned it down again because he’s supposedly gonna be in some movie. I’ve found Gane quite likeable on the whole but his blatant ducking of Aspinall has been ridiculous. It’s gotta be at least 2 or 3 times now he’s rejected offers to fight Tom. The fact he was even being offered an interim title fight again, after going 0-2 in his last 2 shots and coming off one win over Spivac, was a bit much IMO. I hope Blaydes gets the fight. I think it’s a more interesting fight plus it’s unfinished business with how the first fight ended.

I once worked at a company that had a 6 month non-compete. But that didn't stop one guy nicking a load of contacts, starting up his own thing and hitting up some of the largest companies in the world within the window, bragging about it, and being hit with a cease and desist from our old company, at which point he absolutely shit himself. He was a nobhead so this was very funny to all of us obviously. No correlation, just makes me laugh.

Yeah thats some bullshit

Would “Price Surging” be having an effect on the cost or are they going to stay at that price after the initial uptake?

Well, only in terms of televised in Spain. Domestically they still acted like he was undefeated until This Tuesday In Texas. Which was double bullshit as thousand of fans attending house shows or TV tapings across North America had already seen him pinned by Hogan, Warrior, or a very privileged few by Macho Man, or the good people of Halifax, Nova Scotia, by Roddy Piper.