Paid Members IANdrewDiceClay Posted June 23, 2013 Paid Members Share Posted June 23, 2013 Xtreme Pro Wrestling:The Beginning:XPW's roots were based in a wrestling gym in Southern California named Slammers. That is where they got a lot of the wrestlers from. And where Rob Black found the staff which would work with them backstage. Including his right hand man Kevin Kleinrock (Wrestling Society X, Big Vision Entertainment). Rob Black got into the wrestling business through his friends Buh Buh Ray Dudley and Big Dick Dudley, and his business colleague Paul Heyman. Black and Heyman were working on a distribution deal in Australia for ECW. ECW wrestlers including big wig Tommy Dreamer can be seen on Extreme Associates porn videos during this time. Black was so into Heyman's larger than life gift of the gab personality that he wanted in the business on a small level. It was going to be called X Pro Wrestling. And the X was going to stand for nothing in general like X Games (later the idea was put to use with MTV's Wrestling Society X). But when ECW was negotiating with The Nashville Network, someone got word of his relationship with Rob Black (who is known as being a bit of a character), Heyman quickly told Black to fuck off and swore he'd never even met this plum. This angered Black no end and instead of fucking about at the small level, he wanted to be ECW. So bang went the "X" standing for nothing and in came the rip-off "Xtreme Pro Wrestling" name. Apparently XPW's first show wasn't actually their first show. According to legend (i.e. Homeless Jimmy) their first show wasn't put out because it was to ECW like. Which you can only imagine considering what the content was like normally.Assembling the talent:They got a lot of the early wrestlers from the aforementioned Slammers school including The Messiah, Johnny Webb, Homeless Jimmy, Dynamite D and a few others. Some of the originals ranged from people who had potential like Kid Kaos (he turned out to be quite decent) to alright brawlers with no look like the Messiah (his actual wrestling was a decent standard, but his appearance only gets one thumb up from me) to big mentals like Pogo The Clown and Supreme. Supreme was a death match wrestler who looks like the bloke who works in the pizza shop round our way. Pogo the Clown was based on child killer John Wayne Gacy. Pogo loved the promotion so much he got "XPW" tattoed on his neck. I think I prefer Gacy.The announce team was on the wrong side of fucking horrid for most of its existence. Kris Kloss and Larry Rivera are still the standard. Larry Rivera just isn't funny. I hope someone adds him on facebook and sends him this link, because if he's reading YOU ARE NOT HUMOUROUS IN THE LEAST. "Chico, Mr Roboblack isn't going to be happy about this, mang". I honestly don't know if he's actually Mexican or is a Harry Enfield like piss take of stereotypes. Which would still make it offensive. I mean even XPW eventually got sick of him and replaced him with 'Red Rum' Ron Hed from Incredibly Strange Wrestling. Ron Hed sounded like Gordon Solie in comparison. His co-host wasn't much better. Kriss Kloss had long dyed blonde hair tied into a ponytail. The saying "every ponytail has an arsehole under it" was never truer with Kriss Kloss. A fat pasty faced Joey Styles, with faux screaming and over the top yelps. Even if something good were to happen in the ring, this pair ruined itAs far as the rest, it was made up of Rob Black in the Paul Heyman role (of course). Every ECW name you can think of and even more when it folded. XPW had a load of porn stars on the roster as well. Veronica Caine, Lizzy Borden, Kristi Myst, Jasmin St Claire and a few others. I feel for Lizzy in a way. She was knackered whatever she did in this promotion. She had her moments and she had more screen presence and personality than a lot of women. But whatever she did was like pouring perfume on a pig with the rest of the shows filled with shite. Kevin Kleinrock was even a regular character and he has that thing caricature geeks have where you spit when you talk. It was pretty much a roster filled with peoples mates.Concept and other wacky shit:As mentioned the concept was to copy ECW. One thing about XPW, it really sorted the men from the boys in the sense that all those people who used to think they were something in ECW got totally found out without Paul Heyman protecting them. If you think Damien Steele was shit in ECW, you should have seen him in this. To celebrate their one year anniversary, Rob Black decided it was time to make the step up from giving tickets away in small halls to running the LA Sports Arena (the site of WrestleMania VII). A 16,000 seat venue, which attracted a heavily papered 2000 people. The rent of the building was massive, so God only knows how much they lost. To build anticipation for this big show, XPW invaded the Grand Olympic Auditorium which was hosting ECW's Heat Wave. They all turned up in the front row. Supreme, Messiah, Homeless James, Kriss Kloss and a few others. They caused a bit of a scene, with Kristi Myst getting her lallies out and taking the focus off the action in the ring. The ECW locker room piled out on request of their boss and along with Atlas Security dragged them outside. According to Kevin Kleinrock (who was one of them) the actual violence started when one of Atlas dragged Messiah past Paul Heyman who was on the headset watching the match and casually and calmly dropped Messiah with a punch and got back to watching the ladder match between Justin Credible and Tommy Dreamer, as the ECW roster gave the XPW lot a bloody good hiding. Which I find hilarious. Rob Black took out a full page ad in WOW Magazine saying next time ECW were in LA bodies will be left dead. Then said "I hope you enjoy my gift". What he meant by that was, he had sent gay porn to Paul Heyman's Mam's house. Which is a bit sly, but if I'm playing chess, that's a check mate for me.For the next 18 months, XPW put on a few shows building up footage for their TV shows. They'd run buildings like the Olympic Auditorium several times (costing $13,000 a pop) which holds 7000 people and drew a paid 300 people. They seemed to run in the red the whole time they were there. There wasn't an attempt to actually make money. One Olympic show involved the infamous incident where Vic Grimes fell off the Scaffold and missed all the tables. New Jack says it was a shoot, but if New Jack is really strong enough to make a 350 pound man do a flip bump, he wouldn't be doing fake wrestling for a living. I think the Grimes bump was the daftest thing I've seen in wrestling. Just madness.The next notable thing on the XPW agenda was Rob Black handing over the book to Shane Douglas. They might as well have given Homeless Jimmy the pencil. Shane Douglas has proven countless times he hasn't got a clue about anything outside of swearing and making someone turn the music off. He popped up in XPW wearing this shite gold shirt looking about as intimidating as Walter Mitty. His promo was about how nobody wants to watch Raw and all that. Same stuff he said last year before his last promotion with "Extreme" in the title died a death. As impossible as it sounds, Douglas actually made XPW worse. Which is an achievement in itself. He did bring in Joey Styles, which is an improvement on Kriss Kloss. The worst thing about it was, he re-did every angle ECW ever did. All Paul Heymans angles as well. The bloke he buried in every promo. These angles were the same apart from minor details. Raven was replaced by Pogo the Clown. Sandmans son was replaced by Sandy's daughter. And instead of this long thought out plan to have Raven turn Tyler Fullington against Sandman, breaking his spirit and feeding the lust for hate that the Raven character was desperate for ... Pogo's motivation was that he wanted to fuck his daughter and bury her in his basement. Even worse, Shane Douglas won the belt and had long main events against anyone who had received a bounced cheque from HHG Corp.The end:The real end of XPW came soon after The Franchise took over. Rob Black found out The Messiah had been diddling his wife Lizzy Borden and sacked him. Soon after two black blokes broke into his house while Messiah was playing on Tomb Raider and chopped his thumb off with Brutus' hedge clippers. They tried to chop his cock off as well, but Messiah managed to escape. This was played on America's Most Wanted with Messiah pointing the finger he was lucky to still have squaring at Black. The two blokes were never found. Still waiting for an indy promotion to do a "it was me" style angle based on it. Cryme Tyme would have done some funny skits regarding it. This incident wasn't what Shane Douglas needed. He quickly distanced himself from it by focusing squaring on a plan to relocate XPW to Philadelphia. A plan so stupid, I'm surprised there aren't books wrote about it. I read wikipedia in research for this thing and found this "Thanks to promotional efforts on the part of Shane Douglas and Cody Michaels, the East Coast invasion featured XPW garnering some success in cities like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh".FUCKING WHAT? What would you consider "some success"? Drawing horrendous papered crowds after flying in your whole staff from California and losing hundreds of thousands on the venture? The best part about it was, Black tried to exclusively lease the building. This was during the decline in attendance at the show. It went from 900 to 500 to 350 and then Douglas convinced Black to buy the rights to exclusively run the building and stop all other promotions running their. Their logic was that it wasnt that fans hated XPW and thought it was the worst product on the indies, but that attendances would go up without any competition. Forgetting that the likes of CZW, ROH, 3PW and MLW would just run different venues and just stick one in them. It cost Black $100,000 to get the rights to the building. A building they didn't draw in and had to fly the whole crew from Southern California. Just a fucking mess of a situation.Rob and Lizzy were both charged for selling obscene videos and had to use their fortune on stuff more important than GQ Money diving off a scaffold. They got sent down and now Rob Black is currently a 38 year old who looks liked he'd suck your dick for a cheeseburger.TV! TV! TV!:XPW had pockets of TV in California and elsewhere. The shows themselves were filled with a 4 minute opening video which was a bit mad. A one hour show with an intro longer than a lot of the matches. Then it would start with Rob Black in his office shouting at Kleinrock and occassionally telling him to wear a shirt which said "100% negro". Because Rob is Black and Kevin's a Negro (erm ... lol?). Then you would have a match with a million run ins and shit commentary. And Supreme would beat someone up while yelling "fuck".THE FUTURE?:This is what wikipedia says, although it has no sources and looks like its been wrote by someone who is wishful thinking.In 2012, Rob Black regained control and ownership of XPW. The relaunch of XPW and the return of live shows is planned for late 2013.Rob Black swears blind its coming up in August. Although he also says he cant pay his electric bill and is broker than broke. So dont hold your breath there. This thread will be bumped if it does, though.LAST WORDS:Any promotion starring Shane Douglas SUCKS.This whole deal is an ego stroke by Rob Black.Black hires thugs to chop off body parts.Fuck 'em.Bob Barnett OTHER ENTRIES:H2 Wrestling Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members quote the raven Posted June 23, 2013 Paid Members Share Posted June 23, 2013 Rob and Lizzy were both charged for selling obscene videos and had to use their fortune on stuff more important than GQ Money diving off a scaffold. They got sent down and now Rob Black is currently a 38 year old who looks liked he'd suck your dick for a cheeseburger.AHAHAH.A great post. I remember being a stupid mark and more or less refusing all things xpw as i was a czw fan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Devon Malcolm Posted June 23, 2013 Paid Members Share Posted June 23, 2013 Great stuff, Ian.I was baffled by some thread that popped up last year talking about all the great things that happened in XPW because all I remember was a bunch of bumbling old fat cunts falling through tables and being set on fire in front of no fans while some arsehole screamed a lot on commentary.Was it on TWC much? I vaguely remember it being on but not as much as CZW. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Lion_of_the_Midlands Posted June 23, 2013 Paid Members Share Posted June 23, 2013 You could also have mentioned the XPW European title Ian. Jonny Storm won a tournament final to be crowned the XPW European champion by beating Jerry Lynn in the FWA stronghold of Broxbourne civic hall. Unfortunatley for Jonny he won this about 10 minutes before XPW went out of business, and whilst he continued to defend the title on FWA shows he never actually had a belt. Instead he had a briefcase which he would claim contained the belt. It just goes to show that combining the FWA and XPW not only gets you FXWPAW but a double dose of indy shitarsery Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members LaGoosh Posted June 23, 2013 Paid Members Share Posted June 23, 2013 There was also a moment where XPW announced the creation of 4 regional development promotions based around the US, one called Battle Zone Wrestling...remarkably similar to Combat Zone Wrestling. And in the dying days when Rob Black out of nowhere announced he was going to feed a puppy to a snake live on XPWrestling.comXPW also are responsible for stricter regulations on wrestling in Philadelphia because during a match the Hardcore Homo Angel brawled into the womens toilets and got blood all over the athletic commissioners daughter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pgi86 Posted June 23, 2013 Share Posted June 23, 2013 There was also a moment where XPW announced the creation of 4 regional development promotions based around the US, one called Battle Zone Wrestling...remarkably similar to Combat Zone Wrestling.It was War Zone Wrestling and it was to be based in Florida. They never ran an event and, IIRC, Full Impact Pro popped up in its place instead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adequate8 Posted June 23, 2013 Share Posted June 23, 2013 class thread, trying to find V.1 Ian but struggling, anyone got a link? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Egg Shen Posted June 23, 2013 Paid Members Share Posted June 23, 2013 great post Ian!ive mentioned it here several times before, i was an XPW fan. They came about during the height of my indy fandom and i was at that point where i couldn't get enough, i loved ECW and XPW was similar enough to make me watch (i didnt care if it was a copy). I used to get the XPW TV tapes in from the tape trading circuit and all the main shows, i'm probably one of the few on the planet who actually enjoyed all that stuff, i used to think the TV show was funny shit. I think what also made me enjoy XPW at that time was that they had guys id look at as exclusively XPW wrestlers, they always had other guys come in but there was a core group that were XPW originals to me and i liked it (even though from an actual wrestling standpoint they sucked).I followed the promotion near enough up until the end, i remember most of the Arena shows...and whilst Ian quite rightly points out that they were incredibly stupid shows to run, i thought they were the best ones they ever did. If i went and looked back i'd probably realise they were fucking crud, but as a teenage indy mark who had a bit of a fascination with deathmatch and hardcore wrestling it ticked all the boxes for me. *hangs head in shame* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adequate8 Posted June 23, 2013 Share Posted June 23, 2013 this post inspired me to look more into XPW. I initially came across the promotion from my tape-trading days, plus the hardcore/ECW/porno-links obviously gained interest from a 14-year old me. came across this which I never knew During the five month hiatus (after Go Funk Yourself, the rumors of XPW's demise began, and also the ill fated exploding ring death match between Onita and Sabu was announced, that would never happen. People who were inside XPW at the time said the match never occurred because Rob Black basically blew Onita off, and Onita eventually said "fuck you" to XPW. In an effort to save face, Josh Lazie and Sabu sent Onita a letter blaming the cancellation of the match on a lawsuit that was filed against Sabu by Paul Heyman. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Thunderplex Posted June 23, 2013 Paid Members Share Posted June 23, 2013 Cracking post Ian. I remember reading about the crazy matches, and getting a tape of them. Was so sorry I bothered. the commentary was frigging awful, and everything was just setting up for spots that did not work right. Just shit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Maverick Posted June 23, 2013 Paid Members Share Posted June 23, 2013 In my tape trading days I got a few of these aswell, I remember turning it on and they were in a massive arena, properly massive with just a mass of white seats everywhere, it was awful. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members quote the raven Posted June 23, 2013 Paid Members Share Posted June 23, 2013 Just how much money did they pay Justice pain to Jump from CZW?That was kinda a huge deal back then. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Arch Stanton Posted June 23, 2013 Paid Members Share Posted June 23, 2013 I laughed for a good five minutes at that opening graphic! Great work, Ian! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Maverick Posted June 23, 2013 Paid Members Share Posted June 23, 2013 I especially like how Teddy Hart's cat looks totally fucked off with him. Feinstein and the monkey is pretty great too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Fox Piss Posted June 23, 2013 Paid Members Share Posted June 23, 2013 Great post Ian. Did anything much get said by people to the claims Jasmine got raped at XPW? Pretty fucking grim but i'm sure she named her alleged person. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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