elisarcabrera

3 minutes ago, scratchdj said:

I guess I can share my own, small and somewhat silly FWA story.

When I used to attend FWA shows, I thought they were just brilliant. They opened my eyes to a whole new version of wrestling, far removed from what I had followed in WWF since 1988 and totally accessible.

I had started to meet a few faces at some of the FWA shows, and met up with a few UKFF alumni at Broxbourne and York Hall.

I started a website called Smarking Out, which really had no purpose other than I decided that I wanted to start a wrestling site one. I'd recruited a few writers and we were getting a few readers and so (rather stupidly I guess) decided to take up an offer from FWA to sponsor a match. First at one of the regional shows promoted by Bagga, and then at Frontiers of Honour. My number found its way into the hands of Alex Shane and he called me one afternoon to sort things out. He told me someone from the office would call to sort out payment etc, and I soon received a call from a very friendly @elisarcabrera who explained the only account they had to pay money in at that time belonged to a miss K Waters. I didn't know this was Nikita at the time, so acting on blind faith, I sent the money over.

Long story short, all was fine and we got a bit of a spike in traffic for a while which was fine for me at the time and I also had a couple of decent afternoons out attending the shows. The reason I remember this particularly, though, was back then, my online banking wouldn't allow users to delete payees. Before I added Katarina as a payee, I only had one other person I'd regularly send money to. It meant that whenever I'd transfer money to my house mate for bills etc, I almost sent it to Nikita, every fucking time. In fact, once I was convinced I sent her about £500 and spent a few hours worrying about it before I was able to confirm it with my bank.

I think I had her bank details setup until about 2009, by which time I was able to delete them. She must've almost received thousands from me over the years.

I have no recollection of this.  LOL.  

but anyway https://frontierwrestling.wordpress.com/2003/04/26/smarkingout-review-fwa-british-breakout-tour-acton-24-4-03/

is there enough of a fanbase who remember those days ?

I am piqued

5 hours ago, IANdrewDiceClay said:

@elisarcabrerawith all that being said, who actually owns this stuff? Who owns the trademark? Who owns the tapes, the music, the logos etc. There's bloody all sorts of crap promoters who had no following and only ran the odd show up on Highspots streaming service. It amazes me the FWA, with how much the current scene owes to its influence, has not put these shows out for all of us to witness.

Oh, and Simmonz and Andy Quildan had a brief chat about this on their latest podcast. They made some great points about those hype videos the FWA used to produce, and on the flipside how crap the FWA 2.0 was at trying to recreate that magic.

I’d suggest it is complicated. 

The old logo was just a free font from internet. 

but @simonworden this is an issue for me (re: your twitch comment above). Theres an expectation that people should just talk nasty about other people. Its why I avoided interviews this whole time, I deplore shoot style bitching. 

I'd rather celebrate a great company and a great time and acknowledge all the contributions everyone made.  the website is a celebration, an archive of memories.  the players and fans around today, how many of them know about what we did and how we opened the doors for them to be doing what they do now because of what we did.  

So here's why I came back here.  Two years ago I was diagnosed with cancer. Since then I have been through chemo twice and radiotherapy once.  My storage locked burnt down and I lost my FWA memorabilia etc.  I started watching WWE again this year. And enjoyed it. I looked online to see what was happening in the UK scene having ignored it for 14 years. The only thing online I could find about FWA was of the FWA that existed in 2009-12 (what I would call FWA v4 but most refer to as FWA 2.0).

So I thought lets put it back and have an archive that anyone can dip in otherwise if no one puts this stuff up, its lost forever. I guess its one of the sorts of things you think about when you have a doctor telling you if left untreated my cancer would give me 12 months (good news is that was 12 months ago so we're fighting here and we are doing well).

I am a film producer, my movies are already out there but this time of my life is missing, thus the info that existed on the FWA website while I ran it is up there.  I have now reached point in 2004 that Fozzy took over but as I was still vaguely around in the background I will continue posting to the site.  2004 is when I pulled out because work was sending me all over the world at this point. I think i calculated something like 24 flights in 2004 for business trips so it was clear I wasn't able to put in the hours for FWA.

it would need to be something that more than 5 people would be interested in.....

todays instagram:

todays pic on the instagram feed

1 minute ago, Linus said:

Oooh, we're going to fight about this (maybe if we do that thing one day?)! I distinctly remember coming up with the All-England name precisely because Wimbledon was on the telly at the time! Since I got back into the sport, I've followed "my" belt with interest - I was particularly happy when one of my favourites, Earl Black Jr, won it. I do remember the push to be more English, though, with mixed results!

As a trivia note, Scotty Rock carried the belt to the ring at the first TV taping, but we'd decided not to recognise his title reign for some reason that escapes me, and thus we had to come up with an excuse. Does anyone remember what I called the belt he was carrying on commentary? Not sure you could do it today! 

Its the joke being printed in Playboy magazine in Friends

11 hours ago, Carbomb said:

I heard he worked on Rammstein concerts - either as security or as a roadie.

Ulf was running security for bands at their concerts before and during the FWA years.  It brought him to the UK quite often. I remember meeting him at gigs to catch up.

Anyway here's a pic of the man himself debuting on his first FWA show back in November 2001 

I have a few of the all England champs holding the belt.

i willl look and add them to Instagram 

12 minutes ago, Rule One said:

@elisarcabrera Cheers, I thought the All-England was a J-Mar as it was his design but the non-plating and leather on it threw me off. I knew the original British Heavyweight was a J-Mar as the art/design, leather and plating pointed in his direction.

The Tag-Team belts were only being made by those two companies at around the same period they were introduced, they are solid enough but are prone to cracking with heavy handling.

Shame that no-one handed the All-England title back because there's very few clear images of it, I would have loved to seen it properly back then and how it finally ended up.

The XPW European title is with Kevin Klinerock/what's left of Extreme Associates after J-Mar took too long to deliver it and the collapse of XPW due to Rob Black's criminal offences.

@Carbomb Thank-you for the information. 

@Big Benny HG Thank-you for the information, I stopped following IPW after 2005/6 so I missed it all. I have seen their version of the All-England title.

There’s a pic on the belt on that link above 

Probably one of the best pic of the one of the second tag belts I have

https://frontierwrestling.wordpress.com/2003/04/30/brief-results-fwa-british-breakout-night-1-19-4-03-ware/

Here’s the oroginal press release story behind the creation of the All England title

https://frontierwrestling.wordpress.com/2001/07/09/welcome-to-the-all-england-championship/

1 minute ago, Big Benny HG said:

That All-England Title belt ended up in IPW:UK, coming over during the IPW:UK vs. FWA interpromotional feud of 2006-2007 which was the storyline reason for shutting down that version of FWA.  It was then defended throughout the 14-month long, 64-man British National Championship tournament of 2007-2008, won by Terry Frazier. It was just the IPW:UK All-England Championship from then. I'd stopped going to their shows by then, but people like Sammy Smooth and Scott Starr were the regular champions. Title history (which only goes from 2007, when it came over with FWA All-England champ Iceman) is here:

https://www.ipwuk.com/title-history/all-england-championship

They've got a new belt for it now, though:

 

Interesting they liked the name of it enough to continue.

at the time we folded EU Title and when we were deciding to replace it, it was me who came up with the name All England. It was a major debate amongst the partners because not everyone liked the idea. They wanted we have something more in line with what championships were usually called. But I pushed it because I felt we needed to be pushing something uniquely ENGLISH/BRITISH product. All England was obviously derived from Tennis not wrestling but to me conveys something very English and at the same time English traditional. 

And the XPW belt is still in the briefcase because Jonny forgot the combination. But here’s what it looks like

6 minutes ago, Rule One said:

@elisarcabrera What's the story behind the FWA titles belts and any idea on where they are now?

I believe the original British Heavyweight title was made by J-Mar (Joe Marshall) but I have no idea on its second maker or the All-England title. The Tag-team titles were basic belts from Championship Leather (Joe Price) or Legacy Belts (Kevin Rhodes)

The All-England belt, which started life as the FWA EU title first, was the prototype test belt for the original FWA belt. J-Mar sold us the prototype at the same time otherwise it would have just been binned. This is why it wasn’t painted. Mark owned the FWA belt, I owned the All-England. The first tag belts were owned by New Breed. The second version of the tag belts were Barry’s. Barry’s tag belts were gifted to another UK promotion who probably still use them. Not sure who they are.

i don’t know if my All England belt is out there somewhere. I suspect it’s probably fallen apart by now as even back then it was already ropey being an unfinished belt, No one ever offered to return it to me. 

I wonder if whoever bought Balls chair still has it?

1 hour ago, DEF said:

I haven't seen that in years. In much the same way as I've kept all my wrestling VHS tapes I also have a couple thousand DVDs I'll probably never watch again in the cupboard. One of which is Dirty Sanchez season 1. I'll look for that whilst I'm at it and see if there any more FWA stuff on it.

do you have fort boyard episode ?

Flukily found the vhs with the  dirty SANCHEZ clip of flash destorying the mtv SANCHEZ boys. Thought it had been with other tapes in the fire. However turns out it had literally fallen behind the desk and been sitting unseen on the floor behind this whole time.

its up on my YT now

On 8/22/2018 at 2:10 PM, DEF said:

Those photos are awesome.

All summer I've been meaning to dig out my FWA VHS collection and digitize them. I still have a working VHS player for now at least but I don't see me hooking it up to my TV many more times. Would be nice to have that old stuff at a click of a button.

Trying to add pictures daily....

70th Anniversary show in October has been announced

4 hours ago, fwa2 said:

If you ever do that hit me up. Would love copies of them. 

Me too. I lost my collection in a fire so you would make me happy 

On 7/25/2018 at 2:35 AM, jonnybgoode82 said:

I have somewhere. Will try and dig them out. 

I just found the show pics from Cleethorpes 2003 Northern Exposure Tour.

And Bolton.

And here's a pic I took of the tour bus as we were about to make the trip up north

10 hours ago, IANdrewDiceClay said:

It is a good name, it has to be said. Why did you change it to "Cab Kennedy" in the early 2000s?

It wasn't intentional at first.

My first show I was at, FWA One, Mark asked me to be a manager so I made up the name so as to separate it from me.  It was meant to be a one off use.

Then after the show I was part of the company so Cab ended up being a behind the curtain character. 

Then I made up Jane Childs to post news items on the website so as to give a veneer of 'journalistic independence'. And when we then cast and used the Jane name to be an on screen character, I then used Terry to post news on FWA and PWN newsboards.

Eventually it was just easier being Elisar as that worked into our worked shoot style of storytelling.