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Big Benny HG

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  1. Good times.... I attended what I confidently believe to be shows #792, #793 and #794 of my lifetime over the weekend, being a 3-day deathmatch weekender in Hull between Yorkshire-based promotion RISE Underground and their visiting US pals from the indie ICW No Holds Barred group. Was great fun, but I always find the best thing about the shows these days is the all stuff around the show (travelling to a town/city, pre-show pub crawl, hanging out with friends) as much as the wrestling itself. I don't get to as many shows as I used to, having a young family etc. now, but still going to about 25-35 shows a year. And I tend to look out for more 'destination' events like weekenders etc. now, when at one time I'd be following several British promotions and heading along to nearly every show they would put out. At the peak of the mid-2000s and again in the mid-2010s, I would be doing 50+ a year, peaking at 80 in 2017, when British wrestling hit it's peak of cult underground popularity. There are plenty of people that'll have done a lot more than me though, as there were folk doing 100+ per annum during those heavy mid-2010s day. And my near-800 comes spread out over a looooong period, with my first ever live show being exactly 30 years ago last week. I never went to SummerSlam 1992 like so many did, or any of the early-90s UK Rampage events or anything like that. I'm told my dad secretly tried to get us tickets to the WCW house show tour in Manchester in 1993 after seeing the advert in a WCW magazine I'd left out, but it had sold out. So, my first show (as mentioned, 30 years ago last week) was one of those AMERICAN WRESTLING LIVE touring shows, in February 1994 at the then-named Hambleton Forum in Northallerton, North Yorkshire, which was the next town along. 5 singles matches and a 10-man rumble, in a creaky, aging British ring. I've reliably worked out over the subsequent years it will have been a Klondyke Jake-promoted show, and was a bit of a weird mix of 'new' American style fanciness (the big WWF-style colourful cartoon characters) and classic British presentation (single turnbuckle covers, public warnings). UK Undertaker (Rick Masters) was the main star of the show, but there was also UK Earthquake (who was Scrubber Daly), shouty WOS baddies Lucky Gordon, Pete LaPaque and Billy Joe Brannigan, the imposing Barbarian (not the WWF/WCW guy, but a Scottish(?) bloke with the same look, hairstyle, facepaint and gear, who'd also be known as Tarantula), 'Tiger' Kashmir Singh, Zulu Warrior, College Boy (a young Pete Bainbridge) and Rory Campbell (as someone else already mentioned in the thread, now a convicted sex offender). It was good fun, with the ring announcer starting chants over the PA and Undertaker last eliminating Earthquake to predictably win the rumble. Got a polaroid photo with 'Taker and still have both that and the newspaper ad for the show in a box somewhere. The rest of the 90s saw me attending more of the AMERICAN WRESTLING shows in the local area, including seeing Davey Boy Smith in Scarborough weeks before his SummerSlam 1994 return to WWF, Giant Haystacks and shamed ex-Gladiator Shadow during his brief wrestling run. There were also Power Rangers, Legends of Doom, wrestling Clowns and many of those already mentioned above. My first WWF show didn't come until Insurrextion 2000 from Earls Court, after we spotted a poster advertising an organised coach trip to it in Middlesbrough bus station, including travel, accommodation and show tickets. My brother and I went down on the 6-hour bus journey, staying in a hotel next to Tower Bridge as part of the trip. The bus was slow getting from the hotel to the arena, so we arrived almost exactly as the show was starting. I will absolutely never forget the real chill and goosebumps hearing the ā€œROCKY! ROCKY!ā€ chants from the packed arena above echoing through the concourse as we rushed to find our seats. From there, I'd typically try to do at least one WWF/E show when they came over on their UK tours, so saw more UK-only PPVs like Rebellion in 2001 (Austin vs. Rock singles main event!) and 2002, Insurrextion in 2003, various house shows and then the Raw and SmackDown tapings when they started up in 2004. I also did the World Wrestling All Stars shows in Newcastle Arena when they came over in a post-WCW era. After being massively put off by the 2001 WrestleExpress disaster in Coventry, the first show that got me into travelling the UK specifically to see/follow the British wrestling scene was the February 2002 ā€˜Revivalā€™ show at Crystal Palace. Iā€™d been following FWA on videotape from Strong Style Tapes after listening to the Tommy Boyd/Alex Shane TalkSport radio show and made this my first one to go and check it out in person. Iā€™d go to similar GWF (Jon Farrer), NEW (Dann Read) and ā€˜British Uprisingā€™ (FWA) events in Preston, Ipswich and London respectively over the rest of 2002, before jumping on-board the FWA train full-time with effect from ā€˜Seasons Beatingsā€™ that December. I went to 40-odd FWA shows over the next few years, not just their main ones in the Broxbourne Civic Hall, Brent Town Hall or York Hall, but also in places like Cleethorpes Winter Gardens, the Morecambe Dome and Horwich Leisure Centre in Bolton. There was a good community built up around the promotion and it felt like being part of something. Seeing FWA wrestlers advertised on their shows is also what first got me into checking out other British promotions like FutureShock (Manchester-based promotion that originally grew out of the FWA-affiliated training school), GPW (Wigan), wZw (Newcastle/north-east) and 3CW (Teesside) and they became part of my regular schedule in their own right. IPW:UK (based out of south-east London and Kent) took over FWA as the main British-based promotion of my interest from 2006, and I went to pretty much all their shows, as well as selected ones from other groups like Triple-X Wrestling, 1PW, XWA etc. until 2010 when I started being more picky. I would always try to do the 'big' supershow weekends like International Showdown, Universal Uproar, King of Europe Cup, Indypendence Day and the UK shows from US groups like PWG or ROH, but it wasn't until I started going to Preston City Wrestling nearly every month from mid-2012, and the start of the "Brit Wres Boom" that my attendance really picked up again for the next 5 years. I'd be going over to Preston a weekend a month for PCW, popping down to London, Manchester, Birmingham and Sheffield for nearly every PROGRESS show, going to big Revolution Pro Wrestling (which had split-off from IPW:UK) events and filling most of my other weekends with the likes of TIDAL Wrestling, FutureShock, Lucha Forever, GPW, Fight Club PRO and literally dozens of others. There was a whole new generation of wrestlers headlining all these shows, and a really strong community that you'd see all over the place, making the shows a social occasion as much as anything. As mentioned above, though, that has definitely cooled-off over the last few years. That boom/peak died off and things didn't seem to be "must see" anymore, and it got to the point I wanted to do other things with my time. After 16 months without any shows between March 2020 and July 2021 (for obvious reasons), I came back with an attitude of wanting to see more "different" things and being much more selective about what I choose to spend my money and, more importantly, my time on. These days, I'm mostly happy going to a selection of GPW (which took a couple of years to come back after the pandemic, as they couldn't get the previous availability on 'their' venue, but now runs a much-reduced schedule in a new slot in the building, which was worked out great), some BWR (really good, well-presented storyline-based shows in Cleethorpes, that I've only really been going to since the Covid break), True Grit Wrestling (running stacked main shows in Left Bank, Burley, Leeds, one of the best venues I've ever been in for wrestling), OPW in Morecambe once or twice a year (latest promotion to pick up the mantle of the Morecambe Wrestling, putting on shows with long-running storylines that build across a year and an incredibly hot local audience), most TIDAL in Huddersfield (which took me by surprise as being a great town to visit - great pubs) and odd other 'destination' things (like the deathmatch tournament I went to this weekend, PCW once a year for their big tournament in Preston or Blackpool, some big RevPro events, big WWE or AEW shows) and the odd local Megaslam Wrestling show thrown in. And if anything else pops up that takes my fancy (there's a double-ring "GAMES OF WAR" match coming up in Middlesbrough in April, for instance, that might be fun to see). And I'm happy with that. (And, in a few weeks, I'm taking my now-6-year old son to his first ever wrestling event, in the exact same building that I saw my first show described above, almost exactly 30 years on...). 'Fun' stats (yes, Raiders, I have a sheet): PCW is the promotion I've been to the most, at 93 (96 next month!), though 81 of that total took place 2012-2017, and the rest have mostly been multi-show weekenders when I go maybe once a year now. The Monaco Ballroom/Rose Club in Hindley, Wigan is the individual venue I've visited most times for wrestling - 80. First there for me was 2006, latest was 3 weeks ago. London, when considering all its Boroughs, is the town/city I've seen the most shows in - 133. Some of that's due to the sheer size of it, but it's also the case that once upon a time you'd be needing to head to the capital to be seeing the choice stuff, be that WWF, FWA, IPW:UK, RevPro, PROGRESS, etc. and there were times during the mid-00s and mid-10s I'd be there every couple of weeks. Portsmouth is the furthest I've ever been to see a show (PWG in 2007) Biggest crowd is (anywhere between) 72,000 - 85,000 for AEW All In at Wembley last year, followed by 62,000 for WWE Clash At The Castle Smallest crowd is 20 for Monkey Madness Wrestling at Tang Hall Working Men's Club in York, followed by 25 for GRAPPLE in Selby and 30 for Sovereign Nation Wrestling in York/TIDAL Wrestling in Leeds Broxbourne Civic Hall in Hoddesdon, Herts. remains the single venue in which I've seen the most different promotions live, with 6; FWA, ROH, IPW:UK, LDN, Dragon Gate UK, Pro Wrestling NOAH. This summer it'll be 10 YEARS since I last went there, which at one point would have sounded ridiculous. I believe Rumble Wrestling runs there now. All but 2 of my 796 live shows have been in England (and the other 2 were in Wales) EDIT: nice to pop back in and see you all!
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