TsuMirren

Don West's commentary

Any other year it would have been the McMahon limo storyline being cut short, but obviously circumstances dictate I couldn't possibly vote for that. John Cena getting injured

PBW, so good I actually bought a dvd

For the first time ever my work is blocking wwe.com, must be more wrestling fans working for Scottish Water & Solutions than I thought. There literally are no words, so RIP Chris

"I'm not saying that little guys won't get hurt doing crazy shit, but it's hardly a surprise that these two might have been living with ungodly amounts of pain just because they were bigger guys. "Kenny, I neither said nor implied that they weren't. I was pointing out that the flippity floppers have every chance of ending up having to live with more. As for UK guys hooked on pain killers... retire, get a proper job and live without your name in the heady 24 pt font on a website.

Thing about this is we're losing wrestlers who weren't flippity floppers. Can you imagine how dependant on painkillers some of the newer breed will become, it's fucking frightening.

How many times....???They point people have made repeatedly is that even if the shows were good, they consider the business model to be unworkable in the longterm, and 1PW's existence ultimately detrimental to British Wrestling in the longterm.Please actually read what people are saying

Seconded... this is getting way OT and rather futile.

Yeah, but it's going to a fantastic stress relieving distraction when he actually makes this major announcement. I think it's a tie-in with Adam Ryland, with 1PW shows now being a live type-cast with everyone paying to watch Gauntley copy and paste TEW 07 results into MSN. He will, of course, have complete and total permission from all workers used (obviously Forlan from T-Zone will be his booker) and he'll claim complete ownership of any career development by UK workers within the TEW 07 world. After the show, you'll be able to purchase a copy of the typescript and photoshop images of 3D rendered action from the show itself. Fans will be online saying "Did you see picture six, man set aside the dodgy character models, that was a fine powerbomb!" If you're lucky enough to buy a Gold ticket, then christ you'd better strap yourself in and make sure everything is secured for you're going to receive...dun, dun, daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah...YES, a DVD of the entire card run on M Dickie's Wrestling Mpire!

What a cocktard, seriously!I've never read such a load of bloody bollocks in my entire life, I can't even begin to imagine the amount of drugs it would take to have the initial thought that anyone would believe it let alone have the audacity to actually type it. People came up and shook your hand, yes and people wear tracksuits and feed their children on tins of dog food aswell. The 1PW family...more like an orphanage, which will no doubt move on to the next triple lettered organisation promising the earth."I have been called many things by many people, but from here on out it will never matter again what they say ... even in our death they are jealous as F*CK of the house that YOU Built."You're a fucking retard Gauntley, with absolutely fuck all charisma, no business sense, a dellusional belief that the real world is a game of TEW 07 and very few promoters have actually done less in this industry. You are exactly what American Indy workers are looking for "Hell yeah, another one...where's the plane?" and have as much clue about how to actually manage a situation as the Armed Forces in Iraq. Much like them, you had absolutely no business being where you were. Sad thing is, just like others before you, that you could easily have garnered more acclaim and had more to look out upon if you'd actually helped a tried and tested promotion. You could have put your money into a national training school or all manner of other ventures. Sadly, you were, are and will always be remembered as a wank job!Fanfuckingtastic for relieving stress at work though, so take that "heartfelt tribute" and fuck off.

"I can't afford to be throwing away money with two kids to feed."Seriously, get out of wrestling then. You've absolutely no foundations, of any worth, to build on and you're one of the few promoters whom I would fully expect people to be warning venues about. That and any worker with any self respect should be refusing bookings. I don't have a cool and fancy phrase to describe you, so I can't even offer Carbomb something to note down and make this whole sorry scenario even remotely worth it. All I'll say is that in wrestling the workers should be paid first, couldn't care about insurance, the venue or whatever. On the night of SCW's first show, I paid the wrestlers first and then had the fucking guts to wait for the impending avalanche of shit. Saying that, there's a difference between around 300 fans and TWENTY. Hell, even on the night it was pissing down, the local paper had "forgotten" to run anything, Valentine's night and the Greenock swimming baths had some free event on for kids (opportunity for a free wash in Inverclyde is never turned down) SCW still, fucking still, pulled more bloody people than that. Jesus, I can't even begin to comprehend how you go about drawing so few fans. Just realise you've failed, recognise that you've drawn the angriest Majik post I think I've ever seen and use your money to put Kriss through college. Your kids will be a lot more grateful for a father who can count without using fingers and toes than they will ever be for thousands of pounds of debt.

Instead of everybody standing back saying "this will fail" etc why doesn't somebody who has the ability and know-how step in and say "Since you're hell bent on going ahead with this, rather than watch it crash, burn and kill another venue, I'll teach you how to do things the right way"? I'm not a promoter and I don't know one, but there are lot's of people connected to this forum who are.

I've asked for advice, and taken all of the advice I was offered. I'm always open to genuine advice if people are forthcoming with it.

Don't do it, just walk away and try something else. Leave the Promoting to those who know and give Ricky Knight's contact details to your investor. ---As for anyone agreeing to work for Sprules, this is for you:It's bad enough that people take a pay day to work a tribute show without people like you agreeing to work for a Promoter such as Sprules. It's workers such as yourselves who allow these shitehawk fly by night wannabe, but will neverbe, promoters to keep bloody well coming along. Instead of working for people like Sprules, take the night off and rest up/pop some more pain killers (whatever is your want) and think about the fact that you probably already put your bodies through enough pointless stress without doing it for an idiot who obviously has no respect for the business. Is it really that bloody important to be "over" that you'll accept a booking from someone like Sprules?---On a side note. I remember Scott Future contacting me when I was booking SCW's first show. He wasn't a "name", though had been connected with WrestleXpress, so I asked him for a video/dvd/promotional material...fuck anything...and nothing was forthcoming, so I didn't pursue the booking much really. Of course, I could be wrong and you'll find I put press releases announcing him and everything on the site...my memory of certain things is vague at best, I can't even list the shows in the correct order.

We really need to look at the root cause of the problem in order to prevent it from happening again in future:Money Mark promoters - created after the decline of the British Wrestling industry because, quite frankly, any old tom dick or harry can go out, hire a venue, hire wrestlers, hire a ring and promote a show. How can this happen? Because wrestlers in this country will generally sell their services to the highest bidder (as others do in everyday business). However, in doing so they are contributing to the demise of their own industry.In these circumstances fans lose money, promoters lose money, wrestlers lose another place to work and British Wrestling lose's even more integrity.Money Mark promoters are created because of dis-satisfaction with the current product. They are part of/want to cater for a niche audience e.g. Shimmer girls, TNA Indy wrestlers, death match pin cushion guys etc Now is the answer to carry on assisting these niche marketeers by sub-contracting your wrestling services and co-existing? OR (do as the FWA successfully did) add these elements to your existing shows in order to cater for both general and niche audiences? Fans want to see these attractions and will part with their cash in order to do so. Where the difference lies is whether or not the people within the British Wrestling industry decide to cater for alternative tastes or continue to sub-contract their services to support the niche market (which inevitably fails to support itself ala WrestleXpress, 1PW etc).

This is actually a really good post and it's a real shame that it'll probably go completely ignored and unchallenged. I accept that pro wrestling is an industry that has constantly evolved but right now, in this country especially, it's gone too far and desperately needs to go back a few steps.But that's a whole different thread that would be met with nothing but naive optimism.

Thank you. I honestly feel that the British wrestling industry is self-harming rather than falling victim to circumstances beyond it's own control. I think we need another thread, in which I shall ask "what did happen to the British wrestling board of control and the idea of all working together?"

Holy fuck no, don't do that!!! Last thing we need is another BofC discussion, only leads to:Who qualifies and who decides that?Hang on, why the fuck don't X, Y & Z qualify?We've put our money in, built our "territory" and training school. Now, suddenly someone is going to tell us what to do...erm, no!That's even before all the little in-fights and revealing of inside stories, THEN the fans get involved and you finally get heel wrestlers coming online to "big up" their own promotion and destroying what kayfabe/suspension of disbelief we have left. Your point above is good though, very good infact. If we all worked together then we could do everything, book shows so that there's a show within travelling distance every Thursday, Friday & Saturday for most (without including Dixon's All Star shows) make sure promotion's don't end up as near facsimilies of each other with duplicating rosters, build up venues, have a cross over of fans and even...Lord forbid...have some worked aggression, instead of all this ass kissing. You don't see Dixons saying "Go to Currys, they're fucking great too" and bugger me if I didn't live by that ethos with regards to SCW & BCW. Why should we have worked together, hell why should SWA and BCW work together now, better to have little tit bits of fighting and a sense of variation...concentrate on your product, shit on the others, but behind the scenes be able to trade info. Competition is good, hell if it's actual real competition then even better and have two rosters who actually want to outdo each other.Problem, as always, is the utter lack of transparency in the British scene and this "ooooh, I've got fans...better talk to them, hell better add them all to MSN and reply to every message on every forum" mentality. To wrestlers I say, get the fuck off the forums and grow up. Take your aliases and mates with you aswell. Once we've got the wrestlers off of the forums we can start working on everything else. It's not like everyone's sitting on their thumbs anymore, so there's no excuses for fans to say there's nothing to watch. They just need to realise whether they want to watch UK wrestling or spout "wouldn't it be nice to get back to the good old days" whilst jacking off over ever Indy tom, dick and harry who charges through the nose to come across here.

I'm just going to state a fact and not offer an opinion at this stage, to make one thing clear, Steven Gauntley did actually email my home address 45 minutes before making the public announcement, but I didn't pick the email up until about 6pm as I work full time. Steven also has my work email address and my mobile number. I am not going to reveal what he said on the email, at least not at this time, as I feel that would be inappropriate for a number of reasons.Anyway, I'm going back to listening to George Galloway on TalkSPORT. Galloway~

Any truth that the e-mail was as below:Dean, I've got the guns and the masks. Thing is, the guy with the van hasn't arrived because the cheque bounced. Do you know anyone who owns a van? Better yet, do you know anyone who works in this bank I'm going to rob? I'd have used to your mobile, but that would be too easy and I'm loathe to spending money in a way which makes sense. Give me an e-mail back asap.

If only 1PW listened to almost everyone on here when they first started up saying the model couldn't possibly work.....

They were going to book Rick Martel too??? Damn...lolSorry, but seriously, I want to get this in before the vultures settle around here....thank you very much to Steve and Rosie for putting on some truly great shows, and providing us with the opportunity to witness some unique and tremendous matches. Please be aware when hitting the damnation button that without these shows, there were a lot of stars and matches you would never have seen (Doug v Lance Storm anyone). For every ounce of hatred you may have towards 1PW and Steve Gauntley, there also has to be an acknowledgement for how they have benefitted us as a UK fanbase.As bad as some of the business decisions may have been, they were all carried out in order to provide fans with top notch shows. And for that I give what may well be the final bit of credit seen in this thread if I have judged the UKFF correctly on this matter!

Oh fuck off Phil! What you're basically saying is that money marks are okay and that it doesn't matter if they fuck people over so long as they book a few UK guys and spend ludicrous amounts of money giving you the matches that you want to see. "Hmmm, someone got fucked over for flights. But, sod that, I got to see Wrestler x vs Wrestler Y." I notice you haven't once actually thanked Steve & Rosie for the hardship they've obviously put themselves through, not that they deserve the thanks, or even made one comment about people who've lost out.As for credit within this thread, why? Credit to some idiot spending far too much fucking money on workers who obviously don't appreciate it. I'll give some credit here though. Credit to Ricky Knight for being a promoter who didn't and will never go down this route, credit to Gary Graham (yes, wow, imagine) for building up WZW and actually having a training school which I assume made WZW self sufficient at the time, credit to EWW and their return to the scene, credit to the SWA for taking on my work with SCW and eclipsing it and credit to every other promoter in the UK who puts on the sorts of shows UK fans should be happy with if it weren't for money marks and twats who support them. So, instead of hammering the people on here who saw it coming and discussed it (however they did it), why don't you stand in the next meeting you're in with guys who worked for 1PW and ask them why they were all so happy to just take a pay day and not seemingly give a shit. Everyone who worked for Gauntley must have known, from Spud to Doug to Dean and everybody else...far too keen to ride the gravy train, as there'll be another one along in no time I'll bet.Finally,"As bad as some of the business decisions may have been, they were all carried out in order to provide fans with top notch shows."Well, get your credit card out then Phil. Go on, give to the UK fan base, let's see some more of those matches. What? Oh, other people should spend ludicrous amounts and you'd rather others were fucked over in the process.

"And I quote - "We are in no way trying to 'compete' with 1PW". So, I call on the accused here to tell me how deliberately picking a location and venue 7 miles outside of Doncaster when there is a whole United Kingdom to choose from, not competing? And in doing a weekend of shows, which is what 1PW have been known for since the beginning of this year, is this 'not trying to compete' also?"It's a 300 seater you fucking knobend! It's not like we're talking about a 1,000+ seater, on the same damned day and with a bloody TV deal...OR, and this is the key part twat boy, a gaggle of fucking imports.Everyone sits whinging their ass off about "imports, lack of UK investment" and all that ballyhoobyjumbo. Then, someone comes along with a proposal that looks to be including a raft of decent promotions and you still get some blinkered, obviously bitter, tit who wants to launch a conspiracy theory over it all.Away back to your DVD's and leave the adults alone, they know best afterall.

Zebra KidRF... so so funny, for so many reasons. Even just the fact that kids on here used to boast about talking to him on AOL is hilarious.

Karl Harker vs The Lowlanders, SCW Golden Harvest 2004

"(eg, Screens, Ramps and all the rest of that shite)"If you weren't trying to make a decent point, you'd have been right in calling it all shite. In Noah and AJPW the wrestlers often come out of a side door. In American Indies it's a wee black curtain. Why the hell should UK promotions shell out for a ramp and stupid 10 foot high letters either side of the stage? As for screens...why? You don't get a screen at WWE shows in Glasgow...you don't even get a ramp and raised stage. The other problem is pyro, no doubt we're all supposed to have that now aswell. A lot of Scottish venues won't allow you to have fire or pyro, or they charge around

This whole production levels comment is such a grey area, it could be taken a number of ways.As a Promoter myself, I don't want pyro, a ramp, big letters up on the stage or six Americans getting the bums on seats. I promote a Scottish promotion, for Scottish fans and as an outlet for Scottish workers and "the best of the rest" around the UK to work and entertain the crowds we get. I'm not looking to run some sort of fantasy fed, where booking ability is overtaken by the fact 4 or 6 names are being brought in for absolutely no reason other than to get bums on seats.Looking at the bigger picture though, it's pretty obvious that the FWA are bigger and will remain so. In London, they have more possible fans than in the whole of Scotland. Even other major English Cities don't have the same pulling power on a prolonged basis. All I'm really looking at, or for, is a nice little 30 - 60 minute UK Scene magazine programme. TWC would take in tapes, even give their views on what production should be like and decide what to use...let's say they take 2 whole matches a week. Now, alongside that is a 5 minute segment giving who is running a show and where for that week. Something like this really shouldn't frighten the FWA and really shouldn't be a problem for TWC to show, indeed I'd think that they'd see it as a major part of their policy. Let's say that for the 2 shows TWC chose a match from, the shows both had crowds around the 200 mark. Well, that's 400 people maybe wanting to watch the show, watching TWC for more wrestling and everyone becomes a winner. The fact maybe 2,000 more Scots know SCW exists doesn't mean 2,000 more Scots will come and watch. In the same way that everyone in Torquay knowing there's a home match on Saturday doesn't mean that everyone in Torquay will go to the match. This is a perfect opportunity to get British wrestling on the whole to progress, it would just be nice to see it being done properly.

Robbie Brookside.Almost agreed with Si, but Robbie takes it for me...it's only James Mason's utter lack of exposure (an almost disgusting lack of exposure) that gives it to Robbie for me.

Eric Canyon - I just wish I knew where he's at now, seems to have given up wrestling altogether.

I'd vote for Scottish Championship Wrestling, but I own it. So I'll vote for NWA-UK Hammerlock, for allowing me to book Majik and Conscience.

I've not seen a lot of UK stuff this year, but that isn't the reason I vote for...Marco Di Fiore vs "The Great Scot" Scott McKenzie at SCW's Lion Rampant show in February18 minutes of superb action, with Marco and Scott's differing styles really coming together nicely.