UKFF Questions Thread V2

[mim731]

EDIT: WyattSheepMask beat me to it. 

Edited September 4, 2017 by mim731

[Guest]

Is that Billy Gunn, third from the right?

[Au]

I think it's Shaun between Davey and Austin. I agree with it being Billy Gunn at the back. Not sure on the other guy though.

[Callum1993]

It definitely isn't Shawn. Not convinced it's Billy either. Looks more like Angle than Billy although way before his time. 

[JNLister]

On 8/30/2017 at 9:07 AM, nfc90210 said:

What channel and what time is Impact (or whatever it's now called) on? 

Spike TV, Friday, 9pm.

[unfitfinlay]

7 hours ago, Maikeru said:

Can anyone identify the WWF wrestlers on the right (I can only make out Stone Cold and - I think - Hardcore Holly at the back): 

 

Is that not Brakkus at the back? He looks bigger than either Holly or Billy Gunn.

[RancidPunx]

Whatever happened to Gary Steele ?

 

Or anybody else from the transatlantic wrestling challenge for that matter ?

 

i remember really enjoying it at the time . 

[Really Big Shoe]

 Heatwave 97 wasnt released on VHS or DVD. Wiki says it was a iPPV. 

Also is the guy in the red ball cap Jason from ECW?

[Statto]

1 hour ago, RancidPunx said:

Whatever happened to Gary Steele?

I'm really glad you asked this, because it led me to Google him and find a forum post from 2005 that begins:

"I am on a mission to find the man who is arguably the UK’s greatest wrestler since Davey Boy, Gary Steele."

The username - nickaldis.

[JNLister]

19 hours ago, RancidPunx said:

Whatever happened to Gary Steele ?

 

Or anybody else from the transatlantic wrestling challenge for that matter ?

 

i remember really enjoying it at the time . 

One of my favourite FSM pieces:

15 years ago a security guard from Gravesend became the NWA World Champion. John Lister looks back at the unlikely story of how Gary Steele entered the history books.

 

On the afternoon of 25 September 1999, Gary Steele met Ricky Steamboat at a fan convention in North Carolina and explained how Steamboat had inspired him to become a pro wrestler. A few hours later, Steele followed in his footsteps by winning the NWA world heavyweight title.

 

"I never really got into the British wrestling as a kid," Steele told FSM. "But a friend kept nagging at me to watch a tape, which was the first Survivor Series. I could see it was totally different with huge arenas and the guys being treated like rock stars. Steamboat's music hit and the crowd erupted. The hairs were standing up on the back of my neck and I knew right then that's what I wanted to do."

 

With the business still very much a closed shop at this point, Steele trained first in karate and then in amateur wrestling and submission holds, before a fellow student passed on the number of Andre Baker. Operating the Hammerlock Wrestling school and promotion, Baker was one of the first in the wrestling community to open training up to anyone willing to come along and pay their fees, rather than have to be invited into the business.

 

Steele debuted in the pro rings in August 1995 and readily admits that he struggled to adjust to the showmanship side of the sport. "I was kind of shy growing up and going out in your underwear is pretty embarrassing! I didn't really click with the crowd. Then one day about three years into my career I had a match in Ashford where it all came together and the crowd popped when I won. I remember lying on the mat after the win wondering what was going on, then getting up and people wanting to shake hands and get my autograph."

 

A combination of his new-found crowd appeal, the years he'd put in, and the departure of the likes of Doug Williams, Alex Shane and Johnny Storm meant that Steele had become one of the top names in the promotion when it was approached by television producer Nick Halling -- an approach that would set off what Steele describes as a "snowball" effect on his career.

 

Halling had previously profiled Hammerlock while working on a Saturday afternoon show for Sky Sports. He was now working on a freelance basis for southern ITV region Meridian and charged with pitching ideas for local sports-based programming. "It was all very regional based," Halling tells FSM, "so I saw there was something in covering this Kent promotion where you had all these characters like the ring announcer who worked in the VAT office [Dean Ayass] and the wrestler who worked as a security guard at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich [Steele.]

 

"Originally I pitched it as a 60 minute documentary, but I was offered two 30-minute slots, and you always say yes when you are freelancing! I made the first episode based around all the personalities, then for the second I pitched the idea of flying one of these guys out to America."

 

That idea went down well with Baker, who had recently signed up to be the British representative of the National Wrestling Alliance. Although its association with WCW had ended six years earlier and it was now made up mainly of independent promotions, the NWA was still active and operating the same title that dated back to Orville Brown and Lou Thesz in 1948, albeit with considerably less national exposure.

 

With international expansion on the to-do list, NWA officials gave a positive response when Baker contacted them with the TV show idea and not only booked Steele for some US dates, but agreed to put him in a title match against reigning world champion Naoya Ogawa.

 

Steele wrestled three dates on what he considered a "working holiday" in front of the cameras. The first was a show in Nashville alongside local legends Bill Dundee and Jerry Lawler. The second was the title match in Atlanta, an outdoor show plagued by the elements: bad news for the wrestlers, but great news for Halling who was unable to resist overlaying footage of the match with the song "Rainy Night in Georgia."

 

Steele's main memory of the bout was that "Ogawa was stiff! You took what you could and, although it wasn't really covered in the documentary, I did make comebacks! I'd describe it as working for real: there were no rest holds, it was pure go, go, go. It was a good experience, but I really ran out of steam so it encouraged me to get my fitness up."

 

He lost the match by submission and then engaged in what Halling describes as the only moment of the documentary where he sought to influence rather than purely document events. "I told Gary to ham it up, to sit there and look absolutely devastated, like the biggest thing in his life had gone wrong."

 

The final show of the tour, in Marion, Kentucky, proved memorable for different reasons. The venue was literally a farmland field surrounded by a few folding chairs. "It was a lovely place, but it really was in the middle of nowhere," Steele recalls. "I'd worked in some small halls before but this was something else!"

 

The resulting documentary, WrestleManiacs, proved a hit with Meridian producers who asked Halling to produce two further episodes. (All four shows were later repeated nationally on ITV 2.) As before, the priority was to say yes to the commission first and worry about the content later. When he got back in touch with Baker, a natural progression to the storyline was already in place.

 

Steele had impressed not just promoters but, more importantly, Ogawa and had already had a title rematch in Japan. Now the NWA had asked Steele to return for the group's anniversary show at the Grady Cole Center in Charlotte, North Carolina, also booking fellow NWA-UK wrestlers Sebastian P Sterling and Johnny Moss.

 

It was in a hotel lobby a couple of days before the show that Steele had the most shocking conversation of his career with NWA chiefs Howard Brody and Bill Behrens. "I didn't actually know I was going to be in the main event until then. I thought I was wrestling in a match for the Queen's Cup or something," Steele says in reference to a spot filled by Sterling.

 

"They told me I'd be in a three way with Naoya Ogawa and an American guy called Brian Anthony and that  they wanted me to do some of the traditional pro stuff with Anthony rather than it just be Ogawa's style. Then they just throw out 'at the end, you roll up Ogawa and win the belt.' I've never been so shocked! I was surprised because I'd not really worked my way up in the US."

 

But while it was news to Steele, it was by no means a last-minute booking switch. Behrens tells FSM the title switch "was part of a decision to extend the perceived and actual reach of the NWA brand internationally. That made it possible to showcase international talent as NWA champions and have them appear for various NWA members in the US during a limited window of opportunity."

 

The title switch wasn't a complete secret in the UK either: both Baker and assistant Mike White, who also came to Charlotte, were aware of the plans a couple of months in advance. They'd also tipped off Halling that he'd be getting a happy end to the series. (Behrens stresses "that a documentary was being done certainly helped promote what was planned but was not the reason for that decision.")

 

But other than that it was hush-hush, even to the point that Baker and White kept Steele in the dark. White notes this was done partly to avoid disappointing Steele if plans changed, and partly because "we didn't want to put too much pressure on him ahead of the show."

 

As Steele reflected on the news, he had a chance to relax with a white water rafting expedition with Sterling and Moss while Baker and White attended the annual NWA meeting. "It was mainly just business stuff about how we'd work together," White recalls, "but Nick wanted to film a bit of it to contrast with Gary's day off, so he got us to really ham it up, pretending to be bored and yawning every time the camera was on us."

 

The match itself was an elimination affair, something that may have been designed to protect Ogawa's image given the Japanese press contingent on hand, allowing him to get the first decision by forcing Anthony to submit. That was Steele's cue.

 

"I really wasn't thinking much in the match, I was so caught up. I just remembered that as soon as Ogawa got the submission I had to roll him up. From there it was such a blur, such an emotional feeling -- the one thing I really remember is waiting for the referee to hold my hand up.

 

"Getting the belt, that had been held by guys like Race and Flair, was such a fantastic feeling. I remember back at the hotel, sitting there with the belt on the bed just staring at it. I stayed in Charlotte on my own for most of that week and remember being worried about losing it. I can promise you, by the end of that week, it was the shinest belt in the world!"

 

White echoes that memory. "He was like a kid at Christmas. He nearly always kept the belt with him and just couldn't believe what had happened. Regardless of the level of prestige that particular title had at that particular time, it was still the same one that the likes of Lou Thesz had held."

 

While Baker, Moss and Sterling had to return to the UK shortly after the show, Steele and White took a road trip down to Atlanta on the Monday night where Halling was filming at a Nitro broadcast. It appears few of the WCW crew were aware that the man walking around backstage that night was the reigning NWA champion.

 

White recalls that Steele, who had agreed to extend his stay to work an extra show, came to see him off at Charlotte Airport the next day. "A couple of local NWA promoters were meant to be getting in touch to arrange Gary's travel to Connecticut, but we still hadn't heard anything by half an hour before my gate was scheduled to close.

 

"We had Gary's return ticket and the date was open-ended, so I wound up having to use a payphone at the airport and  leave a message threatening that if they didn't call me back by the time the airline started boarding, Gary would be leaving with me. Fortunately they called me back just in time, else Gary might have had the belt a lot longer than expected!"

 

In the return match in Thomaston on 1 October, Steele's reign would come to an end when his one-night-only manager (and local promoter) Tony Rumble mistakenly hit him with a helmet, allowing Ogawa to regain the title. "Funnily enough, they didn't mention that bit before I won it," Steele recalls. "I thought my win might be the start of a feud with Ogawa, but to be fair they never really said anything like that, and I knew I wasn't massive in America or anything.

 

"I do wish I'd been able to have come home with the belt and shown it off a bit. I remember flying back and arriving at the airport and nobody turning a blind eye, and me looking round and thinking 'I was the world champion last week, don't you know?"

 

With the BBC Sports Personality Of The Year show sadly overlooking Steele in its annual roundup of British world champions, his next television appearance was in 2000, again thanks to Halling who had been struck by a moment of inspiration. "I was walking past an empty studio at Meridian and thought, hmm, that's interesting, that would make a perfect wrestling venue, so I went straight to the office to pitch it."

 

The result was the Transatlantic Wrestling Challenge, a six-part series originally airing on Meridian, Anglia and HTV and later repeated on ITV 2. It was a self-contained tournament with NWA-UK and American wrestlers. Steele lost in the final to Sinn (Chris 'Yoshi Kwan' Champion), a result Halling deliberately booked to surprise viewers who assumed a British triumph was the natural finish. It was also intended to create a natural storyline for a second series, but ITV bureaucracy got in the way.

 

"There was talk of networking it nationally," Halling recalls, "but ITV Sport weren't interested. Instead ITV Light Entertainment took it on. I went to one meeting but could see they were clueless about how to televise it and it was going nowhere. I moved on, but I think idea eventually morphed into Celebrity Wrestling." That show, broadcast in 2005, featured D-list stars in grappling and Gladiators-style challenges rather than pro matches. After five weeks of atrocious ratings against the newly-revived Doctor Who, it was pulled from prime-time.

 

In 2001, Steele held the NWA championship belt again, this time for eight weeks -- but he didn't win the title. It was a baffling set of circumstances to fans at the time and, says Steele, "it still confuses me today!" On 27 October at a show in Andover, Hampshire, reigning NWA champ Steve Corino arrived at the building and gave Steele a somewhat unusual booking instruction. "He said he was dropping the title to me that night, then said he wasn't the champion!"

 

Corino had officially lost the title two weeks earlier at the NWA Anniversary show after a controversial finish. Deliberately keeping all but a few Japanese officials and NWA President Howard Brody in the dark, Corino had allowed challenger Shinya Hashimoto to unleash a brutal physical assault that left him bloodied and beaten. The referee stopped the bout and awarded the title to Hashimoto, creating the impression of a double-cross. NWA promoters started genuine slanging matches while wrestler Jimmy Del Ray had to be restrained from physically confronting Hashimoto.

 

Upon his arrival in the UK, Corino, already genuinely disgruntled by NWA management politics, was upset to discover his match with Steele would be a tables, ladders and chairs affair. His irritation stemmed partly from a belief that the NWA title should only be defended in traditional matches and partly because he believed he had no way of living up to the standards of the TLC matches at recent WWE pay-per-views.

 

Whether Corino was simply looking to screw with the NWA promoters or set-up more opportunities to create controversy, he decided to quite literally drop the title to Steele that night. The match concluded with Corino climbing the ladder and grabbing the belt, but it slipping through his fingers and landing in the arms of a prone Steele.

 

"I had no idea what was going on that night, no idea what it was all about. I just did what I was told," Steele recalls. "I took the belt home with me and wore it at a couple of matches, but didn't wrestle as champion. I then took the belt back over to America."

 

While in storyline Corino was still claiming he hadn't lost the title to Hashimoto because he wasn't pinned or submitted, the official NWA position (both in storyline and reality) was that the title had been held up and that, regardless of what had happened with the physical belt, Corino had not been champion when he travelled to the UK.

 

Whatever the real story, Steele was never recognised as a two-time champ. He returned the belt at a 15 December show in McKeesport, Pennsylvania where a round robin series saw Hashimoto pin both Steele and Corino to become the undisputed champion.

 

His time in the title picture over, Steele continued working in Japan where he suffered a serious neck injury. "I couldn't look up so went to the doctor for some X-rays. At first he said not to wrestle for a bit, but it didn't get any better as I'd screwed up some vertebrae. The doctor then told me I could really hurt myself if I carried on. To be told I couldn't do the only thing I ever wanted to do put me into a depressive state. I shut myself off from the business and didn't even watch on TV for years."

 

Steele did make a return of sorts in 2011 when he appeared as a surprise entrant (and winner) of a battle royale at a tribute show to honour Andre Baker, who had taken his own life the previous year.

 

Beyond that, Steele watches every WrestleMania and some TNA broadcasts, but notes that the subject of his former life and seven days of glory rarely comes up in conversation. Indeed, his two children, aged four and five, are yet to really comprehend that their father's past.

 

"I tried showing them the WrestleManiacs documentary once but I had to switch it off after five minutes because they didn't really understand what was happening: they were crying and kept saying 'He's hurting you!'"

[AshC]

20 hours ago, RancidPunx said:

Whatever happened to Gary Steele ?

 

Or anybody else from the transatlantic wrestling challenge for that matter ?

 

i remember really enjoying it at the time . 

The Tank is still out there, albeit with a different lick of paint!

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/whats-on/behind-mask-inside-world-welsh-13553700

[mim731]

That's a cracking read Lister, really interesting stuff. Not least because I had no idea that Sinn from the Trans-Atlantic Challenge was TAFKA Yoshi Kwann.

[Au]

I appear to be a bit out of the loop but can someone explain why Will Ospreay has started wearing cat face paint but then saying he's not a cat?

 

[Au]

Answering my own question... I think. I still don't get it.

https://m.imgur.com/Lu1vxKq

[AshC]

Trust me naked man