Rob Butcher or Glen Radford?

[John.]

I don't post on the UKFF much anymore, but I couldn't help myself when this thread appeared.

 

You don't want to sound like an old man, but as many have already said the excitment you had when either the postman knocked on the door, or when you collected the parcel from the post office is probably something that a lot of the youth don't truly understand.

 

Like quite a few on here I used both Rob and Glen, and yes the hand writing was a thing of pure beauty.

 

I honestly don't know how much I spent, but I remember when I finally moved and decided to sell all the old VHS's someone got an amazing bargain.

 

The highlights weren't always the actual show but some additional stuff that was already on the tape after it cut at the end.. It was this way I had the first chance to really see Sabu and Rey Mysterio with some grainy footage. Like all good fans of a certain age I purchased the King of the Deathmatch tape and some of the mixes were just too good. I'm not syre who it was from, but one tape had the Eddie Gilbert vs Cactus Jack series which was like nothing I had seen before.

 

I can't remember if it was 'A Matter of Respect' but the first time I put an ECW tape into my video after reading about it for so long was a thing of beauty.

[gringo69]

Ah, Shootfabe... guy by the name of Anthony Howells if I recall? Ripped off to the tune of

[Dean Ayass]

I remember that Anthony Howells was from Chepstow and he was the first person to officially distribute the Wrestling Observer in the UK. He got a copy faxed over from Meltzer and so the copy we got was a photocopy of a fax and looked AWFUL. I think Mo then took it over, before Chris Gavriel took it from Mo.

 

Anthony Howells was also the person who got busted by the WWF (as they were then) for selling pirate copies of their commercial tapes, specifically one of their In Your House events from the mid 90s. Someone posed as a customer and ordered a copy off him, which he delivered and was then caught bang to rights. It led to every tape trader in the UK swiftly removing any and all WWF titles from their lists.

[JNLister]

The officials seized and destroyed his Best of the Hollywood Blondes tape :-(

[Tom Zenk]

I see Rob's adverts and letters appearing in the archived Observers from 1994 that are currently being posted on WO.com

[Scorpion_Deathlock]

Rob was the 1st tape trader I used, to this day I still remember the thrill of popping the 1st tape in my VCR - ECW TV from 1995. Seeing the intro & then watching The Pitbulls destroy a couple of jobbers. After Rob gave it up I started buying tapes from a guy called Martin Cox, he was sound & had an awesome collection of NWA/WCW - I think he moved to Australia round about the same time WCW closed.

[neil]

I never used Butcher or Radford. My first tape ordering was with Strong Style Tapes who was the town over from me. Never had any problems with him. Placed a few orders with SiMania too. I think I once used Barnett too.

 

Absolutely crazy to think of now in the world of torrents and the like. Nothing like sending a cheque off to some stranger and waiting a week plus for some vhs tapes.

[Gladstones Bitch]

Just been having a rake around in the loft and I've found my complete set of tape listing sent from Rob/GWI going up to September 1999. I think I'm going to spend an hour or two having a look through to find shows I always wanted as they're bound to be online somewhere now ( well except Heatwave 97 )

 

I thought these were lost forever

[Dirty Eddie]

I never used Butcher or Radford. My first tape ordering was with Strong Style Tapes who was the town over from me. Never had any problems with him. Placed a few orders with SiMania too. I think I once used Barnett too.

 

Absolutely crazy to think of now in the world of torrents and the like. Nothing like sending a cheque off to some stranger and waiting a week plus for some vhs tapes.

 

 

I'm pretty sure I saw the bloke who used to run SST at the NOAH show in Broxbourne. Haven't seen him about for years other than that. I forget his name now??

[Astro Hollywood]

Mark Petar?

[Dirty Eddie]

That's the chap. Well remembered.

[lightningxlock]

I reckon I came along alittle later than the majority in this thread. I used to order from GWI after I found an ad of theirs in the back of Power Slam. From reading what others have said, this must've been post Rob Butcher as the company was run by a Mike and Martin. It was probably around '99 when I started getting their newsletter/tape lists. It was certainly a fun time bringing those in to school as me and my friend would sit gushing over pretty much every tape that was on offer and badly pronouncing the names of Japanese wrestlers. Being a) pretty young and b) not being spoilt, I was quite picky over what I decided to get. Therefore, every tape was viewed time and time again and treated like it was the most awesome thing i'd ever seen (when in reality some of them probably weren't all that great).

 

Long story short, this Martin who is the same Martin Cox that gets namechecked earlier in the thread moved to Australia for some reason and ended up starting his own trading company called MatWarz I believe. Mike seemingly dissapeared. Or so I thought, until years later when I was informed he had opened a shop in Manchester and that he was the same guy that ran GWI. Considering Manchester is around 40 mins away from me, you can imagine my excitement. It didn't hurt that my sister was at Uni there at the time also. Thats probably where my obsessive wrestling spending habits came from as sometimes there'd be multiple trips a month to the shop, where i'd leave with 3,4 maybe 5 tapes at a time. Had some great times at that place, meeting Trent Acid, Johnny Kashmere and Ian Knoxx on one occasion and Jerry Lynn on another. Mike started losing interest in wrestling towards the end and started getting in more MMA and much less wrestling which bummed me out at the time as I was still very much into wrestling and not so much into MMA. He should be thanked though, as it was his shop where I first took the plunge and bought some Pride FC dvd's from. A company that I still very much enjoy today. It's funny because if the shop was still open now, i'd probably be down nearly every weekend buying all kinds of non UFC MMA shows. Deffinately a fun time to be into wrestling and something that feels alittle bit lost now for sure..

[Egg Shen]

i remember the exact time my tape trading ended too...i had a VCD (the only one i ever got) of the first ever NWA TNA show (the one where Shamrock won the belt) and that was the last thing i ever recieved, i was bordering on burn out at that point and that was just the last thing i ever got. I just stopped dead at that point. I gave all my tapes away to a good home shortly after (that of top UK ref. Chris Roberts). I would have sold em on but it was such a fucking potch to send em i just gave em away (plus i did owe him money).

[Taylorslade]

The first purchases I made were ECW Matter Of Respect 1996 & IWA Kawasaki Dream, my friend also bought Barely Legal at the same time but all 3 were delivered to mine so I got to watch them all off the belt.

 

When did Rob sell off GWI? I'm sure he was still in charge when I bought those which will of been 1997 time.

 

Your initials wouldn't be KM, would they?

 

Like many, I saw one of Rob's adverts in "This & That", the phrases used in the ads were always something like "Rob Butcher is selling videos of promotions from the US, Puerto Rico and Japan", so I knew this was my chance to get my hands on some of these ECW shows, and see if they were as good as they seemed to be in Powerslam's show reviews and the reports in the Apter mags at the time.

 

I was a loyal customer right away after experiencing Rob's first class service. Then in, I believe sometime in 98, I got the dredded letter that he was selling his business to move to America and pursue his Journalism dream, and that anyone interested would be welcome to send any offers to him. I remember being gutted that morning when I walked to school and I thought I might not get any more ECW for a long time. I had a standing order type thing going, I sent him a fair enough payment that would run for a few months so that as soon as he got any new ECW commercial tapes, PPV's and TV blocks then he would send them right out for me. I had one hell of a paper round for it though.

 

So, as I remember, he and GWI sent a sort of joint letter out announcing that they were the new owners, and whilst they highly respected Rob's years of service, they were going to take it to the next level in terms of both quality and standard of service. Well, as everyone have already pointed out, the service was fucking shit under GWI and they didn't keep anywhere near as up to date as Rob did. The average delivery from Rob was about 10 days or so, GWI (global wrestling imports) took around 6 weeks. SHIT.

 

Then they announced that they would be opening a shop, in Manchester I believe, called "Extreme Central", but the mail order service would still be available. I remember them doing an "offer", where they would swap two original VHS WCW or WWF tapes, for one ECW tape, of course, a dubbed tape. That was how I got Anarchy Rulz 99, as I had two copies of each Capitol Combat 89 and Future shock 89 or 99 (the one with the black Scorpion, cant be arsed to look it up). But, unsuprisingly, they took a lifetime to sort that out aswel.

 

Then, somewhere around 2000, I discovered Mark Rentcome, who had a killer ECW selection and charged only

[Taylorslade]

Just been having a rake around in the loft and I've found my complete set of tape listing sent from Rob/GWI going up to September 1999. I think I'm going to spend an hour or two having a look through to find shows I always wanted as they're bound to be online somewhere now ( well except Heatwave 97 )

 

I thought these were lost forever

 

Ive got the Hardcore TV episodes which has most of the matches from that card, along with the Cage match main event, so the majority of it will be out there somewhere I think.