Paid Members Big Benny HG Posted February 1, 2013 Paid Members Share Posted February 1, 2013 (edited) Yep, this weekend marks the tenth anniversary of one of the most notorious and talked about Edited February 1, 2013 by Big Benny HG Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Up Chuck Posted February 1, 2013 Paid Members Share Posted February 1, 2013 DEN PERRY from Phoenix Nights, who was there with his family, jumped on stage to do a little routine with Iceman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wrestlingmad Posted February 1, 2013 Share Posted February 1, 2013 I want to see the picture of this 'WWF Toy Ring'. Â Nice write-up, if you can post anything more. Please do so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baz Windham Posted February 1, 2013 Share Posted February 1, 2013 (edited) Great read that Ben, being a relative newcomer to Britwres i'd not heard that before. Den Perry was a highlight for me too, Phoenix Nights would have only just been on then if I remember right. Did anyone ask him to burn the place down? Edited February 1, 2013 by Baz Windham Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hitman89762000 Posted February 1, 2013 Share Posted February 1, 2013 Theres a bit of a write up in greg lamberts " holy grail" about this as well, interesting reading. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members IANdrewDiceClay Posted February 1, 2013 Paid Members Share Posted February 1, 2013 Thread can't go on without posting Farrer's retirement speech. Here's the set up. Alex Shane posted the following on the UKFF announcing he was selling up an moving on: After a week of meetings and debating, I would like to inform you all that I have decided to sell my share of Frontier Wrestling LTD.  This is a decision that has not been easy to make but in all honesty has been on the cards for several months now.  When I first took over the day to day running of FWA, I was 22 years of age. I had no other full time hobby or occupation, no full time relationship and was far less jaded towards the wrestling business than I am now. It was always my dream to run a promotion more so than actually wrestle. In fact other than Mick Foley my all time wrestling heroes are Paul Heyman and Jim Cornette. Two men who, with limited budgets in ECW and Smokey Mountain respectively, created something very special in their part of the world. With FWA I guess I found a way to live out my dream and in the process do something that had always been my goal when I was a UK-based wrestling fan - give people on this side of the Atlantic a company they could follow and be proud of without flying overseas.  Contrary to popular belief, the FWA has never had a money backer. Even our biggest shows like Frontiers of Honour were put together from scratch with no money. The one thing that nobody could ever accuse me of was a lack of passion and that passion enabled me to talk my way in or out of anything because I believed so much in what the FWA was doing. FWA was my entire life. I cared about it more than my various partners, family, friends and even myself. I was so tunnel vision-ed that I could not see further than my own ideals and it led me to see and do some things that I am not too proud of. No matter how much I have ever got out of FWA it has never been equal to what I have put into it but for someone who was living their dream it never bothered me. The unfortunate thing about dreams is, you eventually wake up and have to face the light of day.  After British Uprising 2 I suffered what I can only describe as a mini nervous breakdown. The bomb scare we had that day lead to a chain of events that ended up getting me, not FWA, in a serious amount of debt and the stress of it all lead to me shutting down everything for five months. Fans said what they wanted to say as usual but for the first time I really did not care. I needed a break from everything and felt physically and mentally exhausted. When we came back at New Frontiers 2004 I felt different. I just was not the same passionate person that I was before our last York Hall show. I would have thrown in the towel then if it had not been for three things. I had two more goals left to achieve and more importantly I didn't have anything else!  If you read back through my old Shooting Galleries, two goals will keep popping up. To get a weekly national TV show and to run the Coventry Skydome. Until I had done these I would not be able to stop with FWA. I never realised that was the actual reason but I knew inside I could not stop just yet. The TV show not only started but each week got better and better so that got ticked off my goal list. In April I met the first girl that I have ever wanted to put before wrestling and myself and she is very likely the woman I'm going to marry. With one of my last existing goals achieved and now having something other than wrestling as my main passion that just left one last thing.  On November 13 2004 I promoted my first show at the Coventry Skydome. Although we did not come close to a sell out (I knew we never would) we not only drew more than I thought we would but achieved our biggest paid attendance in the process. We blew our previous number out of the water by over 650 tickets and did it in an area we had never even run before. I also achieved a career highlight by beating Doug Williams for the British Heavyweight Title.  Wrestling is a work so this is not an achievement, right? Wrong. To do it and not be crucified because people felt not only was my work capable enough by now but my heel persona was strong enough to carry it was a huge achievement for me. I went out that night to celebrate my 25th birthday (which was two days later on the 15th) with my business partners, employees and friends, and had one of the best nights of my life. Right there, the FWA had reached its peak for me personally and from that point there is only one way to go. I spent my actual birthday on my own packing my bags to fly out and see my girlfriend in Australia as a surprise visit. A 30 hour flight gives you a lot of thinking time and by the time I landed I had made my decision. My girlfriend is travelling the world until the end of April before she returns to England. This would give me the chance to see if my new project (the TWC Supershow in March) would be a success and if it was then time to hand the FWA reigns over to others before she came home.  You see the one thing I now know is to run a company like FWA with consistent story lines and weekly TV etc you have to eat, sleep and breathe wrestling 24/7. Sadly for me that stopped the day I met my woman and to continue being the driving force behind the company when it is no longer my top priority would have been a bad move unless I could justify it on a financial level and sadly I no longer could. 2005 marked my 12th year in wrestling and without meaning to sound money grabbing I had new priorities and Frontier Wrestling could no longer support them. With none of my existing goals left to achieve I realised that the FWA was now my burden and no longer my passion. The best friend I have ever had once said to me "without goals, eventually you get bored of just kicking the ball around and go home". My new goal was to sell out the Skydome and promote a show unlike any I had done before.  March 19 2005 marked my single biggest career highlight as both a wrestler and promoter with TWC International Showdown. Not only was it the biggest crowd to an event I have organised (along with Sean Herbert who is the unsung hero of TWC) but without a doubt the best all round show to boot. To top things off, I got to work against Raven and shoot an angle with my all time wrestling hero Mick Foley. Do I sound like a mark? Good, because if you are reading this then you are a mark too so live with it. I now know that this is where my future lies and even though the show was an AMAZING success and we only had 150 empty seats I cannot rest until we sell the Skydome out with a turn away crowd. That's why I am going to continue to promote these events and maybe even build into three-day International Showdown tours by next year.  So where does this leave FWA? In truth in a better position than it has been in over a year. The company has badly needed fresh ideas and new blood driving it and that's exactly what it will get. Sadly I have not yet been able to finalise the deal to sell my shares but it is very close to being done and the person who will take over from me is likely to be a much more popular figurehead than myself which can only help the company. Hopefully the deal will be finalised before Crunch on April 16, which at this point is still to go ahead as planned. My departure will sadly hold up the production of our TV show, which I have written and directed for over a year now. This is only expected to be a temporary problem until the new buyers find a new production crew.  I will still wrestle for the FWA and represent the company wherever I go. I will still sit on the booking team from time to time and be the main FWA talent scout. I am still going to get the gym chain stronger, bigger and better. The board of control is now much higher up my list of goals and Alex Shane the performer is going to be developed the way he never could be before. This is not the end but simply the start of a whole new chapter and for the first time in ages the FWA is really exciting me again.  I want to ask the fans one thing. Please give the new guys a chance. The FWA only ever has had ONE full time employee. Everybody else did it part time or as a hobby. Yet the expectation levels from fans were always so high and the criticism sometimes so unfair. I know the guys involved in the takeover have the best intentions of all of you at heart and would not be taking such a financial risk if they did not love the wrestling business. These are wrestling people not greedy business people so give them room to make some mistakes and try and treat it like it's your company the way you guys did when we first started out on this little adventure what seemed like so long ago. I promise it will be worth it if these guys get the chance to prove their worth.  In closing I would like to thank a few people in no particular order. Barry you are the most loyal person I have ever known and I trust you with my life. Greg you are the inspiration behind the word 'reliable', you're doing great and I love being right about people. Nikita you are closer to me than a sister and I love you beyond words, we will always be best friends. Elisar, you have always stuck by me no matter how much of a cock I may have been at times. You're a special person and a great guy. Mark, none of this would have been possible without you. We rarely see eye to eye but the years have brought me a new level of respect for what you bring to the table and I feel you are nowhere near as appreciated as you should be by many in the UK. Ralph, you are the single most talented person I know and a great friend. You believed in me for a lot longer than most would have and still do. That will never be forgotten.  Then there's Dino. You have been the single biggest factor in making me the person I am. You have always believed in me and stood by me when everybody else told you not to. I could not have learnt more from ANYBODY about wrestling than I have learnt from you because you live outside the wrestling box and see things as they are. No one has ever been there for me more when it mattered and I will always owe you more then you will ever know for that.  Lastly, I would like to thank the other people who have made this all achievable. The ring crew, riggers, trainees, regional promoters, web designers, wrestlers, referees, commentators, camera crew and ultimately the fans. I simply would not even want to attempt to name you all and I really couldn't even if I tried. The fans who have sent me e-mails and letters. Come up to me at shows and thanked me for my work as a wrestler, radio show host, teacher or promoter. The fans who I bump into at shows and functions across the UK and how make me feel appreciated when it sometimes feels like I'm really not. I really mean this when I say it, you guys have made this worthwhile on so many levels and I value you all. Thank you.  FWA has made me friends and enemies. It has given me my highest points and my lowest moments. It has bought out the best side of me and my worst. Above all else though it has proven to me that anything is achievable by anyone if you willing to work for it and believe in it enough. My favourite motto is "Do not go where the path leads, go where there is no path and leave a trail". That's how I view the FWA and its how I'd like it to go on. Something tells me I'm going to get my wish.  I am always going to be FWA to the core. I am just no longer able to be the core of FWA.  Thanks for reading and hopefully understanding  Alex  Farrer wasn't having it: I felt inclined to crawl from under my rock after reading Alex Shane Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Awards Moderator HarmonicGenerator Posted February 1, 2013 Awards Moderator Share Posted February 1, 2013 Fantastic story, BBHG. Never heard it before, so thanks for posting it - can't wait to see the pictures! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Your Fight Site Posted February 1, 2013 Paid Members Share Posted February 1, 2013 DEN PERRY from Phoenix Nights, who was there with his family, jumped on stage to do a little routine with Iceman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wrestlingmad Posted February 1, 2013 Share Posted February 1, 2013 This thread has made me excited for the 1PW anniversary thread. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Victor Is God Posted February 1, 2013 Share Posted February 1, 2013 For once, Hitman is right. This incident is indeed featured in my new book, along with many other stories from the FWA years, available from www.xwawrestling.com and also from www.authorhouse.co.uk, and on Kindle at Amazon and e book at other online outlets including Waterstones and W H Smith. 25% of royalties go to the Kidscape anti-bullying charity. Â Incidentally, there is a wrestling show scheduled to take place tomorrow at King George's Hall in Blackburn, exactly 10 years on to the day. I saw a poster advertising this recently when I was in Blackburn doing book promotion with Radio Lancashire; Johnny Moss is on the poster, not sure of the company running the event. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
windoesnot Posted February 1, 2013 Share Posted February 1, 2013 (edited) No wonder you started that 'VHS' chant at the PCW show Benny, that 80's VCR must still hold a soft spot for you Edited February 1, 2013 by windoesnot Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Awards Moderator HarmonicGenerator Posted February 1, 2013 Awards Moderator Share Posted February 1, 2013 What happened to the VCR in the end? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Rob Lowe Posted February 1, 2013 Paid Members Share Posted February 1, 2013 What happened to the VCR in the end? And what happened to Farrers acting career? Whats Alex's latest crusade? Â How mad is it that Jon and Alex were promoting these shows in their early twenties. Im nearly 27 and have trouble with wrestling torrent sites. These nutters were promoting shows! Â Both those statements Ian posted are mental, very entertaining though. Loved the original post too Hat Guy. What a fuckin mess. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ross Posted February 1, 2013 Share Posted February 1, 2013 Farrer ended up winning the lottery didn't he? Â I have fond memories of the first show in Preston, travelled down there with my brother to see that and the FWA show in Telford. I was pretty gutted Corino no-showed as that was the main reason I was going! Regardless, they were two fun shows and I got to meet Jake, Guido and a load of the Brit guys that were there like Jonny and Jody. Good times. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Dead Mike Posted February 1, 2013 Paid Members Share Posted February 1, 2013 Didn't Farrer win the jackpot on the National Lottery & start playing poker full time? Â I went to the 1st show he did in Preston, it was a great day tbf. We were in two minds about going to this but fortunately decided to give it a miss. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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