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Let's talk FWA


Herne's Son

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FWA New Frontiers 2004 at Brent Town Hall was the first live wrestling show I'd ever been to in my life. I'd only just fallen out of love with WWE, and I loved the idea of the rebellious upstart brand (having never seen anything about ECW except their video games on sale in Virgin Megastore). 

I thoroughly enjoyed that show, was a shit-ton of fun. Lots of spotty matches, but as a neophyte smark at the time, this was the finest of dining for me. Jonny Storm vs. X-Dream left me speechless, Mark Sloan vs. Aviv Maayan left me wincing - especially that Indian death lock DDT Mark does. Having never seen Alex Shane before, I was very impressed, because, up till that point, despite all the tilde-generating in-ring action, I still hadn't seen any larger-than-life personalities (although Jonny Storm showed a lot during his match).

One thing, though - because I hadn't seen much of ECW apart from the ones who showed up in WWE, Steve Corino's surprise appearance was completely lost on me. Everyone else around me going mental told me that this was a big deal, but I didn't even know who he was until I heard the chants. Amongst what I felt was a new-found brotherhood of fans, I was sort of like Homer at his first Stonecutters' banquet with the ribs ("I could lose the respect of my beloved brethren..."), so I kept my mouth shut as long as I could until I could hear the name and then chanted along.

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Uprising 2 wasn't quite as good as the first but Alex Shane's heel heat was AMAZING. 

My first exposure to FWA was Wrestlexpress where I bought 2 of the VHS tapes. The Jody Vs Storm match blew me away. From there Revival and then second row seats for Uprising. The FWA was magic. I went to most shows.

What was great was that they really got the UK talent over as much as the imports. Jody was a super face for a time and Shane was a superb heel.

I still have the VHS and most of the DVDs somewhere. I've had the Frontiers of Honor DVD sat under my TV still wrapped for years. I'm for sure going to crack it open after this thread. I remember the Low-ki Vs Flash Barker match being brutal.

Favourite moment has to be Steve Corinos surprise appearance. I swear I saw him a fraction of a second before everyone else and felt like time slowed down. Amazing.

Uprising 3 was definitely when it started to derail but it was when they lost Rusty Music's themes it really lost its magic for me.

I would absolutely love a proper documentary.

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This thread is great!

My first exposure to FWA was Evil Intentions in halifax in 2000 and although that would be the only FWA event i would attend, I did have alot of the tapes and enjoyed them alot. Seasons Beatings with Jerry Lynn being a particular highlight.

Im not sure if ive got my time line right but i think i found out about the FWA through sourcing ECW and WCW tapes through then FuseMP (SST) 

The FWA lead me to this forum, which lead me to ECUK in Manchester where I met AJ Styles, Jerry Lynn and Trent Acid among others.

Good times! 

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11 minutes ago, rollthedice said:

This thread is great!

My first exposure to FWA was Evil Intentions in halifax in 2000 and although that would be the only FWA event i would attend, I did have alot of the tapes and enjoyed them alot. Seasons Beatings with Jerry Lynn being a particular highlight.

Im not sure if ive got my time line right but i think i found out about the FWA through sourcing ECW and WCW tapes through then FuseMP (SST) 

The FWA lead me to this forum, which lead me to ECUK in Manchester where I met AJ Styles, Jerry Lynn and Trent Acid among others.

Good times! 

Maybe we can all ask Moorish if he would consider adding the old official UKFF FWA fan forum back into the Gold section? If it still exists  in his own archive of course.

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I first remember seeing photos of the FWA perhaps in 2001 in some now defunct wrestling mag, might have been Power Slam it was before I would purchase them and I was reading it in Smith's. They had some ex tough enough guys over one being Chris Nowinski I think before he signed with WWE and it was a show in Portsmouth as I remember thinking how I wish I could afford the train ticket at 14/15

Roll on a year and I find out about Scott Conway's shows in Bournemouth and Southampton (much easier from mine) and start to fall in love with British Wrestling. I actually became a little anti-FWA which I think stemmed from intimidation and not having the funds/ information to go to their shows. After meeting a few fans who did go to those shows and watching the early Wrestling Channel shows I became keen to go myself. Unfortunately I wouldn't be able to attend FWA shows until I went to uni in Herts and they were right on my doorstep. That said I could get a bus if I left early for a quid to Broxbourne but had to take the train back which meant a quick jump into and out of London. 

The first show I attended was Uprising 3 which I loved simply for the big feel of it, it was wonderful. As was Goldrush soon after. However following that it was clear the shine was wearing off, companies like IPW:UK were much more appealing  and by 2006 there was so much choice living in the London area between IPW:UK, RQW, LDN, Premier, AWA:UK, ROH's shows that the FWA soon became miss-able.

That said I enjoyed watching tapes I got hold of showing some of the better days, Hotwired and Vengeance 2003 spring to mind as shows I was sorry to have missed. 

I always wondered what happened to some of the key FWA guys like Duke of Danger and Jack Xavier as they seemed to disappear with the FWA.

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I was about to start writing a big post about my own memories of the FWA and so on, until I realised I have already done exactly that earlier in this very thread, 5 years ago!

https://ukff.com/topic/133206-lets-talk-fwa/?do=findComment&comment=2741138

I've not been around these parts very much over the past couple of years, but over on Twitter I've been doing a series of 'ON THIS DAY' retrospective look-back threads at some British wrestling shows, including notable FWA events (with memories, facts, detail, pictures, etc.), which may be of interest:

British Uprising (October 2002)

Seasons Beatings (December 2002)

Crunch 2003 (March 2003)

Frontiers of Honor (May 2003)

Northern Exposure Tour (August 2003) - Night One (Morecambe) - Night Two (Bolton) - Night Three (Cleethorpes)

British Uprising 2 (October 2003)

Hotwired 2004 (September 2004)

British Uprising 3 (November 2004)

Blackpool Rock (October 2005)

Hotwired 2005 (October 2005)

New Frontiers 2006 (February 2006)

Frontiers of Honor 2 (August 2006)

New Frontiers 2009 (August 2009)

Carpe Diem 2009 (October 2009)

 

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I was one of the trainees at the short lived 'FWA North East' training academy run by Stevie Knight.

Held every Sunday at the Baysgarth Leisure Centre in the little village of Barton-Upon-Humber it was in the days before I could drive and there was only one bus every 3-4 hours or so that would run to/from Barton to where I lived in Hull so I would always get there ridiculously early and wait around until Stevie and a few others guys turned up.
I remember that almost all of us were the absolute shits [except LT Summers and, I think, Colossus Kennedy who turned up for a few sessions near the end if memory serves me correctly].
Jamie Idol was the 'star trainee' of the group and Mick Romeo did most of the in-ring stuff with us.
It was always fun taking bumps while people played badminton down the other half of the court.

Still, training there did mean I got to be ring crew on the 'Celebrity Wrestling' tour with D-Lo Brown and Joe E Legend which was a fantastic experience and I remember because I was working in a call centre at the time Stevie had obtained a big list of all the people that had previously bought tickets to see wrestling at the Cleethorpes Winter Gardens and he had me ring every single one of them in the weeks prior to the tour offering, I think it was, a free matinee ticket if they bought an evening ticket.

Sadly, despite all this, about 8 people turned up for the matinee show in Cleethorpes [yes, wrestling was largely on its arse over here at the time] and about 30-50 for the evening show - which was about as many as turned up the next day to the vast Ponds Forge complex in Sheffield [because the venue was telling people they had no knowledge of any wrestling show being held there and all the posters Stevie had given them were found gathering dust in a cupboard behind reception]. 

Sadly Stevie lost his arse on that tour and sodded off abroad without telling anyone so I made a couple of trips to Barton only to hang around for hours doing nothing before realising 'Oh, I guess that's the end of that then' - and trying to ring Stevie you would get his answerphone message which essentially went 'Hello...... Hello.... Ha, you thought I was there didn't you! Leave a message'.

Good times.

 

 

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Jonny Storm was gold during that XPW European Championship run. When he won the tournament final, XPW had already fallen to shit by that time and therefore there was no physical belt for him to possess. Therefore he carried around a briefcase with him and claimed the belt was inside. He would often tease to show the crowd the belt, but would never let anyone have a look at it. Around the same time he debuted his new entrance theme, which was a remix of Chesney Hawkes with Jonny rapping on it. The first time it played at Broxbourne, the crowd lost their shit.

Then there were the Chris Hamrick and Colt Cabana matches, my god. Some of the funniest matches I've seen live. "Let's go amateur baby!"

Edited by PunkStep
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The trips to Broxbourne Civic were always a delight. Starting from the round robin tournament at Seasons Beatings where the over enthusiastic use of the smoke machine set off the fire alarm, which lead to a chant of "We're not leaving" right through to Crunch in 2006 didn't miss a Broxbourne show. Went to all the main shows and lots of the smaller ones. I was one of the 8 people SBA talks about at the matinee show at Cleethorpes, and one of the 30-50 for the evening show and the next night at Sheffield. It was fun while it lasted but in reality 2 things scuppered it from a fans point of view. The insistence of the FWA at taking 3 months off hurt them at the end of each year. Then 1PW came along and started putting so many imports on it's shows the FWA could no longer charge a premium price for front row tickets to see the likes of EZ Money. On the whole pretty much every penny was worth it though and you can see the fruits of it in British Wrestling today. 

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13 minutes ago, PunkStep said:

Jonny Storm was gold during that XPW European Championship run. When he won the tournament final, XPW had already fallen to shit by that time and therefore there was no physical belt for him to possess. Therefore he carried around a briefcase with him and claimed the belt was inside. He would often tease to show the crowd the belt, but would never let anyone have a look at it. Around the same time he debuted his new entrance theme, which was a remix of Chesney Hawkes with Jonny rapping on it. The first time it played at Broxbourne, the crowd lost their shit.

Jonny's character during that time was some stellar work, massively underrated. Like I mentioned above, my first event was NF2004, and I saw him in a match with X-Dream. I knew a little about him and Jody Fleisch, that they were high-flyers, and that Jonny had turned heel on his long-time best friend and all that.

That match, though. X-Dream was fun, but retrospectively not particularly interesting outside of the spots he did. However, Jonny immediately got across his character - a former crowd-favourite high-flyer who didn't give a shit about the crowd any more, and wasn't interested in pleasing them. How did he do this? Every time he had an opportunity for a big spot, running, flying, jumping or whatnot, he replaced it with a...headlock. Great stuff. Funny, too.

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