IANS INDY WANK V.1 feat H2 Wrestling

[IANdrewDiceClay]

H2 Wrestling:I have no idea if anyone remembers this or not, but here goes. I'm prepared if this thread isn't met with any responses. Its WrestleXpress USA in my opinion. H2 Wrestling was brought to us by the same people who gave us Major League Wrestling.The Beginning:Here goes. H2 Wrestling was supposedly founded by a company in Asian called WGO Properties. The same company that Court Bauer "sold" MLW to (even though strangely MLW is still owned by Court Bauer as of 2013). Its worth noting that WGO Properties has a website which hasn't been updated in years and fuck all else. No history of actually doing anything other than setting a website up that holds no corporate information or contact details. And if they have no previous in the entertainment business and are getting up and running, why would they buy the rights to a defunct wrestling promotion than only ran 10 shows? Its almost like there is no such company as WGO. And according to NetworkSolutions.com the WGO website's owner is based in Washington DC. Anyway, enough about who or who didn't own it.Assembling the talent:Bauer gained a reputation back in MLW as a bloke who would open his ears to suggestions. The funny one was someone on Death Vally Driver was ripping the piss out of him telling him to bring Super Porky over. And when he saw him he loved him so much he tried to. Bauer got Super Porky a job in WWE in 2005 as well, he was so into him. Super Porky was going to turn up in H2 which is even more reason to shed a tear this never got off the ground. They did book people, though. A lot of people. CM Punk and Samoa Joe were on top of the list, of course. They both worked for MLW and they were on everyones dream cards in 2004. Problem was Samoa Joe hated working for MLW after the abysmal match where Mike Awesome didn't want to work anything other than a Masato Tanaka style brain scrambling match and Joe refused. So he was skeptical from the off. Punk on the other hand did some good stuff in MLW and it was going to be on TV (so we were told), so this would have been perfect for someone with his verbal skills. But then Teddy Hart got on board, and that was that. Joe and Punk wanted nothing to do with it. That's a bit of a blow, but it was early days. Punk vs Teddy Hart had to happen eventually so we were told (it didn't happen and it didn't really have to anyway).They did sign a load of wrestlers. AJ Styles, Jack Evans, Harry Smith, Tyson Kid, Low Ki, Super Dragon, Ruckus, an unidentified man called Mr. X represented by Black Friday Management, Alex Shelley, Sumie Sakai, Roderick Strong, Mike Modest, Sabu, Homicide, The Amazing Red, Christopher Daniels, Trent Acid, Jay Lethal, Sonjay Dutt, Julius Smokes, Matt Striker. Eric Gargiulo and Julias Smokes were going to be the announcers for the fed, which sounds horrible. Gary Hart was going to be pretty much the lead character on the whole show. They set up a website called BlackFriday.tv, about a Gary Hart led agency named Black Friday Management. He was supposed to be this Don King type promoter, with a shifty past. Mr X was his main man. We were to find out who Mr X was, if they ever ran a show.Concept and other wacky shit:This is from their old website:

"H2 Pro-Wrestling is a truly unique organization and production. Consisting of a mixture of innovative world class wrestling with wrestlers and superstars from around the world, H2 is a throwback to the golden age of the carnival era in pro-wrestling - with a twist. Once you are admitted into the show, every moment thereafter will keep you on your feet. Indeed, the show doesn't begin when the bell rings for the first match, but the moment you enter the door and begin to interact with the various subtle elements, questioning if the show has already begun. H2's philosophy is acceptance of any wrestling technique or style from around the world. H2 is the ultimate showcase for cutting edge wrestling, where you will see tomorrow's best wrestle, respect, player hate and beyond today. From revolutionary aerial maneuvers to gritty hardcore combat to brilliant yet grueling technical displays - H2 is a true buffet of wrestling styles in highly competitive bouts. These words symbolize what H2 Pro-Wrestling is. A surreal live event experience you will not witness elsewhere."

The concept was any Teddy Hart interview you've ever heard promising to come to life. Their tag line was "H2 Wrestling - The Experience Starts When You Enter The Arena" or some shit. The promotions name itself was a storyline. We were going to find out what H2 stood for in a long running storyline. People were saying it would be like Def Jam Vendetta come to life. There was talk of stuff like the fans around the ring like they do in Germany. They were going to hand out glow sticks to create this rave like atmosphere in the building. Actually a good idea I thought. It would give the show a nice little feel. Stripper looking women were going to be patrolling the arena handing the glow sticks out as well. I believe the term Teddy Hart used was (I swear) "girls who didn't look like wrestling fans". Wrestling Society X had the same idea of getting less neck beards on camera a few years later.Before TNA, H2 was going to bring the Six Sided Ring to the United States. This caused way more excitement than you'd imagine. And not JUST a Six Sided Ring either. The ring was going to have trampoline ring aprons so the flyers could spring into higher jumps. And each ring post would have a platform launch pads on top of it. MatRats (the old Canadian promotion that had Harry Smith in it) actually had these on their ring posts. It was designed to give the wrestler more balance and for them to have more room to try and break their necks on mental dives. Bauer said on a web chat "we are in talks with BMI and ASCAP. We will have the rights to many top artists for TV shortly including some sampling from Eminem, 2pac, Biggie". So now we have a promotion filled with indy wank, a six sided ring, glow sticks being handed out by hot women and now Biggie and Tupac will be pumping out the speakers? If you weren't skeptical before you would be now. Not me, though. I'll be honest, I was spaffing one out the whole time I was reading the updates. You see they had bios on their website. Heights and Weights, the lot. Back before I became jaded and spoiled, if you gave me a good roster page and a few write ups I was away.Other stuff worth a mention was there would be an Opera Cup. The Opera Cup was something Stu Hart won when he was active and Teddy Hart took it when Stu died, and they were going to use it in H2 Wrestling as their version the Super J Cup. Teddy Hart was going to wrestle Steve Corino in an empty arena match, because it was a shoot, brother. For their TV show they were going to have cameras capturing them for the moment they entered the arena in a MTV Red Carpet-esque manner. It was going to be a reality show mixed with the wrestling as well. I'm sure there's a shit load more I'm forgetting, but they said all this on various website updates, interviews, web chats.TV! TV! TV!:WGO got them a deal in Japan apparently. Since we've kind of established WGO is Court Bauer and fucking about on Geocities, it might be fair to say that actually wasn't in the works. Unless it was Microsoft Works. They said they signed a deal with the Wrestling Channel or at least had some kind of agreement. No idea if this is true or not. Maybe Herbie can let us know. In the US, they were going to be on a channel called Altitude TV, whatever that is. They announced a shit load of TV deals before they even announced the signing of Matt Striker. Most of these announcements were done via web chat after Teddy Hart had finished a joint off, I suspect. But we didn't know that at the time. At time time I was thinking World of Sport was getting knocked off its perch when TWC viewers witness those trampoline ring aprons.The typical ending to promotions like this:It died a slow quick death if that makes sense. The promotion was only around a few months, but writing was being added to the wall almost daily. First they had postponed their debut until July. Then Teddy Hart went online and started talking about bringing in Bret Hart and Rob Feinstein on their debut show. Both were bad news for different reasons. One Bret Hart wants little to do with Teddy Hart at the best of times, so false advertising a big name is never a good start. And Feinstein was still in hiding after the web chat thing. Teddy Hart thought it would make people go "oh, controversy". Instead of the reality of it, which led to "urggh, he's booking that pedo". Also, H2 was set to do a double shot with Ring of Honor on their rescheduled date, so they weren't happy with this revelation (especially when people were skeptical whether Feinstein was gone from ROH or not). So Teddy Hart was getting them into all sorts of bother with the fans, some of the wrestlers (who began pulling out due to the postponement of the debut show) and with Court himself who was wondering why he was sinking his money into a promotion with this clown as his partner.

Dear Fans,After careful thought and consideration as of Friday July 23, 2004 I tendered my resignation from the H2 Pro-Wrestling project. Our investors have decided due to my resignation and other factors to not proceed with the project effective immediately. As such, all H2 events are now cancelled as the venture has come to an end. All those who paid for tickets will be refunded immediately. My heartfelt and sincere apologies goes out to the dedicated H2 crew and fans for this difficult announcement.See you at the matches.Sincerely,Court Bauer

Eventually WGO pulled all their investment/Court Bauer got to stressed and quit the wrestling business again. Teddy Hart had a good cry on the internet about how Mat Rats was going to comeback instead or something. All the wrestlers found new bookings, TNA got the six sided ring and we all moved on with our lives. They did have some cracking bios on the roster page, though.

[Devon Malcolm]

Amazing stuff, Ian. I would definitely have watched that and loved it at the time. How did Teddy Hart become so prominent with it, though? Also, any ideas who Mr X was?

[IANdrewDiceClay]

No idea. The best names I heard was the Great Muta and Sabu, but chances are even they didn't know.As far as Teddy Hart goes, I think he put a load of money towards it. His Dad's rich, which is why Teddy Hart could afford to burn all his bridges in wrestling for years on end. He used to work for promotions for free for years just to get his name out. When the shit hit the fan, Teddy went spastic saying he'd pulled $500,000 from it.

[ShortOrderCook]

There's a lot of that, that I just love the sound and feel of and would love to see something like that still come to fruition today. I've long wanted a wrestling promotion that contains aspects like mentioned there to pop up as an alternative to WWE. This will sound like a shit comparison - but the kind of feel and atmosphere that all conjures up in the my mind, from an aesthetic purpose anyway is somewhat akin to the Christina Aguilera 'Dirrrty' video. Looking like a rave like atmosphere in a grimey crack den that just so happens to have a wrestling ring and wrestling going on in the middle of it all. Entrances being made walking through the fans for everyone and fans all around the ring. Part of me would love to see that sort of thing recreated.

[Arch Stanton]

A lot of the ideas sound like things that eventually did see light of day in Wrestling Society X and I was all over that as a concept. H2 sounds better though. I think there would be loads of potential for a promotion like this today, but it needs serious investment. If I ever win the Euromillions I'm on it.

[Forrest]

I love insane shit like this. Give me evil masked masterminds who change height and weight every show and Teddy Hart doing 720 shooting star presses off of trampoline aprons over three week suplexfests anyday. I loved WSX. It's one of my favourite feds of all time, so this would have been manna from heaven for me.I still hope my supercard featuring Shane Douglas, Teddy Hart and Jack Evans fighting in a 40 foot scaffold contraption ladder match, OAP Raven, Vampiro, Rob Black and his bevy of porno tramps, the Insane Clown Posse, Juvi Guerrera and the Super Crazy dynasty of garbage luchadors (Xtreme Tiger, Joe Lider etc.), Sabu ODing in the hotel beforehand and being replaced by Chilly Willy, Ric Flair breaking his hip on the second bump and a roidraged Scott Steiner will eventually happen.This had potential to get close it. One can dream what would've happened.Ian, do you know about the insane Sky Battle match Court had planned for MLW before it bit the dust? It apparently had some of the platform stuff you mentioned about H2.

[IANdrewDiceClay]

Ian, do you know about the insane Sky Battle match Court had planned for MLW before it bit the dust? It apparently had some of the platform stuff you mentioned about H2.

Had to involve trampolines. It was late on in MLW, so it must have involved Teddy Hart and a trampoline. It always comes back to trampolines with Teddy Hart.

[Maverick]

You were pushing for the very talented Benny HG to write a book last week Ian but you seem to have a similar talent, that was enthralling and your writing is great. Just something to consider, you obviously have talent with an informative endearing writing style.

[Loki]

These pop-up fed failures are so fascinating. There was one going about a couple of years ago, wasn't there? Someone throwing some money around with talk of major tv deal, out of Florida I think it was, they were going to poach TNA talent, and X-Pac was involved, that's all I remember.Also, whatever happened to the blackalicious Urban Wrestling Federation, the one with all the guns and bling ans sheeeeyit nigger and all that?

[pgi86]

These pop-up fed failures are so fascinating. There was one going about a couple of years ago, wasn't there? Someone throwing some money around with talk of major tv deal, out of Florida I think it was, they were going to poach TNA talent, and X-Pac was involved, that's all I remember.

It was called Worldwide Wrestling Promotions. Kevin Kleinrock (of XPW, WSX, Extreme Rising, Urban Wrestling Federation, etc.) and Mister Saint Laurent (who used to work for MLW and now does podcasts with Konnan) were two of the people involved but it was run by Sean Davis (a Florida indy guy). Vader was going to be their big star, and Vader's son (Jake Carter in NXT) was going to be their new top star. Booker T, Sean Waltman, Too Colt Scorpio, Larry Zbyszko, Sonjay Dutt, Super Crazy, Paul London, Rocky Romero, Hijo de Rey Misterio and Chasyn Rance were said to have been signed as well. They apparently had between 50 and 60 people signed to contracts. And then nothing ever came out of it.

[steamroller]

This is a great post, the northeast of the states was so full of random indies appearing and full of hype at the time, but this and FUSION were the best. So much of H2 was about spiting ROH on Court and Teddys part, never a good reason to do a promotion.

[IANdrewDiceClay]

It was called Worldwide Wrestling Promotions. Kevin Kleinrock (of XPW, WSX, Extreme Rising, Urban Wrestling Federation, etc.) and Mister Saint Laurent (who used to work for MLW and now does podcasts with Konnan) were two of the people involved but it was run by Sean Davis (a Florida indy guy). Vader was going to be their big star, and Vader's son (Jake Carter in NXT) was going to be their new top star. Booker T, Sean Waltman, Too Colt Scorpio, Larry Zbyszko, Sonjay Dutt, Super Crazy, Paul London, Rocky Romero, Hijo de Rey Misterio and Chasyn Rance were said to have been signed as well. They apparently had between 50 and 60 people signed to contracts. And then nothing ever came out of it.

The people behind it were supposed to be the Wilpon family, who owns the New York Mets (that was the major alarm bell that made everyone think this was bollocks). This mega billionaire family were going to make a go of it, and their first act was to bring in the recently arrested Scott Hall and Vader to combat WWE's monopoly of the industry. They got as far as to actually speak with Paul Heyman, who was in his laughable fat Jewish wannabe Dana White faze and wanted to run a company again. But he didn't want anything to do with them. MSL said that this group had verbally (lol) agreed to sign most of ROH's roster and a large portion of TNA's roster, because of they'd been convinced the Wilpons were in change and would pay them enough so they wouldn't have to go six to a room in a motel. The worst thing is, this never ever got any hype. With who was involved, you knew it was never going to see the light of day. First off, anyone who names their company "WWP", is dumb as fuck. WWP is a name worse than TNA. "WWP" is All Star level screwy advertising. Then bringing Mister Saint Laurant and Kevin Kleinrock on board just sumed up the level they were thinking of. Bring in the two blokes that scream "failed indy company". MSL's nothing more than an internet troll who knows a few wrestlers because he lives with Larry Zbyszko and Kleinrock's wrestlings version of a seasonal pantomime producer. Everything he does dies on its arse eventually because his visions are so short sighted and have "fad" stamped over them.That was the last big new promotion promising to taking over the world I think. New promotions are far more reserved these days. Its all "we just want to run a few shows and see how it does". Well fuck that. I want promises of TV deals and negotiations with a bloke who went to school with Batista who says he can get him to come in. And their downfalls aren't nearly as fun. Extreme Rising went out of business without much trouble. After the first show they had, I was expecting big things in terms of how that was going to hit the fan.

[Loki]

For me, the king of this was the XWF. Stupid name: checkAgeing WCW names: checkJimmy Hart: checkPromise of TV: checkAny yet... I reckon it nearly worked. You had a pretty good roster, including the return of Hulk Hogan to wrestling, at a time when it looked like he was probably done. You had Mean Gene Okerland and Jerry Lawler making the announce/backstage bits look legit. They did some tapings at the future Impact Zone and had a product that could legitimately go on tv, by all accounts.If VInce McMahon hadn't pulled the rug out from under them by sneakily signing their most well-known faces, it could have worked. Or is that just be being romantic - perhaps the last thing the world wanted at that point was WCW-lite.I'd love to see some of the shows though - was any of it released apart from the Hogan match?

[Sergio Mendacious]

Ian, do you know about the insane Sky Battle match Court had planned for MLW before it bit the dust? It apparently had some of the platform stuff you mentioned about H2.

Had to involve trampolines. It was late on in MLW, so it must have involved Teddy Hart and a trampoline. It always comes back to trampolines with Teddy Hart.

Trampolines and cats. Let's put cat on trampolines, or trampolines on cats.The cat may be marginally more intimidating than this chubby faced cunt, and there is a built-in psychology to his death defying leaps from several times his height.

[IANdrewDiceClay]

Any yet... I reckon it nearly worked. You had a pretty good roster, including the return of Hulk Hogan to wrestling, at a time when it looked like he was probably done. You had Mean Gene Okerland and Jerry Lawler making the announce/backstage bits look legit. They did some tapings at the future Impact Zone and had a product that could legitimately go on tv, by all accounts.

Their problem was they filmed pilots and shipped the footage around hoping someone would go "Hogan? Piper? Sable? Perfect? Lawler? Universal Studios? Gene Simmons? Willie Nelson? Get this on Fox now. Cancel the Simpsons" etc. But by the time the XWF had actually put the sicker on the video tape, Lawler, Hogan and Perfect were all in the WWF. So all you had to sell people on were Greg Valentine and Horace Hogan. And there's only an acquired taste for that.

I'd love to see some of the shows though - was any of it released apart from the Hogan match?

The 3 pilot episodes are all on Youtube.Episode 1:

Episode 2:

Episode 3: