10 Years Since... FWA British Uprising 3

[Big Benny HG]

13 November 2004.

 

Yes, as well as being my mother's birthday, this past Thursday marked a full decade since what was in many ways the key show during the original run of the Frontier Wrestling Alliance.  Realising one of Alex Shane's long-standing wrestling goals, the leading British group of the time ran at the 3,500 seat SkyDome arena in Coventry.  Though they only ended up filling 1,800 of those seats, it was still by far the biggest and most ambitious event they ever ran.  There has been much discussion as to whether the running of the event was, in effect, the beginning of the end for FWA and, while you believe that or not, it was certainly a significant moment.

 

 

Let me take you back...

 

 

Background

First, a little context: in late 2004 FWA was still the leading British wrestling brand.  There were always the touring likes of All-Star and so on, but mainly since 2002, FWA had built up a solid, loyal, core fanbase and was putting on the closest thing to episodic, storyline-driven shows that this country had.  In terms of action, FWA shows were more like the type of thing you would see on your imported US indie or Japanese video tapes, rather than the pantomime shows you could see down your local town hall.  This was a year before 1PW, and even the likes of IPW:UK, LDN and SAS had barely been born.  In November 2004, FWA was still really the only group putting on that type of show.

 

In 2004, FWA started their own TV series on the newly-launched The Wrestling Channel, where their regular shows from Brent, Hoddesdon and Morecambe would be broken down into weekly TV episodes.  'Anarchist' Doug Williams was the FWA British Heavyweight Champion, but you also had 'Showstealer' Alex Shane, 'Wonderkid' Jonny Storm, Jack Xavier, Hade Vansen, Paul Travell, James Tighe, Paul Burchill, Drew McDonald, Mark Belton, The Duke of Danger & Simmons, Mark Sloan, Stevie Knight and more.  A really good cast, putting on really strong shows.  The TV show wasn't always great, but it was usually entertaining and showcased the promotion to a wider audience.

 

Behind the scenes, the cracks were apparently beginning to form.  The TV show was actually costing them more of their non-existent money to produce than it was generating in fees.  Long-time creative, organisational and motivational force Dino Scarlo had parted company with them.  Disorganisation was starting to take its toll and stress was started to show.

 

In front of the audience, though, things couldn't be better.  I was a huge fan of the FWA at that time.  A few years earlier, it had been the first wrestling show that I had regularly made the commitment to travelling the length of the country to watch and to follow.  Others had the same view - once you were hooked you didn't want to miss out.

 

I have always held the view that, at least in terms of the product itself, 2004 was the best FWA had ever been and would ever be.  All of the characters and storylines were massively over, with big crowd reactions to everything they did.  Alex Shane as the lead heel was awesome, with his grudge matches that year with Jack Xavier and Steve Corino being some of the best in the promotion's history.  Doug Williams was the standard bearer, representing the company with a sense of pride in flawless technical bouts.  The run of shows in the Broxbourne Civic Hall in Hoddesdon that year is still one of the greatest, most consistent run I've ever seen from a UK group.

 

 

Build-Up

The news they were running their annual 'British Uprising' special at the SkyDome seemed like a huge deal at the time.  This wasn't just a leisure centre or a council-run hall in the middle of bloody nowhere like we were used to - this was a 'proper' arena in a city centre location.  It wasn't even like famed boxing venue York Hall in London, where Uprising had been held the previous 2 years.  All the build-up seemed fantastic - you really got the feeling that this was a special moment.

 

In a time when you 'import' usually meant a couple of current US indie wrestlers or former ECW undercard star coming over a few times a year, legendary former NWA and ECW World Heavyweight Champion Terry Funk was announced.  'Mouth of the South' Jimmy Hart was coming over.  Paul Burchill was supposed to be having his last UK match before starting with WWE.  AJ Styles was coming back for a rematch of the brilliant bout he'd had with James Tighe that summer.  Big favourite Jody Fleisch, who had stepped away from the ring for various reasons a year earlier was to be making an appearance.  The 'Jonny Storm is suspended' storyline was going to be resolved.  Boxer Danny Williams, who had shocked the world by knocking out Mike Tyson just a few months earlier, was involved in the build-up with a brawl with Alex Shane in Broxbourne after Alex called him, and I quote, a "gay boy", and then a press conference, both of which made the tabloids.  He was to be on the show as a guest referee.  Everything seemed to be coming together at once.

 

Ralph 'Rusty Music' Cardell, who produced the terrific personalised FWA entrance themes at the time, recorded an Uprising song with his band Citizen Smith that was so good it is still in my regular playlist today.  That tune was teamed with a tremendous video cleverly hyping all the announced matches and received endless play on The Wrestling Channel and got you even more hyped every time you saw it:

 

 

 

Saturday 13 November 2004

After hurriedly giving my mother her birthday card, my friend Martin and I jumped in his little Ford Ka and set off very early that morning for the 3-hour drive to Coventry, the first time either of us had been to the city I would from that point (and still to this day) end up making a ridiculous number of visits to (all wrestling related, I might add.  Why else would anyone want to go to Coventry?!?).  I seem to remember going back-and-forth on the ring road for a while before parking in the SkyDome multi-storey and heading straight to Jumpin' Jaks nightclub, part of the same complex, for the Fan Fest which was supposed to have already started by that point.  Of course, it hadn't so we joined the queue outside, where someone was trying to sell his shitty home-made fanzine.

 

I actually remember very little about the Fan Fest itself.  I remember making my regular visit to the Outcast Video stall to stock up on all the latest ROH and Japanese video tapes I was after, and I remember Terry Funk doing a really humble, polite Q&A on the stage where he genuinely seemed pleased to be there and came over as the nicest guy in the world.  We didn't stick around for the photos or autographs with Terry, instead making use of the time before the show to check into the Menzies LeOfric hotel in the city centre (which i the years to come later became a Travelodge... then student accomodation... then closed), get changed into some decent gear and find something to eat.

 

We'd gone for the £55 super ticket, which got us a front row seat, a free event t-shirt, a free poster, a free programme and entry to the pre-show for 2 extra matches.  We were always front row at FWA, but on what seemed like a huge day we felt really pleased to be right where the action was.  I've still got the t-shirt, by the way.  The design on the back was actually quite decent for an FWA effort, but offset by the fact they chose to put NOTHING on the front:

 

 

The pre-show for those with tickets in the first 3ish rows started so late that in the end they just opened the doors during the second bonus match and started letting everyone in so as not to impact the main show start time.

 

I remember little about Shane's Security (Martin Stone, Stixx & Leroy Kincaide) vs. Damon Leigh, Stevie Lynn & Jack Storm, but the main bonus match was actually Colt Cabana vs. Dirk Feelgood, who was pretty much an unknown in the south but had rapidly become one of my favourites through his appearances on the FWA Morecambe shows.  That I remember as being a really fun, ridiculously daft match that I thoroughly enjoyed.  I'm certain I've got it on a Colt Cabana DVD, so will have to give it a watch again.

 

By the time the rest of the audience filed in, it was clear they had come nowhere near selling-out the vast dome.  It was around half full, with row upon row of empty seats in the stands.  Whole sections were just vacant.  I was told they'd sold 1,800 tickets, which looked about right.  That's a massive audience for a British show, the biggest FWA ever did by a huge margin, a great accomplishment by any other standard, but not enough to make this building look decent.  They'd severely over-estimated the ceiling of interest in something like this.

 

The building was absolutely freezing too, though we quickly discovered that you could stock up on the plastic bottles of Carlsberg people were walking around selling (at-seat service~!), place them on the floor (which really was an ice rink) and they would keep chilled!  Brilliant.  We were also mega-impressed with the hotdogs they sold from a food window, that were slid inside a hollowed-out baguette!  Like this:

 

 

Tremendous.  I'd never seen anything like it before, and never have again.  We ate at least 3 each.

 

Main show started with Aviv Maayan vs. Ross Jordan vs. Spud in the 'Next Generation 3-Way'.  The idea was that they were trying to recreate the highly-touted-at-the-time opening 3-way from Uprising 1 with Jack Xavier, James Tighe & Raj Ghosh, with new, young wrestlers that would be the FWA stars of tomorrow.  Aviv was a talented guy, who would find his perfect role a couple of years later as a slimy greaseball heel in IPW:UK, then disappeared from wrestling altogether in around 2008.  Ross Jordan is now RJ Singh, who appeared on this year's TNA British Bootcamp, while I'm sure you've worked out who Spud is.  It was a good, decent, if not particularly stand-out match.  The bit I remember the most is Spud chucking up towards the end of the match, spewing while climbing the ropes to hit his winning move, scoring the win then hiding under the apron being sick some more.  Poor guy.

 

I remember getting excited when I spotted Jody Fleisch watching the show, hiding in one of the booths at the back of the stands.  He was a real talent and it had been a massive loss when he just disappeared.

 

Hade Vansen vs. Jack Xavier in a Last Man Standing Match was next, which surprised me since that had been built up as one of the key bouts on the show.  The storyline was that Hade's interference had cost Jack a similar Last Man Standing match to Alex Shane 6-months earlier.  This was nowhere near as good as the Shane bout which, as I've said before, is my pick for best-ever FWA match.  The Shane feud was the only time Jack ever really connected for me, and the rest of the time I just wasn't particularly interested.  They worked hard, but this one lacked the drama needed for a LMS bout.  Pretty much the only thing I remember is Hade winning with his South City Driller jumping DDT, done from the top rope onto a piece of guardrail in the ring.  I've just remembered Hade's brilliantly shite entrance theme: "SOUTH CITY THRILLA!  Boom-chi-boom-chi-boom THRILLA!  THRILLA! Hade-Vansen-is-the-man-he-is-the-Spouth-City-Thriller-I-said-beware-all-of-the-kids-because-here-comes-de-KILLA!"  Terrible.

 

I have literally no memory of Mark 'Five Star' Belton vs. D-Lo Brown.

 

Next, though, was Terry Funk, Paul Burchill & Paul Travell (with Dean Ayass) vs. Drew McDonald, Thunder & Raj Ghosh (with Greg Lambert), with Jimmy Hart as guest referee.  So much going on here.  Travell was initially part of Greg Lambert's stable, but turned to the good side over the course of the year.  Burchill was supposedly having his last bout on these shores ("PLEASE DON'T GO!").  There was the Ayass vs. Lambert 'battle of manager's' aspect that had been built well on the TV.  There was Terry Funk and Jimmy Hart making special appearances.  Thunder was a Coventry guy booked to get them local press.  The match itself was a complete mess, just endless slow-motion brawling to absolutely no crowd reaction, but I did appreciate the opportunity to see Funk.

 

The interval was next, and I had a hot dog.

 

After the interval was the Jonny Storm segment.  The deal was that annoying heel Storm had lost a Loser-Leaves-FWA match to James Tighe, breaking his own losing streak, in Morecambe that past May.  Storm was actually lined up as part of Scott Conway's wrestling tour of Thailand, so the angle was a reason to explain his absence (and they kept him on TV through a series of 'postcard' videos supposedly sent from Thailand, that were actually quite obviously filmed on a bleak, cold Morecambe beach, where he would beg to come back to FWA and be chased by ladyboys.  I really am not making any of this up).  When that tour went tits-up, Storm was back earlier than expected, turning up at FWA shows with a petition to come back, that fans got behind and signed, turning him babyface again.  He even wrestled in an 'unsanctioned' match with Colt Cabana at 'Hotwired', which was probably my favourite ever Cabana match and showed Jonny had an absolute talent for comedy.  Anyway, the bit here was that he was presenting his petition to the FWA, and they would make the decision to bring him back.  He was interrupted by James Tighe & Mark Belton, who were doing a gimmick where they would complain about being held back and not getting the opportunities they deserved.  Anyway, they attacked Storm, which brought out Jody Fleisch to a legitimate big reaction for the save.  I actually leapt into the air when his theme hit.  Jody cleaned house and did a springboard shooting star press onto the baddies on the floor, and Jonny was accepted back.

 

Hampton Court (Duke of Danger & Simmons w/ Buttercup) vs. Mark Sloan & Stevie Knight for the tag titles was next.  Simmons' popularity in FWA during that 2003-2004 period cannot be understated.  He was given a goofy butler gimmick, which started gaining cult popularity when people started cheering for him ironically for fun during an interminably crap 6-man tag at 'Seasons Beating 2002'.  It built and built and, with the help of some superb booking on the part of FWA, he grew into genuinely one of the most popular acts on the shows.  Sloan & Knight were a comedy odd couple team mainly built through skits on the TV show.  Man, they used to make me laugh.  Knight has always, always been a really funny guy with a natural ability to make you laugh by making himself look foolish, while super-serious-Sloan was the perfect straight-man.  As a match itself, I don't remember much about it, aside from Simmons getting hardly any reaction from an audience that was either still in the concession queues or weren't familiar with FWA storylines and characters.

 

Doug Williams vs. Alex Shane for the FWA title had been presented as the main event in all the build-up, but went on second-last.  Danny Williams wasn't involved in the end - he was in preparation for his fight with one of the Klitschkos, if I remember correctly.  Despite both being around FWA for years and being the respective top face and heel, Doug and Alex hadn't had much to do with each other from an in-ring perspective, so this was a fresh match that genuinely felt like the biggest thing FWA could put on with it's own talent and came across like a big deal.  You might think this would be a total styles clash (pun not intended), but this was actually a really, really good match.  Say what you will about him, Alex had a real talent for putting together these dramatic, exciting matches that made the most of absolutely everything to the benefit of the story.  This was no exception.  The ref went down,Alex was going to cheat, ULF HERMAN came out (again, I leapt in the air with excitement) for the first time since Alex turned heel on him one year earlier, went for Shane, but somehow ended up accidentally hitting Doug instead, the referee came round and counted Doug down.  Alex had won the belt, and would go on to give us his career best character work over the next year as evil champion.  I must say, I always did prefer Alex as the pantomime villain champion on more family-friendly shows (Morecambe, Cleethorpes, the 'Carnage' tour, GPW, FutureShock) than the role he did on 'main' FWA events.

 

So, going on last was the 30-Minute Iron Man Match of AJ Styles vs. James Tighe.  I'd absolutely loved their first encounter at 'Vendetta' that summer, but that had a screwy finish so they were rematched under these conditions.  I actually remember very little of the match itself here, if I'm honest.  I remember thinking it was a really good match, probably the best wrestling-wise on the entire show, but it wasn't the 'real' main event and it wasn't particularly interesting.  The big thing I do recall is that they managed to use the big ice hockey scoreboard hung from the ceiling to show the 'score'/number of falls won, which for some reason I thought was the best thing ever.  AJ won either 3-2 or 2-1, but there was no drama down the finishing stretch.  Crap finish and everything. the 'Vendetta' match was much, much better.

 

So, the show was done.  It was certainly a 'spectacle' to see a show - an FWA show, our show - in a dome like that, but by the standards they'd set for themselves that year alone you couldn't call it a great show.  There was some kind of meet n' greet for ringside ticket holders afterwards, but Martin and I didn't bother with it and headed to the pub.  We bumped into Alex on the way out of the SkyDome, who let us know that they'd been able to get Burchill for another date and would be putting together an extra Broxbourne show within the next few weeks as his real last stand.  He asked where we were heading and we told him "Jumpin' Jaks", to which he said "Yeah, we'll all be in there later for my birthday".  So, as it happened, we popped into The Shakespeare on 'historic' Spon Street for a quick few (where we discovered the local specialty cocktail the 'Fat Frog'), then headed to Jumpin' Jaks just in time to see D-Lo Brown being refused entry and have a drunken conversation with Colt Cabana in the toilets, trying to teach him British lingo about being out on the pull.  I also remember at some point managed to do what I like to remember as a flawless double-foot 'Brock Lesnar' leap from the dance floor straight onto the stage, that on countless return visits to the club since then I can never fathom out just how I managed...

 

 

The Aftermath

Aside from the FWA, Shane did run the Coventry SkyDome again.  Twice, in fact.  The first came just 6 months after Uprising in the form of The Wrestling Channel's 'International Showdown', which heralded the era of the 'supershow' and did manage to effectively sell-out the SkyDome to the tune of 3,500 punters.  In November 2005, the corresponding weekend to Uprising the previous year, he drew 2,400 for 'Universal Uproar'.

 

'British Uprising 3' was broadcast about a month later in the 'Supercard Sunday' slot on The Wrestling Channel, minus the Styles/Tighe main event (which was left off to entice you to buy the DVD) and the pre-show contests.  I never did buy the official DVD, but do have a copy of the TWC version somewhere.  I've never actually watched it back since that initial broadcast.  Truth be told, there wasn't much with high rewatchability factor on this show.  I'll likely give it a watch in the next week or so, since writing all this has stirred up my memories and my interest.

 

FWA did indeed hold a Broxbourne show a few weeks after Uprising 3, headlined by Burchill vs. Alex Shane and the first ever Goldrush Rumble.  Uprising, however, really was the signal of changing times in FWA.  2005 was nowhere near as exciting, compelling or interesting as 2003 and 2004 had been.  The imports disappeared.  More and more disorganisation, chaos and misinformation came in.  Shows were cancelled and attendances tumbled.  The FWA just wasn't the same again (at least down south - the Morecambe shows continued on their own path and were huge fun).  it was like they'd built everything towards that one date in November and had nothing left.  The rumoured amounts of money the Coventry show lost were staggering, and it got to the stage where those keeping it alive became jaded, disinterested and unmotivated by a business that took everything but gave little.  The likes of IPW:UK, LDN and SAS started in the south-east by people who had either been involved with or inspired by FWA, and by 2006 IPW:UK especially was putting on shows that far surpassed the FWA of the time.  1PW started running 'supershows' with a dozen imports on every couple of months which, unsustainable as they were (and people have written entire books about 1PW's failures) were on a level above anything FWA ever did.  There was no attempt to run a 'British Uprising' in 2005 or 2006, and by the end of the latter it was just about done.  FWA officially closed in spring 2007 in a storyline feud with IPW:UK.

 

Whatever way you look at it and whatever your memories are from the day, British Uprising 3 was a significant moment in the story of a groundbreaking little British promotion.  It was both the peak of their success, but also the start of their downfall.  As a day and an experience, I do remember it fondly, even if it wasn't that good of an actual show.  It proved the limitations of British wrestling at the time, but also opened the possibility of running one-off 'supershows' which would prove to be the focal points of the domestic scene for the following few years, evolving further into bringing entire foreign promotions over here to run shows under their own banner.

 

When I think all of this was now a decade ago, it absolutely astonishes me...

[Fanny Pack]

Great review mate, well played.

[Big Benny HG]

... and as an addition to all of that, here was the 'official programme'.  It wasn't an Uprising-specific publication, just the standard one they were selling at the shows at the time:

 

 

^^ They certainly got their use out of that Nikita shot.  It was on just about every single one of their event posters from 2002-2004.

 

 

 

^^ Alex wasn't actually the FWA British Heavyweight Champion at this point - this was just a promotional shot with the belt (and one of the tag belts, that he didn't hold either).

 

 

^^ "FUN FACT" - Did you know that briefcase Jonny is carrying there was supposed to contain the XPW European Title that he won, except they never made/sent a belt?

 

 

^^ There's that Nikita shot again!!

 

 

 

^^ The UKFF's very own 'andrew 'the ref' coyne on this page, as well as current Revolution Pro Wrestling promoter Andy Quildan and other faces that would become more familiar.

 

 

 

 

Taking a closer look at that FutureShock Wrestling Training ad on the inside-back cover:

 

 

As well as Axl Rage, now of the Blackpool Blondes, the late Dom Travis and the likes of Jennidee, Jamie Flynt and Jamal Lewis, look at a very young Dave Rayne on the left!!

[Flash]

marty scrull next to aj styles

[Big Benny HG]

marty scrull next to aj styles

 

Shit - yes!!

[Statto]

Ten years, shit. Cheers for the memories, Ben.

 

My abiding memory of the day is another "Terry Funk is a great bloke" one - during the meet & greet after the show that you skipped, we were towards the back of the queue. Security were trying to get everyone out of the building, and Terry flat out refused to move until he'd seen everyone. "These people came to see me, so I'm damn sure I'm not going to let you stop me seeing them." Legend.

[Benno]

So 10 years ago, I spent 6 hours on a National Express from Liverpool that got stuck on the Motorway, missed the entire show and spent another 4 hours waiting for the Bus home. A good first outting for BritWres it wasn't!

 

Hope everyone else had a good time at the wrestling show.

[Egg Shen]

who the hell came up with that t-shirt?

[gadge]

I made my journey up on the Sanjay Bagga organised bus trip up from London. Good times except for how cold the actual venue was. Wrestlestuff.com was also Sanjay's baby I think.

[The Dart]

I don't really remember much about the day.  I can't remember who I went with, or how I got there, or whether I stayed overnight or not.  I went to an All Star show the day before, and another one the next day, so I assume I somehow got home that night.  I didn't go to the meet and greats or q&a, and didn't have the tickets to see the bonus 2 matches, but I do have a vague memory of seeing the end of Cabana vs. Feelgood, which goes with what Hatman said about them just letting people in.

 

I just remember the show being bad.  Only Shane vs. Williams and Tighe vs. Styles (despite the poor ending) were decent matches, everything else was bad.  I recall every single match on the show used the ringside barrier as a weapon.  Where we were sitting there was no atmosphere in the crowd.  Definitely seemed like the beginning of the end of the FWA.

[TheShowOff]

Does anybody remember the Alex Shane / Danny Williams press conference / pull apart angle they shot? I remember it being awful at the time and haven't seen it since. The pull apart brigade was made up of mostly children from what I remember.

[freaky]

I was sat in the stands for this show and I reckon I would have enjoyed the show a lot more if I was in the floor seats.  I can't remember much about the show which doesn't say much for its long-term impact from an in-ring standpoint.

 

I also recall the reason for Tighe v Styles being on last was because AJ's flight was late arriving into the UK and he only got to the building during the intermission of the show.

[Statto]

Was that actually true? I remember it being announced that was the reason for the switch (and people starting to boo during the announcement as it started to sound like AJ wasn't turning up at all), but I always thought it was really done so the show ended with the AJ, Jonny & Jody posing after fighting off Tighe & Belton bit, rather than Doug dropping the title to a heel?

 

At least, I seem to recall the consensus on the FWA board on here being that the "AJ arrived late" thing was a work to switch the order.

 

The fact that match was also treated as the "main event" by being left as a DVD exclusive lent that credence.

[freaky]

Was that actually true? I remember it being announced that was the reason for the switch (and people starting to boo during the announcement as it started to sound like AJ wasn't turning up at all), but I always thought it was really done so the show ended with the AJ, Jonny & Jody posing after fighting off Tighe & Belton bit, rather than Doug dropping the title to a heel?

 

At least, I seem to recall the consensus on the FWA board on here being that the "AJ arrived late" thing was a work to switch the order.

 

The fact that match was also treated as the "main event" by being left as a DVD exclusive lent that credence.

All valid points. I don't know about any of the fallout from the show.

 

I had to go back through my photos to remember that I met D'Lo Brown and Colt Cabana that night.  I don't even remember Cabana being there.

[herbie747]

 

 

 

Tremendous.  I'd never seen anything like it before, and never have again.  We ate at least 3 each.

 

 

 

 

They sell those in Alton Towers - they're called Demon Dogs. Impossible to get ketchup into.