1PW Returns

[Surf Digby]

I hope there was still a book of thanks, or at least an app.

[air_raid]

16 hours ago, Lion_of_the_Midlands said:

Doesn't sound like a 1PW card then. Next you will be telling me it finished on time. 

1PW cards should never be straightforward. They should be replete with changes to the announced cards due to missed flights or people just fucking off home halfway through their commitments, people doing double duty to cover for aborted matches, people randomly inserted into announced matches so nobody upsets their main employer by doing a job to a rival, and perplexing substitutions akin to whatever the modern equivalent is of Lance Storm tagging with Andy Local.

[Lion_of_the_Midlands]

The 1PW show with Steve Corino v Al Snow remains the only show I've had a nap during. It was a lovely half hour sleep, and when I awoke the match was still going on because of the aforementioned "Issues" that @air_raid mentions. 

At another 1PW show my mate went across the road, booked a hotel room and had a shower during the interval because there was still half the show left and his train was going in 7 minutes. He missed nothing  1PW made the FWA look punctual. 

Edited April 24, 2023 by Lion_of_the_Midlands

[Chris B]

Was it @tiger_rick that got a picture of himself reading a book on the front row during a Jeff Jarrett 1PW match?

I may have got the person and the promotion wrong here, to be fair. But the idea still makes me laugh this many years later.

[air_raid]

2 hours ago, Chris B said:

Was it @tiger_rick that got a picture of himself reading a book on the front row during a Jeff Jarrett 1PW match?

I may have got the person and the promotion wrong here, to be fair. But the idea still makes me laugh this many years later.

Sounds like @Big Benny HG to me.

[Surf Digby]

Was it not Dopper, in his trademark orange Taz T-shirt?

[Daaaaaad!]

I sat with a copy of the Metro during his match with Harry Smith, if that counts.

Shocked at the unprecedented occurrences at the end of Saturday's show. Couldn't believe what I was seeing.

The curfew was 10:45pm, yet I was outside by 10:41!

[air_raid]

15 hours ago, Lion_of_the_Midlands said:

The 1PW show with Steve Corino v Al Snow remains the only show I've had a nap during. It was a lovely half hour sleep, and when I awoke the match was still going on because of the aforementioned "Issues" that @air_raid mentions. 

A Cruel Twist Of Fate might have been the benchmark for fuck-upery even though later weekenders would have more line-up changes and politicking. The most famous of course being that the main event of Matt Hardy vs Abyss being announced while Matt was still a free man (and promoted with a new nickname I don’t recall which he never used in WWE) and ending up scrubbed because while Matt was permitted to fulfill some of his existing Indy obligations he was either prohibited or simply chose not to do that one. In tandem with TNA pulling their guys from Universal Uproar (cancelling AJ Styles vs Austin Aries) it was quite a frustrating few weeks for BritWres supershow fans. On the night of course, the aforementioned Snow vs Corino went down. The match had loads of stalling and was already too long at the point they did a lengthy “fake injury stoppage” angle, then apparently not sure what to do next, traded finishers of headline wrestlers past and present before finally wrapping up somewhere around the 45 minute mark… this being the last match before intermission on what had already been a stacked card. We were jiggered, man. I forget whether they had not been told how long they had or that the ref wasn’t telling them when to go home or what, but Christ! Eventually after a show which started around 7, the main event started around midnight. I imagine many either missed their train, missed the main event or were grateful they had accommodation local. I was in none of those boats. My own fuck up lives long in the memory too.

Living in the West Midlands and theorising Doncaster was about two and a half hours away from my family home in the West Midlands, I decided in my youthful ignorance I would be fine to drive myself and two mates there and then back again. Routinely being comfortable driving that kind of distance (as I did to drive to Uni) even by night and being a moron - remember, this is before smartphones and integrated satnavs, and I didn’t own a freestanding one. But it was a Saturday night and nobody cared about oversleeping on the Sunday, so it was agreed. Beforehand my mums boss, an old fella who’d “done a lot of driving” and “knew the country up and down” told my mum that for driving that way on a Saturday afternoon I’d be better off shunning motorways and sticking to A roads to avoid match day traffic, and so I believed him. In years to come I’d learn what awful advice that was, but nonetheless we planned Black Country to Donny via a series of A roads, town names and junction numbers. Armed with an old road map and two navigators the route there was easy and uneventful enough although took far longer than we planned for despite “avoiding match day traffic” so we got to the Dome unfed and perilously close to bell time. Shuffling in, we spotted a “24 Hour” Asda on the way in and being small town morons not used to the concept, we’re relieved that we’d at least be able to grab sandwiches, sausage rolls or whatever before heading home, which we guessed would be around 10 and probably no later than half past worst case. I’d even set the VideoPlus for Match of the Day.

On the way out, after midnight, of course we were horrified to find the “24 hour” Asda was closed. Today I understand Sunday trading laws, at the time I joked that in Doncaster (which to my mind might as well have been Emmerdale) it must mean open 24 hours a week. Having not eaten anything substantial for over 8 hours and not willing to stray too far from the car on foot or our known route home we then were resigned to eat only what we could buy from the petrol station - a small fortune worth of Doritos and Wagon Wheels. We then headed back and by night I managed to get lost, and given the exhausting day we’d had, my two navigators ended up falling asleep despite my constant shouting at them to get the map out and help me. I don’t remember specifics except I’m sure we spent far longer driving round Chesterfield than any non-native should ever have to, and we got back to my mums around 3:30 still starving and far too miserable to watch Match of the Day. Plus I tripped a speed camera on the A449 but thankfully while I saw the flash, a penalty never came.

Subsequent 1PW weekenders we stayed at the Travelodge and dined at Little Thief, though in comparison to the hell of October 1st 2005 every penny towards an overpriced “any 3 items” breakfast felt well spent. A cruel twist of fate, indeed.

[Daddymagic]

16 hours ago, Lion_of_the_Midlands said:

The 1PW show with Steve Corino v Al Snow remains the only show I've had a nap during. It was a lovely half hour sleep, and when I awoke the match was still going on because of the aforementioned "Issues" that @air_raid mentions. 

At another 1PW show my mate went across the road, booked a hotel room and had a shower during the interval because there was still half the show left and his train was going in 7 minutes. He missed nothing  1PW made the FWA look punctual. 

I only went to one 1PW show and did something very similar. 
I went to Asda, got some food, took it back on foot to my hotel room, walked back and was still around 2 hours of the show left (think it went on well past midnight) and I didn't stay till the end as had enough by this point. 

[air_raid]

1 hour ago, Daddymagic said:

I only went to one 1PW show and did something very similar. 
I went to Asda, got some food, took it back on foot to my hotel room, walked back and was still around 2 hours of the show left (think it went on well past midnight) and I didn't stay till the end as had enough by this point. 

I strongly suspect this was also A Cruel Twist Of Fate.

Something I missed from my post above was something remarkably eerie. During D'Lo vs SJK, D'Lo paused and shouted out "This... is for Eddy Guerrero" before he was about to go into Three Amigos, which prompted me and my mates to look at each other and ask "Has he died???" This being about six weeks before he actually died.

[Daddymagic]

It was the one with Christian on. 
After I sat through a near 3 hour "pre show" and lots of utter drek like the UKFFS own Jay Phoenix I was burnt out by the time Christian came on. 

[air_raid]

2 hours ago, Daddymagic said:

It was the one with Christian on. 
After I sat through a near 3 hour "pre show" and lots of utter drek like the UKFFS own Jay Phoenix I was burnt out by the time Christian came on. 

Sounds like you're referring to Know Your Enemy night 2 in 2006, which I attended the whole weekend of. Phoenix was in the second match of the night show proper. What I suspect you refer to as a "pre show" was actually the first Fight Club, headlined by the Morishima 5-way for the 3CW title. If so, you didn't really go to one really long show with time to go to Asda, your hotel and back while it was in progress, but unknowingly attended two separate shows, where there was a suitably long break in-between. In other words, a lot of the time you were gone, no wrestling was happening. If you'd been in Asda at the same time as we were on that afternoon, you'd have spotted Yone and Morishima doing their best to get supplies. Yone was looking at the packet noodles, big Takeshi seemed bewildered by how many varieties of orange juice there were. I felt like the break was refreshment enough, certainly don't remember the night show going on to near midnight, and definitely wasn't burned out by the excellent finale of the tag title tournament - Jonny & Jody going over the Phenomenal Angels. But then, YMMV and there's a chance you were talking about a different show, correct me if I'm wrong.

Despite the weekend being pretty good (Doug vs Lance Storm, the GHC tag title match in particular being very good matches) that's where me and my mates jumped off as we felt like we might be seeing the peak, Steve Corino as champ didn't inspire us for the star power of future shows, and one or two too many adhoc lineup changes and missed flights meant the appeal of the "gamble" was waning.

I started seeing a girl in the June time, which didn't help.

[TildeGuy~!]

Most of these sound like Pro Wrestling Eve shows where the show starts late as normal and instead of having 5 advertised matches with a respectable end time, they add an extra couple of hours on where the couple who run the shows try to get themselves over with shitty stand up routines.

Edited April 25, 2023 by TildeGuy~!

[Tim R-T-C]

I missed all the 'fun' of the early 1PW shows 😳

I just got the inebriated Sandman at To the Extreme N1, unexpected fireworks and general nonsense of 4AS, the most foul mouthed promo ever at the Ellesmere Port show (family friendly and Ulf Herman do not work well together) and the utterly bizarre attempt to run in Liverpool.

Not to mention though Mr Gauntley's PW101 and its very strange one and only standalone Sheffield event.

This most recent show, aside from the final brawl definitely lacked the classic 1PW feel!

Edited April 25, 2023 by Tim R-T-C

[Michael_3165]

Despite the amount of fucking around from Gauntley et al, I have some fond memories from those shows.

I know it's the thing to do, to bash the company, and Gauntley sure has alot to answer for. I suspect some folk on here got fucked about by him and he certainly crapped on British wrestling's rep with his BS.

That said, I'd never have seen half of those talents without those shows (Sabu, Styles, Abyss, Jarrett, Joe etc). Sure they were chaotic, the wrestling was often patchy and the run times were nonsensical but I enjoyed most of them. Though, I nearly died on the drive back to London at 1am on multiple occasions. 

I loved the Burridge vs McGuinness 2/3 falls match at one of them. There was also a brilliant Styles v Pac match IIRC that was great (I may have rose tinted glasses, its been years). 

It's a shame because the concept was great, but the execution was appalling at times. 

A quick shout out to Les who ran RQW I think it was. Getting Muta over after that fiasco w 1PW was a great call and shows he was a decent bloke (I heard he passed away, bless him)