WyattSheepMask Posted February 16 Share Posted February 16 (edited) First was the UK Hart Attack Tour in 1994. Bret & Bulldog v Owen & Neidhart was the main event. I was always a little gutted that we didn’t get Randy Savage in the place of Davey Boy, as was the card on the German leg of the tour in what were to be his final WWF matches.  The undercard had a mixture of alright stuff. Razor & Lugar v HBK & Diesel and Alundra Blayze v Bull Nakano were probably the two best from an in-ring standpoint, but there was also Undertaker v Yokozuna in a Casket Match. It was years until I went to another show after that when me and a friend started going to a bunch of the mid-00s indie stuff. There was one weekend where we went to Frontiers of Honor 2 in Orpington (I think?) and then went to 1PW in Doncaster the following night, and we’d joke about we were just like the boys making towns. We went to the majority of those first year 1PW shows before it all went tits up, and we went to the first NXT tour over here, Progress at Wembley, New Japan at the Copperbox. In fact I think that was the last wrestling show we went to together Edited February 16 by WyattSheepMask Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SuperBacon Posted February 16 Share Posted February 16 100% certain I've told this on here a million times, but at One Night Only I was interviewed by Sky Sports before the event and was asked who would win, and my answer was "Bulldog obviously because Shawn is gay" Funnily enough it didn't make the airing. Greatest show ever. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavidB6937 Posted February 16 Share Posted February 16 7 minutes ago, SuperBacon said: 100% certain I've told this on here a million times, but at One Night Only I was interviewed by Sky Sports before the event and was asked who would win, and my answer was "Bulldog obviously because Shawn is gay" Funnily enough it didn't make the airing. Greatest show ever. Oh wow. You're like the lesser known Summerslam 1992 Bulldog girl. So close to infamy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snitsky's back acne Posted February 16 Share Posted February 16 1 hour ago, wandshogun09 said: Only 2 for me. First was a WWF house show in December 1993 at the NEC in Birmingham. It had a Taker vs Yoko main event, Savage vs Shawn, Razor vs IRS, 123 Kid vs Model and Adam Bomb squashing Virgil so fast we missed it queueing for ice cream. Shit, I saw this line up in Bournemouth and completely forgot about it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members BomberPat Posted February 16 Paid Members Share Posted February 16 my first was the FWA Revival King Of Europe show, as a teenager in 2002. My parents and older brothers hated wrestling, so it was never on the cards to go to a show before that one, but I managed to cajole one of my older cousins into taking me to this one. I'd been living in Jersey for a couple of years, and basically became a die-hard wrestling fan not longer after moving there, so it was a big thing to be flying over to London for a show, and I found it all very daunting. The show was superb, as I'm sure plenty of you know. I'd been buying every wrestling magazine I could get my hands on by then, so had been reading about the FWA in Powerslam, and so a lot of the card felt like stars even though it was the first time I was seeing them. As much as I went in for Brian Lawler and Eddie Guerrero, I came away far more a fan of the British guys, and absolutely convinced that Jody Fleisch would be the future of the industry.  It was a long time before I'd go to another show, even though my fandom only got more obsessive - living on an island and working minimum wage jobs put paid to that, and I missed out on Jersey having been one of the regular stopping off points for All-Star and other touring promotions; my friends went to shows in the early and mid-90s featuring a knackered Dynamite Kid and The Legend of Doom (an old mate still insists to this day that he saw Hawk wrestle in a Jersey hotel), whereas the only shows I ever saw advertised in the early '00s were a single newspaper ad for a full-blown tribute show, and posters for a show headlined by Robbie Brookside that ended up cancelled. I only found out a few months ago that Shane Stevens was still running some hotel shows in Jersey around this time, but they were only advertised to hotel guests, so I never heard about them - if I'd known, I could have been watching James Mason wrestle four or five times in a weekend. My next show was TNA at Wembley Arena in 2011; a good mate of mine that I was going to music festivals with around that time had got big into TNA, and had been to a live show the previous year. He got some cheap tickets for this one and asked if I fancied going - another friend had just started uni at Goldsmiths, so I stayed with him, and made a long weekend of it. Despite having some of the most phoned in matches imaginable - Rob Van Dam vs. Matt Hardy, and Jeff Hardy vs. Mr. Anderson come to mind - it was great fun, with a Jeff Jarrett/Johnny Moss match that's still one of my favourite matches I ever saw live, and made a Jeff Jarrett fan of me. The big story going into it was that Ric Flair had missed a show earlier in the tour - from what I remember, he'd not been paid his fee up-front, and was spending money he didn't have, maxing out his credit cards at the bar in every town they went to, and having to get management to cover him. They got sick of it in Dublin, and left him behind, so he missed the following night's event, and it all came to a head again in Manchester the day before I was due to see him wrestle. We weren't sure if we were going to see him, and given that AJ Styles and Kurt Angle had already pulled off, he was one of the big draws for us. Jeremy Borash didn't mention Flair at all during the pre-show hype, and he feared the worst, but he showed up after intermission and had a mad brawl with Doug Williams.  The following year, it was the return of live wrestling to Jersey at long last! Rumblemania at Fort Regent, a good 500-600 turn-out, and I managed to talk my way in as a ringside photographer as they had booked some of the "stars" of Channel Island Wrestling, then just a ramshackle training school. The show was run by Shane Stevens, serial con-man and convicted fraudster, and those are the nicer things you could say about him, though I didn't know any of that at the time. I mentioned James Mason earlier in connection to the shows Shane Stevens had previously run in Jersey - James told me that Shane was the dodgiest person he had ever met in wrestling, and just imagine the ground that must cover. As far as this show goes - VIP ticket-holders got front row tickets, a post-show meet-and-greet, and would be sent a DVD of the show when it was produced; that DVD never surfaced, and because of our involvement on the show, Channel Island Wrestling were still fielding complaints about it at least two years later. He also promised that he was coming back with a bigger show the following year, that would feature an ex-WWE superstar - some kids behind me got excited that it must be Shawn Michaels for some reason - and that show never came to be. I found out years later that the four CIW talents who got booked on this show, Shane did the expected shitty promoter to naïve young talent thing of not paying them, and just using them to fill spots on the card, and bring in plenty of family and friends buying tickets, and that didn't surprise me at all. What was more of a dick move that I wasn't aware of was that he refused to let them change in the same dressing room as "his" wrestlers, making them get changed in the corridor instead. Bob "Blondie" Barrett was advertised for the show, and they used his Rebel Pro ring (I'm racking my brain trying to remember what the actual promotion name they used was, because it wasn't that), but he wasn't there. I don't know if he just never got on the boat, or was there working backstage, but I never saw him. I've been looking up the show and some old photos to try and get a sense of who was on the card - a short-haired and unrecognisable Joseph Conners, Mad Dog Maxx, Danny Steel, Paul Malen, Tom Mason, Flex Buffington, Matt Mentzer, Bam Bam Barton, and others I don't recognise at all. Not exactly a superstar line-up, and what strikes me now is that it's odd that it's almost entirely a Northern and Midlands contingent for a show at the southernmost point of the British Isles.  It was, through a long and convoluted set of circumstances, that the Fort Regent show led to Channel Islands Wrestling (later Channel Islands World Wrestling) getting a regular gig at a local hotel, and running consistently there from 2013 until last year, so after that, I was refereeing and firmly getting started in the business, and every subsequent show I attended was with at least one eye toward that. My next show was RevPro's When Thunder Strikes at York Hall in 2013, for the headline match of Prince Devitt vs. Jushin Thunder Liger. From there, I started attending the occasional RevPro show when they had a big NJPW name in, and in 2015 I went along to the first CHIKARA UK tour, co-promoted with Fight Club Pro, and I started going to more of their shows, and later to Pro Wrestling EVE, and picking up other indie shows as and when I could. Before long, all of my disposable income was going on wrestling shows, and I was travelling back and forth between Jersey and London, Birmingham or Manchester for live shows, some years as much as once a month, and since moving to London three years ago, often more than that, so I'm not going to detail every single one of them over the last almost ten years! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr_Danger Posted February 16 Share Posted February 16 2 hours ago, air_raid said: Or they took you on the Tuesday night because they didn't want to miss Brookside. Understandable. Nah, he was on in Rhyl town hall on the Thursday. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Lion_of_the_Midlands Posted February 16 Paid Members Share Posted February 16 My first was sometime in 1979, the Drill Hall in Lincoln. I cannot for the life of me remember who was on that show. It would have been Dale Martin/Joint Promotions i assume. I was taken by my aunt and uncle who were big fans. They kept taking me to shows semi regularly until about 1986 when my uncle had a stroke and couldn't drive anymore. Then I had somewhat of a gap in live attendance apart from a few shows in the 90s locally, promoted by the local Wrestler Andy Strong. I remember Dale Preston was on most of those shows. Dale of course famous from Simon Garfield's book The Wrestling. This was before that time but I did eventually get to shout "FUCK OFF BACK TO LINCOLNSHIRE" at Dale many years later. When the FWA started to gain traction I started to travel to watch them. Didn't miss a show for a couple of years, all the Uprisings, everything. Lots of other local shows on top of that, RDW, NBW, Hope, Hop, EAW, loads of stuff, mainly bad or funny. Also went to the first UK Raw and Smackdown in Manchester, took my nephews to their first shows to continue the tradition. Also went to Earls Court and Sheffield arena to see WWE. TNA in Nottingham, all the Dragongate UK shows, Chickfight in Great Yarmouth, WAW in Yarmouth, and Hunstanton, that promotion that a young Nick Aldis used to run in Kings Lynn that I believe were called SUMMIT? NOAH in Wolverhampton, International Showdown, King Of Europe. 1PW if course, NGW in Hull, loads that I can't remember now but that's just off the top of my head. I also have a vague memory of seeing Loki wrestle in Norwich, I think Scott Conway promoted that. For 2 years in row I went to over 100 shows per year, those both included weekly shows in the summer from RDW at the Suncastle in Skegness and WAW in Great Yarmouth. Petrol was cheaper in those days and I earned more money. The last show I travelled for was the show that had Liger on at York Hall. I had a list of people I wanted to see wrestle live, Liger was the last name I ticked off that list. I've been to maybe 5 shows since then, but they always involved friends who were wrestling or charity. All In all I've been to more than 500 shows, and honestly I wouldn't change a thing. I've seen some good wrestling, I've seen some great wrestling, I've seen crowds get really emotionally involved, and I've seen crowds that didn't give a shit. From scout huts, to town halls, to arenas I've seen wrestling at all of them. Big shout out to the now sadly demolished Winter Gardens at Cleethorpes which was a great venue and Broxbourne Civic Hall where I saw a lot of great wrestling and also saw a 9 year old kid F5 his younger brother into the lake/pond/river/whatever it is in the garden behind it. What a bollocking he got as we tried not to laugh. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Statto Posted February 16 Paid Members Share Posted February 16 3 hours ago, Lion_of_the_Midlands said:  I also have a vague memory of seeing Loki wrestle in Norwich, I think Scott Conway promoted that. Think you might be thinking of New Era Wrestling in Ipswich, which was a Dann Read promotion? One of those first show of a new promotion that turns out to be the only show. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Lion_of_the_Midlands Posted February 16 Paid Members Share Posted February 16 17 minutes ago, Statto said: Think you might be thinking of New Era Wrestling in Ipswich, which was a Dann Read promotion? One of those first show of a new promotion that turns out to be the only show. That's the one. Norwich/Ipswich are pretty much the same. Same webbed feet, and only 3 surnames. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2Xtreme_lives Posted February 16 Share Posted February 16 Growing up I went to the annual wwe tours from 02-05 as the wrestlemania revenge tour used to come through and as it was near my birthday was a guaranteed easy thing for family to club together for. I then went to sporadic wwe shows when they came over and I earnt my own money. As britwres took off every event I went too was southside as it was on my doorstep and for about a tenner it was a no brainer and pretty much stopped going to wwe during this time I'm fortunate that my dad lives nr chicago so I've been able to do a handful of aew shows too My only US WWE event was wargames 2019 again in chicago, being a big trading card collector gives me a long term chase to get event autos and relics from different sets Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members Lion_of_the_Midlands Posted February 16 Paid Members Share Posted February 16 6 minutes ago, 2Xtreme_lives said: As britwres took off every event I went too was southside as it was on my doorstep and for about a tenne I forgot about Southside. Fit Finley v Sami Callaghan rings a bell. Also some sort of tournament at an indoor bowls arena, that's them isn't it. The problem with Southside was often a lot of similar matches, buts that's nothing unusual for promoters who were workrate perverts like Ben from Southside seemed to be. Lots of shows in Nottingham obviously but also St Ives, some sort of no ropes match with El Ligero. One of the things I do remember is that at one show that had been running for ages. It had gone midnight and the main event hadn't started so I decided to call it quits and go home. It was in Nottingham and I live just outside Lincoln. I had a bet with a couple of people in the audience that I knew that I would get home and the show wouldnt have finished. They rang me the second it finished as I was pulling into my drive. They also told me that I'd seen the same match at least twice in the same show but drawn out longer because it was the main event. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SuperBacon Posted February 16 Share Posted February 16 I've been to Southside once, when Tommy Dreamer and Million Dollar Man* and Rev Pro a few times, including that Bret Hart appearance one with Balor vs Ricochet, which was probably the best match I've ever seen live. All great fun, as was the one time I went to see LDN, apart from the set up being rubbish with the ring on a stage. In Epsom if I remember correctly, and I remember a hilarious character called The Executioner, I think. *fun fact, I only found the UKFF as I was looking for details of that show and came across this place somehow. So blame Tommy Dreamer for me being here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AndyUK Posted February 16 Share Posted February 16 (edited) I believe my first show would've been All-Star Wrestling in Grimsby which would've been either late 2001 or early 2002 looking at when Davey Boy Smith passed away, as he was advertised for the show but didn't turn up to due to travel restrictions after 9/11 I want to say? Could be wrong about the reason, but I do know me and my brother made big fuck off cardboard signs for him, and I don't think either of us ever made a sign again after the disappointment. Saw a few more All-Star shows with Tatanka and Jake Roberts standing out along with UK Undertaker and a fake Scotty 2 Hotty, and also some FWA shows in the area that the likes of Christopher Daniels and Bryan Danielson were on too, which is funny looking back. Tour of Defiance Tour in 2004 in Birmingham was my first WWE show with Chris Benoit v Triple H and Shawn Michaels v Ric Flair on the card and I've since been to countless RAW and Smackdown tapings, NXT Takeover London, NXT UK Takeover Blackpool, Wrestlemania 33 in Orlando, Wrestlemania 35 in New York along with the NJPW/ROH Supershow at MSG, Clash at The Castle and Wrestlemania 39 in LA. MITB at the 02 and All In at Wembley last year were my most recent shows. It's been a hell of a ride. Edited February 16 by AndyUK Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TildeGuy~! Posted February 16 Share Posted February 16 (edited) Considering I’ve been watch wrestling for around 30 years I haven’t been to many shows, My first few were FWA shows that I went to with school friends but the one that I remember clearly  had a one night tournament which included Jerry Lynn and AJ Styles (where it was the first time ever seeing him and thinking he was the best thing ever) Season Beatings may have been the show name?  Was in Chesunt I believe, also saw CM Punk and Colt Cabana wrestle in Enfield in a sports hall that held about 80 people. Only been to a couple of WWE house shows at the O2 in London, to take my nephew really as he was a fan at the time one main evented by Owens/Rollins/Zayn think it was a week after Owens won the title and the other if I can remember was a 6 man between Flair/HHH/Batista Vs Orton/Benoit/Michaels Been to a couple of Pro Wrestling Eve shows as well as Rev Pro shows the best being Rev Pro’s Super J Cup which was an ace show and probably the most fun I’ve had, when I was in Japan a few years ago I attended a few Stardom shows as well as a night at New Japans best of Super Juniors and the last show I went to was All In at Wembley. Edited February 16 by TildeGuy~! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paid Members theironshake Posted February 16 Paid Members Share Posted February 16 My first show was WCW real Event at the Birmingham NEC. Next was the Halloween Havoc tour in late 93 at the NIA (Me and my mate were convinced we was going to a ppv) Didn't go to another show until the Awful 2000 WCW tour again at the NEC. Where the 19 year old Shake and his mate acted like total smarks and were total dickheads. WWE House show in 2004 featuring Shawn V Flair and other stuff I have forgotten about. Then it was Coventry 2005 International Showdown - what can I say about that day absolutely amazing...what a show Then onto Universal Uproar. Which was good but not at Showdowns level. Next was Raw at the NEC Then Raw at Manchester TNA at Coventry in 2010 great night. NXT TAKEOVER LONDON was next wow what a show. TNA at the NIA Jokers Wild (weird show that was) I haven't been to a show since but think I'll be at All In as missed last year.  Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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