Promotion Names

[Carbomb]

3 minutes ago, Merzbow said:

NOAH was always a cool name especially with the history behind it with everyone jumping ship from the sinking post- Baba AJPW to the new ark.

Also, their developmental fed was called SHEM, who was Noah's son.

[wordsfromlee]

As bad as Juggalo Championshit Wrestling is as a name, what more do you expect from a turn of the millennium, glorified backyard ECW-wannabe promotion ran by the Insane Clown Posse?

[air_raid]

1 hour ago, Carbomb said:

This also reminds me that I had a bit of a fond spot for British regional promotions' names and concepts - Herts & Essex Wrestling, Preston City Wrestling, Leicester Pro Wrestling, Midlands Pro Wrestling, LDN, etc. - in that I appreciated the realism and humility of not trying to be a global promotion with a world championship when it was pretty clear that couldn't be the case.

Didn't PCW call their title the World Heavyweight Championship? Or am I mis-remembering that on account of Fludder being the type of tool who does that, but he actually didn't?

Me and my mates used to have a chuckle referring to the to it as the 1PW World Heavyweight Championship of Doncaster.

[ultimo the great]

Dream Star Fighting Marigold's (to be known as Marigold) first show is next week. other Joshi promotions include Diana, Prominence, Actwres girl'Z, Girl's Pro-Wrestling Unit COLOR'S, Marvelous and SEAdLINNNG. The also used to be The Woman

Some current japanese promotions include FREEDOMS, Secret Base, Best Body Japan Pro-Wrestling, Real GUTS Army, P.P.P Tokyo, DIE (Deathmatch Innovative Element)

Former companies El Dorado, DragonDoor, Pro Wrestling NIGHT-MARE, WWS (World Wing Spirit), Hayabusa's company WMF (Wrestling Marvelous Future) Wallabee, Super Hard Fighting Group Kazushi Gumi and W*ING

I remember Rob Feinstein's Pro Wrestling Unplugged was a rubbish name as is H2O (Hardcore Hustle Organization) also heard of a company called Violence X Suffering

Edited May 15 by ultimo the great

[Statto]

2 hours ago, Carbomb said:

This also reminds me that I had a bit of a fond spot for British regional promotions' names and concepts - Herts & Essex Wrestling, Preston City Wrestling, Leicester Pro Wrestling, Midlands Pro Wrestling, LDN, etc. - in that I appreciated the realism and humility of not trying to be a global promotion with a world championship when it was pretty clear that couldn't be the case. Plus there's something that felt a bit "naffly cosy" about it - like they were trying to re-create the glamour of the American state territory system.

On the contrary, I've always kind of respected Ricky Knight calling a promotion that primarily runs around East Anglia (not counting camp shows which are a different kettle of fish) World Association of Wrestling. If you don't treat it as big time, who will? 

For that brief period it looked like Preston City Wrestling were going to become the big boys of the UK scene, I always thought a name change was going to become necessary. Like when Fratton Wrestling Alliance had to become Frontier Wrestling Alliance. 

(There's a whole other level to initially naming your promotion not after a region county or city but a specific area of Portsmouth!) 

[Arch Stanton]

31 minutes ago, ultimo the great said:

Best Body Japan Pro-Wrestling, Real GUTS Army

Real GUTS Army, for the guys too out of shape to work for Best Body Japan Pro Wrestling.

[Carbomb]

1 hour ago, air_raid said:

Didn't PCW call their title the World Heavyweight Championship? Or am I mis-remembering that on account of Fludder being the type of tool who does that, but he actually didn't?

Me and my mates used to have a chuckle referring to the to it as the 1PW World Heavyweight Championship of Doncaster.

Ah, did they? That's a bit pony.

21 minutes ago, Statto said:

On the contrary, I've always kind of respected Ricky Knight calling a promotion that primarily runs around East Anglia (not counting camp shows which are a different kettle of fish) World Association of Wrestling. If you don't treat it as big time, who will? 

For that brief period it looked like Preston City Wrestling were going to become the big boys of the UK scene, I always thought a name change was going to become necessary. Like when Fratton Wrestling Alliance had to become Frontier Wrestling Alliance. 

I'm not saying I necessarily have a problem with it, but there are points where bombast would just obviously be ridiculous, if you're playing tiny village halls like HEW were. The whole mentality you describe is very American, and it doesn't necessarily work with British people - we're a bit too cynical for that, I think. 

As I understand it, WAW do comparatively big venues, and East Anglia is a relatively large area of several counties, so it's not unreasonable for them to give it the big I Am in promoting themselves.

21 minutes ago, Statto said:

(There's a whole other level to initially naming your promotion not after a region county or city but a specific area of Portsmouth!) 

Yeh, that was odd - especially as there was Hayling Island Wrestling later on.

[BomberPat]

Channel Islands Wrestling became Channel Islands World Wrestling because a guest MC on a show kept saying it that way, and we found it so funny and so absurd that we changed the entire company name to match it, and put out some videos with the slogan "Get The World In" to announce the rebrand. When I met up with said MC years later and told him, he was absolutely gobsmacked, had thought the company was already called that and everything he'd seen since of using the name had just reinforced that belief.

We also have/had a "United States Champion", largely because we were buying a World Title belt and they offered us a US Title at a discount and we took it - the next time we had an American guy on the show, he just came in as US Champion by default.
 

[air_raid]

8 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

We also have/had a "United States Champion", largely because we were buying a World Title belt and they offered us a US Title at a discount and we took it - the next time we had an American guy on the show, he just came in as US Champion by default.

I'd absolutely love a domestic indy to do an "International"/"Imports" Championship gimmick where the latest visiting wrestler has to defend that belt against a local. If the local wins, he defends it on future shows. If the import retains, he can defend it next time, though a time where he isn't booked and a different import is, the title switches to that guy. For the real nerds they can keep score of "UK vs The World" in terms of championship reigns and results.

Could be problematic, politically. But it would make slightly more sense than a World Heavyweight title that never leaves the country and is only defended in Grimsby.

Edited May 16 by air_raid
and Nobby dancing...

[BomberPat]

I know PWL (as far as promotion names go - it stands for "Pro Wrestling Live", and was never meant to be the company name, but people started treating it as it was because it was on the top of every poster) have a couple of titles that basically exist either to put on their talent for whenever they work internationally, to make them seem more credible when they debut in a new country, or to lose to talent elsewhere to cement working relationships. Their last two European Champions have both been Channel Island World Wrestling guys, while their World Title was once held by Tatsumi Fujinami. 

 We also had the POW (Power Of Wrestling) Intercontinental Title defended in Jersey; the first time said Intercontinental Title had ever been defended outside of Germany. 
 

With CIWW we also leaned into how silly the whole thing is - aside from the aforementioned company name change, someone once said "World Heavyweight Championship of the World" in a promo by mistake, and we've referred to our top title as that ever since. But I think if I ever run shows again, firstly I wouldn't rush to having title belts in the first place, secondly I'd definitely shy away from any kind of "World Champion", and would either keep things local and regional, or come up with gimmicks and stipulations to differentiate each title rather than being yet another Indie "World" belt.

[lanky316]

20 hours ago, ultimo the great said:

Dream Star Fighting Marigold's (to be known as Marigold) first show is next week. other Joshi promotions include Diana, Prominence, Actwres girl'Z, Girl's Pro-Wrestling Unit COLOR'S, Marvelous and SEAdLINNNG. The also used to be The Woman

Some current japanese promotions include FREEDOMS, Secret Base, Best Body Japan Pro-Wrestling, Real GUTS Army, P.P.P Tokyo, DIE (Deathmatch Innovative Element)

Former companies El Dorado, DragonDoor, Pro Wrestling NIGHT-MARE, WWS (World Wing Spirit), Hayabusa's company WMF (Wrestling Marvelous Future) Wallabee, Super Hard Fighting Group Kazushi Gumi and W*ING

I remember Rob Feinstein's Pro Wrestling Unplugged was a rubbish name as is H2O (Hardcore Hustle Organization) also heard of a company called Violence X Suffering

There's great names all round in Japanese wrestling, from promotion names down to stables, often found in joshi but not exclusive to, which could almost fill its own topic. Most of the wrestlers have relatively normal names, regardless of gimmick, but they make up for it everywhere else.

[Jesse]

2 hours ago, BomberPat said:

With CIWW we also leaned into how silly the whole thing is - aside from the aforementioned company name change, someone once said "World Heavyweight Championship of the World" in a promo by mistake, and we've referred to our top title as that ever since. But I think if I ever run shows again, firstly I wouldn't rush to having title belts in the first place, secondly I'd definitely shy away from any kind of "World Champion", and would either keep things local and regional, or come up with gimmicks and stipulations to differentiate each title rather than being yet another Indie "World" belt.

Being involved with early FutureShock this was one of the things I thought we did really well. Not having a title at all to begin with, the only belts being defended were those of other companies from big UK names or US imports (iirc the very first show had a main event of Doug Williams vs the now Cesaro for a belt, maybe the FWA one, or ROH Pure title maybe).

It was only once we'd established regular monthly followers with returning punters that we did a trophy tournament, revealing the FutureShock Championship to the eventual winner. They were always very clear to me that it was the FutureShock Championship, not World, not Heavyweight or anything like that. I think being cognisant that we were working in a small masonic guildhall in front of 50-100 people is what helped attendees connect to it and not feel like it was a group of people cosplaying WWE.

[Carbomb]

Was going to start a thread to talk about this tangent of title names, because it's interesting in itself.

Back when I was still sort-of involved in the business, I had this ambition to set up my own promotion (which was never going to happen, given what I know about myself now), and one of the things I would have done is name it something like AEON Pro or EPOC Pro - I wanted to keep it as vague as possible so that there would be no requirements to be a local or a national or a global promotion.

The other thing was that I really liked the Japanese solution to making their titles sound like world championships without the necessity of them having to actually be world championships, i.e. referring to them as being globally recognised. The International Wrestling Grand Prix title and the Global Honour Crown title sound immense. The Triple Crown also sounds big-time, though it's using a different linguistic trick.

So I would've given my big title a name like the International Prestige title, International Accolade title, or Global Renown title - I also felt like the term "world" was over-used, so anything different felt fresh.

Ah, fantasy booking, eh? Fanciful stuff.

 

EDIT: Oooh, one thing I always liked (and I don't know if he's continued it) was when Sanjay Bagga started up the Spirit League in LDN - a division for a classic British style is something I've always thought could've made British promotions stand out, especially when you saw how popular it became on the American indies. And I have to say that the name "Spirit League" is a superb bit of creativity, to my mind.

Edited May 16 by Carbomb

[BomberPat]

what I love about the IWGP, the GHC and the PWF is that it was an attempt at legitimacy by Japanese promotions to suggest that there was a larger governing body that managed these titles, rather than it just being the "<enter promotion name> World Title". You're not just the champion of NJPW or AJPW, you're the champion recognised by the "IWGP" or the "PWF" as a broader entity.

That no such broader entity ever existed is kind of irrelevant! You see it on a smaller scale in Japan (and Mexico, actually) too, where a lot of indie promotions or individual wrestlers use belts from long-defunct promotions, because the name and longevity still afford it some kind of credibility - like Michinoku Pro having the British Commonwealth Junior Heavyweight Championship for years.

[Carbomb]

2 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

what I love about the IWGP, the GHC and the PWF is that it was an attempt at legitimacy by Japanese promotions to suggest that there was a larger governing body that managed these titles, rather than it just being the "<enter promotion name> World Title". You're not just the champion of NJPW or AJPW, you're the champion recognised by the "IWGP" or the "PWF" as a broader entity.

That no such broader entity ever existed is kind of irrelevant! You see it on a smaller scale in Japan (and Mexico, actually) too, where a lot of indie promotions or individual wrestlers use belts from long-defunct promotions, because the name and longevity still afford it some kind of credibility - like Michinoku Pro having the British Commonwealth Junior Heavyweight Championship for years.

Which brings me to another level of wrestling bullshittery: the Intercontinental title! 

I love the sheer, Barnum-level bollocks and chutzpah it takes to take advantage of people's lack of foreign TV access to essentially make up a whole South American tournament that never took place, for a title that never existed, supposedly governed by an organisation that, for some reason, was perfectly happy for the North American champ of a completely different fed to take their belt and unify it into a new title that would only be defended in that fed.