Nordic Elite Wrestling

[LaGoosh]

So I'm currently in Copenhagen and have been seeing posters for this literally on almost every street:

Anyone ever heard of these lads? I don't recognise anyone on the poster at all. I didn't know Denmark even had a wrestling scene. Also how big an event does it need to be to be Denmark's biggest wrestling show?

[Hannibal Scorch]

12 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

So I'm currently in Copenhagen and have been seeing posters for this literally on almost every street:

Anyone ever heard of these lads? I don't recognise anyone on the poster at all. I didn't know Denmark even had a wrestling scene. Also how big an event does it need to be to be Denmark's biggest wrestling show?

I didn’t realise Scandinavia had a wrestling scene at all! I know they used to get some WCW in the late 90’s early 00’s but that seemed to be it. But can’t say I recognise anyone on that either. But I’d certainly be interested in hearing about it.

[Infinity Land]

I recognise Daz Black on the poster. At first glance I thought this is somewhere Mercedes Martinez has disappeared to but that's not her.

I remember Fight Club Finland. As they would bring in some imports so you would get used to seeing the name.

[kidzero]

6 minutes ago, Infinity Land said:

I recognise Daz Black on the poster. At first glance I thought this is somewhere Mercedes Martinez has disappeared to but that's not her.

I remember Fight Club Finland. As they would bring in some imports so you would get used to seeing the name.

Wasn't Starbuck involved in fight club I remember he wrestled in Japan.

[The Dart]

Looks like they've been doing shows for a couple of years.   No big names, but a few recognisable ones from America and UK.

This seems to be their first show in this venue, so I'm guessing all their other shows were in smaller venues.

[Statto]

1 hour ago, Hannibal Scorch said:

I didn’t realise Scandinavia had a wrestling scene at all!

I know Norway has something of a scene, as WAW used to bring in Erik Isaksen (who I believe to be the Rikidozan of their scene), Aron Frost, Miss Mina, the late Isak Rain and a few others on a regular basis. 

[Hannibal Scorch]

2 minutes ago, Statto said:

I know Norway has something of a scene, as WAW used to bring in Erik Isaksen (who I believe to be the Rikidozan of their scene), Aron Frost, Miss Mina, the late Isak Rain and a few others on a regular basis. 

Tbf I’ve not been in well over a decade, but I was surprised there was no scene as such or even toys/merch considering WWE is normally available everywhere 

[TheBurningRed]

I was in Copenhagen literally one year ago today and also saw those posters for their big show/same company. I wasn’t in the country long enough to go but defintiely would have. I’m just hoping it’s not their version of LDN. The poster style gives me flashbacks.   

[BomberPat]

4 hours ago, kidzero said:

Wasn't Starbuck involved in fight club I remember he wrestled in Japan.

SLAM is Starbuck's promotion, but he used to work Fight Club Finland a lot, and yeah, worked Japan a lot and still goes over there a fair bit, he works a lot with Tajiri.

Scandi-Graps has been really growing over the last few years, I think it could be the next breakthrough scene if the right eyes get on it. I worked with a few guys who were working for STHLM Wrestling in Sweden a few years back and they were great, I think one of them runs Freedom Pro now. He has a ton of different ring names depending on where he's working, but he's the guy flexing in shades on the right of the poster - really great value wrestler, always fun, and I've wanted to book him in the UK for a long time.

I think Aliss Ink is also on that poster, she's the most likely breakout star from the Scandinavian scene - booked strongly everywhere, has worked a lot of UK talent that are brought over for her, and has worked WXW and Stardom. 

I'm sure there's a couple of British lads on there, but their names escape me.

[Tamura]

As a frequent (I've actually lost count of the number of times I've been, I know it's more than 15 but less than 20) visitor to Sweden I keep meaning to check out STHLM Wrestling, especially as they run shows at a venue I regularly attend gigs at, Cyklopen in Stockholm (apparently some other promotions also do shows there as well)



The previous version of Cyklopen was burnt down by Nazis, which may account for the choice of building materials since it doesn't look particularly flammable. There also appears to be various promotions doing shows in the south-western city of Malmö (which is just across the bridge from Copenhagen), often at Plan B where I've also been to a gig. There's also wrestling shows up in Gothenburg, I know one of my friends from there goes to them often). It's perfectly understanble that people may on here may be oblivious to what's going on in Sweden, given the lack of activity in the UK Wrestling Events sub-forum people could be forgiven for not even knowing there's a UK wrestling scene!

Edited September 15 by Tamura

[LaGoosh]

Interesting! Who are they trained by? I'm assuming it's a mix of self trained guys training new guys and people who went to the UK and/or Germany?

[BomberPat]

7 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

Interesting! Who are they trained by? I'm assuming it's a mix of self trained guys training new guys and people who went to the UK and/or Germany?

Going back to when I worked with the STHLM guys, because they're the only ones I can really speak for when it comes to training, I first met them because we were all attending the same Mike Quackenbush seminar. They had been wrestling for a couple of years, but took every opportunity they could to travel for seminars, and generally if the promotion booked an import (usually from the UK or Germany, though they had El Generico and Juice Robinson there a couple of times), they'd try and get someone who could lead a seminar for them over the same weekend as the show. 

In terms of day-to-day training, this sort of promotion is generally run by someone from that country who went elsewhere to train, then eventually came home and tried to build their own scene. Starbuck was mentioned earlier - he was a Lance Storm trainee, who started out wrestling in Canada. I'm completely blanking on the name of the guy who I think started STHLM, but my understanding was that he had been a local hero babyface during a brief period in the '90s that wrestling shows from other countries would visit Sweden on tour, and probably wrestled elsewhere, then started his own promotion when the bookings dried up. He was everything you'd expect a local babyface of that era to be - all muscles and tassles, clinging on long past his prime, big goofy charisma.

The way the guys explained it to me was that wrestling was only on TV in Sweden for a couple of years in the '90s, and then again for a couple of years in the '00s, and that was really it. So on one hand it was difficult to build up a scene out of next to nothing, but on the other hand it gave them so much freedom creatively, because the audiences weren't jaded by having already seen everything done a thousand times on TV. Initially, because of the tastes of some of the promoters, a lot of Scandinavian wrestling was either booked as deadly serious almost shoot-style wrestling with plain trunks and boots (bizarrely, there was a BattlArts Sweden gym for a time), or as a bit of a timewarp to mid-90s WWF, but over the years has developed a lot more into modern indie wrestling with some good silly character work in the mix.

 

Mostly because it's how I came through wrestling in Jersey, where there had never been a domestic wrestling scene or promotion, and where tourism drying up meant it was no longer somewhere that the likes of All Star bothered including on their tours, and we basically built up a promotion from scratch in a similar fashion of having one guy train elsewhere then come home and start teaching people, and relying on imports to further our knowledge as and when we could afford them, I always love finding out the quirks of wrestling in other countries and territories that don't have a long tradition of wrestling existing there. The way it grows, what their frames of reference are, the little differences in how they do things differently, I always have a lot of time for them.