Britwresdvds

Number 2 every time. I hate modern wrestling, so picking between that and the amazing classic stuff I've seen during my time as a fan, it's not even a contest.

Rude really made Warrior look amazing in this one. A really underrated / forgotten match. Awkward botch on the finish, though, where Rude ends up landing on his head.

I only watch old footage. I hate modern wrestling for the most part. I've tried watching it, but it's just so far removed from what I love that it actually makes me angry, so I just don't bother with it any more. People have recommended new wrestlers and matches to me, I've watched them and my thought every time is how far standards have fallen when this stuff is considered good.

Has this podcast paid the ultimate tribute to WCW and gone for good? I hope not. It's an enjoyable listen.

Glad to hear he's doing well. Wonderful guy. Good at basketball too. Shooting hoops in a run down Glasgow sports centre with him and Tiger Steele is a fun memory

I loved Barb when we worked together. I haven't seen him in nearly 15 years, but I hope he's keeping well. He was always one of these guys who came with a 'fight people and wreck the hotel room' reputation, but he couldn't have been nicer to me. Top man. Also, the Bobby Fulton match you described sounds like my match in 2006 with Tracy Smothers. I think in the end we went just over 50 minutes. Of that 50 minutes, approximately 7-8 minutes was wrestling. It was a real chore to watch back on tape afterwards, but the live crowd absolutely ate it up on the night. Did you love working matches with me in various gym's around the Midlands area in the late 90s? Of course. Definitely a career highlight! Especially the boxing gym that had the toilets and sink with water just pissing everywhere.

I loved Barb when we worked together. I haven't seen him in nearly 15 years, but I hope he's keeping well. He was always one of these guys who came with a 'fight people and wreck the hotel room' reputation, but he couldn't have been nicer to me. Top man. Also, the Bobby Fulton match you described sounds like my match in 2006 with Tracy Smothers. I think in the end we went just over 50 minutes. Of that 50 minutes, approximately 7-8 minutes was wrestling. It was a real chore to watch back on tape afterwards, but the live crowd absolutely ate it up on the night.

It's clearly where all the action is! Going back to the raffles, me and another promoter in Scotland would wrestle on each other's shows and had a little competition going as to who could sneak the worst prize into the other's raffle. At various different times, the raffles featured a tin of potatoes, a tin of baby food, Wham: The Video, a 'Guide to Exterior Decorating with John Craven' video, a box of Poundland Christmas cards (in February), a pack of coat hangers, a watermelon, and a live goldfish in a plastic bag, along with other things I can't remember now. After the one with the goldfish, we told the MC, who was upset about the goldfish, that the next show's raffle was going to feature a litter of puppies. He wasn't happy. We also used a portable mixing desk and PA system in some halls that didn't have their own PA setup, with which we could alter the MC's voice to either sound like he'd inhaled helium, or conversely like Darth Vader. That hall had some interesting raffles! I miss silly things like that now I'm not wrestling any more

This is probably the first time the words 'exciting' and 'Crewe' have been used in the same sentence. Ever. Exiting Crewe might be the most exciting thing about the place.

If you don't mind me asking where did you work when you came here to Canada as you mentioned? I would love to hear more about you're experiences in booking cards and who you learned from and their philosophy and points about card structure but that might be a better fit for another thread if you'd feel like sharing it at all. I worked for a promotion based in Calgary called the Can-Am Wrestling Federation, run by Steve Wilde and Vinnie Fever. I think they closed down a couple of years after we were there (just a coincidence, honestly!). We criss-crossed Alberta and Saskatchewan and lots of the shows were held on First Nation reservations, although we did do some regular town shows as well. My one and only wrestling TV appearance was during that tour, against Kurrgan in Fort McMurray, Alberta, and I've never been able to find it anywhere. I doubt a tape of it even exists, but I still live in hope that it'll turn up somewhere one day, along with the editions of the Calgary Sun we were in as 'Sunshine Boys'. In terms of the booking of cards and promoting, etc, the person I learnt the most from was a guy called Spinner McKenzie, who probably won't be that familiar to many people on here. Spinner was a long-time wrestler and promoter, who was kind enough to spend time with me, and give me some very good advice as we went along and he worked on my shows in Scotland. I met him working for another promoter in Scotland and we went from there. I wouldn't say there was any specific philosophy to the booking of my shows, except the points I've already mentioned really. The shows were traditionally British in nature and feel, with an American influence in places, although there was a good mixture of styles and match types being showcased. When I first started promoting, I didn't understand about burning the audience out. My philosophy then was to cram as much action into the show as possible, which failed completely as a concept. People were totally burnt out before the end and I had too many matches, some of which were just pointless and served no purpose at all. I was promoting 7 or 8 match cards in the beginning, which is way too much for an average show. In my latter days of promoting, most of the time I ran a 5 match card, which I found to be perfect. That gave each of the matches more time to tell their story. I tended to structure a show like this.... MATCH ONE (15-20 MINUTES) One of the most important matches on the card. Sets the standard for the evening and gets the crowd warmed up for the rest of the night. Good, solid, basic match with two experienced wrestlers, who could not only work in the ring, but work the crowd too. Two people you can trust to deliver the goods, but not go over the top and throw out every spot in history. Meat and potatoes wrestling - nothing too fancy, but good and solid. Opening a show with a match like this, you can go either way on whether you have the villain or blue-eye go over. Really, for me, it depends on the outcome of your third match (end of the first half of the show), which will be a feature match. If I had a villain going over in the third match, I would tend to put the blue-eye over at the start of the show, and vice-versa. It's all about balance. As well as a variety of matches and styles, I felt it was important to balance the results as well. Too many villains going over can bring the energy down when you don't want it to be down, whereas too many blue-eye wins devalues the villains I think, and you don't want your villains losing credibility. Some people advocate putting a rookie match on first, if you have two guys without much experience, but you want to give them a bit of show time. Personally, I think that's absolutely suicidal and can backfire massively. For me, the opening match is crucial in setting the atmosphere and energy for the rest of the night, so you can't leave it to chance like that. MATCH TWO (15-20 MINUTES) Now that you've brought the crowd up with the first match, it's important to give them some time to recoup their energy. You want them to be hot for your third match, which will be one of the main feature matches of the show. This is where I often put on a straight, technical wrestling match, between two blue-eyes. No grudges, no crowd work, lots of good technical wrestling, some nice flashy moves, good sportsmanship, handshakes, etc. Not boring. That's not the idea, contrary to what some people think about having this type of match on a show. You don't want to bore them. You want people to watch the match and be entertained by what's going on still, but by its very nature this type of wrestling doesn't elicit shouting, cheering and masses of emotion. You want them to save that for the next match. Polite, appreciative applause (spontaneous, not the two wrestlers trying to elicit it) is a good gauge here of how successfully this match is going, in terms of achieving your objective. It shows that people are watching the match, seeing the story unfold and still appreciate what's going on, without shouting, screaming and expending loads of energy. With this kind of match on second, it should be even more obvious why match one is so important. If your opening match bombs and people don't get into it at all, your first half is going to feel very long and tedious with this following it. That's why some of your best and most trusted hands should be involved in the opening match. It's not a place for those without a good amount of experience. I would quite often make the second match two out of three falls, utilising the traditional British rounds system with corner seconds, especially if I had someone like Johnny Kidd involved. My shows were a mixture of different wrestling styles, although very traditionally British in feel, so this was a nice way of staying true to that. I would quite often end the match in a draw, either through both wrestlers scoring one fall each and going to the time limit, a double pin in the deciding fall, or an injury finish. The injury finish, and the opponent of the injured wrestler not wanting to accept the decision, was also a nice way of emphasising the sportsman-like nature of the match. MATCH THREE (20 MINUTES) Now that the crowd have regained their energy, this is the match you want them using it for. This match could be one of several different types. It could be a grudge match of some kind, built up from the previous show. It could be a tag match. It could just be a match between two excellent workers, which is virtually guaranteed to deliver a great and engaging match. Depending on what you have booked for your main event, this could also be a title match. I did sometimes put my title matches in this slot on the card, as the 'main event' would often be a grudge match of some kind. This is not only a nice slot, show-wise, for a title match, if you have a grudge match at the end, but it also leads nicely into the interval, and photos in the ring with the champ and belt during the break was always a nice little earner. Again, the booking of the opener was dependent on what was due to happen in this match. If a villain went over in the opening match, and then the second match ended in a draw, if the blue-eye goes over in this third match, generally people are even happier to see them win, because they've been waiting for the result, so the first half ends on a great reaction. On the other side of the coin, if you go into the interval on a villain win (the good guys having won the first match), it doesn't affect anything further on, because we now have the interval, and they've seen a balanced mixture of results anyway. I hope I've explained that properly. INTERVAL (15 MINUTES) An important time, not only for merchandising, etc, but also for communication between the backstage and front-of-house personnel, MC, referees, etc. Not only that but, again, it gives the audience time to cool off before we start again. MATCH FOUR (15-20 MINUTES) This is the time in the show when I tended to put on something a little bit different sometimes. Again, variety here is key. Too many matches following the same formula will not only start to get boring as the show goes on, but there's a danger that people will start to see through them. I appreciate that this might be an outdated way of thinking now everyone and his dog knows wrestling is a work, but it was important to consider things like this during the time I was promoting shows. Things have changed massively in recent years, but I can only speak from my own experience during my timeframe, when things like this were taken into consideration and seen as important. Depending on what the finish of the show is, this match could sometimes be something a little bit gimmicky, such as a submission match, etc, although always with a reason for doing it. I can't stress enough how important that is. Gimmicks and special match stipulations are there to be used, but sparingly and always for a good reason. Again, depending on what the final match is, this slot could also be used for something like a flag match, or some other similar gimmick. With many of my shows taking place in Scotland, having the Scotland vs. England rivalry there as a natural undertone proved useful. My shows were mostly a mixture of Scottish and English wrestlers anyway, which was handy in that respect. The finish of the show is important in deciding what to do with this slot on the card. Many people always used the philosophy 'send them home happy'. However, I didn't subscribe to that. My theory was 'send them home engaged', which more often than not meant the villain going over through some dastardly means, with the outraged punters coming back to see the bastard get his comeuppance. Of course, you have to give them the blowoff eventually, but the shows building up to that were what shifted the tickets to see the final showdown. If this show is your final showdown, where the blue-eye goes over to end the series, then you send them home happy, with that as your main event, absolutely. However, what to do if this is one of the buildup shows for that big showdown? Sometimes I would have the villain going over (and gee up for the return match afterwards) be the end of the show, but sometimes I'd put that match in this slot, then end the evening with a comedy match for the finale - something light-hearted to, yes, send them home happy (sometimes). It was always important, again, to switch things and not be so predictable as to make it the same thing every time. When your shows and finishes are predictable, people start to lose interest, but if you can keep them guessing, that keeps the excitement of not knowing what's going to happen next (and coincidentally they keep buying tickets). If people turn up, basically knowing that the good guy will win the last match every single time, they're not going to be as engaged in that match, so keeping them guessing is important in that respect. RAFFLE / ANNOUNCEMENTS / PLUGS So, what to do between matches four and five, where you can't put in another match to cool the crowd down? Ah, it's the promoter's best friend - the trusty, old raffle. Not only does the raffle make money, but it's also used to separate matches four and five and provide a break in the action, yet again. This might sound excessive, but it really was important to think about these things. I promoted hundreds of wrestling shows during my time and found that this formula worked an absolute treat the vast majority of the time. Not only does the raffle take place here, but it gives the MC time to plug any other shows, special offers, merchandise, etc, as well as announce the date for the next show at the venue, which was a great opportunity to start building those ticket sales in advance of any other advertising. We probably sold 25% of our advance tickets for the next show in the week directly after a show, so getting the date out there, to people who were already interested, proved extremely valuable. MATCH FIVE (15-20 MINUTES) See above really. This could either be a heated grudge match, a title match, a comedy match to send them home happy, so on and so forth. Many of the matches on the card depend on the others, which hopefully I've explained reasonably well above, although I do tend to ramble when I'm writing, so apologies for that. Thanking the audience for coming was always important to me, as I felt that it made them feel part of things. We built up some nice regular audiences over the years I was promoting, and I always liked my MC to engage with the audience, from the beginning to the end, especially in a regular venue. Then there's always time for one last plug for the next show, of course! I didn't mention before about the MC being important in kickstarting the show before any action takes place, but that's just common sense really. A good MC can make such a difference to the atmosphere of a show, before the action even starts. The referees play such a massively important role in the show too, and I always liked to have a regular team of the same people in those roles as often as I could. In terms of the actual wrestling side of things, I had a core group of 6-8 wrestlers who were pretty much always there at every show, but others were rotated in and out, and new people were brought in all the time. It was important to keep things fresh, so bringing new people in to work with your mainstays was important from show to show in a venue. If you use exactly the same roster every time, eventually you run out of combinations, so freshening things up was always good, as well as building those 6-8 people as mainstays. I've probably left some obvious logical gaps here, and maybe not expanded on some points as well as I would have liked, so apologies for that. That's what you get when you start writing at 1am, after having had an average of about three hours' sleep per night for the past month or so!

I wrestled for 16 years, from May 1996 until October 2012, mostly within the UK, but I did have a couple of overseas excursions - most notably to Canada in 2001. I'm unsure of the exact number of matches I had in total, but did 186 during my busiest year. I also worked with many incredibly talented and very well-known / well-regarded wrestlers during my time, so I'd like to think I speak from a decent amount of experience. I finished in 2012 for a number of reasons. As much as anything else, I wasn't really enjoying it any more. It was one of those things where, not only had the business itself changed massively since I started, but many of the people who made it worthwhile for me had begun to drop away. That, coupled with injuries and having a young family, made me decide to finish. I was also tentatively starting on a new career in hypnotherapy back then, which has now become my main focus. It's fair to say that my opinions on what I enjoyed and appreciated wrestling-wise changed enormously from the time I watched purely as a fan. For example, I began to appreciate some of the little things during matches that might not even be seen by non-wrestlers. Some of the things that are taken for granted as being 'simple' or 'easy' from a fan's perspective can sometimes be not so easy once you get in there. Watching people who make those things look effortless, when you know they're anything but easy, gives you an entirely new appreciation of how good the all-time greats are. I also became far more appreciative of telling a story within a match. As a fan, before I started training, I was massively into ECW, especially from 1993-95, which was basically highspots and violence. That was my vision of wrestling when I started, which was soon drummed out of me. As I had more matches, and wrestled far more experienced people, I started to understand the importance of telling a story and things making sense, not only within the match itself, but also the specific crowds I was working in front of. I also learnt to appreciate the value of a well-structured card. As a promoter as well as a wrestler, I was lucky to get some great advice from an experienced UK wrestler and former promoter, who taught me (amongst many other things) how to properly structure a show. He not only taught me about the importance of having variety from one match to another, but where to put each kind of match on the card for its best use, pacing the show and allowing people to rest between the heated matches, so they don't get burnt out before the end. As a fan, I didn't even think about that. It wasn't something that even entered my consciousness. That's just scratching the surface, of course. I'm sure there's a massive amount of other stuff that changed for me. Nowadays, I'm enjoying being a fan again. There was a time when I pretty much stopped watching wrestling at all, but I love sitting and watching some of the old stuff again. I don't watch any modern wrestling. I just can't relate to it. I do love watching some of the old stuff from the 70s, 80s and 90s again now though.

Do go fuck yourselves, won't you?!

Disgusting response. Yeah, to be sure. I don't even ... Get a grip. It wasn't meant to be taken seriously.

The Eaton / Lane incarnation of the Midnight Express. Just wonderful from start to finish. Their best year was also their last, which was a shame in a way, although I suppose they went out before their legacy diminished in any way, which is good. Shame they never had even a brief run in the WWF like Tully and Arn, just for those dream matches with the Rockers, Harts, etc.

Ex wife. Don't make it sound worse than it is

I really enjoyed his short WCW run in 1993, when he was absolutely killing people on Worldwide every week.

I've tried this one, but just can't get into it, sorry to say. I turned off about two thirds through the second episode.

Any plans for a new episode sometime soon guys?

Glad to hear it'll be carrying on at some point. I really enjoy it.

Is this one of the podcasts that has finished? It would be a shame if so. I really enjoy listening to it.

I watched this one tonight. I really like some of the stuff they both do, but to me it felt more like an exhibition from two guys at the end of their careers than a fully competitive match. Might just be me. This might also just be me, but the camerawork really annoyed me at times. Sometimes they were zoomed in too close and it almost felt like you were missing stuff because of that.

A board game for dyslexics.

I've also been watching bits of pieces from the UWFI. Mostly Vader's matches actually vs. Takada, and a tag with him and John Tenta vs. Gary Albright and Kazuo Yamazaki. I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed that stuff the first time round.

I've been watching bits and pieces from the Network, mostly revisiting some old favourites in the hope that they're as good as I remember them. I haven't been disappointed so far. The last match I watched was Dustin Rhodes vs. Bunkhouse Buck from Spring Stampede 94. Fantastic brawl and a match I haven't really heard talked about a lot.

More of the ones I've seen on Tellumyort's channel have the taping dates, rather than air dates. If people wanted to use my site to cross check, all the ITV listings on there are air dates, which in some cases I've checked from multiple sources, including cross-checking the football scores at the bottom of the screen with a football history website, where some air dates might have had question marks.