Dave Youell
12-28-2005, 04:36 AM
Right, ok then.
This is a subject close to my heart and I’ve had many discussions with friends about this in the past, chances are most of the guys who are not from the UK won’t understand who I’m talking about, but for everyone else I want to talk about Alex Shane.
This is just a personal opinion on what I think he’s done for british wrestling and what he’s currently in the process of doing.
For those who do not know, he’s one of the forces behind the FWA’s boom period, and to be fair at the time they were putting on some fucking stella shows with one or two USA based talents to draw in the punters, which was a sound choice. I remember going to the revival show (granted not an FWA event, but he had a hand in it) there were 1000 peeps there and it was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. The only outside talent they had were Brian Christopher and Eddie G. Now this was in 2001 I think and wrestling was starting to show a dip again. But Alex managed to still draw the biggest live crowd for a UK show for the past 20 years, through lots of hard work and smart promotion.
There was also a smaller show the year before called wrestlexpress, which I went to as well, which again was really good, but sadly a mix up with venue kept the crowd size down.
Moving on, Alex around this time was a major player within the FWA, I don’t know if he was the owner at that time, but he was definitely pulling some strings somewhere, he co-hosted a radio show on talk sport (which is a HUGE station in the UK) every Saturday and got the FWA shows over, to get the punters in, this was the start of the BOOM period for the FWA, they had some great UK talent on the roster (Williams, Fliesch, Storm) and they were promoted hard, really hard. Plus they had a great venue in York Hall, which could hold 800 and for big shows they sold it out.
One of the best shows they did was probably the Frontiers of Honour show, where loads of the ROH talent came over for a FWA/ROH dream match show, again though proving my point that overseas talent was used to get this over with the fans.
This trend continued for a while with the FWA getting in some talent from overseas to get the punters in and it still worked well, for a while. But then they got the TV deal, which probably turned out to be the thing that nearly killed them. The FWA signed a 5 year deal (now 7 years) with TWC (The Wrestling Channel) to basically have exclusive rights to what is shown on the channel with regards to current British wrestling, which basically means they can make themselves to be the only show in town.
Now as a UK wrestler myself you may think that this is an attack on what the FWA have done to the UK scene because of this deal with the UK, I’m not having an ego in the sense that I think I should be on TWC, because I’m not under any illusions, I’m not in the same league as those guys, what really grinds my gears is that I know there are a lot of others feds out there, they get bigger crowds without outside talent and put on great shows and as long as the FWA have this stranglehold over the UK scene general fans will not be able to see it
Now by doing this, they needed to produce at least one hour of TV per week, they filmed shows in blocks and then split them up for TV, the first couple of shows were actually quiet good, showing off the UK talent and having some really good matches. Then they advertised the US talent coming up ‘NEXT WEEK!’ basically what started to happen is the live attendances started to suffer, why travel all the way to Portsmouth when you can watch it at home? The crowd started to get really bad and this in my opinion is because the product was saturated to the point where the fans just didn’t care enough to show up.
They did have one last hurrah at the Coventry sky dome where they held British Uprising again though with outside talent they managed to get around 1000 people in a 3500 seater, which was a shame, regardless of my opinion on how the FWA/Alex Shane does business, success breeds success and it’s never good to see a once great promotion die out in the way that it is. The show itself was average to be honest, but I now see what purpose it served.
Shortly after that show Alex Shane announced he was no longer the owner of the FWA, he sold it Greg Lambert who is now in the process of doing a complete re build of the fed, going back to smaller 100 seaters and making the fans care about them again, good for him!
Back to Shane though, he no longer had any ownership of the FWA, he was the Champ at the time and still wrestled for them, but didn’t have any of the power he once held. On the day of British uprising 3 there were tickets on sale for another event at the skydome the following year, this event had no talent named for it, it was called Universal Uproar and the only information on it was that it would feature many stars from the US and be considered a supershow for UK fans of indy wrestling, some fans were buying gold ringside seats for £100 just based on that knowledge!
I later found out the source behind all of this, Alex Shane! He ditched the FWA to start on this, his latest venture and man! He did well, he sold the fucker out! 3500 people in that place! I was one of them, it had a lot of TNA/ROH guys on it and yes it was a great show. Now he must have had 15 big indy guys there, now I know how much the average guy would cost as I help with promotion of shows and have also financed my own shows before, so I know a little about how much it was Alex had to get together to pay for it all, and he must of made a decent profit from the whole thing, but here’s where it gets interesting…
Not only did he get in all of these big names (Mick Foley was one of them!) he then pimped them all off to smaller feds on the Friday and the Sunday either side of the show, plus he made these feds pay for the flights for the workers! So Shane was getting all these guys over the pond for free and was off-setting the costs onto other UK promotions! Now as far a business sense goes, this was very very smart of Shane, as far a business ethics go and how this could effect the UK wrestling scene as a whole I feel the same thing that happened to the FWA could start happening to other promotions, as although all these feds were getting all these big indy stars on there shows, I doubt many of them made a profit from it, cos they costed too much and why as a punter would you pay to see one or two of the guys who are going to be in a supershow the next day?
I know all this seems hypercritical as I’ve attended many of the shows I’ve mentioned, but I am also a fan of wrestling and these were great shows, but I just worry about the knock on effect this can have.
Since the uproar show, Alex has held another Supershow in Coventry, but the crowd was down by about 800, he had now started a new promotion called 1PW, which works on the same basis and is having a show on second weekend of Jan, back to back on the Friday and Saturday with Bret Hart on the card.
I know this whole post isn’t exactly structured very well, I just wanted to make this post to let people know what I though about the state of UK wrestling, and judging on what has happened to the FWA and also what is starting to happen to the smaller feds, I can just see 1PW or another similar Alex Shane style fed ‘WWFing’ everyone and making 1PW the only show in town.
This is a subject close to my heart and I’ve had many discussions with friends about this in the past, chances are most of the guys who are not from the UK won’t understand who I’m talking about, but for everyone else I want to talk about Alex Shane.
This is just a personal opinion on what I think he’s done for british wrestling and what he’s currently in the process of doing.
For those who do not know, he’s one of the forces behind the FWA’s boom period, and to be fair at the time they were putting on some fucking stella shows with one or two USA based talents to draw in the punters, which was a sound choice. I remember going to the revival show (granted not an FWA event, but he had a hand in it) there were 1000 peeps there and it was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. The only outside talent they had were Brian Christopher and Eddie G. Now this was in 2001 I think and wrestling was starting to show a dip again. But Alex managed to still draw the biggest live crowd for a UK show for the past 20 years, through lots of hard work and smart promotion.
There was also a smaller show the year before called wrestlexpress, which I went to as well, which again was really good, but sadly a mix up with venue kept the crowd size down.
Moving on, Alex around this time was a major player within the FWA, I don’t know if he was the owner at that time, but he was definitely pulling some strings somewhere, he co-hosted a radio show on talk sport (which is a HUGE station in the UK) every Saturday and got the FWA shows over, to get the punters in, this was the start of the BOOM period for the FWA, they had some great UK talent on the roster (Williams, Fliesch, Storm) and they were promoted hard, really hard. Plus they had a great venue in York Hall, which could hold 800 and for big shows they sold it out.
One of the best shows they did was probably the Frontiers of Honour show, where loads of the ROH talent came over for a FWA/ROH dream match show, again though proving my point that overseas talent was used to get this over with the fans.
This trend continued for a while with the FWA getting in some talent from overseas to get the punters in and it still worked well, for a while. But then they got the TV deal, which probably turned out to be the thing that nearly killed them. The FWA signed a 5 year deal (now 7 years) with TWC (The Wrestling Channel) to basically have exclusive rights to what is shown on the channel with regards to current British wrestling, which basically means they can make themselves to be the only show in town.
Now as a UK wrestler myself you may think that this is an attack on what the FWA have done to the UK scene because of this deal with the UK, I’m not having an ego in the sense that I think I should be on TWC, because I’m not under any illusions, I’m not in the same league as those guys, what really grinds my gears is that I know there are a lot of others feds out there, they get bigger crowds without outside talent and put on great shows and as long as the FWA have this stranglehold over the UK scene general fans will not be able to see it
Now by doing this, they needed to produce at least one hour of TV per week, they filmed shows in blocks and then split them up for TV, the first couple of shows were actually quiet good, showing off the UK talent and having some really good matches. Then they advertised the US talent coming up ‘NEXT WEEK!’ basically what started to happen is the live attendances started to suffer, why travel all the way to Portsmouth when you can watch it at home? The crowd started to get really bad and this in my opinion is because the product was saturated to the point where the fans just didn’t care enough to show up.
They did have one last hurrah at the Coventry sky dome where they held British Uprising again though with outside talent they managed to get around 1000 people in a 3500 seater, which was a shame, regardless of my opinion on how the FWA/Alex Shane does business, success breeds success and it’s never good to see a once great promotion die out in the way that it is. The show itself was average to be honest, but I now see what purpose it served.
Shortly after that show Alex Shane announced he was no longer the owner of the FWA, he sold it Greg Lambert who is now in the process of doing a complete re build of the fed, going back to smaller 100 seaters and making the fans care about them again, good for him!
Back to Shane though, he no longer had any ownership of the FWA, he was the Champ at the time and still wrestled for them, but didn’t have any of the power he once held. On the day of British uprising 3 there were tickets on sale for another event at the skydome the following year, this event had no talent named for it, it was called Universal Uproar and the only information on it was that it would feature many stars from the US and be considered a supershow for UK fans of indy wrestling, some fans were buying gold ringside seats for £100 just based on that knowledge!
I later found out the source behind all of this, Alex Shane! He ditched the FWA to start on this, his latest venture and man! He did well, he sold the fucker out! 3500 people in that place! I was one of them, it had a lot of TNA/ROH guys on it and yes it was a great show. Now he must have had 15 big indy guys there, now I know how much the average guy would cost as I help with promotion of shows and have also financed my own shows before, so I know a little about how much it was Alex had to get together to pay for it all, and he must of made a decent profit from the whole thing, but here’s where it gets interesting…
Not only did he get in all of these big names (Mick Foley was one of them!) he then pimped them all off to smaller feds on the Friday and the Sunday either side of the show, plus he made these feds pay for the flights for the workers! So Shane was getting all these guys over the pond for free and was off-setting the costs onto other UK promotions! Now as far a business sense goes, this was very very smart of Shane, as far a business ethics go and how this could effect the UK wrestling scene as a whole I feel the same thing that happened to the FWA could start happening to other promotions, as although all these feds were getting all these big indy stars on there shows, I doubt many of them made a profit from it, cos they costed too much and why as a punter would you pay to see one or two of the guys who are going to be in a supershow the next day?
I know all this seems hypercritical as I’ve attended many of the shows I’ve mentioned, but I am also a fan of wrestling and these were great shows, but I just worry about the knock on effect this can have.
Since the uproar show, Alex has held another Supershow in Coventry, but the crowd was down by about 800, he had now started a new promotion called 1PW, which works on the same basis and is having a show on second weekend of Jan, back to back on the Friday and Saturday with Bret Hart on the card.
I know this whole post isn’t exactly structured very well, I just wanted to make this post to let people know what I though about the state of UK wrestling, and judging on what has happened to the FWA and also what is starting to happen to the smaller feds, I can just see 1PW or another similar Alex Shane style fed ‘WWFing’ everyone and making 1PW the only show in town.