Monday, 12 June 2017
(P, PD, BRS) W3L Queens Hall, Hexham - afternoon show Saturday may 20th
0925 and I'm awoken by last night's beer can falling off the shelf. My train leaves in an hour so a quick shower and a dash to the bus stand insues. The sandwich kit and beer are in my bag ready - as is a spare shirt. I'm not taking any chances this time. Quick pause to refill my trusty hip flask, and off we go.
I've said this before, and I'm sure I'll say it again. Stagecoach route planners suck. Badly.
5 min to go and it's all aboard the graps train. My first time in Hexham since the last cannonball run (Tyne valley ale trail). Train beer is a Guinness original - the optical nerves started tingling last night in Asda, and after a little bit of searching I found out why, they had it on 4 tins for £2.50.
The card for the W3L show either hasn't been announced or is buried somewhere, but I've got an idea that one of the Owens sisters is likely to be there. I've not kept up with the product apart from that, but I know it can be viewed on their YouTube channel W3LNetwork.
It's funny, but as picturesque as the landscapes are here I don't get the same urge to listen to the green and the grey by new model army as I get when going between Leeds and Hebden Bridge. So the soundtrack to today's journey is a heavy mix of PJ Harvey, Birmingham 6, bad religion and Desperate Journalist (who's recent album release is awesome by the way Check out their site ) with a little bit of red paintings peppered throughout.
At Hexham station, an uphill walk leads to the venue, I'm an hour early and there's a cafe inside, so a hot chocolate is on the menu - a salted caramel one - luxury and all that...
A quick peek round the corner and there's the wetherspoons I used to work the door of back in the day. I know some of the breweries that have a good relationship with this place, so I'm straight in for a pint of Big Lamp keelman brown - perfect breakfast beer.
Doors are in half an hour
World of sport (the original one) star "Blondie Barratt" is apparently in attendance for this event. It looks like he was a regular tag partner of Kendo Nagasaki back in the day.
Keelman brown sunk, conversation with an older rocker in the spoons ended and its off to the queens hall.
Now, this is a theatre in a library/art gallery/community hub complex. There's a sports centre down the road. With a sports hall. Just saying.
We're in a set place theatre with the ring on the stage at the front and one bank of seating.
This has good and bad points - it's a bit detaching, but the lighting and sound should be good. It would be better if they weren't playing a service station "generic rock" compilation before the start. I've heard Bon Jovi's always twice this last week and frankly that's more than enough
A little concerned by the audience size to be honest. Probably going to end up being moved forward.
Hard cam is set up right in the middle of the seating bank. So we're all viewing from the same angle. As far as the adjustments the wrestlers, I can see this being a bit strange, but working to only one side can put the matches in good stead for a single camera video shoot since to play to the audience they're also playing to the camera so to speak.
The ring announcer comes out - he looks a bit like one of the tech guys I sometimes have a bit of a natter with at Whitby Goth Weekend. Sounds a bit like him too. If that is you Savage, good on you mate. Next time you're up in the Tyne/wear area, give me a shout and I'll gladly give a hand setting up etc.
Lo and behold we're moved forward
There's around 60/70 here initially, mainly kids, and here I am the mid 30s bloke blogging about it. Guess who feels a little out of place.
No open bar at the event, but the cafe I went to before is open. And they do sell beer, though it's not on display - good to know for the Interval.
I'm sitting in line with the camera - mainly because I'm two beers and a hot chocolate deep, and fat man going for a pee is not a regular segment on the W3L network.
The merch table gets moved to the side, the house lights go down.
No videoing or photos for distributors. No lazer pointers no bad language etc public service announcement played from what sounds like a 1940s era 78rpm bakolite cylinder. I think it was the B-side to "dig for victory
And we're off. Ragnar Vs Mike Musso
Heel Ragnar promo pre-match is awesome. Musso is dressed as a Beverly Brother, but kind of resembles a younger and shorter Kevin Nash.
The in ring work is pretty good here, I've not overly detailed the matches here for the most part because the gramophone message at the start would suggest that they might see this as some sort of copyright infringement.
both guys put on a great opener and engaged the crowd well. Musso, for someone that neither myself or seemingly the rest of the punters were familiar with got over nicely as a fan favourite.
Musso wins with a fireman's carry into a DDT. As far as finishers go, it came a bit out of the blue, and looked pretty good.
Blondie Barratt is out next. He's wearing an "old school" T-shirt. A smile comes over my face as it dawns on me that I've seen this particular shirt somewhere before. The WAW has a heel faction called "old school" headed up by Ricky Knight and Jimmy Ocean. I kind of get the feeling I'm the only one here in on this.
His opposition is a firm fan favourite here. Big Dave Jeremi.
Barratt is a fantastic heel. He's someone I genuinely wasn't majorly familiar with before the show, save a YouTube video or two, but was well hooked into watching shortly after he emerged. Oldschool by shirt, old school by nature.
The crowd are properly going for him here by the way, I can't tell is the kids at the front hate him more or of he's loving the reaction more.
Barratt lines Jeremi up for a chop against the ringpost and misses. Jeremi works the hand for a while, leading Barratt around the crowd, until the kids start attacking Blondie. The Ring announcer comes out and ushers the wrestlers back onto the stage.
Barratt won with a feet on the ropes roll up.
The ring announcer comes back to remind us there's a raffle and that we can get merch at half time etc. He then tells us that a member of the W3L roster would like some time to address us.
Euan G Mackie is out to address us all. And lay down an open challenge
There's a back story to this one - Euan took W3L on to judge rinder (cheesy people's court style ITV daytime show) to challenge the suspension they gave him. W3L was represented by Mike Musso.
Musso accepts the open challenge and pulls double duty.
Green mist to the eyes of musso. Mackie is in charge until getting caught mid dive.
He sneaks an advantage again and a bell rings eventually.
Mackie removes a turnbuckle pad. While the ref is repairing it, he went and removed the opposite one - nice touch.
Very entertaining match. Euan G Mackie is one vicious little sod! Gave a nice back story. He eventually walked away and got counted out.
Intermission beer is wylam rocket. The raffle is drawn and a kid wins a W3L DVD, a backstage pass and an inflatable hammer.
Line of the night from the ring announcer: "maybe we could have had more prizes if more tickets were sold". I couldn't tell if he was bollocking the audience or the merch guy.
Woman's match kicks off the second half. Debbie Sharp Vs Ruby Summers.
Debbie's interaction with the audience is awesome. The kids' words here are vicious to say the least.
Ruby wins with a codebreaker. The chemistry was definitely there between these two, and this was
Rumble match to finish.
Participants
Euan G Mackie, Blondie Barratt, Ragnar, Mike Musso, Big Dave Jeremi, and "The Red Tormentor"
Mackie puts out Musso
Red Tormentor thrown out by the Barratt and Ragnar.
Big Dave Jeremi puts out Euan G Mackie
Jeremi puts out Ragnar and Barratt to win.
All in all this was a decent little kid friendly show, I think this is their debut in this place, so more power to them. It's nice to see Wrestling coming to smaller towns, and with the wealth of shows that happen in Newcastle finishing after the last train or bus back to Hexham, it gives folks out here the chance to get into the live experience.
Too big for his boots 1: UK TV starts showing British Wrestling
Strangeness abounds in the world of TV Wrestling in the UK.
Impact got involved with world of Sport shortly before getting a UK TV deal for impact wrestling with spike tv - a channel 5 substation.
Mexican Wrestling is showing up on free TV in the uk, as AAA gives an air date on freeview channel frontrunner.
I've not seen anything of NGW on made in Tyne and Wear for quite some time, and apparently WAW is still airing on mustard TV (ok, it's a repeat, but it's British Wrestling on TV).
WWE have a UK division that are sitting on some of the best talent in the UK, putting three of them on regular NXT programming and the odd one to put those three over every now and again. Apart from that there have been 3 UK division programmes and four live shows (the initial tournament and the epic studios shows which were padded out with 205 live talent)
So here is the state of play as is. In the UK, we have national and regional over the air TV networks in abundance. We have IPTV with more free stuff. We have multiple free to air satellite channels, some that show caravan maintenance programmes for hours on end. You know what we haven't got? On any of it?
A regular nationally screened British Wrestling show on over the air TV.
We have free to air Mexican lucha libre shows and American Wrestling shows, but none from our own country - a country where Wrestling is booming.
ITV were keen to get World of Sport back as a brand, unfortunately their tapings went south - ticket sales were cited by outside sources to be the issue, but the involvement of impact wrestling showed its face again - by face I mean eyes and nose, because the mouth certainly didn't make an appearance for quite a while, and when it did everyone was told it was due to contracts etc.
Here's an idea - you have studios all over the country equipped with on site and outside broadcast equipment.
ITV - realistically, what would it take for you to just remove impact from the management team and start over.
Contract 8 wrestlers, contract a booker. You have TV people you can use for continuity/ring announcing - Dave Brown in Memphis was a newscaster.
Commentators you can borrow, other talent you can borrow/bring in for short runs from other promotions after all, you're a TV show not a promotion. By all means you can expand on this later, but this is a starting point.
Two night tapings in either your studios or town halls, or a mixture of two (promos, hype videos etc) etc around the UK in the form of standard Wrestling shows (as they will appear to the punters/audience)
Use your training/apprenticeship/local college/university community links for video, audio, lighting, runners, you know, all the stuff you need people to learn how to do for regular programming when they finish their courses and apply for jobs. It'll give them a fast paced work environment and good experience to be able to work on pretty much anything else later in there careers.
Run a show in each region first, 8 man tournament style - use your regional news areas as the territories, that's where the kit is and hopefully your apprenticeship programmes. Run one of them as a two nighter.
Your 8 contracted wrestlers win the regional tournaments and go on to do the second night in the chosen territory for the British title.
Quick booking tip at this point, make sure the contracted talent you stick in each regional leg of the tournament are regulars to somewhere near the region or its going to take some of the unpredictability out of it.
Take the videos, and compile them into a set of pilot episodes that follow the tournament, switching between regions from a central studio so that a decent variety of wrestlers from all over appear across the shows. That way, even if casual fan A in Eastbourne is watching for the guy they've seen on a poster in the newsagent window, they see the wrestler from Fort William who properly impresses him, and they've got a reason to tune back in again if he's going to be on etc.
First couple of weeks, watch the feedback from Twitter and Facebook, see who's impressing, listen to the viewers
Run another show in each of the region's you didn't run the final in (you don't run the initial ones as a two nighter when the tournament winners aren't going to be there the following night) Get the library built up so you can chop together another couple of episodes for just after the tournament is done to give you time to book for continuity.
Get footage from other promotions, let other promotions titles appear on the programme, let yours appear on theirs, let a local guy win it, let another of your contracted guys win it back later or at the next regional show. exchange TV time advertising promotions local shows for advertising the tapings at local shows. Don't run it as a promotion per se, run it as a showcase of British wrestlers incorporating a title scene so that there's something for other wrestlers to aim for. Easy enough storyline prop to start with.
Now I understand that this sounds completely barmy to anyone that's been in the business in the short form explanation, but if you're serious about having your own nationally screened British Wrestling show, and you're not willing to let an already established promotion, or set of promotions host these for you (or the Knights and Len Davies, or Alex Shane'strident vision media setup), you're going to have to put some work in and make it inclusive in appeal bloody quickly.
So let's see how this would pan out. For the purposes of this, the ITV regions used will be:
Central
STV (Scotland)
Border / Tyne Tees
Granada (including isle of man)
YTV Yorkshire (Lincoln is in this catchment area as well - hey, ITV made the borders, not me)
Anglia
London/Meridian
West country/West/Wales
Now, Ireland, I've not mentioned yet - there's a good reason for this, and all will become clear later on.
The tapings go ahead as detailed above. Your first two hour show has a central commentary team in a studio. Green screen a production room in the background or something - stay away from cheesy graphics involving massive turnbuckles, silly typeface text, etc it's not the 80s or 90s any more.
It's 2 hrs on ITV, so it's actually 90 min. A mixture of full as-live matches and match highlights go out on air for the first two weeks. Each region gets one full match (1st round in a tournament is normally a 10 min time limit, isn't it?). You've got 4 matches per area to choose from. Here's the kicker, you stick all the matches from round 1 up on the ITV hub with video packages on the wrestlers, and of course adverts between the matches. Also, you're going to want links to promotions where you can see the participants wrestle live. Gotta get that revenue in and make a good start at working with real promotions - after all, you're a TV show advertising British Wrestling, not a real working promotion.
Use a hashtag, use Facebook, get feedback. After week 1, see who's impressing, see who's matches are getting the most views and making the most buzz. Use that to choose the full matches on week 2. If it's someone that's gone out of the tournament get them on the odd live show, while you're building the library. Tell people where they're going to be in the near future if they want to see them live, both in a world of sport showcase show and in other UK promotions.
Round 1 gets done with. Round 2 keeps the same format just with a couple more full matches.
By the time you've got this from tape to air the non tournament shows (or at least some of them) should have been taped.
Were on to week 5 on air by this point, and you've got the 8 regional finals to show. Time to start giving some more promo time to your core for after the matches.
Week 6 - the matches from night 2 of the tournament.
Week 7 - the direction from here is dictated by what you have in the can, what other promotions have sent you, and what the viewers want. You can either stick with the footage from all territories cut together with the central commentary team, or send out your guys to the other territories in a cycle to move to a format where matches from local talent (keeping an eye on the feedback) factoring in your core guys are featured.
Basically do what Vince did with "all American Wrestling" back in the territory days, just don't try to take over completely, because we love British Wrestling as it is, we'd just love to see more of it and more people to be able to see it.
It seems a bit contrived, but there are options. The easiest way to do it of course would be to just back a promotion. Pay them to chuck a few intro video packages together and perhaps organise help with production for video, but as for the show and the booking, let one of the groups that's been doing it for a few years handle it. And possibly think about tying it into world of sport but changing the name of the show, because you've tied that to impact wrestling, which is still pretty toxic, and the recent debacle isn't going to help you get anything off the ground.
Oh and Ireland? Cut together format week 10, matches in two of the territories are interrupted by Irish wrestlers, who are disgruntled at not being included at the initial tournament and demand to be recognised and used as a territory.
Impact got involved with world of Sport shortly before getting a UK TV deal for impact wrestling with spike tv - a channel 5 substation.
Mexican Wrestling is showing up on free TV in the uk, as AAA gives an air date on freeview channel frontrunner.
I've not seen anything of NGW on made in Tyne and Wear for quite some time, and apparently WAW is still airing on mustard TV (ok, it's a repeat, but it's British Wrestling on TV).
WWE have a UK division that are sitting on some of the best talent in the UK, putting three of them on regular NXT programming and the odd one to put those three over every now and again. Apart from that there have been 3 UK division programmes and four live shows (the initial tournament and the epic studios shows which were padded out with 205 live talent)
So here is the state of play as is. In the UK, we have national and regional over the air TV networks in abundance. We have IPTV with more free stuff. We have multiple free to air satellite channels, some that show caravan maintenance programmes for hours on end. You know what we haven't got? On any of it?
A regular nationally screened British Wrestling show on over the air TV.
We have free to air Mexican lucha libre shows and American Wrestling shows, but none from our own country - a country where Wrestling is booming.
ITV were keen to get World of Sport back as a brand, unfortunately their tapings went south - ticket sales were cited by outside sources to be the issue, but the involvement of impact wrestling showed its face again - by face I mean eyes and nose, because the mouth certainly didn't make an appearance for quite a while, and when it did everyone was told it was due to contracts etc.
Here's an idea - you have studios all over the country equipped with on site and outside broadcast equipment.
ITV - realistically, what would it take for you to just remove impact from the management team and start over.
Contract 8 wrestlers, contract a booker. You have TV people you can use for continuity/ring announcing - Dave Brown in Memphis was a newscaster.
Commentators you can borrow, other talent you can borrow/bring in for short runs from other promotions after all, you're a TV show not a promotion. By all means you can expand on this later, but this is a starting point.
Two night tapings in either your studios or town halls, or a mixture of two (promos, hype videos etc) etc around the UK in the form of standard Wrestling shows (as they will appear to the punters/audience)
Use your training/apprenticeship/local college/university community links for video, audio, lighting, runners, you know, all the stuff you need people to learn how to do for regular programming when they finish their courses and apply for jobs. It'll give them a fast paced work environment and good experience to be able to work on pretty much anything else later in there careers.
Run a show in each region first, 8 man tournament style - use your regional news areas as the territories, that's where the kit is and hopefully your apprenticeship programmes. Run one of them as a two nighter.
Your 8 contracted wrestlers win the regional tournaments and go on to do the second night in the chosen territory for the British title.
Quick booking tip at this point, make sure the contracted talent you stick in each regional leg of the tournament are regulars to somewhere near the region or its going to take some of the unpredictability out of it.
Take the videos, and compile them into a set of pilot episodes that follow the tournament, switching between regions from a central studio so that a decent variety of wrestlers from all over appear across the shows. That way, even if casual fan A in Eastbourne is watching for the guy they've seen on a poster in the newsagent window, they see the wrestler from Fort William who properly impresses him, and they've got a reason to tune back in again if he's going to be on etc.
First couple of weeks, watch the feedback from Twitter and Facebook, see who's impressing, listen to the viewers
Run another show in each of the region's you didn't run the final in (you don't run the initial ones as a two nighter when the tournament winners aren't going to be there the following night) Get the library built up so you can chop together another couple of episodes for just after the tournament is done to give you time to book for continuity.
Get footage from other promotions, let other promotions titles appear on the programme, let yours appear on theirs, let a local guy win it, let another of your contracted guys win it back later or at the next regional show. exchange TV time advertising promotions local shows for advertising the tapings at local shows. Don't run it as a promotion per se, run it as a showcase of British wrestlers incorporating a title scene so that there's something for other wrestlers to aim for. Easy enough storyline prop to start with.
Now I understand that this sounds completely barmy to anyone that's been in the business in the short form explanation, but if you're serious about having your own nationally screened British Wrestling show, and you're not willing to let an already established promotion, or set of promotions host these for you (or the Knights and Len Davies, or Alex Shane'strident vision media setup), you're going to have to put some work in and make it inclusive in appeal bloody quickly.
So let's see how this would pan out. For the purposes of this, the ITV regions used will be:
Central
STV (Scotland)
Border / Tyne Tees
Granada (including isle of man)
YTV Yorkshire (Lincoln is in this catchment area as well - hey, ITV made the borders, not me)
Anglia
London/Meridian
West country/West/Wales
Now, Ireland, I've not mentioned yet - there's a good reason for this, and all will become clear later on.
The tapings go ahead as detailed above. Your first two hour show has a central commentary team in a studio. Green screen a production room in the background or something - stay away from cheesy graphics involving massive turnbuckles, silly typeface text, etc it's not the 80s or 90s any more.
It's 2 hrs on ITV, so it's actually 90 min. A mixture of full as-live matches and match highlights go out on air for the first two weeks. Each region gets one full match (1st round in a tournament is normally a 10 min time limit, isn't it?). You've got 4 matches per area to choose from. Here's the kicker, you stick all the matches from round 1 up on the ITV hub with video packages on the wrestlers, and of course adverts between the matches. Also, you're going to want links to promotions where you can see the participants wrestle live. Gotta get that revenue in and make a good start at working with real promotions - after all, you're a TV show advertising British Wrestling, not a real working promotion.
Use a hashtag, use Facebook, get feedback. After week 1, see who's impressing, see who's matches are getting the most views and making the most buzz. Use that to choose the full matches on week 2. If it's someone that's gone out of the tournament get them on the odd live show, while you're building the library. Tell people where they're going to be in the near future if they want to see them live, both in a world of sport showcase show and in other UK promotions.
Round 1 gets done with. Round 2 keeps the same format just with a couple more full matches.
By the time you've got this from tape to air the non tournament shows (or at least some of them) should have been taped.
Were on to week 5 on air by this point, and you've got the 8 regional finals to show. Time to start giving some more promo time to your core for after the matches.
Week 6 - the matches from night 2 of the tournament.
Week 7 - the direction from here is dictated by what you have in the can, what other promotions have sent you, and what the viewers want. You can either stick with the footage from all territories cut together with the central commentary team, or send out your guys to the other territories in a cycle to move to a format where matches from local talent (keeping an eye on the feedback) factoring in your core guys are featured.
Basically do what Vince did with "all American Wrestling" back in the territory days, just don't try to take over completely, because we love British Wrestling as it is, we'd just love to see more of it and more people to be able to see it.
It seems a bit contrived, but there are options. The easiest way to do it of course would be to just back a promotion. Pay them to chuck a few intro video packages together and perhaps organise help with production for video, but as for the show and the booking, let one of the groups that's been doing it for a few years handle it. And possibly think about tying it into world of sport but changing the name of the show, because you've tied that to impact wrestling, which is still pretty toxic, and the recent debacle isn't going to help you get anything off the ground.
Oh and Ireland? Cut together format week 10, matches in two of the territories are interrupted by Irish wrestlers, who are disgruntled at not being included at the initial tournament and demand to be recognised and used as a territory.
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