By: John Lister
The Fight Network
Since the demise of British wrestling from the mainstream, the business has revived to a degree. While still nowhere close to the glory days of hundreds of full time workers and thousands of shows a year, the industry is at its strongest point in at least a decade.
Brian Dixon’s All Star wrestling remains the most active promotion in the country, and arguably the only truly national group. While it has now virtually abandoned its network of regular monthly venues (only Hanley’s Victoria Hall and Croydon’s Fairfield Halls remain as semi-regular stops), All Star runs around 12-15 shows each month in towns across the country.
Dixon’s crew visits each venue just one or twice a year, usually selecting buildings such as theatres which have their own publicity staff to promote the dates.These shows normally draw well among families as an occasional novelty, and are not designed to build to future dates. Instead they follow a familiar self-contained formula pitting overseas heels against local babyfaces, often with the Brits tasting defeat early in the evening before gaining revenge in a show-closing battle royale.
The foreign tourists have included everyone from Jake Roberts to Shinjiro Ohtani, with former Quebecer Pierre Oulette and Joe Legend (WWF’s “Just Joe”) the current head villains.
The second string of All Star’s business is the holiday camp circuit. These facilities, which offer all-inclusive cheap vacations to working class families, put on a variety of free entertainment for guests. All Star visits each camp with a crew as small as four performers, putting on two singles matches and a tag main event.
While hardly shining examples of technical grappling, the camp shows are seen as an ideal training ground for developing crowd interaction skills, with the wrestlers having to hold the interest of an audience which may never have seen live wrestling before. More importantly for the promoter, the camps pay a flat guaranteed fee for the show, meaning competition to get the contract for each chain of venues is often fierce.
What is likely the second most profitable style of wrestling promotion in Britain is also the least widely reported. Several promoters tour the country running what are euphemistically known as ‘tribute’ shows, involving a cast of performers using WWE names and gimmicks. The argument goes that the term ‘tribute’ makes clear that no WWE talent will be appearing, and it’s certainly debatable how many audience members are genuinely surprised when they do not get the genuine article. But at the very least the promoters show total disregard for intellectual property rights, meaning that although they can draw large crowds, they tend to take a hit and run approach to promoting, hoping to keep one step ahead of the lawyers.
The claim of largest average crowds in recent times (though certainly not most financially successful) arguably belongs to the Doncaster-based 1PW. Launched in October 2005, the group made its name through a heavy use of imported US indy talent, often flying in more than a dozen performers at a time. While the shows often drew four figure crowds, the sheer expense involved led to heavy losses which brought the promotion’s parent company to the brink of liquidation. Having obtained additional funding, the group now puts more emphasis on domestic performers and maintains a passionately loyal fan base. However, 1PW maintains a well-earned reputation for wildly overbooked shows, with their recent second anniversary show running for a buttock-numbing six hours.
The rest of the British scene is made up of an alphabet soup of promotions with a wide range of scope, success and professionalism. The two veterans of the scene are John Fremantle, whose Premier Promotions runs a traditional rounds based style on its South Coast events, and Ricky Knight, whose WAW promotes across East Anglia and features his wife Saraya and a host of offspring. Knight’s crew, also regularly run the holiday camp circuit and have ties with a number of smaller promotions across the country.
Many of the remaining ‘new school’ promotions follow in the footsteps of the now-defunct Frontier Wrestling Alliance, which ran through the early 2000s and promoted a more modern internet-oriented style, peaking with shows in London’s York Hall and Coventry’s Skydome Arena. The remains of the group are now run by Greg Lambert as the Northwest-based XWA. Meanwhile, former FWA local promoter Sanjay Bagga runs LDN wrestling, which stresses the traditions of British grappling. Initially based in North London, the group now promotes right across Southern England and Wales, while its weekly television show will soon be appearing on The Fight Network.Daniel Edler’s IPW-UK runs along the South Coast, splitting its focus between local residents (with Big Brother contestant Billi Bhatti recently making his ring debut) and hardcore fans (co-promoting shows with Ring of Honor and Pro Wrestling Guerrilla). And of the remaining dozens of promotions around the country, the most successful of recent months is the Scottish Wrestling Alliance which attracted a reported 1,500 to Glasgow’s Kelvin Hall for its ‘super show’ titled The Gathering.
