30 Day Wrestling Challenge - Day 12 Favourite Defunct Promotion

Apr 30, 20205 min read

Promotions don't tend to actually last much longer than a decade, they come and go leaving us with memories both good and bad. But which are our favourites?

Let's find out!

BRUM - WRESTLING SOCIETY X

Hear me out. I know WSX was stupid. I know they had to edit matches heavily to meet the run time. I know they opened the shows with shit Ford Focus punk bands like Good Charlotte & New Found Glory. But it was also a bag load of fun.

When I was 22, before I’d discovered Proust or vegetables, WSX was what I was looking for in life. Fast paced flippy shit with explosions is what I was all about. And fuck me, did they like explosions. The unaired finale’s double main event was an “Exploding Cage Timebomb Match” & a “Piranha Tank Deathmatch”. Are you not entertained?

Not enough explosions for ya? Well let me tell you about their only two title changes. 1) Vampiro tombstones X-Pac into an exploding coffin. 2) Ricky Banderas/ Judas Mesiais/ Mil Muertes tombstones Vampiro into an exploding coffin. Same finish? Nope. The second exploding coffin was wrapped in barbed wire. Eat shit, Gedo.

The roster was also lit. A young Seth Rollins, Yoshino, Human Tornado (whatever happened to him), peak Jack Evans, peak Teddy Hart, Jimmy Jacobs, X-Pac, Horiguchi, and fucking New Jack. What’s not to like?

I’ve managed to find all 10 original episodes and they’re only 19 minutes each so I’m definitely making the Nerds watch them for my next Nerd Watch Wednesday. Maybe with the finale as a beautiful watchalong.

SHAFI - ECW

"Tonight, we have a chance to say, 'Yeah, you're right. We're too extreme. We're too wild. We're too out of control. We're too full of our own shit.'

Or we have a chance to say, 'HEY, FUCK YOU, YOU'RE WRONG! FUCK YOU, WE'RE RIGHT!' Because you have all made it to the dance. 'Cause believe me, THIS IS THE DANCE!"

Goosebumps. Pure goosebumps. All these years later this speech, this moment, this philosophy is still etched on my soul. When Paul Heyman made that speech to the ECW locker room he wasn't just speaking to them, he was speaking to everyone that didn't feel like they belonged.

He was speaking to the misfits, the unloved, those going through struggles that seemed insurmountable. Forget what people think of you, be who you are and fuck the world. When Paul spoke, I listened.

Like much of WWE revisionist history, ECW is wrongly remembered as a 'hardcore' promotion. They had every type of wrestling you can imagine and revolutionised wrestling in the United States. If a new idea became popular in WWF or WCW you can almost guarantee it happened in ECW first. From cruiserweights to triple threat matches to tables, ECW changed the game.

Even Stone Cold, who was the biggest star of the era, 'borrowed' his beer drinking from The Sandman and stole his finisher from Mikey Whipwreck.

There was such an eclectic roster. The Dudley Boyz were the best thing in tag wrestling and got nuclear heat. RVD and Jerry Lynn's series of matches were as good as anything I'd seen and were the template for pretty much every indy match for the next 10 years.

Mike Awesome was a crazy fucker who did things someone his size shouldn't have been able to do. New Jack was New Jack. They were new, they were fresh and they were REAL.

ECW meant so much to me that I would consider myself a bigger ECW fan than WWF or WCW fan during the Attitude Era. I fully drank the kool aid and even started to hate The Rock during his peak because he was a 'pussy' for covering his head when taking back drops.

When I would fantasy book shows my champion wasn't Hogan or Austin or Goldberg. It was Taz. I fully believed in everything about him and that is the greatness of ECW. They could accentuate the positives and make you believe.

ECW shows were not easily accessible which made me want them even more. To get the PPVs we had to wait for them to be released on VHS and then either order them from the local video store and wait weeks for it to arrive or go to the nearest city 15 miles away and hope they had some in stock.

Ross 'The Boss' and I would co-ordinate our purchases so that between us we wouldn't have any duplicates and could watch as many shows as possible.

I suffered from social anxiety a lot as a teenager, I hated talking to people in shops or on the phone.and avoided it at all costs. One time when I was 13 I was in a shop and I saw the latest ECW release and I wanted it so much but it was rated 18.

My parents weren't with me. I must have paced around that store for half an hour trying to decide whether to try my luck and risk buying it or not. Being rejected would have been my worst nightmare come to life.

Covered in sweat, heart beating a thousand times a minute, feeling sick and dizzy... My fear of missing out on ECW overcame my anxiety and I sheepishly approached the tills, shaking as I handed the box over to the worker who clearly wanted to be anywhere else in the world. The till flashed up that it was an age restricted purchase and I knew I was fucked.

But he didn't even look up at me as he hit a button on the till, took my money, and put the video in a bag. I power walked out of the shop as quickly as i could before he realised his mistake. It was exhilarating.

WWF/WWE will always be special to me as it's be there since I was very young. WCW is something that I appreciate more and more as I get older and Raw gets staler and staler. But I don't think anything will ever match my emotional connection with a promotion the way that ECW did. When it died wrestling was never the same again.

30 DAY CHALLENGE

DAY 1 - FAVOURITE MALE WRESTLER

DAY 2 - FAVOURITE FEMALE WRESTLER

DAY 3 - FAVOURITE MOMENT YOU'VE SEEN LIVE

DAY 4 - FAVOURITE TAG TEAM

DAY 5 - YOUR FIRST WRESTLING MEMORY

DAY 6 - FAVOURITE FACTION

DAY 7 - FAVOURITE PROMOTION

DAY 8 - FAVOURITE MANAGER

DAY 9 - FAVOURITE COMMENTARY TEAM

DAY 10 - FAVOURITE ENTRANCE THEME

DAY 11 - FAVOURITE MATCH