RE-POST: 1 Stop Wrestling 27th April 2003

When I first began to take an interest in my local promotion, the World Association of Wrestling, there was one aspect of their company in which they were lacking. They were receiving hardly any exposure on the Internet.

After the big Fightmare show at the Norwich Sport Village just over two years ago, I searched the world wide web for information on WAW, but found that there was very little. A young lad by the name of Dan Quintain, nephew of WAW wrestler Steve Quintain, had put together a couple of fan sites, and, of course, the U.K. Pitbulls had their own web site, but the company itself had no web site worth speaking of.

Well, I tell a lie here. They did actually have an official web site - there just wasn't any substance to it. Whenever I logged onto the web site, all I saw was a "coming soon" kind of message. They had a fan forum, but nothing else.

I learned that the site was actually run by a fellow from London. I don't want to name the guy, because in the next few lines I'm actually going to be quite critical of him. The word was that the guy had telephoned Ricky Knight just once, offering to build a web site for WAW. Ricky, having very limited knowledge of the Internet, agreed. But then things stalled for what seemed like an eternity.

A few weeks after the Fightmare show I contacted the man in question offering my help, offering to send him the various newspaper articles I had collected, my Fightmare show review, as well as the photos of the show I had taken. I sent them all in. Nothing happened.

I'll skip forward now to the following October. During the summer months I had begun work on my first ever web site project, my Two Sheds Review web site. I had picked up a few tricks, and decided, just before the October Outrage III show, to construct a WAW fan site. I contacted Adam Mumford, who at the time ran the Wrestle Britain web site, and Carl Smith, who ran the Wrestling In Britain web site, about using some of their material. I was also contacted by a young lad called Liam Gibson, who offered to design some graphics for the site. With a ton of material, including my own, I put the site together.

This seemed to spur on the "official" guy, and he did a little bit of work on the site. But if truth be told, his work wasn't up to much. It was as if his heart wasn't in the job. He would constantly tell everyone how he was going to update the site on a regular basis, but nothing would happen. This "official" web site for WAW was a very poor advertisement for the company.

Meanwhile, my fan site was getting an increasing number of hits, but it eventually got to a point where I knew that if I wanted to make the site special, I needed official help. So I contacted Ricky Knight.

A few months back I wrote about the first meeting I had with Ricky in Lowestoft in December 2001. It was during that meeting that Ricky decreed that my WAW fan site would become the official WAW web site.

This did not sit well with the other guy. This guy seemed under the impression that Ricky should be on the telephone to him 24/7. This guy didn't make any effort at all to keep in touch with the powers-that-be in WAW. When I announced that my site was now the official home of WAW on the Internet, the guy whined and cried on his forum, saying that I was a liar, that I was this, that I was that.

I bore no ill will against this guy. I explained to him what had happened, and wished him well. I haven't heard much from him since, and I hope he isn't still carrying a grudge for what happened.

The relationship between WAW and the Internet has grown a great deal in the past eighteen months. It has basically been my job to promote the company on the Internet in any way I can. Ricky, Julia and I meet at least once a week (when possible) to discuss various things as we try to give the WAW fans as much information about the company as we can.

At the start of this column, I mentioned that before my web site came along, the only Internet exposure related to WAW came from a couple of Dan Quintain's web sites, and from the U.K. Pitbull's official web site. Since then, many, many more web sites have sprung up from the WAW family.

In January 2002, at the request of Ricky, we launched the WAW Hall of Fame web site (www.wawhalloffame.cjb.net). The first entrant on this site was Ricky's old friend, the late Crusher Mason. Ricky's piece on Crusher is quite moving, and can still be viewed on the site.

To qualify for the Hall of Fame, there was only one criteria - those entered must not be an active wrestler. Originally we had intended that only British wrestlers, or overseas wrestlers who had worked in Britain, could be entered. But a few months ago we decided to include other wrestlers from overseas. Recent additions to the web site include Brian Pillman and Curt Hennig, who have joined the likes of Owen Hart, Giant Haystacks and Andre The Giant.

A short time later, we launched a web site aimed specifically at a certain demographic - the WAW Divas web site (www.wawdivas.cjb.net). WAW promotes women's wrestling in Britain like no other company. The majority of female grapplers currently competing on the British wrestling circuit have been trained by WAW.

The original plan was to include detailed bios of the women on the web site, but it soon became apparent that those logging onto the web site were doing so for just one reason. So all you'll find on there now is nothing but pictures. Tasteless pictures, mind you.

With these three web sites in place, we soon launched the first web site dedicated to a single wrestler. The story surrounding the birth of the Sweet Saraya's official web site (www.sweetsaraya.cjb.net) is an interesting one, and, handily enough, can be read by logging onto the site. This site has proven to be the third most successful web site I've worked on, behind the WAW and Divas web sites.

A couple of months later, we launched our next web site, dedicated to the Rowdy Man himself, Ricky Knight (www.rickyknight.cjb.net). While not as successful as some of the other web sites, it is successful in it's own way. Ricky's serious of articles on the British wrestling business have proven to be quite popular, and this reminds me that I must start nagging the old sod to do another one!

Of course, we had a few teething problems with the main WAW web site last September. The web site hosts botched the account, so we had to start all over again from scratch. Although this was annoying and upsetting, it did mean that we could cut out the dead wood, get rid of all the crap that had accumulated during the past year. The site that is there now is the one that has been up and running since then.

However, I am not the only man who has been working on WAW-related web sites.

Former WAW trainee, the Guvnor, Matt Jones, began to write about his training experiences on his own web site. When he hooked up with his tag-team partner Dan Quintain, Matt changed his web site so Dan was now a part of it. While Dan is still associated with WAW, Matt has had a few personal problems over the past few months which meant that his wrestling career had to take a back seat. It's great to hear that Matt is finally putting these problems behind him, and it back to full health. So, although the site hasn't been updated in a while, you can still see it by logging onto www.danandmatt.cjb.net.

Then came Marty Reed, another WAW trainee. The American, known as Detroit, was contacted by a fellow called David Garlick, who began to build a web site for Marty. It chronicled the early days of Marty's career, and is due a massive update real soon. You can view the site by logging onto www.detroitwaw.cjb.net. Incidentally, David took over the running of Dan and Matt's web site as well.

Then came the web site of one of the best wrestlers in Britain today, the Zebra Kid. Roy (Zebra) had originally wanted me to run the site for him, but seeing that I already had quite a full workload, asked if I could get anyone else to do it for him. At first, David ran the site, but handed over the reigns to WAW's resident graphics guys and trainee wrestler Liam Gibson. The site is currently undergoing a major overhaul, but so far it looks great, so all credit to Liam. Yours truly will be working closely with Liam on the site. You can view what's there so far by logging onto www.zebrakid.cjb.net.

Of course, I couldn't end by not mentioning my Two Sheds Review web site. I closed the site down for a few months last year as my work for WAW took me away, but with the arena shows being put on the back burner during the late summer months, I decided to go back and to revamp it a hell of a lot. You can reach the site by logging onto either www.twoshedsreview.cjb.net or www.julianradbourne.tk. The vast majority of my work over the past five or six years, both wrestling and non-wrestling, is there, and if you go to the Wrestling Articles section, you'll be able to read the first ever wrestling article I ever wrote, way back in December 1998, before I even knew what a smart mark was!

Finally, I would like to end this column by paying my respects to a group of people. At the end of March I collected my WAW Employee of the Year award for 2002. I won the voting by a considerable margin. The fact that the fans of WAW, and the men and women I worked closely with over the past year or so thought I was doing a good job, despite the fact that my illness meant I was really suffering at times, meant a lot to me. Now that I'm just about back to full health, and I've finally got that writing bug back, here's hoping I can do an even better job for the company in 2003, and beyond.