PART FIVE - From great success to a great loss to a great flop
JULY 2001
The news that Ricky Knight and WAW would begin running regular shows at Tiffany's nightclub in Great Yarmouth pleased me a great deal. Apart from Steve Quintain's charity show in Lowestoft, which, due to work commitments, I had been unable to attend, Ricky's band of merry men (and women) hadn't done much since Fightmare in April. Their hopes of a television contract with Sky were dead and buried, and along with them were my hopes of getting that paid writing assignment.
Even though I was pleased at the news that WAW was back, I was angry and annoyed at the way I found out this news. I didn't hear about it on the WAW website - that website was still down. I didn't see it in a newspaper advertisement - surprising, because Ricky and Martin Marshall had used the papers so well before while promoting Fightmare.
I found out about the weekly Yarmouth shows from the boys of East Norfolk Backyard Wrestling, and they only knew because one of their number worked there as a barman.
Not sure if these stories were true or not, I posted a message on the UK Pitbulls message board, and Dave Waters was quick to respond, confirming what I had heard.
It seemed like my summer holiday plans were now set in place. I had already paid a trip to Cornwall in June. Why not go to Yarmouth, take in one of the WAW shows, stay over that night, and take in the sights of Yarmouth's "Golden Mile" the following day, before making my train journey home.
So, with time off work booked, a hotel room booked for my chosen night, I went about my business, looking forward to my little jaunt.
After the first show came around, I got in touch with Danny Quintain again. He gave me a quick rundown of the show, and on the Pitbulls message board, said the show was "interesting".
Before the shows could really get into their run though, I received some news that, at the time, really surprised me.
The call came from Dave Waters. The news being that he and his brother Mike, the UK Pitbulls, had parted ways with Ricky Knight.
This news really surprised me. In my encounters with the various WAW people, and watching them in person at Fightmare, it was obvious that the Waters brothers were their biggest and most popular stars. They were getting something of a cult following among the pro wrestling fraternity.
But it appeared that Ricky didn't see it that way. While the brothers wanted to be booked in tag-matches together, Ricky wanted Dave to adopt a persona he had in the past, as "UK Vader", an English version of Japan's favourite American star, and to go into matches against Mike. The brothers, not wanting to do this, decided that enough was enough, and the two parties agreed to go their separate ways.
It seemed to me that perhaps Ricky didn't really know how to promote his greatest asset.
After hearing this news, I began to wonder if it was worth going to Yarmouth to see the show now. One of the main reasons I was going was to see the Pitbulls. Now I knew that they weren't going to be there, the appeal of the event wasn't quite the same.
It was around about the same time that I also heard from Adam and Danny Yarco, two of the ENBW wrestlers. They had attended the shows, and basically had not liked what they had seen. Things ranging from bad matches, with wrestlers who apparently couldn't take a proper bump, to bad food, and to poor advertising of the events really got their goat. This, along with the Pitbulls departure, got me thinking.
For my weekly Internet column, I wrote about the Pitbulls are their situation. Interspersing it with a few of the comments about the Yarmouth shows, the column was not only sent out to my regular editors and site masters, but also posted on a couple of message boards.
Out of respect to Dave and Mike, I posted the column on their message board. I had a feeling there would be some negative feedback from this, but I never expected any from Danny Quintain.
Danny said that everything I wrote was bullshit. It wasn't WAW's fault for the bad matches, it wasn't WAW's fault about the bad food. He did agree with me, though, that they could have advertised the shows a lot better.
The second piece of feedback, a positive piece, came from a New York native who had seen the posting on the forum board of the Wrestling In Britain website. Gordon Scozzari was a wrestling promoter who had worked with Ricky Knight in the past. He liked what I had to say.
Gordon also told me that he had family in the Yarmouth area, and would be moving from New York to Yarmouth so he could be near them. Seeing as I seemed to know a bit about wrestling, he asked me about the local wrestling scene. I was happy to oblige, but told him that, apart from WAW's seemingly lacklustre efforts, and the ENBW boys, there was no local wrestling scene.
Gordon asked me to keep him appraised of WAW's shows, which I was more than happy to do.
As July became August, I began to get a little excited about my upcoming trip. Okay, Yarmouth is only about forty miles or so away from Cromer, but I was going to attend a wrestling show.
However, my excitement was soon ended. It was about two weeks before I was due to attend the WAW show in Yarmouth. I had posted on the Pitbulls message board about my attending the show, giving the date of the show I would be attending. I had a reply to my message wondering if the shows were still going ahead. This person had apparently turned up at Tiffany's, and the doors hadn't even opened. After a while, the small amount of people who had turned up to watch that night's wrestling just left, not knowing what the hell was going on.
Not wanting to piss off Danny Quintain again, I once again sought out the ENBW boys, this time managing to get in touch with owner James Weston. James confirmed what I had seen on the message board. He had been one of the people at Tiffany's that night. He told me that he and his friends just waited around, and that there wasn't even a notice saying that that night's show had been cancelled. He also told me that the shows hadn't even been advertised in the first place.
This did not look good for my little trip. Knowing I couldn't get back in touch with Dave Waters because he was no longer in contact with WAW, I telephoned the manager of Tiffany's. Without giving away too much information, he told me that all wrestling shows had been cancelled until further notice.
Putting the phone down, I cursed. I began to wonder what the hell Ricky Knight was playing at. I wondered how the hell he could go from promoting a show like Fightmare at the Norwich Sport Village, getting a sell-out crowd of 2,000, to having to cancel shows in Yarmouth, mainly because he couldn't even be bothered to promote the event.
With my journalistic tendancies coming to the fore, I sent this news to the British wrestling websites I visited and wrote for. I didn't care if I pissed off anyone from WAW. They had pissed me off. With the news being seen by everyone who visited Adam Mumford's and Carl Smith's sites, I knew that WAW's apparent incompetent promotional tactics would be seen by many, many people.
Gordon got in touch with me again. He found it laughable that someone from WAW seemingly couldn't be bothered to walk around Yarmouth and pin up a few promotional posters. Gordon said that, once he moved to Yarmouth, he would have considered possibly co-promoting some shows with Ricky. Now he wasn't so sure.
Going from the excitement of Fightmare to the disappointment of the Tiffany shows, I had intended to end this little diary series with these events. But that changed. I received an e-mail from Martin Marshall - WAW October Outrage III was on the horizon!
JULY 2001
The news that Ricky Knight and WAW would begin running regular shows at Tiffany's nightclub in Great Yarmouth pleased me a great deal. Apart from Steve Quintain's charity show in Lowestoft, which, due to work commitments, I had been unable to attend, Ricky's band of merry men (and women) hadn't done much since Fightmare in April. Their hopes of a television contract with Sky were dead and buried, and along with them were my hopes of getting that paid writing assignment.
Even though I was pleased at the news that WAW was back, I was angry and annoyed at the way I found out this news. I didn't hear about it on the WAW website - that website was still down. I didn't see it in a newspaper advertisement - surprising, because Ricky and Martin Marshall had used the papers so well before while promoting Fightmare.
I found out about the weekly Yarmouth shows from the boys of East Norfolk Backyard Wrestling, and they only knew because one of their number worked there as a barman.
Not sure if these stories were true or not, I posted a message on the UK Pitbulls message board, and Dave Waters was quick to respond, confirming what I had heard.
It seemed like my summer holiday plans were now set in place. I had already paid a trip to Cornwall in June. Why not go to Yarmouth, take in one of the WAW shows, stay over that night, and take in the sights of Yarmouth's "Golden Mile" the following day, before making my train journey home.
So, with time off work booked, a hotel room booked for my chosen night, I went about my business, looking forward to my little jaunt.
After the first show came around, I got in touch with Danny Quintain again. He gave me a quick rundown of the show, and on the Pitbulls message board, said the show was "interesting".
Before the shows could really get into their run though, I received some news that, at the time, really surprised me.
The call came from Dave Waters. The news being that he and his brother Mike, the UK Pitbulls, had parted ways with Ricky Knight.
This news really surprised me. In my encounters with the various WAW people, and watching them in person at Fightmare, it was obvious that the Waters brothers were their biggest and most popular stars. They were getting something of a cult following among the pro wrestling fraternity.
But it appeared that Ricky didn't see it that way. While the brothers wanted to be booked in tag-matches together, Ricky wanted Dave to adopt a persona he had in the past, as "UK Vader", an English version of Japan's favourite American star, and to go into matches against Mike. The brothers, not wanting to do this, decided that enough was enough, and the two parties agreed to go their separate ways.
It seemed to me that perhaps Ricky didn't really know how to promote his greatest asset.
After hearing this news, I began to wonder if it was worth going to Yarmouth to see the show now. One of the main reasons I was going was to see the Pitbulls. Now I knew that they weren't going to be there, the appeal of the event wasn't quite the same.
It was around about the same time that I also heard from Adam and Danny Yarco, two of the ENBW wrestlers. They had attended the shows, and basically had not liked what they had seen. Things ranging from bad matches, with wrestlers who apparently couldn't take a proper bump, to bad food, and to poor advertising of the events really got their goat. This, along with the Pitbulls departure, got me thinking.
For my weekly Internet column, I wrote about the Pitbulls are their situation. Interspersing it with a few of the comments about the Yarmouth shows, the column was not only sent out to my regular editors and site masters, but also posted on a couple of message boards.
Out of respect to Dave and Mike, I posted the column on their message board. I had a feeling there would be some negative feedback from this, but I never expected any from Danny Quintain.
Danny said that everything I wrote was bullshit. It wasn't WAW's fault for the bad matches, it wasn't WAW's fault about the bad food. He did agree with me, though, that they could have advertised the shows a lot better.
The second piece of feedback, a positive piece, came from a New York native who had seen the posting on the forum board of the Wrestling In Britain website. Gordon Scozzari was a wrestling promoter who had worked with Ricky Knight in the past. He liked what I had to say.
Gordon also told me that he had family in the Yarmouth area, and would be moving from New York to Yarmouth so he could be near them. Seeing as I seemed to know a bit about wrestling, he asked me about the local wrestling scene. I was happy to oblige, but told him that, apart from WAW's seemingly lacklustre efforts, and the ENBW boys, there was no local wrestling scene.
Gordon asked me to keep him appraised of WAW's shows, which I was more than happy to do.
As July became August, I began to get a little excited about my upcoming trip. Okay, Yarmouth is only about forty miles or so away from Cromer, but I was going to attend a wrestling show.
However, my excitement was soon ended. It was about two weeks before I was due to attend the WAW show in Yarmouth. I had posted on the Pitbulls message board about my attending the show, giving the date of the show I would be attending. I had a reply to my message wondering if the shows were still going ahead. This person had apparently turned up at Tiffany's, and the doors hadn't even opened. After a while, the small amount of people who had turned up to watch that night's wrestling just left, not knowing what the hell was going on.
Not wanting to piss off Danny Quintain again, I once again sought out the ENBW boys, this time managing to get in touch with owner James Weston. James confirmed what I had seen on the message board. He had been one of the people at Tiffany's that night. He told me that he and his friends just waited around, and that there wasn't even a notice saying that that night's show had been cancelled. He also told me that the shows hadn't even been advertised in the first place.
This did not look good for my little trip. Knowing I couldn't get back in touch with Dave Waters because he was no longer in contact with WAW, I telephoned the manager of Tiffany's. Without giving away too much information, he told me that all wrestling shows had been cancelled until further notice.
Putting the phone down, I cursed. I began to wonder what the hell Ricky Knight was playing at. I wondered how the hell he could go from promoting a show like Fightmare at the Norwich Sport Village, getting a sell-out crowd of 2,000, to having to cancel shows in Yarmouth, mainly because he couldn't even be bothered to promote the event.
With my journalistic tendancies coming to the fore, I sent this news to the British wrestling websites I visited and wrote for. I didn't care if I pissed off anyone from WAW. They had pissed me off. With the news being seen by everyone who visited Adam Mumford's and Carl Smith's sites, I knew that WAW's apparent incompetent promotional tactics would be seen by many, many people.
Gordon got in touch with me again. He found it laughable that someone from WAW seemingly couldn't be bothered to walk around Yarmouth and pin up a few promotional posters. Gordon said that, once he moved to Yarmouth, he would have considered possibly co-promoting some shows with Ricky. Now he wasn't so sure.
Going from the excitement of Fightmare to the disappointment of the Tiffany shows, I had intended to end this little diary series with these events. But that changed. I received an e-mail from Martin Marshall - WAW October Outrage III was on the horizon!
No comments:
Post a Comment