Credit Where Credit's Due: Imagine What I Could Have Done For WAW If I Was Healthy

WAW head honcho "Rowdy" Ricky Knight greets me on his way to ringside to face Robbie Brookside at The Talk in Norwich in April 2002 .

 

I’d like to take you back a few years, to the dark, distant days of the early 21^st century. Yours truly was just about finding his way around the world wide web, combining two of my favourite things, writing and professional wrestling.

In 2000 The Two Sheds Review was in it’s infancy, but the wrestling world was going through some massive changes. When I began writing about wrestling World Championship Wrestling and Extreme Championship Wrestling were on their death beds, and it wasn’t long before Vince McMahon and his mighty World Wrestling Federation swallowed up as much of the national wrestling scene in the States as he possibly could.

Around the same time my interest in wrestling began to wane a little. I wasn’t one for trading tapes, and streaming and downloading shows was but a distant dream, so, seeking an alternative to WWE, I began to take an interest in the local wrestling scene, most notably the Norwich-based World Association of Wrestling, formed in 1994 by the husband and wife team of “Rowdy” Ricky Knight and “Sweet” Saraya Knight, along with Ricky’s Superflys tag-team partner “Gentleman” Jimmy Ocean.

My interest was piqued in early 2001 when I read a local newspaper article about WAW’s upcoming Fightmare show at the Norwich Sport Village. It certainly grabbed my attention, and as I was building a bit of a following and reputation with my ramblings, which by then was being syndicated to twenty or so websites and newsletters, I thought I could help them get a bit more publicity not just in this country but around the world as well.

This was only the second wrestling show I’d attended in person, the first having been just up the road from where I lived and when I was very young. In fact I was so young I actually have no memory of this show, but anyway. With my interest in the American scene dwindling a bit, WAW’s Fightmare show blew me away, so much so in fact that I wanted a piece of the action.

With the show having been filmed for possible transmission on Sky Sports, Martin Marshall, the guy in charge of production, and the guy I’d been in contact with, asked me if I was interested in commentating on the show. I accepted his offer, but to cut a long story short this, for various reasons, never happened.

Fast forward a few months to December 2001, and Mrs. Radbourne’s little blue-eyed boy was sitting in a changing room in the Suffolk coastal town of Lowestoft with Ricky and Saraya Knight discussing a few things. To cut a long story short, at the end of that meeting I became WAW’s website guy and official reporter. Well, I say reporter, but I never actually had any formal training or qualification to call myself a reporter.

It was the kind of thing I’d wanted for ages. I was actually working in a business I’d observed for years, and now I was getting the chance to hang around and talk with people who loved the wrestling business as much as I did.

But during that same period of time my personal and professional lives began to change for the worse, and while it would take too long for me to go into detail here, let’s just say that after WAW’s awards night in mid-2002 I suffered a severe mental breakdown. I was diagnosed with clinical depression and put on all sorts of medication, including powerful anti-depressants.

So while my personal and professional lives were crumbling around me, WAW, and in particularly the Knight family, were incredibly supportive of me and my immediate family I continued my work for WAW, running the company website, writing articles, reviewing shows, and eventually writing and editing the magazine. Sure, there were some bumpy moments in our relationship, but there is in any relationship.

I like to think that I achieved a hell of a lot during this time, even though I probably wasn’t in any fit state to do so. What helps me though is the little bit of research I did around that time. At the time my Two Sheds Review column could be seen all over the place. I sent it out to as many people as I could, and when I found out my reviews were getting around 500,000 viewers a month it kind of blew me away.

This meant that WAW’s news and reviews were being read around the world. Around this same time Scott Conway, then head honcho of The Wrestling Alliance, a company that had close ties with WAW, told me that Ricky often spoke about how much I’d helped the company’s profile. Indeed, I lost count of the number of people who’d told me that they’d never heard of WAW and the men and women on it’s roster until they’d read one of my reviews.

Another thing you have to factor into my efforts here is that all this took place before social media became the thing, before it became the way to get yourself noticed. I spent countless hours going around the internet getting the contact details of people I knew could help get more exposure not only for my Two Sheds Review column but for my WAW writings as well.

Recently I began to think about what I achieved in WAW, especially as I achieved all of this while going through some drastic health problems. It took me around three years to recover from my mental health problems. I wondered what I could have achieved if I’d done all of that unhindered by my health problems.

I left WAW at the end of 2005 for various personal and professional reasons. I won’t go into why I left. Quite frankly there’s no point. They’ve had their say, and so have I.

Since then the company has gone from strength to strength and achieved a great deal. You don’t need me to tell you about those who have gone on to make a name for themselves. If you do then you’ve probably been living in a cave for the past decade or so.

I think it’s great that they’ve achieved what they have, I really do. I hold no ill will towards them, despite everything that’s been said and everything that’s happened. But what does make me sad is that the powers-that-be have never acknowledged what I did for them.

According to WAW's website nothing of note happened during my time with the company.

 

If you look on WAW’s website now, on their “Our Story” page, you’ll find no mention of the events that happened after Fightmare in April 2001 and before Fightmare 2 in April 2007. There’s no mention of WWF legend Jake “The Snake” Roberts appearing for them, no mention of future stars like Paul Burchill, Bryan Danielson, Colt Cabana and Nick Aldis appearing for them, and no mentions of other events such as the feud with Alex Shane’s Frontier Wrestling Alliance, the creation of the Inter-Federation Cup, or any of the events that happened during that time, events that took place during my time with the company.

As I said before I bear no ill will towards any of the Knight Dynasty, despite every thing that’s been said and done (some of which was very unpleasant), and I will always acknowledge and give credit to them for all the help, love and support they gave me and my immediate family during some of the darkest times in my life, but I think it would be nice if, nearly twenty years after I left the company, they could acknowledge and give me credit for the things I did for them. After all, if I could do what I did for them while I was unwell imagine what I could have done for them if I was healthy.