- originally written Oct 9th, 2010-
Right: May! Off we go…
My first show of the month took me to Carrickfergus in the North for Wrestling.IE. I made the trip up with JC Williams, and we engaged in enjoyable conversation slash banter for the two-and-a-half hours on the road. Once we got there, and everything was set up, I managed to get a bit of in-ring time with Bonesaw/Machine, which was fun. Always enjoy going through a bit of chain before a show if the opportunity arises. My match was a singles with Maxer, and I liked it. It was solid, it was fun, and got the job done nicely. That opinion wasn’t shared by the promoter, though, who disparagingly described most of the matches on the card as “shit.” Heh heh—can’t please everyone! I do, however, put this summation down to the fact that he was probably in a bit of a huff; he had asked all the workers on the show to donate their wage to the funding of a local Northern Irish Olympic wrestling team, and no one did, to my knowledge. From my own standpoint, I incur petrol costs every time I drive up north and I can’t afford to give up a wage and work for free. If it were a good cause like cancer research, MS, or for an animal shelter or something like that, I wouldn’t mind in the slightest and would take the hit, but this, in my opinion, wasn’t a worthy cause. I’d wish the team every success, but I’m sure they’re well looked after funds-wise by the Northern Irish government.
The whole Wrestling.IE experience was a peculiar one, if I’m to be honest. That’s not to imply that it was a bad experience; I have plenty of fond memories from my year or so there. I would have a few criticisms, though, about some of the stuff that went down; I covered some of them in a previous blog, I think. I started working for Wrestling.IE (“W.IE” hereafter, for the sake of brevity) in June 2009, literally a week after I’d left IWW. If you worked for IWW, you worked for them, and them only, and no other promotion in Ireland or Northern Ireland. Starting for a new promotion was daunting, but I was happy to face a new challenge, and work with new people. I needed to. A lot of my friends and trainees had left or been forced out of Irish Whip, and I was working with the same guys on every show; good as they were, it was killing my passion, doing the same thing every time. I was bored, and mired in apathy. Mired, for goodness’ sake! I needed a spark, and something to get me going again; a rebirth, in a sense, and a fresh start, and that’s what W.IE represented. Though I had UK shows, having regular work domestically as well would be a major boost, and certainly more favourable that hopping on a plane every weekend!
My first show with them- in Cookstown, Tyrone- was amazing. A crowd of almost 500 people turned out to see it; this was a stark contrast to wrestling in front of double digit crowds, as I had been for the first half of 2009. I worked Machine/Bonesaw, in my W.IE début (and our first ever match together) and was very happy with it, and confident that I’d given a good account of myself, and what I could do. (Bonesaw- who I’d met previously, down south in Irish Whip- had put in a good word for me, and ensured that I got in all my best stuff. It was a really selfless, nice thing to do, and helped get my foot in the door, and I really appreciated it.) I’d chatted with Steve, the promoter, after, and he seemed to be a fairly nice, respectful guy, with a good, sensible head for business. I liked him, and was very impressed with his setup. He offered me another show with him shortly after, and I began to work regularly there, even ‘going over’ in a king of the ring tournament at the beginning of August. The shows were exciting, the atmosphere (or “craic”) was good, attendances were high, and I was having fun again. Things seemed good as W.IE wrapped up its season at the end of October. Then, 2010 rolled around, and the landscape changed radically.
I have no idea what happened in the intervening months between November and February of this year, but my theory is that someone was giving promoting advice; advice which focused more on the pure money-side of things for the promoter, and less on the “employee relations” side of things. At the end of the day, the promoter is out to make money; that’s his raison d’etre, as it were, and is completely understandable. It’s business. That said, you need to treat the talent well, too. There needs to be a middle ground. You can’t, hypothetically, treat your workers like crap, and not pay them (or pay them peanuts, figuratively-speaking, or literally if you have some sort of pro wrestling elephant working on your shows), and expect their loyalty, and for them to stick around forever. At the same time, if you treat your workers like rock stars, it will breed egotism and avarice, and you’re gonna lose a lot of money trying to keep them happy. As I say: middle ground. Pay a sensible wage and show appreciation for people’s hard work, and generally they’ll be happy. It’s not a magic formula- it’s common sense. Though, I have to admit, there’s nothing straightforward about promoting, so perhaps that’s a little cut-and-dry. At any rate, things changed this year, and a lot of guys were unhappy, pissed-off and frustrated. Attendances were dropping too, into the bargain. It’s just the nature of wrestling- ebb and flow, high and low.
Carrickfergus was my last W.IE show for a while and, genuinely, I thought it’d be my last, full-stop. Shortly after this show, I was cancelled from a few upcoming shows for being “too expensive”, which is crap, since I really don’t charge that much; certainly, not extortionate amounts. I appreciate realistically what I bring to a show, and what my contribution is, and charge a fee on that basis. Anyway, having kept those dates free for W.IE shows, I was quite vexed to be messed around; I could’ve accepted bookings elsewhere for those dates, instead. Despite being told that it was “out of [Steve’s] hands”, I was well aware that he’d been planning to get rid of most of his roster in order to facilitate this NXT-like idea, and had been telling this to people who’d never worked for him before, all the while keeping his actual workers in the dark. Having busted my ass on shows for close to a year for him at this point, helped out with lifts and such, and worked for very fair amounts (fair more for him than for me, to be honest), I believe I deserved better; he obviously disagreed. At this point, anyway, I knew that the sensible head for business I first acknowledged was gone, and I was content to move on.
As I say, it wasn’t all bad, and I don’t want the experience to come across as very negative because it wasn’t. I had the chance to work with a lot of great talent, meet a lot of cool guys and girls I’d never had the chance to meet before, see Northern Ireland, and experience the promotion itself, as it did absolutely super business at one point. If there was one failing- aside from alienating and dividing the roster- it was doing too much, too soon; trying to run too many shows in a short period of time, and hitting the same town too many times within a year. I sympathise with Steve, in a way; he obviously put a lot of his time, money and effort into the venture, and spared little expense. I’m sure trying to promote a load of shows on his own, too, must have been incredibly stressful. Promoting is something I very strongly considered, myself, at one point, but decided against, as I was concerned about the cost, and I didn’t want the headache. I just wanted- and want- to wrestle. Having looked into setup costs and the paperwork involved, I can appreciate the enormity of legitimately establishing a promotion, though, so I do have respect for Steve for having set up W.IE in the first place. He may have burned out the market somewhat, but with a little time, he could easily run again a little less regularly, and still enjoy success. I have no doubt. I would hope that if he does decide to run again somewhere down the line, though, he’ll recognise the importance of valuing the people that work for him, as they’re the ones who wake up the next morning with a catalogue of aches and injuries.
If my tone comes across as a little- or even “a lot”- self-righteous, I don’t intend it to. My opinions on booking- and wrestling, in general- that appear in these things are simply that: my opinion. The opinion of one guy. They’re not a “How To” manual, or anything like that! I don’t want to come off as preachy—it’s just opinion. Opinion that might be a load of Hollywood hogwash, anyhow…! Heh heh.
The day after, I’d a show in Dublin for AWS (American Wrestling Superstars, a sister promotion to American Wrestling Rampage), in Drimnagh. I worked with Bonesaw in the opening match, and (again) enjoyed it thoroughly. It was a little weird working in a 20x20 ring, actually! The extra few steps as you run rope-to-rope or corner-to-corner kinda throw you a little, but you get used to it. It was a fun show, anyway, and my ‘missus’ went along to check it out; her first time seeing me wrestle in quite a while. I finished off the evening with a nice chicken fried rice from my local Chinese take-away.
The following weekend, I was in Newcastle for a show for IWF (the Independent Wrestling Federation.) I should first reference my flight over to that neck of the woods: the flight wasn’t exactly full, but you’d swear it was from the absolute cacophony being created by this hen party down the back of the plane! Absolute knackers, they were. Hound dogs, they were! They were half-cut at about 8am, talking very loudly- even shouting across to each other- and dying for the “bullseye baggies” that Ryanair sell on their flights. (A bullseye baggy- if you’re not familiar with them- is essentially a sachet of alcohol. It’s a plastic bag of vodka, or gin, or eh… Schnapp’s. Stuff like that.) They were talking utter shite and, unfortunately, I had to listen to them for about twenty minutes, as you can’t listen to electronic devices, like iPods, roughly ten mins either side of take-off or landing. Bad start to the trip over, anyway…! I’d a bit of time to myself in the morning once I arrived, so I spent a bit of time in Newcastle city centre, and had a look around. It was a cool experience—Newcastle’s a nice place. That balanced things out, if you’ll pardon the pun… I met up with some of the IWF guys in the early afternoon, and we went to the venue. The ‘Geordie’ accent was a little bit difficult to understand at first! Just a little. (I was reminded of that scene in ‘One Foot in the Grave’- one of my favourite sitcoms, incidentally- where Victor Meldrew is confronted by a Geordie binman on his doorstep, and hasn’t the faintest idea what he’s talking about! He ended up misunderstanding him, and receiving a box of alligator eggs!)
The IWF folk were very nice, and very welcoming, and it was a nice setup to be a part of. They got a good crowd for their show, and I had an enjoyable match with Pauly C. I got to cut a promo, too; I was happy with the content and delivery, but there’d been a load of promos already on the show, so the impact I thought it might have was diluted. Good match, anyhow, and another heel outing for yours truly. The only drawback of the show was that the backstage dressing area was ridiculously cramped.
After the show, I headed to the bar in the venue. “What’ll it be, pal?”, the barman enquired. “Jack”, I growled, and he reached for a bottle of JD behind the bar. “Uh-uh”, I warned as he placed a glass tumbler on the bar in front of me. “Leave the bottle.” Ok, maybe that’s not true… Well, it’s definitely not true, though I did head to the bar for a glass of water. This frivolous act, however, is a mere prelude to the anecdote that follows. I was accosted at the bar by a gentleman in his late twenties or early thirties who had attended the show, and he engaged me in conversation. Things seemed relatively normal to begin with, as we discussed the show, and then things took an interesting turn. He claimed he’d just returned from the States, as he’d been wrestling for ROH, and in two weeks’ time, he’d be wrestling in the Grimsby Auditorium for the WWF Tag Team Titles. He didn’t exhibit any of the hallmark ‘tells’ of lying (if ‘Lie to Me’ is to be believed!) The guy was obviously severely deluded as there was absolutely no chance he was a wrestler. As many absolutely wonderful people there are that I’ve had the chance to meet through wrestling, there are a lot of weirdos out there that wrestling seems to attract! I wrapped up the conversation fairly quickly, then turned to the barman. “Bacardi. Leave the bottle.”
I wrestled for PWU in Belfast at the end of May, and enjoyed myself, but this blog is running long as it is, so I’ll include that in my next one.
Thanks for reading, folks.
- Ballance
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