Steve's View #106
By Steve
For those who don't know, XPW has
canceled all of it's upcoming shows, lost it's TV in LA (and according
to one source Pittsburgh, but that isn't independently verified)
and their parent company Extreme Associates was raided by federal
authorities, for what is believed to be shipping what would be
considered obscene materials into Pittsburgh, PA, but could turn
out to be more than that.
While Xtreme Pro Wrestling might
not yet be officially dead, the plug is almost ready to be pulled
on it's life support.
XPW has had a very rocky time, almost
from the start, mostly due to bad business decisions and a total
lack of regard for it's fan base. Over the next three columns
we'll take a look at XPW's history and where things went wrong.
Part one will focus on the beginning of XPW up through their shows
at Patriot Hall. Part two will cover the debut at the Grand Olympic
through Shane Douglas' return and the announcement XPW would be
running in Philadelphia. And part three will be the ECW Arena
debut to the present.
XPW was pretty much created after
a failed attempt by Rob Black (Robert Zicari) to invest in, and
become a west coast promoter for ECW. Despite being an almost
carbon copy of ECW straight from the start, early XPW was actually
met with decent press (except for by members of UIWA and their
fans, who felt that XPW was created by raiding and screwing over
that promotion, but more on that later), and while a good portion
of their crowds were papered (something that would not only continue
throughout their history, but grow to ridiculous levels), the
attendance was pretty steady and one of the larger crowds in indy
wrestling. Then they started running shows at the Los Angeles
Sports Arena.
While the first Los Angeles Sports
Arena show for XPW saw the debut of Sabu, who would actually bring
XPW to highest levels, it was also the beginning of the running
joke that XPW papers most of it's crowd. Unable to draw a crowd
that didn't look embarrassing in a building that holds over 10,000
people, free tickets to the shows became increasingly easier to
find. While some people might think that giving away free tickets
to a show is a good way to attract a new audience to your promotion,
unless your show is truly blow away, you will have a hard time
convincing people to pay for what they were getting for free.
So the cycle began of XPW having to comp to get any real crowd.
XPW was also running what it called
house shows in Ventura and Bakersfield at the time, but stopped
shortly after they began running at the Sports Arena. While one
might think the house shows were stopped purely because of the
money lost running at the Sports Arena, the truth is the theater
in Ventura they ran at wanted to raise the rates to an incredible
level, and Bakersfield wasn't drawing well enough to justify the
shows.
Also about the same time XPW's bad
reputation with fans was really just beginning A lot of people
cite the ECW Heatwave incident as the start of the bad Internet
publicity, and while it definitely was the worst thing to happen
to XPW in it's history, something it could never shake and was
still haunting them three years later, the true beginnings were
in June of 2000.
Lonnie Hill, who co-founded SoCal
UNCENSORED, was a very vocal critic of XPW's product on their
official message board. Lonnie was an XPW fan, and was even called
Mr. XPW on the board, but he was also outspoken as to what he
thought was wrong with the product, and was angering some people
within XPW with his views. Lonnie was also co-creator of the first
XPW fansite "Blood, Beer, & Tities", so he was well
known by XPW staff.
At June 17th, 2000's XPW show called
"Vengeance", a member of XPW's street team came from
ringside, and attacked Lonnie Hill from behind. XPW claimed the
street team member would be fired for the incident, but he was
still seen around the offices and at the next show after that.
People who went to school with him claimed he was saying at school
that he was told to do it by XPW management, though that can't
be verified at this point in time. The incident started to get
XPW a lot of backlash on the local level, and set the seeds for
what was to follow.
Then of course the Heatwave incident
occurred. This really has been talked about to death, and there
is no real point in going into it in much detail again, but for
those who are new to wrestling here is a basic synopsis. ECW was
holding it's Heatwave pay-per-view at the Grand Olympic in Los
Angeles, and several XPW wrestlers, Messiah, Supreme, and Krysti
Myst were sitting front row. Security made everyone who was wearing
XPW shirts turn them inside out and wear them that way. During
the main event the XPW wrestlers tried to turn their shirts right
side out so the XPW logo was showing, and Krysti Myst removed
her shirt. Francine took issue with it, Dreamer came over, and
the XPW wrestlers were escorted out of the building and they,
along with other people associated with XPW were attacked outside
by members of the ECW locker room. Nothing was really noticeable
on camera, and aside from people in the building who saw some
commotion going on, no one would have known if it didn't blow
up on the Internet. Unfortunately for XPW it did.
ECW's fanbase was extraordinarily
loyal, and they were the fans XPW needed to draw in order for
the product they were presenting to have any chance of working.
When every major wrestling website mentioned that XPW tried to
"ruin" ECW's pay-per-view, which was a huge over exaggeration,
fans turned on XPW, and fans who never knew XPW now knew they
hated them. XPW tried to play it off with the old "any publicity
is good publicity" routine, but time has proved that one
wrong for XPW as years later fans still used that as an excuse
for refusing to check out XPW's product, despite much improvement.
XPW's next show "Go Funk Yourself"
would however go down as the largest attendance in XPW history,
however that was mainly due to the introduction of "free
admission with this flyer" flyers that were given out at
the ECW pay-per-view and the Metallica concert the next week.
Even if there was to be any momentum due to the recent publicity,
and a crowd of almost 2,000 at "Go Funk Yourself", XPW
would kill it by not running again for nearly five months.
During the five month hiatus, the
rumors of XPW's demise began, and also the ill fated exploding
ring death match between Onita and Sabu was announced, that would
never happen. People who were inside XPW at the time said the
match never occurred because Rob Black basically blew Onita off,
and Onita eventually said "fuck you" to XPW. In an effort
to save face, Josh Lazie and Sabu sent Onita a letter blaming
the cancellation of the match on a lawsuit that was filed against
Sabu by Paul Heyman.
XPW finally ran again, sort of,
in November 2000 at the San Bernardino Metal Fest concert. While
the show was pretty much panned by most people who went, at least
it was a sign of life for XPW.
In January 2001 XPW began running
in Patriot Hall in the San Fernando Valley, which while it was
only for four shows in three months, it is still considered by
some a golden age for XPW. The shows in Patriot Hall had logical
booking for the most part, and built well to the next. Plus the
building was the perfect size for the crowd and there was a real
energy in the building. It seemed XPW was beginning to turn things
around.
In the last XPW show at Patriot
Hall, which is on the campus of Birmingham High School, the main
event featured a double flaming tables spot, that not only got
XPW kicked out of the venue, but got pro-wrestling banned from
all Los Angeles Unified School District schools, a ban that is
still in place, forcing XPW to get a new venue once again.
Part two in a couple days.
--
We should start getting more interviews
up on the site again shortly. We have a couple setup and if anyone
has any suggestions to who they'd want to see interviewed send
Justin, Scrub, or myself an e-mail and we'll see what we can do.
--
I think UPW has done a pretty good
job so far of hyping their 22 Man Battle Royal as something important.
I think for the most part wrestling fans could care less about
a battle royal in this day and age, but by linking it to wrestling
history, and really doing a good sell job of it on their site,
they are doing a great job of building interest in the match.
It will be interesting to see how the actuality of the match lives
up to the hype.
--
Speaking of UPW I hope to check
out their Laughlin show on the 19th and if I do I should have
a full report on that up on the site.
--
According to WPW Lil' Cholo and
Chilango will be joining El Genio (King Ali Baba) on the June
Toryumon tour in Japan.
--
Real Pro Wrestling, the group that
is trying to start a promotion based on non-worked amateur style
matches, finalized a deal with USA Wrestling that will bring the
U.S. National Wrestling Championships to Fox on May 24th. I don't
believe it will be on in the SoCal area however, but for you NorCalers
it will be on in the Bay Area, as well a few other cities.
--
In a follow up to Steve's View #104
dealing with the Threat versus EWF situation, Threat claims that
he was not involved in any trashing of anyone's house and he wanted
to state that he did not punch out the window of his jeep. He
also stated that he wasn't ordered to remove any EWF related material
from his site, that he did it as a work to explain why EWF would
no longer be mentioned there. EWF has admitted to telling him
he couldn't use any pictures or graphics that are their property.
And since I've been getting asked
about it at every show, there's no heat between myself and Threat.
People get upset at me or this website all the time when something
negative comes up about them, and when good stuff is written they
like the site. Threat took issue with some stuff coming out about
the cancellation of UWW's show, and then later at my column on
the subject and the fact that Jeff Hanula was one of the sources
for the column. Once people think things over, cooler heads usually
prevail. Which is what happened here. I'm sure Threat will have
his side of things in more detail up on his site soon, so if you
are interested check it out.
-Steve
