Schrödinger's Belt - The XPW European Championship

This is a script for a video on my YouTube channel. You can find the video here.

When we talk about championships in pro wrestling usually we're usually referring to championship belts, but occasionally thats not the case. When Progress wrestling formed in 2011 their singles championship was first symbolised by a staff, and their tag team championships were two halves of a shield that fitted together like yin and yang. Thankfully these didn't last long though... A more modern example would be the New Japan KOPW Championship, which began as a trophy before being replaced by a belt in December 2022. This video however, is about a championship around for a little over a year, that was represented by a presumably empty briefcase. Whats more, the company it belonged to no longer existed. The title I'm referring to is the XPW European championship.

XPW is a broader topic than is relevant here, but as a brief introduction, it was founded in July 1999 by Rob Black, who was also well known in the porn industry. Black fancied himself a promoter, and hoped to assist in bringing ECW to the West Coast, but was turned down by Paul Heyman, leading him to create his own company to be a sort of ECW competitor. Towards the end of XPW's original run they formed a working relationship with UK based Frontier Wrestling Alliance, which was formed in 99 but began as the much more locally minded Fratton Wrestling Association in 93. FWA would become known for it's US influenced presentation of storylines that many UK promotions weren't doing yet. Following XPW's closure FWA would go on to work with Ring of Honor, with the likes of Christopher Daniels, AJ Styles and Bryan Danielson, still under a mask as the American Dragon working for FWA. This even resulted in a co-promotion, with FWA and ROH presenting Frontiers of Honor in May 2003, and a sequel in 2006. As best I can tell, the seemingly odd pairing of FWA and XPW came about through FWA wanting a US working relationship.

Now let's talk about the one and only ever XPW European champion, the Wonderkid Jonny Storm. Jonny started training to wrestle in the early 90's, having his first matches for NWA Hammerlock. The same school that produced Doug Williams and Zack Sabre Jr. He would wrestle mainly for Hammerlock before arriving in FWA and other promotions in 99. In 2002 at age 25 Jonny would make his first trip to America, competing for CZW, Ring of Honor, Heartland Wrestling and crucially, XPW. His cruiserweight style made him a perfect fit against wrestlers like Jerry Lynn, Brian Kendrick and his long time friend Jody Fleisch, who was also touring US indies around this time. Jonny and Jody would often be opponents, having put together a match they could tour the indies with long before shows were as accessible as they are today through streaming. The match they planned was designed to allow them both to shine, leaving a lasting impression on whatever local crowd they were in front of.

Jonny Storm would defeat Jerry Lynn in the finals of the tournament at the Broxbourne Civic Hall on March 16th 2003. Unfortunately though XPW would run it's final event (that time), on March 8th. Whether XPW's closure around this time was the reason, or whether the belt had been completed in time, either way it didn't make it's way to Hertforshire in time for the tournament final, and so Jonny actually won and would continue to carry a black briefcase. Ya see, to the best of my remembrance from watching FWA at the time, Jonny never actually opened the briefcase. According to the thought experiment of Erwin Schrodinger, the contents of the briefcase are equally both there and not there until the case is opened. Welcome to yet another philosophy channel. And yes, I know the full theory is more complicated than this, I'm just messing around.

As the title was made in conjunction with FWA, Jonny would continue to defend the black briefcase apparently containing the XPW European title for a little over a year, long after XPW closed, until it was quietly retired in mid 2004. I guess you could say Storm was before his time, as Money in the Bank wouldn't become a thing until Wrestlemania 21 in 2005, thus continuing the tradition of briefcases being carried to the ring. In a 2005 shoot interview Jonny Storm would note that XPW had ambitions of expending internationally, explaining the link with FWA from their side. He also stated that he was long out planned to be the European champion. Jonny would defend the case mostly in FWA, but also in Germany based WXW. He would defend mostly against imported talent such as Juventud Guerrera, Super Crazy and Justin Credible among others, which did a lot to raise Storms profile, working with and beating former ECW names. As of September 2023, Jonny Storm continues to be active in the ring, some twenty eight years since his first match. Now that XPW is back maybe we might see him reactivate the briefcase, whether there's a belt in it or not some day?

Sources:

Final XPW show https://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=2781

Belt history https://www.cagematch.net/?id=5&nr=78&page=5&reign=1

Storm 2005 shoot https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BUd5Wuu2mg XPW 1:19

Four pitches for the next AEW World Champion

This is a script for a video on my YouTube channel. You can find the video Here.

Over the four years of All Elite Wrestling's existence, it's World championship has been kept pretty sacred. Granted there was a rough period with interim titles and injury's, but as of right now only six men have held the elite prize. When Jericho had it he made the most sense as the man with the most main stream appeal when the company started. Moxley has shown himself to be a dependable hand through his record three reigns. Omega was the man people clamoured for to be champion at some point, who battled through injuries to reach his finish line. Hangman was from day one preparing to finish the story. Sorry Cody, you know I love you. Whatever anyone thinks about CM Punk, it is a fact that we never got to see what an AEW World title reign would actually look like. Then we get to MJF, who is carving out his legacy with the title today.

All of this makes me look to the future, and wonder who the next AEW World champion might be. Four of the previous six were guys established either in WWE of New Japan, whereas Maxwell can be considered an AEW guy, but at this point the future beyond MJF isn't quite clear. At the time of making this video his Full Gear match with Jay White was just announced. By the time that match takes place MJF will have surpassed Kenny Omega as longest reigning champion, and if he gets by Jay White, he will pass the one year mark, as he won the title on the same weekend last year.

Before I get into my list, I want to hear your ideas. Please let me know in the comments who you think will be the next AEW World Champion and why.

1) Swerve Strickland

I'm not just saying this because of his line in a promo with Hangman saying that if he had the same opportunities as Page had he'd be the first black AEW World champion, but I honestly feel like Swerve would kill it as the World champion. When allowed to which he hasn't always, Swerve often delivers one of the better matches of any show he's on. At All In, Swerve felt like a big star, and completely at home across the ring from an icon like Sting, which by the way is a match he manifested on his podcast and made it happen. Then at WrestleDream he beat Hangman in what felt like validation of him as a top star for the promotion. Swerve needed a big win against a credible talent, and he got one that night in Seattle. This coming Tueday he's set to wrestle Bryan Danielson, and honestly if feels like he might get another huge win. It also seems like Tony Khan is a fan of Swerve, despite his early dubious booking of the guy.

Swerve has also made it sound like his personal goal, not exactly in these words, is to make WWE regret releasing him, and there's no better way for him to do that than to conquering All Elite Wrestling and proving his worth in the main events. The quiet part of that goal might be to eventually go back with a bigger profile than he left with ala Drew Mcintyre and Cody Rhodes, which I can totally see him doing. He showed a lot of promise in NXT, and was let go right after being called up to Smackdown, along with the rest of Hit Row. He had a bit of a slow start in AEW, being in a long team and feud with Keith Lee, then being handed a parade of henchmen that he frankly didn't need. As an early ROH fan I  love his nods back to the Embassy, even going as far as to wear the no longer with us Jimmy Rave's entrance robe, and it suits him well. His relationship with Prince Nana had been allowed to build organically too, with Swerve dictating Nana's pace depending on his mood. If Swerve doesn't feel like it, Nana can't dance. Swerve comes across to me at least, as a badass who controls his own empire stoically, and thats a surprisingly rare thing when you look at a lot of other top heels these days. Maybe you could put Roman in that category when he leaves his grievances to Paul Heyman to deal with.

If they spent the next few months having Swerve knock off a few more big names, I could see him being ready to challenge MJF by Revolution, because the one thing he was lacking but is not slowly gaining is big wins. A few wins over the likes of Danielson would set him up right, and tell me they wouldn't be great matches too.

2) Eddie Kingston

I know this isn't likely, but this is a fantasy booking video so I can say it, how freaking great would a MJF vs Eddie Kingston main event feud be? The promos alone would be a sight to behold, and both men like to draw from their personal histories to provide context to promos at every chance they get. Talk about pro wrestling storytelling, this might well be epic. When I started writing this video Eddie hadn't yet won the Ring of Honor World title, but my point still stands that the story could be epic given time.

Eddie has for so long been the nearly man who succeeds every once in a while. He's the man who at the start of the pandemic sold his wrestling boots prior to his AEW debut, where he wasn't guaranteed to leave with a job but he did. All of this is to avoid calling him an underdog, because you could apply that term but Eddie is deeper than that as a character. If he wasn't, a better comparison would be Mikey Whipwreck, and he beat Steve Austin for the ECW World title. Yes he recently won the ROH World title, but imagine if that was just the start of him ascending, putting a new spin on the classic underdog story.

Right before the pandemic, Eddie was telling an interesting story in Progress Wrestling that never really got going. Eddie did one promo in particular about being the last of his generation not to make it to a major promotion, and now the generation younger were passing him by, and he was sick of watching it happen. He at the time had targeted then NXT UK roster member and new NXT Champion Ilja Dragunov, and as we've come to expect from the Mad King, his promo made you feel his angst and rage.

Eddie is the perennial nearly man just like Tommy Dreamer was in ECW, but every once in a while the nearly man in wrestling has to win to keep himself in the game. He did this recently by winning the NJPW Strong title, but how much more meaningful would it be for Eddie Kingston to even for a day be AEW World Champion. Maybe before he gets a shot at MJF, he might have to get that big win over Jon Moxley, calling back to their 2020 feud over the World title, and once he has that behind him he could maybe earn a shot some time next year.

3) Jungle B-

3) Jay White

When Jay White first won the IWGP heavyweight title from Hiroshi Tanahashi back in 2019 he was a fairly contentious figure amongst fans. Some saw him as the future, and others thought he was undeserving. Personally even though I loved Tanahashi and his win over Kenny Omega, I was sad that his likely last major title reign was over as soon as it was, but I was also a fan of Jay White and the potential in him back then. Now four years and another World title reign later the Switchblade is in AEW, and leading his own brand of Bullet Club. I could totally see Jay blind siding all of us and having a Bullet Club Gold a hostile takeover to end Full Gear.

The main thing Jay lacks right now, much like Swerve is big singles victories. He's proven himself elsewhere but not in AEW yet. Once thing I would have loved out of CM Punk's second AEW run was a singles match between the two, and imagine what it would have done for Jay to win that match, but it wasn't to be. I don't see MJF losing at Full Gear myself, but maybe Jay in retaliation might earn a later shot having beaten some other top card talent and come back in win down the line?

4) Adam Cole

Let's get the obvious one out of the way. Now I'll be honest in saying that I'm a bit of a recent convert to this idea. While I enjoyed the current storyline as it happened, I wasn't thrilled about it main eventing Wembley Stadium, however live and in person I absolutely loved the match they gave us and the story that was told. It felt like a big important main event. There were people sitting around me that fully believed when the two double pinned each other that the show was about to end, and they were very, very angry.

The way All In ended left many open branches as to where the story could go. Cole and MJF won the ROH tag titles, which by the way was a very clever move as nobody seems to care much about ROH these days, and having them on it might help for a while. I still haven't given up on the idea that Cole will turn on us all and align with Roderick Strong and the Kingdom. He does after all have history with Taven and Bennett that admittedly I don't know much about. Unfortunately for AEW they weren't able to reunite the Undisputed era for various reasons, Bobby, but maybe the Kingdom plus Roddy group could take that role with Adam Cole at the helm? They could even involve Kyle O'Reilly should he be fit enough to come back. The end of last weeks Dynamite has been much discussed, and my view right now is that it is leading to a Cole, Roddy, and Kingdom faction.

Throughout the Cole and MJF story one thing I wasn't having was the umpteenth attempt at MJF teasing turning babyface and usually doesn't in the end, but All In felt like they were making the biggest effort ever to try and convince us that the guy who refers to himself as the Devil could actually turn the corner. Him chasing a heel group led by Adam Cole is an interesting prospect in itself, and one that could maybe even take us back to Wembley Stadium for the payoff if they play it right.

So those are my four ideas, if you have a different one please let me know in the comments. Despite everything I just said, I walked out of Wembley Stadium with the thought in my head that in the era of longer title reigns we seem to be in, MJF could well still be AEW World Champion come All In next year, and right now I'd be fine with that.

WCW's EVP going into the 1990's, Jim Herd

This is a script for a video on my YouTube channel. You can find the full video by clicking Here.

On the September 9th 1991 edition of Prime Time Wrestling, Bobby Heenan would introduce a new major signing to WWE. He wasn't just a World champion, according to Heenan he was the 'real Worlds champion'. Out walked The Nature Boy, Ric Flair, carrying a familiar piece of hardware, the WCW International Heavyweight title as it was known at the time, also known colloquially as the Big Gold Belt. But how did a major WCW title end up on WWE programming? The short answer is a man who was serving as EVP of WCW at the time, Jim Herd. I'll get to more about Jim and Ric's history a bit later.

What most know about Jim's career pre-WCW is that he at one time was a manager at Pizza Hut, but he also had experience in the television industry, being a former production executive for KPLR-TV in St. Louis. This was the same channel that aired 'Wrestling at the Chase', which ran on the channel for twenty four years, though it's not clear if Herd had anything to do with that product. Likely due to this experience and also a connection to a Turner executive, Herd was hired by Turner Broadcasting and placed in charge of WCW in January of 1989.

Creative or crazy?

Chances are if've heard of Jim, you've mostly heard bad stories about him. He's not exactly the most popular executive amongst wrestlers who worked for him, and for a few very good reasons. His lasting reputation is that he seemed to have not a lot of product knowlege, and didn't seem willing to learn any, but still wanted to contribute ideas. He was credited with such ideas as a tag team of wrestling hunchbacks, who could never be pinned as both of their shoulders were never on the mat together. Herd apparently thought that this would make the team unbeatable, until it had to be explained to him that there are in fact, other ways to win a wrestling match. This is perhaps indicative of the level of wrestling knowlege we're dealing with. That idea was quickly rejected by the booking committee who knew much better, but occasionally one of Herd's daft ideas would make it to the ring. Introducing the Ding Dongs, played by Greg Evans and Richard Sartain who had previously worked as the Rock n Roll Rebels.The team would come running out wearing awful orange costumes, thankfully with masks so they couldn't be identified, billed from Belleville USA, of which there actually is one in Illinois. To make things worse they would be wearing bells on their wrists and ankles, and would have a bell in the corner that they would ring to fire themselves up. To be fair to them, neither Evans or Satrain look to be bad wrestlers in the slightest, but the gimmick wouldn't ring in much success. As best I can tell Jim Herds reason for this ridiculous gimmick was he was trying to come up with wacky characters that kids would love, because thats what he saw the WWE doing with acts like the Bushwackers. Unfortunately though Herd seemed to be taking the wrong lessons from how WWE gained its national audience, as the sillier gimmicks didn't last long there either.

One unfortunate wrestler who personified not one but two of Herds bad ideas was Brad Armstrong, brother of Brian Armstrong better known as the Road Dogg. In September 1990 Brad would be repackaged as the Candyman, wearing candy can coloured tights and throwing sweets out to the crowd on his way to the ring. Years later Herd claimed that the reasoning behind this gimmick was not just to appeal to children, but also to try and get a brand deal with Hershey which fell through. Later on near the end of Herd's time in WCW, Brad would be given a new costume to wear. A new, suspiciously familiar costume, recoloured to match the WCW logo of the time. Yes, Brad would be bitten by a radioactive shitty idea, and would become Arachnaman, complete with silly string shooting from his hands. Maybe a young Serpentico might have seen this, who would have been seven years old at the time. As you might well imagine, Marvel comic's super legal team got involved fairly quickly and the Arachnaman gimmick was squashed. If you're going to infringe on Marvel's trademarks, you might as present it well, like when the AWA's Terry Boulder became 'The Incredible Hulk Hogan". They billed Arachnaman from Web City, not even New York!

Speaking of brand deals, Jim was also responsible for another infamous brand deal with a sneaker brand Roos, now known as KangaROOS. I'd genuinely never heard of these before making this video, and I don't know how I feel about shoes with pockets but thats neither here nor there... According to Jim Cornette in one of his dozens of shoot interviews where he talks about Herd, Jim arranged for the WCW wrestlers to work their matches wearing Roos', but the wrestlers hated this so the edict was quickly removed. There are also numerous adverts that are still with us through the magic of YouTube that feature various WCW stars promoting the sneakers with the tagline "shoes for your feet, pockets for your stuff" that very much sounds like it came from an SNL sketch, I can even hear it being said in Phil Hartmans voice.

I can't talk about Jim Herds creative input without talking about one of the craziest idea that has been attributed to him. It seems like he and one Ric Flair never really got a long, and it also seemed like Herd didn't care much for sticking with established gimmicks that had worked for years, like Flair had at the time. It has been claimed for many years by Ric himself that Jim once pitched an idea for Ric Flair to trade his suave suits and long blonde locks, and to become a Roman gladiator, now going by the name Spartacus. Clearly this was never going to actually happen, and in a 2020 interview with Conrad Thompson, Herd would deny that this was ever actually pitched, and that many silly ideas would be thrown into meetings, but many were tongue in cheek and not meant to be serious suggestions, or thats what he implied at least. Jim also noted that the idea came from Turner buying a backlog of black and white movies and colourising them. It was felt that there was a need to cross promote these movies, and this may have been where the Spartacus idea came from. There is some weight to this given Tony Schiovone's explanation of Robocop being in WCW later on was that there was pressure from Turner to co-promote with the release of Robocop 2.

Herding Jim's enemies

As I mentioned earlier, Jim wasn't much popular with many wrestlers, and if the stories are true, he didn't do much to change that. One such wrestler that hated Herd is a man who is known to hold a grudge or two, The Franchise Shane Douglas. In a 2018 shoot interview Shane told a story about once meeting Herd in his Atlanta office. Shane claimed that Jim talked down to him the entire time, and at one point handed him a document while saying "you probably won't understand this just being a wrestler." Shane, with his two Masters degrees in education, wasn't thrilled by this comment, and claims not only to have understood the document which included rating information for various other wrestling shows, but he understood it better than Herd.

Another of Herds more famous enemies was Jim Cornette, who as you can probably imagine has talked endlessly about Herd over the years. In fact, he has done entire shoot interviews about the period of his career where he worked for Herd, I recommend in particular his Timeline: 1989 interview by Kayfabe Commentaries. If I went through Cornette's grievances with Jim Herd we'd be here all day, and Jim tells it all way better himself but I'll share this one story. Having left WCW in October 1990, one year before Herd would leave, Jim upon hearing about how bad WCW's business had gotten would be inspired to send Jim a funeral wreath of black roses, with a card that read "my deepest sympathies for the death of your  wrestling promotion". According to Cornette Herd was fuming when he received the wreath, and placed it on the desk of Jim Ross, who worked in the WCW offices at the time.

Sorry for teasing you at the start, but now we get to Herd biggest blunder of all, managing to get the WCW World championship into the hands of his competition. Flair and Herds feud resulted mainly from Ric Flair being the WCW booker at the time, and Herd constantly wanting to get involved and change things. In 1991 Ric would finally have enough to the point of quitting the company, while he was the International champion as it was then called. In Jim Cornette's Timeline 1990 interview with Kayfabe Commentaries, Jim actually shows a copy of the actual resignation letter that Flair sent. Back in those days, in order to be the NWA world champion, which is what the International title upheld the lineage of, the new champion was required to pay a deposit of $25,000, which would be repaid back to the champion upon losing the belt. This was essentially to keep said champion responsible and to make sure they made all required bookings, as any money lost by a promoter would be repaid to them from the deposit. When Ric left WCW, he claimed that for whatever reason the deposit wasn't returned to him, so he kept possession of the belt. When Ric arrived in WWE in September 91 he considered the belt his, and as a way of sticking it to Jim Herd, he made the Prime Time appearance with the belt, claiming to be the 'real Worlds champion".

Much like with Marvel and Arachnaman earlier, WCW and Turners legal team got involved pretty quickly. Going forward WWE would not be allowed to use the belt, so they would have Flair come out with a modified tag team title belt, and they would blur it out in the edit to make it look like Flair was still using the WCW belt. Flair claimed that when he agreed to send the belt back once WCW paid him the deposit, but Herd refused. However not long after this incident in January 1992 Jim Herd would resign from Turner Broadcasting, and Ric Flair would return a month later. Upon his return, Ric claimed in a 2004 WWE Interview that he was paid the deposit plus interest.

In all my years of listening to and reading interviews with wrestlers, I don't remember ever hearing a good thing said about Jim Herd. He was clearly a capable business man to have reached such a high corporate level, but clearly didn't understand enough about the wrestling business, and yet tried to influence it anyway. As I mentioned earlier at the age of 88 years old, Jim Herd gave his first interview in decades to Conrad Thompson on his Ad Free Shows platform. I won't share too much from that interview given that it's behind a paywall, but Herd claims that his biggest achievements that he brought to WCW were improvements to the visual presentation of the shows such as better entrance sets, pyro and ramps.

In the end Jim Herd is one of those people that history doesn't remember kindly, but it's worth noting that he was the first in a line of WCW EVP's who failed to turn the company's fortunes. On Herd's watch came the classic Flair/Steamboat trilogy, the ascension of Sting and many more legendary talents, and yet WCW was still struggling. One thing you can't deny though is that Jim was an influential figure in pro wrestling going into the 90's, one who now in his 90's is still talked about today.

Sources used for this script:

Prime Time debut: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWUx-iuvpOQ

ding dongs debut (Clash 7): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHcMK3a4Vj8

Shane Douglas on Jim Herd: https://m.facebook.com/TheHannibalTV/videos/shane-douglas-on-jim-herds-wcw-regime/441552703743887/

Herd denies Spartacus: https://www.fightful.com/wrestling/jim-herd-we-never-considered-changing-ric-flair-s-name-spartacus

Cornette funeral wreath: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_6yjSD8lLk

Ric Flair interview re Herd: http://www.mediaman.com.au/interviews/flair_silvervision.html

Why Shane Douglas threw down the NWA World Championship

This is a script for my YouTube channel. You can find the video by clicking Here

August 27th 1994 should have been a proud moment for the National Wrestling Alliance. It was the day that they were set to crown a new World Champion, their own World champion following the separation of the Alliance from WCW.  Crowning a new champion was an exciting prospect for the NWA with it's top title no longer under WCW's control as it had been. It also signified the return of the most famous design of the NWA World title as WCW had replaced it with what is today known as the 'big gold belt'.  A one night tournament was held in Philadelphia Pennsylvania in one of the alliances' biggest territories, Eastern Championship Wrestling, including some impressive names of the day like the Tazmaniac, Dean Malenko, and Doink the Clown for some reason. The final of the tournament saw two more up and coming stars vie for the gold, with Shane Douglas, the former dynamic dude, defeating Too Cold Scorpio to win the championship, but what happened next the NWA hadn't bargained for, as Shane took the microphone, presumably to give his victory speech.

"I stand here before God and my Father in Heaven tonight, as I said I would be, Worlds heavyweight champion. In the tradition of Lou Thez. In the tradition of Jack Brisco, of the Brisco brothers (not those ones). Of Dory Funk Jr. Of Terry Funk, of the real nature boy Buddy Rogers upstairs tonight. From the Harley Race's to the Barry Windhams, to the... Ric Flair's. I accept this heavyweight title. Of Kevin Von Erich, of the fat man himself Dusty Rhodes, this is it tonight Dad. And Rick Steamboat, and they can all kiss my ass." With that line, Shane would take his newly won World championship, whose lineage could be traced back to 1948, and he would throw it to the ground. Shane goes on to declare the NWA to be a dead promotion, proclaiming himself the new ECW world champion. Why did Shane do this? Who's idea was it? What would be the consequences for Eastern Championship Wrestling?

According to Shane Douglas in a 2018 interview, the whole idea came from ECW's founder Todd Gordon and booker Paul Heyman, who had been part of creative in ECW for almost a year by that point. Shane was already ECW's champion at the time, having beaten Terry Funk for the title in March of 94, so the plan was made since ECW was one of the largest and best drawing NWA territories at the time, to crown the ECW champion as NWA World champion also. In the 2005 WWE produced documentary 'The Rise and Fall of ECW, Paul Heyman claims that he pitched the idea as a way of breaking Eastern Championship Wrestling away from the traditional perception of wrestling upheld by the NWA. In Paul's words, the old school NWA was "everything we wanted to get away from". In that documentary Paul doesn't mention a man who is important to this story, who Paul and Todd Gordon had heat with at the time. A fellow promoter and competitor who he claimed in a 2006 interview would call the fire department on ECW shows claiming overcrowding just to be a nuisance, Dennis Corraluzzo.

The match and Shane's actions would air on the August 30th episode of Eastern Championship Wrestling, and would be followed by an interview with at the time joint NWA president who was in the building that night, Corraluzzo. Dennis was a fellow promoter in the Philadelphia and New Jersey area, and had made clear his distaste for Todd Gordon and ECW because of it's mature product. Even before ECW became extreme by name, they had already begun the shift towards its new direction. Dennis also was against ECW hosting the title tournament, but was over-ruled by the NWA board as ECW was one of the few Alliance members with a stable television presence, therefore it would give the new champion more exposure. At the time, Dennis was understandably shocked by what he saw in the ring, but was assured by Todd and Paul that it was just a storyline to start an NWA vs ECW feud. Neither side, Dennis on one and Paul and Todd on the other trusted the other's intentions for the NWA World title, so Paul and Todd planned the swerve to distance themselves from the NWA, to create buzz for their new brand, and to firmly define Shane Douglas as their guy. Having won the NWA world title tournament, their regional champion was now able to rebrand himself as a World champion in the eyes of ECW's fans.

On the Hardcore TV episode moments after Douglas' actions were aired, Corraluzzo, who at this point still wasn't aware he had been swerved, claimed on camera that Shane was still the NWA champion and the NWA board would get involved since ECW was one of their members. Little did he know at the time that his comments would play directly into Todd and Paul's hands, as this interview would be directly followed by a message from Todd Gordon himself, announcing that NWA Eastern Championship Wrestling as a company was being folded, and in it's place would be Extreme Championship Wrestling, not an NWA member and so not subject to it's rules. The show would close with the Public Enemy, one of ECW's hottest tag teams of the day, spray painting over the word 'Eastern' on the logo banner, and painting the word extreme under it. While the name 'Hardcore TV' had existed since April '93, the following weeks show aired on September 6th 1994, would be the first episode of Extreme Championship Wrestling.

In the interview with Shane Douglas I referenced earlier, he noted that he initially felt that the idea when pitched to him by Paul Heyman was the wrong thing to do. In the promo when he won the title he listed many esteemed names that had held that honour, who he did have respect for , well most of them. For those not in the know Shane held a long time grudge against Ric Flair for his treatment in WCW while Flair was booking the shows, a grudge he has referenced for decades now. He claimed to spend the whole week leading up to the event wrestling with the idea of it, and notes that Paul never forced him to do it. He claims his mind was made up after receiving a phone call from of all people, Mike Tenay, future voice of TNA Wrestling, who at the time hosted a radio show called 'wrestling insiders'. Tenay told Douglas that on his show the previous night Dennis Corraluzzo made some negative comments about him. When Shane heard the comments from a man Shane didn't even really know, he was incensed, and this was enough to convince him to follow Heymans plan. Dennis, again not knowing what he had started, unwittingly caused a great deal of damage to the NWA, damage that it would take a long time for the Alliance to come back from.

In November he would oversee another tournament to crown a new NWA World champion, this time held in association with Jim Cornette's Smokey Mountain Wrestling. Jim has stated that given his former ties to the NWA and respect for it, he was appalled when he learned what had happened. Jim has a fairly rocky history with Paul Heyman, and this no doubt made things worse between them. Cornette has claimed that while not an official NWA member, he offered to host a new tournament to crown a champion, one Cornette trusted in future ECW star Chris Candido. Unfortunately for the NWA the bloom was already off the rose, and the NWA would struggle through the rest of the 1990's. There would be a few notable names to hold the title over the next eight years, such as Sabu, Steve Corino, more ECW names, and former UFC champion Dan Severn, who in his first reign held it for four years and a month. After some dark years for the title where it usually changed hands at non-televised events, it wouldn't be until NWA TNA launched in June 2002, that the title would be seen by a national, and eventually global audience as TNA grew.

While the NWA entered it's wilderness years through the rest of the 90's ECW would continue to thrive. At this point I'll confess that this video has an ulterior motive. While continuing the videos I make on this channel, I also want to chronicle ECW month by month, starting with Shane Douglas throwing down the NWA title and ECW becoming extreme. If you're interested in this idea please let me know in the comments, and I'll hopefully cover September 1994 very soon.

Sources (directly referenced)

ECW August 30th 1994: https://network.wwe.com/video/73525/ecw-hardcore-tv-aug-30-1994?playlistId=15447

Heyman 2006 interview: https://www.pwinsider.com/ViewArticle.php?id=20037&p=1

Shane Douglas Interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBBB9hakIPA&t

Cornette on Shane throwing the belt down: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlU18p0LlRM

What happened when Ric Flair went to Ring of Honor?

This is a script for a video on my YouTube channel. You can find the full video by clicking Here.

For this video I want to take you back to a different time in wrestling. Back when there was one major company, a distant second and an even more distant everyone else. Amongst that everyone else, Ring of Honor was a growing company that showed promise, but it had been built on the efforts of it's largely home grown talent, many of whom would become superstars, but weren't there yet. They needed something more if they were going to grow past being a small company reliant on DVD sales. They were going to need a star to give them legitimacy with the wider wrestling audience, and of all people they managed to recruit the dirtiest player in the game. But what would happen when Ric Flair would enter Ring of Honor? First we'll look at the changing landscape of ROH at the time, then where Ric Flair's career was, and the timeline of his relationship with the indie. Finally, we'll try to figure out what went wrong and how it happened.

ROH in 2009

The late 2000's were a very pivotal time in Ring of Honor history in terms of changes that impacted the entire company. Since the start of the promotion all wrestlers and storylines had book booked largely by one man, Gabe Sapolsky. Gabe had spent the previous years before ROH working for ECW but more importantly, he spent those years sitting under the learning tree of Paul Heyman himself. Gabe's booking from ROH's early years is still fondly remembered by fans two decades later, from the beloved 'Summer of Punk, to the nearly two year reign of Samoa Joe as World Champion. Many, Many wrestlers that Gabe brought into Ring of Honor went on to become big stars, proving that he had an extraordinary eye for talent. On the screen right now is not even a complete list of the sheer talent Gabe had an influence on in their early careers.

In late 2008 then owner Cary Silkin made the decision to remove Gabe from his position as Booker after about six and a half years. Gabe who admitted afterwards that he had been feeling burned out after putting all of his focus into ROH, was great at drawing the fan that wanted a stronger style of wrestling, but Cary felt that the company would need to change it's product to be more accessible in order to grow the company. Cary was mostly a fairly passive owner, leaving the day to day operations to his booker and other staff, but stepped in when he saw the company's decline in live attendance and dvd sales throughout 2008, which were vital in keeping the company going. Aside from any revenue ROH made, Cary had put a lot of his own money into the company, and thus wanted to recoup his losses.

When Gabe left, Cary replaced him with an interesting choice, an active wrestler who appeared to have a good relationship with a lot of the ROH locker room, 'Scrap Iron' Adam Pearce, who at the time was also the NWA World champion wrestling all over the US and internationally. The same Adam Pearce seen on WWE television today. When Pearce was tasked with wrestling Roman Reigns on Smackdown a couple of years ago I hoped we might see shades of the old 'Scrap Iron', but sadly we didn't. When Adam took over the ROH product there became a very clear change. The excellent quality of wrestling was still there especially in their main events, but the overall tone of the shows felt lighter and more family friendly. One of Gabe's final projects, a dark emo stable known as the Age of the Fall, became very much toned down in terms of its violent nature. This is a group that debuted by hanging an already bleeding Jay Briscoe by his feet from the loop that just been used for a ladder match. The group's leader Jimmy Jacobs then proceeded to cut a promo standing underneath, as Briscoe's blood dripped down onto Jacobs' white suit, creating one of the most stunning moments in ROH history. Under Pearce there was none of that, and the groups future prospect was quickly separated from the group and pushed as a singles star. That prospect was a young Tyler Black, known today as Seth Rollins.

The changes to the product can maybe be best visualised in the transformation of one of ROH's top wrestlers of the time, Austin Aries. Around the time of Gabe's last shows Aries was presented as a very serious wrestler. The man who ended Samoa Joe's epic world title reign, who was going to time limit draws with Bryan Danielson, and who was battling Jimmy Jacobs in brutal matches. By mid 2009 Aries was almost a completely different wrestler, undergoing a vast makeover, adopting flashy new ring gear, and style. This was validated by Aries defeating Jerry Lynn to become the first ever two time ROH World champion, a title that he held until Tyler Black was ready to ascend to the throne in the following year. The newly christened 'A Double' felt like the figurehead of ROH's new direction, which was propelled forward by another major change, ROH's first foray into national television.

On March 21st 2009 Ring of Honor debuted ROH on HDNet. While HDNet was a start for the company, it wasn't the most accessible channel as to my understanding you needed an extra package on your cable to have the channel. Years later HDNets owner Mark Cuban would sell the channel, and it would become known as AXS tv, the current home of Impact Wrestling. The weekly one hour show at the time felt very different to the televised products of WWE and TNA of the time. One reason for this was ROH taping as many as six episodes over a weekend, usually from the former ECW arena. This meant that you only saw the big stars of ROH every few weeks as opposed to every single week on Raw. As a fan at the time I liked this, as I might get a thirty minute Bryan Danielson match one week, and it gave time enough to look forward to seeing Bryan wrestle again in a few weeks. The show was clearly aimed less as ROH's already die hard fanbase and more at casual or new fans. Character babyfaces like Delirious and weirdly, the Necro Butcher were featured, as well as traditional heels like the Embassy who a new fan would instantly recognise to be the bad guys. The birth of the HDNet show also brought something ROH had rarely used in the past, an on screen authority figure. Jim Cornette had previously, and would again in future take on the role, especially during the well regarded ROH vs CZW feud, but ROH wanted a bigger name for their HDNet show, which is where Ric Flair comes in.

Leave the Memories Alone

Much like for Ring of Honor, 2008 was something of a big year for Ric Flair too. Flair entered the year with a storyline in which Vince McMahon would force him to retire the next time he lost a match, which led to many near misses for Flair. This was slowly leading to one of the biggest matches of his at the time thirty six year long in ring career, which would take place at Wrestlemania 24. Throughout the whole of Wrestlemania weekend you could say that Ric Flair was the star attraction. On the Saturday night he was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame as the featured inductee, along side Mae Young, Rocky Johnson, High Chief Peter Miavia the Father and Grandfather of The Rock, famed announcer Gordon Solie, Florida promoter Eddie Graham and  Gerald and Jack Brisco. Flair would again be inducted in 2012 as a member of the Four Horsemen, making him the first of currently eight wrestlers to be inducted twice, as groups such as the nWo, DX, the Hart Foundation and Harlem Heat would follow.

On March 30th at Wrestlemania 24, Ric wrestled what was to be his final match against Shawn Michaels. While not a perfect match, it had enough story and drama in it that fans were truly along for the ride, capped off by Shawn's "I'm sorry, I love you" moment. Fairly early in Shawn would suffer a cracked rib which would go on to hinder him for the rest of the match. The injury came when Shawn would perform an Asai moonsault to the outside of the ring, missing Flair and landing ribs first on the spine of the Spanish announcers table. Apart from this scary moment Ric Flair claimed while discussing the match on his podcast that the rest of the match went according to plan, and was always going to end with the Sweet Chin Music. He also claimed that the famous line from Shawn Michaels hadn't been planned, or at least Flair didn't know it was coming. Clearly production must have known that the line was coming since the camera was there to get a perfect shot of Shawn mouthing the words, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Flair knew.

On Raw the next night, the show ended with tributes to Ric Flair. He was honored in the ring by many of his peers, from Triple H, to members of the Horsemen, to his family including a pre-wrestling career Charlotte, and eventually the entire roster. After the programme went off the air Flair, who by this point had no more tears left in his body was even shown ultimate respect by the Undertaker in a somewhat in and out of character moment. The entire weekend felt like the perfect sendoff for the Nature Boy. More on that later... While Ric would make a couple of appearances on Raw it still seemed that his days in the ring were done. 

Ric Flair and Ring Of Honor

So what did Ric Flair actually do in Ring of Honor? On March 13th 2009 ROH presented a show they titled 'Stylin' and Profilin' because of Flair's presence. He was there to observe the main event ROH World title match between Nigel McGuinness, who was nearing the end of his epic sixteen month long reign and his challenger for the night Brent Albright, the man briefly known as Gunner Scott for a few months on Smackdown. The match would end in a disqualification as Claudio Castagnoli would interfere on Nigel's behalf, and Flair would actually enter the ring to make the save.

Around this time Ring of Honor would announce that Flair would become an 'ROH Ambassador' and heavy promoted him for their HDNet show. He would make his first TV appearance on the May 2nd 2009 HDNet episode. He begins the show with an in ring promo complimenting ROH in the most Ric Flair way, by claiming that the next Flair, Shawn Michaels or Triple H might be in the ROH locker room, which is not exactly what a die hard ROH fan would have wanted to hear given that many of them loved the indie for it not being like WWE. He was then interrupted by Austin Aries, planting the seeds for what would come later. On the following week's episode Flair would appear in a backstage interview talking up the roster whose names I bet he couldn't have told us without a prompter. On the May 16th episode he heads to the ring again, this time to announce a four way match for the ROH World title in which the new champion who by this point had dethroned Nigel, Jerry Lynn, would defend against Austin Aries, Bryan Danielson and Tyler Black. On the June 6th episode, Ric would be interviewed before the four way that I mentioned before, and would talk about the importance of being in a World title match. As best as I can tell all of these episodes were taped in early April at the second ever HDNet tapings. On the June 13th episode that would have been the first of a new set of tapings, commentators Dave Prazak and Mike Hogewood note that Ric Flair had stepped down as ROH's ambassador, and he wouldn't be seen in the company again.

Aside from the HDnet show, at this time ROH was still running events that were primarily released on DVD, a huge aspect of their income especially in the early years. While Ric Flair appeared on the aforementioned 'Stylin and Profilin' show, he was next advertised to appear at The Hunt Begins on April 17th in Montreal, but apparently no showed the event. Undoubtedly the biggest wrestling related catastrophe to ever hit that city. Following this event, Ring of Honor would proceed to sue Ric Flair for money that he had been paid in advance to appear. The lawsuit revealed that Ring of Honor were paying Flair ten thousand dollars per appearance, and thirty five thousand on top of that to be their Ambassador on the HDNet show, though ROH was claiming that Flair owed them a total of forty grand. According to a 2011 article by Cageside seats, part of Ric's conditions for bookings included a refundable five thousand dollar deposit, and this may contribute to the amount ROH was owed for not being their Ambassador and no showing in Montreal.

When Ric Flair officially left Ring of Honor, he claimed that he did so to go back to WWE, which he technically did, making a very brief comeback, and by brief I mean two weeks. He would get into an in ring dispute with Randy Orton on May 25th 2009's Raw, and a week later he would receive a dreaded Orton punt kick and would disappear again. It turns out based on what happened next that Flair may have used his WWE link to get out of his ROH deal, in order to to explore some other opportunities. In November of 2009 Flair would break his in ring retirement, wrestling on the Hulkamania: Let the Battle Begin tour in Australia. I won't go into too much detail here as the tour definitely deserves it's own deep dive, but Flair crucially would wrestle in four main events, losing to Hulk Hogan every time.

The next time Ric Flair would be seen on a major platform would be a night etched in the memories of every TNA fan of the time. January 4th 2010, the debut of the ill fated attempt by TNA compete head to head with Raw, which only lasted around three months. The first episode featured a former WWE star either debuting or returning in what felt like every single segment, including Ric Flair who would be paired with TNA champion AJ Styles. Flair would stay in TNA for two years, wrestling twelve matches before eventually making his way back to occasional WWE appearances. Michael Bochicchio, which by the way I apologise if I'm pronouncing wrong, is a former friend of Ric who I'll return to in the next section, alleged in a 2011 interview with Cageside Seats that TNA offered Ric a four hundred thousand dollars per year deal. Given how Ring of Honor weren't using him on every show, he was never going to make the kind of money TNA was offering while with the much smaller Ring Of Honor. Until his to date final match in 2022, his last would have been a loss to Sting on a 2011 episode of Impact, but more problems continued to follow Flair.

From what I can tell ROH eventually sued Flair in 2011, citing that he had been with TNA for long enough that he feasibly could have paid them back by then, but from what I can tell the ROH vs Flair lawsuit never really went anywhere. I've also seen it claimed that when Sinclair Broadcasting purchased the ROH in 2012, they showed no interest in perusing the previous owners debt, which might be accurate as Cary seems to be claiming that it was his own money and not ROH's. Over the years Ric Flair has been fairly quiet about Ring of Honor, but in March of this year he was directly asked about them on his podcast. Ric claimed talking to Conrad Thompson that the deal fell through when someone asked him to bad mouth WWE in a promo, but never really explains any further. In his exact words, Flair says "They asked me to go out and say that they were a bigger product than WWE, but I said I'll absolutely never do that. They said you're under contract, say what you're told and I said I'm under contract for that? Not for that, I won't do it. Thats all it was, simple as that." He also briefly implies that ROH's plan was for him to go to a strip club before the show, but that gets glossed over so we still don't know what that meant. Flair doesn't say who "they" are who told him to do this, and moves on to burying Bocchichio. Around this time ROH would never really bury other promotions on screen except within agreed upon promotional feuds with CZW and later Chikara, so this claim doesn't feel like the true story. With respect to Conrad, he could have grilled Ric on his statement a bit more, maybe ask for clarification. Flairs 2023 comments caused Cary Silkin to again reiterate that Flair owed him the forty one grand, not sure where that extra thousand came from, for appearances Flair didn't make. Money Cary will likely never see quite frankly.

In the podcast Flair also claims that the ROH deal was put together by the owner of HighSpots, Michael Bochicchio who I mentioned earlier, who has had his own financial disputes with Ric. In researching for this video I found a story of Flair giving Highspots an NWA championship belt as collateral for a loan. According to Highspots, Flair never repaid the loan leading to them attempting to sell the belt, but they quickly found that it wasn't theirs to sell, as Flair had previously used the same belt as collateral to a company called Conbraco Industries for a different loan. Conbraco by the way was a plumbing heating valve company making this even stranger. The article I found this information from at Cageside Seats claims that Flair also gave Conbraco more items as collateral, most notably his first WWE Hall of Fame Ring, and the Rolex watch that Shawn Michaels gifted him following Wrestlemania 24, and weirdly an autographed poster of Michael Jordan. Weeks later Dave Meltzer would clarify that the owner of Conbraco was a friend of Flair so that at least makes some sense. To be clear though these are allegations, and the money disputes between Flair and Highspots are very, very messy, so I'll include a link to the multiple articles in my blog which can be found in the video description if you would like some further reading. Frankly I wouldn't have known about any of this had Flair not mentioned the Highspots owner instead of focusing on Ring of Honor.

To be clear, as best as I can find, Ric Flair has never given a clear and concise explanation for his Ring of Honor run, other than his badmouthing WWE claim. He did reference this same claim against ROH in 2022 on an earlier version of his podcast with Mark Madden, another long time friend of Flair who he fell out with. There is however another theory about what might have happened, but I want to make it clear that this shouldn't be treated as absolute fact, and will get quite dark. It's been speculated that Flair made the deal with ROH partly to guarantee his son Reid a spot on their roster, only for this to never happen when Reid was arrested for driving while impaired right before Ric would appear for the company, but after he had been advertised. The timeline for this does add up, as Reid spent much of 2008 training to wrestle with Harley Race, and made his in ring debut in December of that year teaming with his brother David. He was arrested on March 4th, right before Flair's first ROH appearance and a again on April 26th, which was after the show that Flair didn't turn up for. Maybe ROH denied using Reid, who according to his Cagematch stats had only wrestled one match by the time of Flairs first appearance, (not including the two he had in WCW as a child), and so Flair reneged on his deal. When Reid sadly passed away at the age of twenty five, Mike Johnson of PWInsider as well as other obituaries noted that he had been slated to work for ROH but his arrest caused this not to happen, with Johnson in particular claiming that this might have led to Flair deciding to no longer appear for the company.

When I first read this I was very skeptical, as Flair probably could have got Reid straight into the WWE system with his connections, so why would he have joined an indie just to get him a spot. When Rey Mysterio returned to WWE it was fairly common knowlege that he was doing it to ensure that Dominik would get an opportunity to bypass the indies and train within WWE, so the idea that Flair couldn't do this initially felt suspect to me. At first I wondered if Flair might have felt that Reid should go through the indies because of what happened when David Flair was pushed straight onto Nitro and that didn't end well. Maybe that could have been Flairs approach? It turns out though that years later in a 30 for 30 documentary about Ric Flair, Triple H explained that Reid actually was on course to join WWE, but wasn't signed as he failed two drug tests, so maybe WWE just wasn't an option for the time being.

It's ironic in a way that the wrestler most famous for embodying the lifestyle of the rich and famous, the limousine riding, jet flying and all the rest son of a gun, famous for "living the gimmick", has been plagued by money troubles in the latter years of his life that grew more and more complicated. In researching Flair's life around this time I read some truly harrowing stories around his finances, his relationships, and even his health. They're out there if you choose to find them, but I don't want this to turn into Dark Side of the Ring. I'll instead leave you with a reminder of the amazing high's of Flair's long and successful time in the ring, because as the song chosen for Flair's retirement says, 'leave the memories alone.

Sources (that are directly referenced in the video)

Sorry line not planned https://talksport.com/sport/wrestling/692195/ric-flair-shawn-michaels-wwe-wrestlemania-2008-match/

Ric Flair on his time in Ring of Honor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agXGcnDWfmo

Flair saying he would never bad talk WWE and mentioning ROH in 2022: https://wrestlingnews.co/wwe-news/ric-flair-says-he-walked-out-on-roh-after-they-asked-him-to-bad-mouth-the-wwe

Highspots owner https://www.cagesideseats.com/2011/6/8/2213881/michael-bochicchio-of-highspots-talks-about-their-legal-dispute-with

ROH sues Flair https://bleacherreport.com/articles/335844-breaking-news-roh-sues-ric-flair

Highspots sues Flair https://www.cagesideseats.com/2010/8/3/1603875/highspots-sues-ric-flair-over-lack

Highspots sues Flair 2: https://www.cagesideseats.com/2011/5/26/2192312/tnas-ric-flair-charged-with-contempt-of-court-in-highspots-belt-case

PWInsider Reid: https://www.pwinsider.com/article/76485/reid-flair-passes-away.html?p=1

'The Wrestler in real life' profile: http://grantland.com/features/the-wrestler-real-life/