Coming soon to Tubi and YouTube internationally, WWE is set to launch it’s fourth weekly show, sort of, known as Evolve, but that name has a long history out on the indies. Over it’s ten years as an independent promotion, Evolve hosted many talents who would become future stars all over wrestling, with many of those becoming champions. Evolve may have been sold to WWE in 2020, but it’s beginnings were as indie as they could be, by which I mean in born out of a desire to stick it to ex-employers, allegedly. In this video, We’ll look at the events that led to Evolve. We’ll follow the timeline from it’s creation to the first event, as well as the wrestlers who were involved from the start, and how show one went. You might also hear from the company’s founder himself, if it gets past the YouTube copyright overlords.
Evolve’s story begins with it’s founder Gabe Sapolsky leaving Ring of Honor, where he had served as it’s booker from the start of the promotion to October 2008. According to the Wrestling Observer months afterwards, Cary Silkin, who had owned Ring of Honor since 2004, “fired Sapolsky on 10/25 in Edison, NJ, although it was largely because Silken wanted to take the company in another direction, feeling the product wasn’t drawing a mainstream audience. The argument was whether any significant audience of that type could be drawn without television, which the company didn’t have at the time.” His firing occurred at the event titled ‘Ring of Homicide 2’, a not at all daunting title for a new fan. Gabe’s last show was not a particularly stand out one, apart from the second of two return matches for the former World champion, who brought his LAX tag team partner Hernandez with him for a match with the Briscoes.
During Gabe’s time as booker, having cut his teeth working under Paul Heyman in ECW, he had gained a reputation for being an exceptional creative mind behind the promotion, earning several best booker awards and contributing to the rise of stars like CM Punk, Bryan Danielson, Samoa Joe and many more, but there was an argument of whether or not Gabe’s ROH could draw more eyes to it, or would it be stuck at the level it had gotten to? Following his absence, Ring of Honor would change it’s product, toning down the heavy emphasis on workrate, and it’s darker storylines like their emo group the Age of the Fall. These changes occurred under it’s new booker Adam Pearce now of WWE, who would help the move into television with Ring of Honor on HDNet. Gabe would later admit that he had begun feeling burnout in his role at ROH, so despite his stellar reputation, it may have worked out well for him.
In April 2009 Gabe’s new venture was made known, Dragon Gate USA. The project was announced by Japanese promotion Dragon Gate officially on April 15th, and the plan at the time to do six-ish shows per year, with Gabe at the helm. It was also announced that Dragon Gate intended to send over eight of their top Japanese wrestlers per show, and the rest of the card would be filled out with domestic talent. “The goal is to draw 400 to 600 fans per event, based on the idea that Dragon Gate itself has become well known enough in the U.S. to draw that level of a niche audience.” This announcement was in a way, a kick in the teeth for ROH, as they had previously had a good relationship with Dragon Gate, especially over Wrestlemania Weekend, which as Dave Meltzer noted in the Observer when covering the announcement were some of ROH’s most profitable and sought after shows each year. The most notable being Supercard of Honor 2006, which occurred on March 31st 2006 in Chicago Ridge, Illinois on the same weekend as Wrestlemania 22. That event featured a Dragon Gate showcase six man tag between Do Fixer and Blood Generation, six relatively unknown wrestlers at the time in the US, who would achieve a five star match for ROH, their third behind Samoa Joe vs CM Punk and Samoa Joe vs Kenta Kobashi. The dissolution of this relationship was a big deal for ROH at the time, and Dragon Gate looking to use a similar business model to ROH seemed like a bit of an underhanded move. The Observer reported at the time that “The concept is similar to ROH at the beginning, where they will look at DVD sales as a primary revenue stream. The annual shows with the Dragon Gate wrestlers were always among the best selling DVDs each year for ROH.”
Days before this announcement, CIMA of Dragon Gate, one of the six from that five star match, had taken to his Myspace page to explain why there had been no Dragon Gate presence on the recent ROH Wrestlemania weekend events, claiming that it came down to ROH not living up to financial agreements. Whether this is true or a way or breaking the relationship to start their own US presence, the timing of CIMA saying this and Dragon Gate’s announcement is interesting.
There’s a lot more to Dragon Gate USA which is more relevant for it’s own video, but it’s formation played a big part in the founding of Evolve. In the early days DGUSA used US talent that weren’t necessarily ROH made stars. The first card featured the Young Bucks largely through their Pro Wrestling Guerrilla links, and their friendship with CIMA. An eight man tag team match filled with Chikara talent also occurred, as the card took place in Philadelphia, where Chikara was based.
By November, Dragon Gate was set to put on their third pay per view, Freedom Fight 2009. Just before that though, the first inklings of Evolve were reported in Figure Four Daily by Bryan Alvarez. *clip 1* (Bryan reported that Gabe Sapolsky, as well as Full Impact Pro founder Sal Hamaoui and Davey Richards were leading the promotion, and no other details were available. “There was literally no other info about the group at press time, although there were all sorts of rumors about what kind of style the group would feature, etc. All I can say is that everyone involved is being very tight-lipped by design, so anything that comes out that wasn’t reported on their official site is probably premature.”) The inclusion of Davey Richards was interesting, as he was not only a fixture of Ring of Honor at that point, but he was even one half of their tag team champions with Eddie Edwards as the American Wolves, and had been for most of 2009. He had worked for FIP throughout the year though, and had wrestled one match for DGUSA, and would work for Dragon Gate proper in December as well. On November 12th, Bryan would speculate more, and report on the rule that singles wrestlers and tag team wrestlers would compete in separate divisions, and seemingly never the twain would meet. *clip 2*
A few days later the Wrestling Observer would provide a little more info. Dave speculated that the promotion will follow the Dragon Gate USA model of DVD releases and several pay per views a year, and as far as the style of the promotion, “All Sapolsky has said is that they are going to work around each individual talent’s strengths and weaknesses, and regards to rumors it would be a shoot style promotion, he said that there isn’t enough talent to pull that direction off.” The next information was revealed in the November 17th Figure Four, when it was reported that TJ Perkins, Bobby Fish and Ricochet were set to join. It’s also noted that Davey Richards is not an owner of the company, “though that information came from Sapolsky originally so I would guess he just doesn’t want to be seen as one of those guys who is a worker and also a company owner.” In a rather weird note, Alvarez adds that “They’re saying that all competitors must “follow the inherent rules of sportsmanship and ethics that govern all sports,” which includes no biting the ears off dudes, no killing referees, etc.” It almost feels like it doesn’t need saying, but what he is getting at is the suspension and fines system that would be put in place from show one as a way of addressing rule breaking after the events.
In the following week, we finally get information about Evolve's first show. In the November 23rd Observer, Dave writes that “They are going to put more emphasis on wins and losses, and the web site already lists the wrestlers signed with won-loss records (they are all 0-0 to start with obviously). The debut show will be 1/16 in Rahway, NJ at the Rec Center, which is also the home base of Jersey All Pro Wrestling.” it’s also about ten miles from where Gabe got fired from ROH, coincidence? Probably. In another curious note, “They also are going to do a sports-like theme, as they showed videos of a football brawl, the Gilbert Yvel hitting the ref and the Mike Tyson ear-biting incident and noted that incidents like that would lead to suspensions.” It seemed that going in, Evolve's unique selling point was going to be “rules!”
It was though, a little more than that. On Evolve’s website, they would post the following mission statement. “Evolve is an attitude. Evolve is not a particular in ring style. It is not an age group. It is not strictly defined. Evolve has no limitations. It has no restrictions. It has no boundaries. Evolve is the ability to look into nothingness and instead of seeing nothing to recognise infinite potential and absolute possibilities. Evolve is the desire to be something greater than what we’ve become.” Aye, okay. Another feature of the Evolve website was it’s message board, which Gabe no doubt would have hoped would be a key part of his promotion’s online presence, much like the Ring of Honor’s message board was at the time.The one last notable thing I found on the archived version of the Evolve website is a contact form to report piracy anonymously for a free gift as a reward. I bet that got used a ton.
Around this time Evolve was also posting on it’s YouTube channel, on which some of the content still exists today. There are several short videos with some very 2009 editing, announcing roster members Davey Richards, Aeroform and Kota Ibushi. There was also a series of more cryptic videos featuring a man in shoes you’d expect Zoolander to wear, walking down a corridor. Briefly on the screen would flash an email address, abstract wrestler @gmail.com, and the number 161, referencing the Age of the Fall stable in Ring of Honor, whose code name before debuting in a similarly cryptic way was Project 161. These ended up revealing the debut of Jimmy Jacobs, who had many interesting storylines in Gabe’s time in ROH, and would also join Dragon Gate USA in January 23rd 2010, one week after Evolve’s first show.
The next note came from the December 1st Figure Four, and it's the announcement of Davey Richards facing Kota Ibushi in the debut main event. The December 9th Observer adds more roster members, including Brad Allen, Arik Cannon, Kyle O’Reilly, and the Dark City Fight Club, the latter also getting a video on Evolve’s YouTube channel. He added that we should expect new additions from Chikara, as well as the Jeff Peterson Memorial Cup, a tournament that had existed since 2003, but that year had been booked by Gabe, who quote, “said that there was a lot of undiscovered talent on those shows.” An early video on Evolve’s YouTube channel has footage from the event, referring to it as “the precursor to Evolve”.
Speaking of Kyle O’Reilly, in the previous week’s Observer Dave had written that he and Adam Cole, who were both young in their careers at the time, had worked the pre-show of the November 28th Dragon Gate USA show, and may have turned some heads. He said of them “O’Reilly is a protege of Davey Richards and Cole is a CZW wrestler. Nobody knew the two guys, but they got over great and will probably both end as a regulars with the Evolve promotion. (sic)”H The two would eventually arrive in Ring of Honor around the same time and team up as Future Shock, a team that I had totally forgotten about until making this video. Upon the breaking up for that team, the two would have a brutal hybrid rules match at Best in the World 2012, a match in which Cole would lose some of his teeth, and they would even go on to wrestle each other in the Tokyo Dome. Sorry for going off on a tangent, but I felt it was worth remembering.
More roster additions were announced as of the December 15th Figure Four, as a Chikara six man tag had been booked, adding Mike Quackenbush, Hallowicked, Jigsaw, Gran Akuma, Icarus and Brodie Lee to the card. As well Chuck Taylor and Cheech in a singles match, and TJP’s opponent was announced to be Munenori Siwa, making one his first US appearances. Chuck Taylor being in the singles division was an interesting choice, as in Chikara he teamed regularly with Akuma and Icasus as FIST, which stood for Friends in Similar Tights. It’s interesting given how the rules stated you could only be a singles or tag wrestler, and clearly Gabe wanted Chuck in the singles division.
In this same newsletter, Alvarez notes that Gabe Sapolsky had written in a blog that Bryan Danielson is the one who came up with the name Evolve, which is the first time I could find his name attached in any way. In the December 30th Observer, Dave explains Danielson’s involvement a bit more. “The Evolve name was actually the idea of Bryan Danielson, who e-mailed it to Sapolsky while on a tour of Japan. Danielson was originally planned to be the top star of the promotion, and he was originally going to announce the forming of the promotion at a Dragon Gate USA show, but before it happened, he signed with WWE.” Danielson at this point had wrestled one match for Dragon Gate USA, against Naruki Doi in September 2009. In his brief time away from WWE he would wrestle three more matches, including ones against SHINGO, later known as Shingo Takagi, and Jon Moxley, his seemingly last ever opponent at the time of me making this video.
In one final bizarre note before the first Evolve show, in the January 12th Figure Four Weekly, Bryan Alvarez reported that “will include an “Extreme Surprise” and they’re teasing that “INNOVATION WILL EVOLVE.” In other words, Tommy Dreamer is coming in.” Truly one of these is not like the others.
Before I get to Evolve’s first show, let’s hear from Gabe himself. On January 13th, just days before Evolve 1, Gabe was interviewed by Alvarez on Figure Four Daily. He talked in great depth about his thought process changing a little while after leaving ROH, and how that led to Evolve *clip 3* He then gave an interesting explanation for the heavy emphasis on rules and the enforcement of them, something he calls “the inherent rules of sportsmanship.” *clip 4*
On January 16th 2010, Evolve would finally hold it’s debut show, in front of an estimated 350 to 400 fans. In Bryan Alvarez’s report, he notes that “They also took a bunch of concepts out of MMA, but the matches were still indy-style pro-wrestling matches and not fake MMA a la UWFi.” He’s referring to the presentation of the show, in which every wrestler in each match would walk out to the same generic music, and each would be announced with their record, which was obviously 0-0. Post match they conducted interviews, ala Joe Rogan in the UFC Octagon. Alvarez reported that “There were mixed reviews on the first show, with some saying it was an interesting concept and others saying it just didn’t work and they wouldn’t go back”, but he also noted that Gabe was happy with how things played out, noting that they had laid the groundwork for things down the road. Final additions to the roster included the team of Aeroform, Flip Kendrick and Louis Lyndon, Mercedes Matrinez who defeated Niya, Silas Young who lost to Brad Allen, and Ken Doane who lost to Jimmy Jacobs, who also had a dispute with yes, Tommy Dreamer. Filling out the card was Johnny Gargano, who beat Chris Dickinson. As far as the card itself, Bryan noted that “many of the matches lasted under 10 minutes, a big departure from a lot of the stuff Gabe has booked in the past.” This didn’t apply to Davey Richards and Kota Ibushi in the main event though, which was described as an awesome match that went twenty.
On the show to push future roster additions, Brad Allen also made a challenge to Chris Hero for their next show in March. Hero’s team mate at the time in the King’s of Wrestling Claudio Castagnoli would also join for the second show, as would Adam Cole and Jon Moxley for the third. As rosters go for a new promotion, that’s a pretty impressive one, especially when you consider how many of them would go on to big things in the future. For the fourth and fifth shows, Bryan Danielson would wrestle, having been briefly released by WWE for the infamous neck tie incident when Nexus debuted on Raw. Looking at that roster, there are many, many future world champions for many different promotions.
Over time, Evolve would drop many of the MMA and other sports like aspects of their presentation, though the style would continue to be similar to what Gabe had booked in Ring of Honor. Many more talents would pass through Evolve on their way to greater success, and WWE has been reminding us of this on their way to Evolve coming back in their image. The new version hasn’t aired as of me making this, but it looks to be a new platform for new and aspiring talents to showcase themselves, and hopefully for them, one that gets more attention than Level Up did. And hopefully for us, Bully Ray isn’t anywhere near it in his Tough Enough Hardcore Holly role.
Sources:
Evolve YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@EvolveWrestling
DGUSA: https://www.youtube.com/@WWNLive/videos
Wrestling Observer April 20th 2009, DGUSA announcement https://members.f4wonline.com/wrestling-observer-newsletter/april-20-2009-observer-newsletter-draft-details-mania-business/
Supercard of Honor 2006 Dragon Gate six man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeKPZpA2fWQ&t=1s
Figure Four November 10th 2009 Evolve rumour https://members.f4wonline.com/newsletters/figure-four-weekly/nov-10-2009-figure-four-weekly-strikeforce-cbs-dixies-weird-meeting-stalking/
Wrestling Observer November 16th 2009 Evolve announcement https://members.f4wonline.com/wrestling-observer-newsletter/nov-16-2009-observer-newsletter-strikeforce-cbs-ufc-war-wwe-biz-great/
Figure Four November 17th 2009 Roster notes: https://members.f4wonline.com/newsletters/figure-four-weekly/nov-17-2009-figure-four-weekly-brocks-future-ufc-105-great-tna-ppv-shane-meets/
Wrestling Observer November 23rd 2009 First show info: https://members.f4wonline.com/wrestling-observer-newsletter/nov-23-2009-observer-newsletter-exclusive-lesnar-scoops-ufc-105-live/
Evolve mission statement: https://web.archive.org/web/20100309110313/http://www.evolvewrestling.com/
Evolve Roster March 9th 2010: https://web.archive.org/web/20100309110313/http://www.evolvewrestling.com/
Figure Four December 1st main event announcement https://members.f4wonline.com/newsletters/figure-four-weekly/dec-1-2009-figure-four-weekly-business-and-ppv-breakdown-rey-update-dgusa/
Wrestling Observer December 9th roster additions https://members.f4wonline.com/wrestling-observer-newsletter/dec-9-2009-observer-newsletter-kameda-does-gigantic-rating-masa-saito/
Jeff Peterson Memorial Cup footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4Z9qPCeRUs&t=4s
Wrestling Observer December 7th Cole and O’Reilly note https://members.f4wonline.com/wrestling-observer-newsletter/dec-7-2009-observer-newsletter-wrestlemania-biz-war-machine-rampage/
Figure Four December 15th, more matches and Danielson note https://members.f4wonline.com/newsletters/figure-four-weekly/dec-15-figure-four-weekly-tlc-ppv-3-hour-raw-ufc-107-lucha-year-end-showssheamus/
Wrestling Observer December 30th 2009 Bryan Danielson explained https://members.f4wonline.com/wrestling-observer-newsletter/dec-30-2009-observer-newsletter-ufc-vs-illegal-streams-roh-final/
Figure Four January 12th 2010 Tommy Dreamer note https://members.f4wonline.com/newsletters/figure-four-weekly/jan-12-2009-figure-four-weekly-faber-vs-aldo-possible-monday-night-war-2-raw-vs/
Figure Four January 19th Show one report https://members.f4wonline.com/newsletters/figure-four-weekly/jan-19-figure-four-weekly-ufc-sells-10-russohogan-week-2-genesis-recap-lesnar/
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