Here's some more various thoughts...
my first night as an actual member of the EWA (1999)crew on a show at the Lewiston,Maine Armory. Which I've said before to me is a great place to hold a wrestling show, it had that "elk's club in queens n.y" look to it in a way. I get there and after I get a table to set up for myself i'm setting my tapes up when i see Kidd USA and Damon D'Archangelo. Damon comes over and i'm doing the old school 'don't say much unless spoken to" deal because i'm 'new' to most of the crew here.
Damon sees my tapes and forgot I dealt in tapes. So he's looking at them as I'm setting them up and what i had decided to do was that night feature tapes from other New England Indy promotions I either worked in or was able to get. So damon bought acouple tapes and i handed him some (at the time)current issues of newsletters. I asked him to take them to the locker room and pass them around.
he did and suddenly a guy named Josh Shea comes up to me. He later became one of the owners of the promotion but at the time he was a manager and working behind the scenes. we shook hands and he said "You write for all them newsletters"? I nodded and he said "I read what you wrote, you seem to have alot of heat on you for what you write". At the time the EWA was just featured on MTV's 'trulife' show, so i chuckled and said "I really have heat now that I'm here with you guys but you know what? I just spin that shit to not many indy feds have that chance to get that kind of exposure, and if i was running this promotion i'd milk that every way I could, like 'the promotion that was featured on MTV...MTV's favorite wrestling promotion, etc etc.".
Alexander Worthington III came up to me soon after that and mentioned the kind of column i wrote and said 'you seem to be pretty pissed off". I replied "I'm going thru a divorce so alot of things are pissing me off".
That was the night one month after some tv tapings I have on tape where they showed it was fun to be a fan again. Which at the time i really needed.
I say that because after leaving WWA New England I was kinda pissed off, especially when it came to WWA after i found out they actually DID in some ways burn the towns i helped locally promote. They either burned the Jaycees in Rochester, burned the school district by not paying for the gym they used, and when it came to the Farmington, NH show how I wanted to promote who was on the WWF training dojo compared to how Mike Sparta ended up doing it on the posters that were made, really, and i mean really, if you have the talent that was on this show what do you do? Hype the shit up.
You had Steve(william) Regal, former WCW World tag team and World TV Champion...can't mention it they said...why not? That's THE PERFECT WAY to draw fans...jeff jarrett, former I-C Champion, can't say that, why not? Former NWA World Champion Dory Funk jr.(as a manager for Kurt Angle), nowhere on the poster...why not hype that up? Even though we did do good attendence, the fact they 'said' you can't hype up the talent on this dojo I think hurt and showed a 'lack' in HOW...to really hype up who you have.
Now, when the radio station i got did the advertising/ticket give away, you think they heeded to that 'can't mention' idea? hell no, they threw full bore into and rightfully so. When Mike Sparta found out he tried to yell at me about it the night of the show. What I replied back and was in no means nice about it was. "I got a radio station who'll plug every show you have, at a cost of 5 pairs of tickets that would've been given away anyway..so you pretty much have free advertising, free...f-r-double e, free. when you can do as good, let me know, until then appreciate the fact those radio [plugs are what sold alot of these tickets tonight". Fred Sparta, the owner, couldn't defend his brother and said i was right, he even said to Mike "Instead of billy learning from you maybe you should be learning from Billy because he's got a bigger draw here in NH, than we're gonna have on the show tomarrow in Mass so he's doing something right up here, leave him alone".
Common sense says you have this kind of great talent you do the obvious and hype the shit up, other promoters did when they had the WWF training dojo so why not go all out, the obvious IS to go all out to get as many asses in seats as you possibly can.
There was this building in Pembroke, NH called the Sports Emporium. pembroke is just outside Concord, real easy to get to, a pretty decent parking lot, etc etc. you could put 200-250 people in an upper balcony and close to 300 on the floor around the ring. I spent alot of time romancing the notion of a wrestling show there. This I know now would've been perfect for an EWA show and i thought for sure WWA would love this, right? Wrong...hence of me starting to see some writings on the wall..
First they said a 500 seat place was great but Mike was thinking they can draw 1000 people somewhere. my obvious question was "you, are gonna draw a thousand people, where...you can't even get 600 people on shows in Lynn and wittman mass so explain this new philosophy to me please". that of course made them feel 'real happy' with me, lol. and after working thru little nitpicky shit the owner of the sports emporium wanted..he wanted to keep his vending machines on during the show and I finally got it sunk into his head that if he turns them off, has someone like a group from the high school doing vending, you help out more in the community by having the baseball or volleyball club make some money, or elks or jaycees, etc. I finally finally get the guy to go with a show, and then the WWA bails out of it...
Had they drew well there they could've had a monthly show there but 'it's too small we want to draw 800-1000 people' was the mentality, and in the end, they never did achieve that, anywhere. especially when i went to their next show in Salem, Mass and there was less than 300 people and I was "aaa-yep, sure looks like a thousand people here to me, how am i ever going to get thru the crowd here". Not to say I'm not a nice guy at times like that but, you get the picture.
Had the WWA not dilly-dallied they could've had it, but they bailed and when i tried to get the same building for the EWA, forget it, wouldn't even consider it. because of the WWA's antics they really shit on themselves and made it bad for a long time for other promotions to run shows because in some way, they always screwed someone over and didn't think it would matter.
When I was in the EWA, for some fun,I made a fantasy wrestling promotion online. some people do fantasy football and there's hundred's of these fantasy wrestling things out there. so i created one. acouple of the EWA wrestlers joined it because how i based it, as one person described it "like watt's UWF with alot of indy things thrown in". it was fun at that time and both members of the tag team the damned were in it, Matt and i talked about doing some sort of rib on an EWA show based on the characters in my little 'efed' as they're called.
After batting around idea after idea, i came up with an idea to see if Vinnie(matt's partner)would crack from his serious face he always had when he came to the ring. i ran it past matt and he laughed and dared me to do it. So on a show in Portland at the Stevens ave armory, I made a sign up. got my usual ringside seat and matt came up to me and said "you gonna do it"? "hell yeah already have the sign made". matt didn't bother telling Vinny about it and when they came out to do an in ring promo I grab my sign from under my seat. After the damned do their in ring walk, Vinie looks to see where i'm at(cause he and i usually do the plant/heel' deal where we yell stuff back and forth), and he suddenly sees me with a sign that says "Draven fears Jaden Cross".
Vinny stopped dead and you can see he's trying like hell not to crack. matt saw it and kept elbowing Vinnie and Vinnie came to the ropes and mouthed "you asshole", at me. after their promo as they're leaving the ring Vinnie comes and tears my sign up(which was a perfect spot for them to get booed). i go to the back a few minutes later and I can hear Vinnie saying "that fucker out there ribbed me", and matt was laughing telling him how he knew all about it.
little things like that really made it fun to be in the EWA.
Another time in Portland Scott taylor was visiting guys in the back(he had gotten his start there) and i walked in the back for whatever reason, lord knows as i was always passing a message, handing a tape...something. Scott had seen me in the WWA so he's talking with one of the owners when i walk by and I just did my usual 'hey how you doing', and kept going. I hear Scott saying "hey, I know that guy, he was in another promotion", and the owner said "was it the WWA by any chance, he says he worked there". Taylor put me over. "He certainly was there, setting chairs up, always getting heat with me during the shows, he was there and was good at getting the fans into things". The owner said "he's doing the same here now".
Scott and I had talked alittle, as he was curious what had me jump from WWA to EWA, how do i compare both promotions, do i get to do more here than there, etc etc..scott actually had asked if my friend dave was still coming to shows with me and i said 'yeah he's out near the ring drooling over precious lucy". Which i know quite a few people were, short little compact blonde, quite the head turner and had some decent talent compared to what you see alot of on tv these days.
So as a rib on Dave i go back out to where i had my table, found dave and told him, "go walk in the back and pick out the one guy you don't normally see here". Dave knew I was setting him up for something and i just said "go on, go take a look". dave goes back there, comes back out and says "you could've just told me scott taylor was back there, jerk".
Worst place I ever seen a show, ever. not the worst fed, just the worst place...Oxford, Maine. The EWA had a show at the Oxford Fair, and just finding that was a trip with wrong directions in itself. one way into the place, one way out..I get to gate and have to explain who i am,who I'm with, so i don't get charged admission to the fair. Some how the words "I'm with the wrestling show", just didn't compute right, the first 6 times I explained it, in 6 different ways no less. I mean it was pretty obvious I was with the show, i had an EWA t-shirt on, had EWA tapes in my back seat, the EWA flyer for the fairgrounds show, what more do you really need to see that hey, it's pretty damn obvious he has something to do with the wrestling company..20 minutes with a long line of cars honking behind me later, it took 4 people to get the one single thought between them that hey, I work for the wrestling company and finally they let me drive my car in.
of course the directions they gave me to get to where the show was happening was a clusterfuck, they blocked off the path i was directed to take, had to explain to an oxford cop (which was abut as good as explaining to the 4 guys at the gate)why my car was allowed to go back there. he didn't want to budge and wanted 'proof'. after looking at 20 f'n tapes that said "Eastern Wrestling Alliance" on them, the light bulb suddenly flickered. he moved the barrier and wha-la, I was allowed in. not once did i drink the water in that town.
the ahem, 'building' that the show as in looked like a beat up barn that a gust of wind could blow over at any second. They were having a horse pulling contest in it before the wrestling show, nothing resembling a locker room for the wrestlers, so if I remember right they backed two campers together so guys could get dressed in them.The 'name' match was prince Albert vs Scotty Too Hotty, and i'm sure they were making comments about how this was just, wrong in many ways, and it's not the promotion's fault,they just didn't know what kind of clusterfuck was gonna happen so you have to make the best of it which they did.
when the show started...you can hear the tractor pulling contest just outside...right then i knew that I was still indeed, a city boy. never in my life have I seen a tractor pull, i've heard of truck and tractor pull sure but your basic pull your john deere up and see how good it pulls? what the fuck kind of area was i in..the windows in thisbarn had no glass or plastic so it got windy and chilly in the place, the sounds of them tractors made it rough on hearing the P.A. this was just bad. The guys tried hard and the show itself was good, have nothing bad to say about anyone on the show, the basis of where that show was held, and to me what kind of inbred, redneck country dumbass ways that they at the fair put it together stands out as the worst place ever. Went to oxford once, never even drove in that area again.
What's the difference between Farmington, NH and Farmington, Maine? Not a whole lot really. farmington NH is considered the 'inbred' town in the rochester, dover somersworth area. and i think Farmington maine is considered in the same light. But the EWA had a real decent show in I believe it was the high school gym. It was at at that time i got to see 'who' came up to see who could get jumped on the show at the last minute. which is something I never understood. if you don't work for a company, aren't booked on their show, why would you drive several hours on the big chance of not even being considered as a last minute replacement? maybe it's me but waste of time and gas and toll money would be obvious reasons not to continue that stupid trned, especially when you're spending more to get there than what you'd be paid even if they did consider you.
One of the guys i saw was Slick Wagner Brown, before he became this indy sensation he is today he was just another student at Killer Kowalski's school. trying to get booked on the EWA show. and wasn't. I always didenjoy remembering that moment as to me it looked like an ego popper when he got denied.
I'm just all over the place with this, so let's go back to Portland Maine and the Collectables show I was at representing the EWA. I think it was james St. jean's idea to participate in that, if i'm wrong I'm sure i'll be corrected. Josh Shea and I were there when it started and he and i really didn't know each other, and sometimes my 'award winning personality' I'm sure rubbed him the wrong way, so as people were walking by us and looking at the tapes i brought, etc etc. I said to him, "well we may as well talk about something instead of ignoring each other all day".
Josh to his credit did say "well you're the one who loves to talk, pick something". So since we were in the same building I had seen a WWF House show in, I asked him how many shows has he seen in this building, and that sparked the conversation that went from portland maine shows to Japan where he had gone to Chicago and Indiana where in had been for shows, so we kinda went around the world with wrestling promotions and shows and things we remembered.
Nate comes into it and the topic changed from how they were raised on WWF wrestling and i was raised on AWA and Bob Luce wrestling. Portland Maine is considered traditional WWF territory anyway and I mentioned that compared to chicago which went from being traditional AWA territory to everyone's territory because of how many companies were running shows there when i was growing up. we changed it to how they considered the WWF champs as the real world champs and i always considered nick bockwinkel as that so the comparisons went on and on which made for great conversation. something of which i rarely have now these days.
Nate had asked me9since he was soon going to be a manager) what i thought made a great manager and I brought up indy manager Chris Grande, who was a throw back to the old school, get the fans so anxious to want to see you get popped, and then have that spot happen so the fans got that spot and would come back the next show to see how you react to it. Chris was awesome in every way doing that and when he got slugged in a match the fans would pop big time. so i told nate(not that I'm really an 'expert' on it), that if you can see how someone like bobby heenan did that(and i've seen heenan do that since the bob luce days),interact with fans, get em riled up so they hope to see you get your ass kicked, and then let them have that moment somewhere in the show, you'll get over. nate later on and was very good at that, different than how chris grande did it but got across well, and when he got smacked, the fans were happy.
We carried the topic over to the next day there and larry huntley had added some stuff into it as well. Then larry said to me "you've been around several different indy groups that had big names on the shows,you never seem star struck or don't come off like that has anyone really made you feel that way"?
when i always saw a legend on a show, I always tried to just play it cool, they have enough mark fans that'll be 'awestruck' that they don't need a guy who works for the company acting all giddy and shit, but there have been times when the armor almost cracked.
meeting tito Santana in Woburn mas and the fact he was interested in the conversation I was having with Killer Kowalski about the claw hold, was a great example. king Kong Bundy always telling me off on diferent shows(cause he knew I was part of the company) really shot an undescribable feeling in me, he'd mouth off at others but always find me and nail me like a motherfucker. George steele was another one but the one that really came close to totally cracking me was when Chris Grande introduced me to Dr. Death Steve Williams, grande had put me over as the 'guy who know so much old regional stuff, he's a guy dr death you'd appreciate" and when I told him i had a tape of him and ted dibiase against the bladerunners from Mid-South he said" How'd you get that? I don't even have that". really you want to be a fan living a dream? these are examples of how great the dream was.
When the EWA changed hands(one of the many times it did, but this is the first time)...I knew who was buying it, so i went to Josh Shea and said I know changes are being made, where am i standing on all this? who knows what the new direction would bring, get rid of the tape guy, put someone else in there, i didn't know but josh did..How he knew i won't say I'll just say, he knew.
He said "Don't worry, you actually make us money with your table, we didn't think you would when you first started but you do and with the things you do do, we want to keep you around, alot of the guys appreciate the things you do". from the writing to the jaw jacking them during the shows(and lord knows how many times I was laughed at at the end of the night when my voice had gone to complete shit from my yelling like a maniac,lol),to helping out setting chairs up, tales, helping with the ring, the fact I was trying to be one of them 'all around guys' like i was elsewhere worked.
he had always come to my table to see what obscure tapes i'd bring besides the EWA stuff, when he saw i had ECW tv shows he looks at me and asked where I get my ECW from? Most thought I was getting them from RF Video, who had the time while they had the $1500 ads in PWI and inside wrestling, had the absolute worst quality in most of their tapes. Not once ever had I ever bought or traded a tape from RF Video, i saw their quality and an example was a hangman noose match from florida between kevin sullivan and blackjack mulligan. RF's you culd barely make out who was who. the one I got from someone in Texas? almost perfect. RF's ECW TV? fuzzy as hell, mine I got from someone in CT. who had MSG network on his cable? perfect.
I handed Josh the tape and said "I know you guys have a tv and vcr set up back there, go play this". he did, came back and said "someone wants to buy this can you put it to the side"? I smiled and did and one of the owners of the EWA bought it right before the show. That's the one thing the WWA couldn't grasp, me selling stuff would've garnered money but it was one of them ideas that flew over their heads. Sousa had Mike Sparta selling WWF stuff and only after I saw him at an EWA show in lawerence, mass did he admit that he should've considered having me do the same thing for him that i was doing for the EWA.
And you know, i would've went back to Souza, he was trying to tell me about how he was getting shows lined up in new bedford and other places, and had he actually did that on a regular basis like he was in manchester, nh, I would've went and helped. Why? because he was the one who gave me my first break, good bad or indifferent the things i heard about him, he was the one who gave me my first break, and i would've went back to help and split my time between him and EWA. Souza was the one who helped start me to live the dream i did, EWA made it fun to do when I really needed it. memories like that will live forever.
