Tribute to NWA Wildside

[Phoenix Fury Legdrop 0]

Much like Jason Doring did, I also wrote up a tribute/goodbye letter of sorts for NWA Wildside, seeing as if April 30th is the last go-around. I would post it on the PCN site, but I kind of forgot the password for posting things. Plus, I'm super-impatient. So, here goes...

 

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April 30, 2005. It’s not a big national holiday or anniversary of anything significant to most people. But, to anyone who paid attention to, liked, or even loved a little wrasslin’ promotion in a converted one-room school building, it’s a big deal. As cheesy as it might sound, when NWA Wildside‘s final show, entitled “War Games: The Final Countdown“ was announced as taking place on that date, it was like being told in advance that a relative with previous health problems had died. Sure, you might have been able to see it coming via previous warnings (in this case, all the hoopla surrounding Bill Behrens and Deep South Wrestling), but it still hits you like two tons of bricks when it happens (or in this case, will happen).

 

Here’s another date that I’ll throw out: 4:00 PM, December 17, 2000. All of you are probably saying, “What the hell is that?” To me, it was the discovery of something that I’d end up falling in love with. I was at a Christmas get-together at my grandmother’s house. It was that weird point in between presents being exchanged and everyone actually leaving. I locked myself away in my grandpa’s den since, well, I don’t really like being around most of my family members. They got a syndicated station that aired most America One Network programming. If any of you remember America One, you’ll know that they were this tiny, nearly UHF-like network that happened to air a crapload of wrestling programming. I knew that whatever Bert Prentice was running was on at 3:00 PM, and ECW was on at 5:00. But, when looking at the TV schedule in the newspaper, the program listed for being on at 4:00 was quite foreign to me. It was listed as “NWA W’side”, since the grids left no room for things to be spelt out. I figured it was just some “country bumpkin crap” from Nashville like the wrestling on the channel before it. I was pretty freakin’ wrong…

 

I stayed tuned, thinking it was just something to watch in between the two other wrestling shows. From the start, it had this different look to it that struck out at the viewer after an hour of clips of a Fargo/Lawler schmozz at the Nashville Fairgrounds and Bert Prentice pimping some independent women’s wrestling pay-per-view that I think I’ve heard about once since then. The Wildside program had a rougher edge to it, but it wasn’t trying to give you a seizure in its rapidness like ECW would. The hook that they pulled me in with at that time was that Sabu was coming in for future shows. I was like, “Hey, I recognize Sabu from ECW, he’s kind of cool.“ The opening promo featured this little guy wearing warm-up athletic gear and stroking his abs like it was some sort of fun game to do so, along with his manager at the time, the man who I’d find out later was then-Wildside owner, Steve Martin. Martin and his protégé spoke for a few minutes on how afraid they were about wrestling Sabu since he’s so damn dangerous and wanted to cancel the match. Then, another man named Jeff G. Bailey walked out, who turned out to be their attorney, to inform them that Sabu had won the NWA World Title in Florida recently, which changed their tunes real quick since this wrestler now had a shot at the NWA World Title. The little athletic-looking, looks-obsessed heel’s name? AJ Styles. I didn’t have the Internerd yet, so I wasn’t too wise when it came to building stuff up and all that jazz. I just knew that Sabu was coming in to fight this guy, and it was going to be interesting.

 

They then cut to the first Wildside match I ever saw: Perfect Creation and a guy who I’d learn to really like by the name of Caprice “Ice” Coleman (which, at the time, I thought was “Caprizice Coleman” or something similar) against a team that was actually a foursome, but for this match used a revolving “Freebird Rule” and rotated duos into the bout. The four-some, which would change form a few times since this match, turned out to be one of my favorite stables of all-time in pro wrestling and guys who I personally think were the predecessors to groups like Generation Next on an independent level, Suicidal Tendencies. At this point, they consisted of Adam Jacobs, John Phoenix, Air Paris, and a guy named Mark E. Mark. In time, this “boy” would get “lost” and become the “Angel of Death”. I sure hope that was obvious enough. At this point, he was basically the other three guys’ lackey (and was even not let into the ring until the finish, where they simply dropped him on an unconscious Creation for the pin). Anyway, I like to think that this was the one match that sold me on Wildside, as it was a group of young guys doing some really cool moves and was something different from what you could view in any of the national promotions at the time. In a way, this match was a lot like the first song you hear from a band that you’ve never heard of before that ends up becoming your favorite band even when no one else really knows who they are, and the song sticks with you for a good portion of your life.

 

I remember the rest of the show as consisting of a Eddie Golden versus Jessie Taylor Television Title match (probably better than I thought it was at the time) and both a squash and a “night-vision” promo from a redneck macho team I never really got into, Total Destruction (Sean Royal, formerly of the New Breed team of the late-80’s, and Rusty Riddle). For some reason, I only remember one specific thing from the Golden/Taylor match, that being announcer Steven Prazak (who commentated the show with “The Duke of New York”/current Wildside manager Al Getz) getting in a dig at ECW after Taylor, I think, busted out a Yoshihiro Tajiri-style handspring elbow, which for some reason I thought was “cutting-edge” and “cool” at the time. As for Total Destruction…they reminded me too much of a couple of big lugs who watched too many Steve Austin tapes.

 

Nonetheless, I became a fan that day. The thing is, I didn’t get that channel at my house across-state, and my grandma was never home usually when the show aired, so she couldn’t tape it for me. So, that’s the last of that…or so I thought.

 

Fast-forward throughout the next six months in time. I ended up getting my first computer for Christmas the next week, which meant my first real regular access to the Internet. Within a three-month period, WCW and ECW had died and there was only one national promotion left, one that I was quickly getting sick of. Fortunately, the Internet became an excellent tool when searching for alternatives to Cartoon-Land. I bought a couple of ECWA Super 8 tapes. I thought they were good stuff (especially 2001), but I wanted something more. Here’s where Wildside comes in…

 

I had sparingly read about Wildside online (mostly about the WCW developmental deal that they had gotten as WCW was on its last legs), but hadn’t really been paying as close of attention that I should have. I started reading more up on it and catching up on its happenings. That summer, Freedom Fight 2001 happened. At the time, the results and reviews coming in were praising it as Wildside’s best show ever. I had an extra $20 and a curiosity, So, I bought the tape to see if it was anything cool. It ended up reeling me back into the Wildside product, something I’m proud to say I’ve now been into since then.

 

During that time, Wildside’s gone through a lot. “The Class of 2001/2002” has developed into one of the finer groups of wrestlers out there today. Of course, you have to start with AJ Styles. The guy’s become, to excuse the pun, a “phenomenon”. He’s won titles all over the world, beloved by fans everywhere, and has had tons of great matches. Hell, he’s probably the only independent worker who’s never wrestled for WWE who can say that he’s a legitimate draw on the indies. That’s big. Then you got a guy like Jimmy Rave…started off as just this little skinny kid with really baggy ring gear who, because he had boyish looks and not a lot of size on his side, got the crowds on his size because he was the natural underdog in battles against such groups as Body Count (Caprice Coleman, Sweet Dreams, and Blackout) and the NWA Elite. Over time, he’s evolved into a top independent star nationwide and someone who most fans of wrestling of the non-WWE variation know. Some hate him, but oh well, what can you do? Then you got guys like the Lost Boys, Caprice Coleman, Todd Sexton, Jason Cross, Tank, Rainman, Murder-One, Slim J, Jeremy V., and so on and so forth. All of these guys were born and bred in NWA Wildside, and developed as wrestlers immensely. Hell, if anyone would have told me in summer 2001 that Tank would be one of my favorite wrestlers at this point in my life, I would have told them that they were freakin’ crazy. No offense to Tank, but I just didn’t see this chubby dude wielding a blue bag and wearing Hot Topic ring gear becoming anything special. Now, I like the dude so much that he’s one of the few guys that I get legitimately excited about getting to see live when the Wildside crew makes a stop at IWA shows in Indiana.

 

Then, of course, there’s one guy who’s become an idol of sorts of mine. Anyone who knows me or knows of me (that would be about three of you) know that I think the absolute world of Salvatore Rinauro. He’s a humorous guy, great wrestler, can cut one hell of a promo, and is developing into one of the finest heels on the independent scene. He took a wrestler whose career in Wildside was stuck in neutral (Seth DeLay), a guy who was slowly building momentum but going nowhere (Fast Eddie), and a complete choad (Zero-X) and made them one of the most consistently entertaining stables in wrestling, in Three Guys That Totally Rule. The guy could talk his way out of an aluminum bag, and chances are he’d entertain the hell out of everyone around while doing so. The guy can also go in the ring; just check out his IWA Mid-South Ted Petty Invitational 2004 stuff, or the awesome double-elimination four-way dance from Hardcore Hell 2003 for the NWA Wildside Jr. Heavyweight Title. To brutally use a painfully bad pun, Sal Rinauro “totally rules”.

 

Wildside’s also produced, without a doubt, two of my favorite independently-promoted wrestling matches in my lifetime: the Fright Night 2001 ladder match for the Junior Heavyweight Championship between AJ Styles, JC Dazz, Jimmy Rave, and Jason Cross, and the 2003 Freedom Fight War Games bout between the NWA Elite (Rainman, Jason Cross, Iceberg, and Justice) and Team Wildside (Jimmy Rave, Jeremy V., Hotstuff Hernandez, and Onyx). With both matches, the stars and moon aligned just right and, fueled by the perfect stories, everything came together was happened as well as it could happen. The crowd went apeshit at exactly the right moments, the wrestlers did the exact right things at the exact right moment. They were basically the defining moments of the company, and for good reason.

 

Admittedly, if it weren’t for Wildside, much like Jason expressed in his piece paying tribute, I probably wouldn’t be watching wrestling anymore either. Wildside ended up being a gateway for my viewing habits with other independent promotions. I started watching Ring of Honor because they used AJ Styles at a time where his buzz was growing, but still small. I started watching Combat Zone Wrestling because they had a brief (yet horrible) interpromotional feud with Wildside, where Wildside talent such as the Lost Boys, T-N-T, and Jimmy Rave. Those bloomed into me becoming an avid viewer of promotions like IWA Mid-South, Pro Wrestling Guerrilla, Chikara, and so on and so forth. If it weren’t for me discovering the indies, I’d end up getting bored to death with WWE and quitting my wrestling viewing habits altogether.

 

In conclusion, I’d like to thank Wildside for, at least to me, nearly five years of delivering a product that, through its ups and downs, always stayed entertaining and interesting. It was exactly what I needed at the time that I got into it and always stayed that way: intriguing, entertaining stories told with interesting, dynamic characters and two of the best narrators around (Steven Prazak and Dan “The Dragon” Wilson). To put it simply, it was what wrestling has, is, and always will supposed to be. There’s not much of that around anymore. The sum might be more than the parts, but the parts were pretty damn cool as well. Hopefully the motley crew of characters that compose the Wildside roster end up staying active somewhere, as the talents of the respective people involved in the process of creating what ended up being a really great thing being squandered and unused would be nearly as bad as what’s happening after April 30th.

 

To everyone who’s ever been apart of creating this wonderful product that ended up becoming something that I became emotionally attached to, I thank you very much. You guys have no clue how much of an impact you’ve left on everyone who was a fan of the promotion, and how much you guys mean to us.

 

So, as hard as it is to type this, goodbye NWA Wildside. Thanks for the memories, and who knows…hopefully, maybe there’ll be a glimmer of hope for one more ride around the block.

[Jingus 0]

Then, of course, there’s one guy who’s become an idol of sorts of mine. Anyone who knows me or knows of me (that would be about three of you) know that I think the absolute world of Salvatore Rinauro. He’s a humorous guy, great wrestler, can cut one hell of a promo, and is developing into one of the finest heels on the independent scene. He took a wrestler whose career in Wildside was stuck in neutral (Seth DeLay), a guy who was slowly building momentum but going nowhere (Fast Eddie), and a complete choad (Zero-X) and made them one of the most consistently entertaining stables in wrestling, in Three Guys That Totally Rule. The guy could talk his way out of an aluminum bag, and chances are he’d entertain the hell out of everyone around while doing so. The guy can also go in the ring; just check out his IWA Mid-South Ted Petty Invitational 2004 stuff, or the awesome double-elimination four-way dance from Hardcore Hell 2003 for the NWA Wildside Jr. Heavyweight Title. To brutally use a painfully bad pun, Sal Rinauro “totally rules”.

You know what the greatest part about Sal is? It's that he's not an act. That's what he's REALLY LIKE, 24/7. Just being in the same locker room with the motherfucker is a guaranteed diagnosis of sore sides, cuz you'll be laughing nonstop.

[LucharesuFan619 0]

What the heck? Why is Wildside ceasing operations? This came out of nowhere. Did they give a reason?

[Jingus 0]

Short answer: because the WWE wants Bill Behrens to run the television side of a new developmental territory in Atlanta, Deep South Wrestling, which is being promoted by "The Assassin" Jody Hamilton.

 

This is all from half-remembered internet reports, I'm sure the big news sites have it archived: WWE supposedly thought about using Wildside as a developmental, and supposedly they sent Tommy Dreamer down to look at the facilities (which are a Fireflyesque kludge of wood and duct tape, it's one of those promotions that survived on little more than willpower, talent, and passion for da biz), and supposedly he came back with a big red frowny mark on their report card. So they decided to make an entirely new company, and hell, if Vince called YOU and asked you to train his future superstars, could you turn him down?