My Time With Dale Gagne(r)'s AWA
Aug 12, 2014 23:48:21 GMT -5
Chainsaw, jagilki, and 11 more like this
Post by Dragonfly on Aug 12, 2014 23:48:21 GMT -5
I realize I talked about this up about four or five years ago, but hey... I got a request. Besides, I wasn't nearly this thorough the last time. And I apologize in advance for not remembering everyone's names. Some of the people I worked with were extremely obscure, and I lost some of my emails. That said, here we go.
My interest in the Dale's AWA started in early February 2007, about a week or so after my grandmother died. I had spent the previous year as her nurse/caregiver/person she could playfully tease when my parents were working, and it hit me pretty hard. The only non-family, non-girlfriend things I had to keep my mind off of it was TEW and a three day, live-in interview with PETA. When I wasn't talking to my girlfriend on MSN, eating meat out of spite in my car or watching a crappy black and white TV I bought with money from my dad's cousin, I was online looking new promotions to add to our shared game. It was then I ran across the AWA site. The physical design was actually pretty good, and I liked the fact they treated their top star ("The First" Ric Converse) as a big deal. Everything else, however, was awful. The roster was woefully out of date, the show list was confusing and there was absolutely no merch available at the store. Worst of all, though, was the writing. Most of the articles talked about how Dale was an unreliable scumbag and that co-owner Johnnie Stewart was a tool. That's not the kind of thing you want to see plastered on the front page. Questionable content aside, I was interested enough to come back.
Fast forward a month. The job at PETA didn't pan out - turns out being an emotional mess that never socialized with anyone wasn't the best way to get employed. I was at home, with no job and a gaping hole in my resume. (Employers at the time took that hole as me being lazy. And yes, I was actually told that once.) Out of options and bored to tears, I sent Dale an email explaining how his copy sucked and how I could do it better. I received an extremely wordy letter an hour later saying he was willing to give me a shot. If he liked what I saw, I would become his go-to writer. I quickly fired off a piece talking about how Ric Converse wanted nothing more than to kick Dale's ass. He loved it. He even promised to pay me. I was in. My first assignment was to perform kayfabe interviews with the AWA's major stars. Dale didn't want me to physically talk to anyone, so I had email everyone. I found out later that he neglected actually tell anyone that I would doing this, so 60% of the interviewees ignored me completely. The only people who bothered to respond at first were the tag team champions Ric Converse and Xsiris. Converse's answers were short and boring and Xsiris' made no damn sense. I thought I failed. That's when I heard back from Steve Corino.
Corino was, at least from my point of view, the only thing keeping the entire operation together. He actually cared about the product, and made sure that everything I did was done "the right way." And by the "right way," I mean "making me rewrite my questions until he approved." He did end up doing the interview... After the fifth rewrite. After we posted the interview for Corino and then-protege Ricky Landell, the interviews started pouring in - Noah Lott, Kirby Mack (who I will talk about in detail later), GQ Gallo and Dinn T. Moore (now known as The Beer City Bruiser in ROH), who Dale liked, but wouldn't push because "his name sounds like lunch." Then came the TNT interview. It was the day that things got weird.
TNT was a big deal for us. Not only was somewhat of a star in his native Australia, he had pull with the big promotion at the time, the AWF. If we treated him right, we could possibly see the AWF in the AWA. Most of the interview was centered around his big title match against Steve Corino, a match that he was clearly going to win. And win he did. There were no shenanigans, no extenuating factors. He pinned Corino clean as a sheet. It was the office's way - read: Steve himself - to establish the AWA brand outside of North America and Japan. It also took the belt away from Dale, who had the tendency to put it on random people on a whim (Evan Karagias, Luther Reigns, Turbo from the original American Gladiators, etc). Everything was going fine, until Dale decided to suddenly change the direction of the company. He sent an email saying that the title change was null and void due to TNT's paperwork being "lost in the mail." Steve had to fly back to Australia to get the belt. He was pissed, TNT was beside himself and I was left in a lurch. I was already hip deep in "TNT is our new champ" stories. I had to start from scratch.
It was around that time that I started working with Light Heavyweight champion Kirby Mack. Kirby Mack is, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the nicest guys I've ever worked with. And I don't mean just in wrestling, either. He was in the middle of a feud with his brother TJ that Dale loved, but honestly made no sense. From the top: Kirby and TJ started in the AWA as a tag team called "Team Macktion." The team broke up when TJ, who at that point was brainwashed by Steve Corino, turned on Kirby. But it was all an act. See, TJ was actually Dexter Poindexter, nerd superhero. He was only pretending to be brainwashed in order to gain Steve's trust. I got the order to continue the story, only with TJ/Dexter as a face. There were naturally a few issues.
I ended up crafting a story in which Noah Lott, playing a Dr. Doofenshmirtz-like inept super villain, was out to get Dexter Poindexter. Zach Gowen was set up to be the henchman, for no other reason than Dale made do something with him. I also laid the groundwork for a match between Kirby and the then-current AWA Junior Heavyweight champion, Zero1's Minoru Fujita. Steve Corino just lost the title to Takao Oromi, so I believed that setting up a small war of words between the two was the way to go. Best case scenario, Kirby gets an international booking and Fujita gets at least some mention in the US. Steve was fine with it, as was Hawaii Championship Wrestling owner/liaison to Zero1 Linda Bade. Kirby even posted my articles on his surprisingly popular MySpace page. (He always reposted my stuff.) Dale, on the other hand, let me have it in email form. He called the Junior Heavyweight belt "meaningless" and that I didn't have any right to write something like that. He almost got rid of me right there. But cooler heads prevailed, and I stayed on. The story line was dropped after that. By then, I was too busy interviewing promoters to fight with him.
Sidebar: My two favorite promoters to deal with were Frankie DeFalco from Milwaukee's Brew City Wrestling and Colorado wrestler/promoter Michael Hunt, aka Lightning Blind Mike. Mr. DeFalco was willing to try anything I suggested and was generally easy to get along with. Lightning Blind Mike was... well... blind. I'm talking totally blind. You have to respect that.
I was in the midst of my promoter interviews when I found out that the WWE was suing Dale over the AWA name and logo. Dale immediately claimed that Vince was full of shit. Not only did he claim to own the name AWA, he said he was distantly related to Verne Gagne and had the DNA test to prove it. He said Vince didn't have a leg to stand on, but was going to use his "propaganda machine" to convince the world that he was right. I immediately sprung into action, writing an article about how Vince couldn't physically own three letters. I punctuated it by adding a picture of the Ambridge (Pennsylvania) Water Authority - the AWA. It was pure, grade A bullshit, but Dale loved it, and that's all that mattered.
While the AWA lawsuit started Dale's downfall, it wasn't the thing that brought him down. A few weeks after Vince announced the lawsuit, the Benoit tragedy happened. My online-only story about Dale blowing up Vince's limo - I did it before Wrestling Society X, by the way - was immediately scrapped. He was horrified, and generally unsure about what to do next. Apparently, that uncertainty lasted a few hours, because he had co-owner Johnnie Stewart booked on The O'Reilly Factor the next day. It was kind of cool to say one of my bosses on TV, but to be honest, I was angry. Why aren't they hyping our events like this? We could have more than four people and Kirby Mack's fan club show up. Still, it wasn't my place to complain. I just waited, hoping for something to do.
That something did come about, but not in the way I was hoping. At the beginning of July, Dale booked a show called WrestleRace in Indianapolis. The concept was simple, albeit kind of "out there" - there would be an auto race, then a pro wrestling show headlined by Kirby Mack vs. Shark Boy. Everything was going according to plan, until Dale announced few days beforehand that Ric Converse and Xsiris was suddenly stripped of the tag belts and banned from all AWA events. He claimed that he caught them doing "illegal substances" (steroids for one, RVD special for the other) backstage at a CWF show and didn't want his promotion to be a part of that. The problem was that he did it without talking to the promoter of CWF first. They immediately left the AWA, and left a gaping hole in the show. I wanted to have Team Macktion win the belts. (Nope, not letting that one go.) He had a different idea. At the top of the show, he announced that the new tag champs were Johnnie Stewart and Ricky Landell. They would then defend their titles against the team of Buff Bagwell and The Patriot. Please note that I'm not talking about neither Del Wilkes nor Salvatore Sincere here. Our Patriot was Danny Dominion, which was loosely based on Sincere's run with the character. So it was a unauthorized ripoff of an allegedly unauthorized ripoff. And yes, Buff and The (fake) Patriot won, because Dale loved former stars and old guys even more than Dixie Carter.
In the midst of all the frustration, there was a glimmer of hope (sort of). Shortly before WrestleRace, Dale found that he had one unlikely supporter in his crusade against the WWE: Larry Zbyszko. Not only was Larry going to help us fight Vince, he was going to bring his proteges Team Vision (Mister Saint Laurent, Chasyn Rance and So Cal Val) with him. MSL was my favorite guy to work with outside of Kirby Mack and Corino, despite being a tool. He just "got it." Chasyn Rance, on the other hand, was a real piece of work. Case in point: He told a story about having his way with Kirby Mack's girlfriend while the Mack brothers slept in the next room. I immediately went to Kirby and asked his opinion. It was then I found out that Rance's little story wasn't a story. It actually happened and the asshole was bragging about it. Kirby shot on him, basically calling him every name under the sun and telling me to post it as is. I had stumbled into Russoville accidentally, but what was left of our fan base was instantly hooked. And Dale... he loved it, once he found out that Kirby was cool with it. (I have to give Dale this much: He only went with the story after he got Kirby's okay.)
A few days later, word got out that Kirby suffered a collapsed lung during a match. It wasn't the first time it happened, either. I almost immediately heard from Chasyn Rance, who called Kirby out of shape and soft. He also said it proved that he wasn't a real man, because a real man would be able to go "all night long" without hurting himself. That interview went onto the AWA page, then onto Kirby's MySpace page. His fan club went nuts. There was post after post about how Chasyn Rance was evil and needed to get his ass kicked. "Did you see Kirby Mack's MySpace page?" my dad asked the morning after he posted the article. "Those girls want to kill that other guy. You must be doing something right." And I was. I booked a hot feud. Sure, it was by accident, but no one needed to know that. The video Team Vision shot about Kirby Mack (with Larry reiterating many of my ideas, I might add) made things even more volatile.
Kirby Mack vs. Chasyn the jackass and Dale being Dale wasn't the only things I was dealing with. As I mentioned above, Takao Omori from Zero1 won the title from Steve Corino and this time, it stuck. It was obvious that Dale didn't like letting another promotion have control over the belt, but the outside forces (Steve Corino and Linda Bade) won out. I originally wanted to interview Omori over the phone, but Linda shot that down due to both the language barrier and the fact that he hated the media. It took me a week to get the damn thing done, but it was worth it. Dale liked it so much that he put it on the cover of the AWA magazine. It was supposedly going to be available at every AWA branded event. (More on the magazine in a bit.) I found out later that it was the first interview Omori finished in full in years. I'm still proud of it.
So we had a hot, for us anyway, tag team, a feud that everyone (in Kirby Mack's fan club) was talking about and a fairly reclusive, but well-known champion. Unfortunately, our tag champs were awful. Buff ignored all of my emails and for a while, everyone else's, and Danny Dominion didn't do interviews. So Dale asked me what I wanted to do. My answer was predictable: Team Vision vs. Team Macktion, and we hype like it's a Wrestlemania main event. It would have been Kirby's first match back. Unfortunately, he didn't see things that way. He had already started booking a two-day tournament, with teams from all over North America invited. There were a couple recognizable names (Team Vision, Dinn T. Moore, The Heartbreak Express, Bryan Logan, Silas Young, Alex Silva from TNA), but it was mostly local guys no one has ever heard of. Oh... and he wanted me to downplay the whole "faces and heels" thing, but hammer home their hometowns. And Team Macktion wasn't included, naturally. It was his new direction for the company: treating wrestlers like they were sports teams. It was awful. The only thing that made it worse was the fact that he didn't realize just how awful it was. I wasn't allowed to give any booking opinions this time, and I wasn't allowed to go to the show. So I sat at home and waited for the result email. I was hoping that he would have the common sense of closing the show with Team Vision winning and Kirby Mack rushing the ring. But he didn't. The finals were The Heartbreak Express vs. Sonny Roselli (who was also an AWA promoter) and Larry Huntley, known collectively as Team Elite. They were in their 40s. But what about Team Vision, you ask? They were eliminated in the first round by Frankie DeFalco and Jake Milliman. For those unaware, Milliman was the guy who lost the "turkey on a pole" match in Verne's pink room. Yeah. The big hot heel team lost to two guys from the ORIGINAL AWA. Great book there, Dale.
Around this time, I found that the nephew of one my mom's closest friends was local indie wrestler Powerhouse Hughes, or "House" for short. He had a few tryouts with the WWE, but was always turned down due to his knees. In addition to working some of the lower level promotions in the Pittsburgh area, House was a regular at AWA-MWA in West Virginia. So as a favor to my mom, his aunt asked him to pick up a few AWA magazines from the promoter. According to the "grapevine," the promoter had no idea the AWA even had a magazine. I was pissed, and I let Dale know about it. I received a copy of the magazine, a handwritten note and a check for $30 in the mail a week later. I still have the magazine and the note. The money went to buying a copy of Fire Pro Returns. It was only fitting.
I had also started crafting a proposal of my own. My AWA would be a combination of our regulars (no old guys save for Steve Corino and Japan, however), a few hands from AWA promotions that weren't being used by Dale (House, Zac Vincent, Rob James) and a pre-WWE Ted Dibiase Jr. He was being booked regularly by Brew City, and he was working cheap. He hated it. He especially hated the idea of using Ted Jr., for reasons that never were properly explained. Instead, he was going to base the promotion around Arya Daivari, Shawn's younger brother. He was going to be an All-American face, while also being a proud Muslim. As much as I hate to admit it, it wasn't Dale's worst idea. (That would come later.) Unfortunately, "Hulkster" Daivari lasted only two shows. It was all a set up. He was a terrorist all along. Fantastic.
I started to do less and less for Dale after the Daivari swerve. I only got lured back in when I discovered that Masato Tanaka was the new champ. It was Dale's newest vision. I immediately lined up an interview with Tanaka, who was willing to do face-to-face (or rather, phone-to-phone) with me. I was psyched. Two days before my interview, Dale broke off all relations with both Zero1 and HCW/Linda Bade due to Dale consolidating his power. In all honesty, it felt like a divorce. Masato Tanaka got to live with mom in a nice house in Hawaii and I was stuck in Minnesota with crazy old dad. I didn't think it could get any worse. Boy, was I wrong...
One day, Dale came to me with this crazy idea he called "mixed fighting." Each show would have wrestling matches, shoot fights and boxing matches. And mix style matches (boxer vs. wrestler, wrestler vs. shoot fighter, etc) would happen on a fairly regular basis. And the new champ was going to be some untrained guy who was on an early season of Big Brother. No, I'm not talking about Jessie Godderz, either. This guy had ZERO training. Did I mention he was going to beat Larry Zybysko for the title? Yeah. And Team Macktion wasn't going to get back together. And Kirby and Chasyn the jackass would still be kept apart. I had all I could take. I was gone. I tried pitching a few stories to Pro Wrestling Illustrated, but Stu Saks said my style didn't work with the magazine. The girlfriend and I moved to Atlanta shortly thereafter.
My last experience in the wrestling industry was after we moved. I had contacted Bryan Logan about doing some stuff for his new "not AWA," American Wrestling Affiliates. Bryan had left the AWA a few months after I did and took Larry's AWA belt with him. His show, presented in cooperation with Tony "totally not Ricky Steamboat" Givens' Championship Wrestling promotion in Kingsport, Tennessee, was full of rip-offs. Wannabe versions of Kane, James Mitchell, Ricky Morton (who inexplicably got to share a moment with the real thing), Jerry Lawler and "The Natural" Dustin Rhodes were all given the star treatment. It was also filled to the brim with run-ins, screw jobs and a pole match so ill-advised that it would embarrass even Russo himself. The main event between Logan and Givens ended with a Dusty finish. In all, that show did what even Dale freaking Gagner could not: Kill my desire to work in the business. I wrote two more articles for Bryan, but that was it. I was done for good.
In the year plus I worked for the AWA(s), I ended up with $30, a magazine, Steve Corino's personal email address, a copy of the PWI 500 that makes a passing mention to my "Team Vision" angle and a fun story to tell at interviews. It was my work for Dale that got me the job for my next two scumbag bosses. (Truly another story for another time.) As for the loose ends:
- Dale's "mixed fighting" idea was turned into the "Fighting World Championship" belt. The first real champ (excluding Ricky Landell, who held the belt's predecessor, the AWA United States Championship) was Keith Walker. He was one half of the Skullcrushers in the NWA.
- Dale lost the lawsuit. The promotion became Dale Gagne's Wrestling Superstars Live in 2008.
- After Masato Tanaka went to go "live with mom," the AWA World Title went to Larry Zybysko. He dropped it to Bryan Logan, but again, he and the physical title left town due to Dale being Dale. Logan's AWA title is now known as the NWA Smoky Mountain Heavyweight Title. And when I mean "title," I'm talking about the lineage only. Larry eventually got his vintage title belt back.
- Kirby Mack and Chasyn Rance the jackass never had a proper one-on-one match in the AWA.
- Team Macktion would finally take on Team Vision in early 2009, a year and a half after everyone stopped caring. It was also, to my knowledge, not officially sanctioned by Dale. Yes, I'm still bitter.
My interest in the Dale's AWA started in early February 2007, about a week or so after my grandmother died. I had spent the previous year as her nurse/caregiver/person she could playfully tease when my parents were working, and it hit me pretty hard. The only non-family, non-girlfriend things I had to keep my mind off of it was TEW and a three day, live-in interview with PETA. When I wasn't talking to my girlfriend on MSN, eating meat out of spite in my car or watching a crappy black and white TV I bought with money from my dad's cousin, I was online looking new promotions to add to our shared game. It was then I ran across the AWA site. The physical design was actually pretty good, and I liked the fact they treated their top star ("The First" Ric Converse) as a big deal. Everything else, however, was awful. The roster was woefully out of date, the show list was confusing and there was absolutely no merch available at the store. Worst of all, though, was the writing. Most of the articles talked about how Dale was an unreliable scumbag and that co-owner Johnnie Stewart was a tool. That's not the kind of thing you want to see plastered on the front page. Questionable content aside, I was interested enough to come back.
Fast forward a month. The job at PETA didn't pan out - turns out being an emotional mess that never socialized with anyone wasn't the best way to get employed. I was at home, with no job and a gaping hole in my resume. (Employers at the time took that hole as me being lazy. And yes, I was actually told that once.) Out of options and bored to tears, I sent Dale an email explaining how his copy sucked and how I could do it better. I received an extremely wordy letter an hour later saying he was willing to give me a shot. If he liked what I saw, I would become his go-to writer. I quickly fired off a piece talking about how Ric Converse wanted nothing more than to kick Dale's ass. He loved it. He even promised to pay me. I was in. My first assignment was to perform kayfabe interviews with the AWA's major stars. Dale didn't want me to physically talk to anyone, so I had email everyone. I found out later that he neglected actually tell anyone that I would doing this, so 60% of the interviewees ignored me completely. The only people who bothered to respond at first were the tag team champions Ric Converse and Xsiris. Converse's answers were short and boring and Xsiris' made no damn sense. I thought I failed. That's when I heard back from Steve Corino.
Corino was, at least from my point of view, the only thing keeping the entire operation together. He actually cared about the product, and made sure that everything I did was done "the right way." And by the "right way," I mean "making me rewrite my questions until he approved." He did end up doing the interview... After the fifth rewrite. After we posted the interview for Corino and then-protege Ricky Landell, the interviews started pouring in - Noah Lott, Kirby Mack (who I will talk about in detail later), GQ Gallo and Dinn T. Moore (now known as The Beer City Bruiser in ROH), who Dale liked, but wouldn't push because "his name sounds like lunch." Then came the TNT interview. It was the day that things got weird.
TNT was a big deal for us. Not only was somewhat of a star in his native Australia, he had pull with the big promotion at the time, the AWF. If we treated him right, we could possibly see the AWF in the AWA. Most of the interview was centered around his big title match against Steve Corino, a match that he was clearly going to win. And win he did. There were no shenanigans, no extenuating factors. He pinned Corino clean as a sheet. It was the office's way - read: Steve himself - to establish the AWA brand outside of North America and Japan. It also took the belt away from Dale, who had the tendency to put it on random people on a whim (Evan Karagias, Luther Reigns, Turbo from the original American Gladiators, etc). Everything was going fine, until Dale decided to suddenly change the direction of the company. He sent an email saying that the title change was null and void due to TNT's paperwork being "lost in the mail." Steve had to fly back to Australia to get the belt. He was pissed, TNT was beside himself and I was left in a lurch. I was already hip deep in "TNT is our new champ" stories. I had to start from scratch.
It was around that time that I started working with Light Heavyweight champion Kirby Mack. Kirby Mack is, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the nicest guys I've ever worked with. And I don't mean just in wrestling, either. He was in the middle of a feud with his brother TJ that Dale loved, but honestly made no sense. From the top: Kirby and TJ started in the AWA as a tag team called "Team Macktion." The team broke up when TJ, who at that point was brainwashed by Steve Corino, turned on Kirby. But it was all an act. See, TJ was actually Dexter Poindexter, nerd superhero. He was only pretending to be brainwashed in order to gain Steve's trust. I got the order to continue the story, only with TJ/Dexter as a face. There were naturally a few issues.
- The only people who liked the Dexter Poindexter character were Dale and TJ, and TJ refused to answer my emails. It's hard to write a gimmick when the person you're writing for ignores you.
- No one wanted to see this superhero bullshit. We all wanted Team Macktion. They were money, especially in North Carolina. (The main American AWA affiliate at the time was the North Carolina-based CWF Mid-Atlantic.) While Dale liked the team, he felt their time had passed. So my plans for a reunion were shot down. And no, Kirby and Dexter weren't allowed to team together, either.
- The only people left for them to feud with were Zach Gowen and Noah Lott. Gowen ignored my emails, and Lott was inexperienced at pitching his own ideas. He was 20. He was just happy to be booked.
I ended up crafting a story in which Noah Lott, playing a Dr. Doofenshmirtz-like inept super villain, was out to get Dexter Poindexter. Zach Gowen was set up to be the henchman, for no other reason than Dale made do something with him. I also laid the groundwork for a match between Kirby and the then-current AWA Junior Heavyweight champion, Zero1's Minoru Fujita. Steve Corino just lost the title to Takao Oromi, so I believed that setting up a small war of words between the two was the way to go. Best case scenario, Kirby gets an international booking and Fujita gets at least some mention in the US. Steve was fine with it, as was Hawaii Championship Wrestling owner/liaison to Zero1 Linda Bade. Kirby even posted my articles on his surprisingly popular MySpace page. (He always reposted my stuff.) Dale, on the other hand, let me have it in email form. He called the Junior Heavyweight belt "meaningless" and that I didn't have any right to write something like that. He almost got rid of me right there. But cooler heads prevailed, and I stayed on. The story line was dropped after that. By then, I was too busy interviewing promoters to fight with him.
Sidebar: My two favorite promoters to deal with were Frankie DeFalco from Milwaukee's Brew City Wrestling and Colorado wrestler/promoter Michael Hunt, aka Lightning Blind Mike. Mr. DeFalco was willing to try anything I suggested and was generally easy to get along with. Lightning Blind Mike was... well... blind. I'm talking totally blind. You have to respect that.
I was in the midst of my promoter interviews when I found out that the WWE was suing Dale over the AWA name and logo. Dale immediately claimed that Vince was full of shit. Not only did he claim to own the name AWA, he said he was distantly related to Verne Gagne and had the DNA test to prove it. He said Vince didn't have a leg to stand on, but was going to use his "propaganda machine" to convince the world that he was right. I immediately sprung into action, writing an article about how Vince couldn't physically own three letters. I punctuated it by adding a picture of the Ambridge (Pennsylvania) Water Authority - the AWA. It was pure, grade A bullshit, but Dale loved it, and that's all that mattered.
While the AWA lawsuit started Dale's downfall, it wasn't the thing that brought him down. A few weeks after Vince announced the lawsuit, the Benoit tragedy happened. My online-only story about Dale blowing up Vince's limo - I did it before Wrestling Society X, by the way - was immediately scrapped. He was horrified, and generally unsure about what to do next. Apparently, that uncertainty lasted a few hours, because he had co-owner Johnnie Stewart booked on The O'Reilly Factor the next day. It was kind of cool to say one of my bosses on TV, but to be honest, I was angry. Why aren't they hyping our events like this? We could have more than four people and Kirby Mack's fan club show up. Still, it wasn't my place to complain. I just waited, hoping for something to do.
That something did come about, but not in the way I was hoping. At the beginning of July, Dale booked a show called WrestleRace in Indianapolis. The concept was simple, albeit kind of "out there" - there would be an auto race, then a pro wrestling show headlined by Kirby Mack vs. Shark Boy. Everything was going according to plan, until Dale announced few days beforehand that Ric Converse and Xsiris was suddenly stripped of the tag belts and banned from all AWA events. He claimed that he caught them doing "illegal substances" (steroids for one, RVD special for the other) backstage at a CWF show and didn't want his promotion to be a part of that. The problem was that he did it without talking to the promoter of CWF first. They immediately left the AWA, and left a gaping hole in the show. I wanted to have Team Macktion win the belts. (Nope, not letting that one go.) He had a different idea. At the top of the show, he announced that the new tag champs were Johnnie Stewart and Ricky Landell. They would then defend their titles against the team of Buff Bagwell and The Patriot. Please note that I'm not talking about neither Del Wilkes nor Salvatore Sincere here. Our Patriot was Danny Dominion, which was loosely based on Sincere's run with the character. So it was a unauthorized ripoff of an allegedly unauthorized ripoff. And yes, Buff and The (fake) Patriot won, because Dale loved former stars and old guys even more than Dixie Carter.
In the midst of all the frustration, there was a glimmer of hope (sort of). Shortly before WrestleRace, Dale found that he had one unlikely supporter in his crusade against the WWE: Larry Zbyszko. Not only was Larry going to help us fight Vince, he was going to bring his proteges Team Vision (Mister Saint Laurent, Chasyn Rance and So Cal Val) with him. MSL was my favorite guy to work with outside of Kirby Mack and Corino, despite being a tool. He just "got it." Chasyn Rance, on the other hand, was a real piece of work. Case in point: He told a story about having his way with Kirby Mack's girlfriend while the Mack brothers slept in the next room. I immediately went to Kirby and asked his opinion. It was then I found out that Rance's little story wasn't a story. It actually happened and the asshole was bragging about it. Kirby shot on him, basically calling him every name under the sun and telling me to post it as is. I had stumbled into Russoville accidentally, but what was left of our fan base was instantly hooked. And Dale... he loved it, once he found out that Kirby was cool with it. (I have to give Dale this much: He only went with the story after he got Kirby's okay.)
A few days later, word got out that Kirby suffered a collapsed lung during a match. It wasn't the first time it happened, either. I almost immediately heard from Chasyn Rance, who called Kirby out of shape and soft. He also said it proved that he wasn't a real man, because a real man would be able to go "all night long" without hurting himself. That interview went onto the AWA page, then onto Kirby's MySpace page. His fan club went nuts. There was post after post about how Chasyn Rance was evil and needed to get his ass kicked. "Did you see Kirby Mack's MySpace page?" my dad asked the morning after he posted the article. "Those girls want to kill that other guy. You must be doing something right." And I was. I booked a hot feud. Sure, it was by accident, but no one needed to know that. The video Team Vision shot about Kirby Mack (with Larry reiterating many of my ideas, I might add) made things even more volatile.
Kirby Mack vs. Chasyn the jackass and Dale being Dale wasn't the only things I was dealing with. As I mentioned above, Takao Omori from Zero1 won the title from Steve Corino and this time, it stuck. It was obvious that Dale didn't like letting another promotion have control over the belt, but the outside forces (Steve Corino and Linda Bade) won out. I originally wanted to interview Omori over the phone, but Linda shot that down due to both the language barrier and the fact that he hated the media. It took me a week to get the damn thing done, but it was worth it. Dale liked it so much that he put it on the cover of the AWA magazine. It was supposedly going to be available at every AWA branded event. (More on the magazine in a bit.) I found out later that it was the first interview Omori finished in full in years. I'm still proud of it.
So we had a hot, for us anyway, tag team, a feud that everyone (in Kirby Mack's fan club) was talking about and a fairly reclusive, but well-known champion. Unfortunately, our tag champs were awful. Buff ignored all of my emails and for a while, everyone else's, and Danny Dominion didn't do interviews. So Dale asked me what I wanted to do. My answer was predictable: Team Vision vs. Team Macktion, and we hype like it's a Wrestlemania main event. It would have been Kirby's first match back. Unfortunately, he didn't see things that way. He had already started booking a two-day tournament, with teams from all over North America invited. There were a couple recognizable names (Team Vision, Dinn T. Moore, The Heartbreak Express, Bryan Logan, Silas Young, Alex Silva from TNA), but it was mostly local guys no one has ever heard of. Oh... and he wanted me to downplay the whole "faces and heels" thing, but hammer home their hometowns. And Team Macktion wasn't included, naturally. It was his new direction for the company: treating wrestlers like they were sports teams. It was awful. The only thing that made it worse was the fact that he didn't realize just how awful it was. I wasn't allowed to give any booking opinions this time, and I wasn't allowed to go to the show. So I sat at home and waited for the result email. I was hoping that he would have the common sense of closing the show with Team Vision winning and Kirby Mack rushing the ring. But he didn't. The finals were The Heartbreak Express vs. Sonny Roselli (who was also an AWA promoter) and Larry Huntley, known collectively as Team Elite. They were in their 40s. But what about Team Vision, you ask? They were eliminated in the first round by Frankie DeFalco and Jake Milliman. For those unaware, Milliman was the guy who lost the "turkey on a pole" match in Verne's pink room. Yeah. The big hot heel team lost to two guys from the ORIGINAL AWA. Great book there, Dale.
Around this time, I found that the nephew of one my mom's closest friends was local indie wrestler Powerhouse Hughes, or "House" for short. He had a few tryouts with the WWE, but was always turned down due to his knees. In addition to working some of the lower level promotions in the Pittsburgh area, House was a regular at AWA-MWA in West Virginia. So as a favor to my mom, his aunt asked him to pick up a few AWA magazines from the promoter. According to the "grapevine," the promoter had no idea the AWA even had a magazine. I was pissed, and I let Dale know about it. I received a copy of the magazine, a handwritten note and a check for $30 in the mail a week later. I still have the magazine and the note. The money went to buying a copy of Fire Pro Returns. It was only fitting.
I had also started crafting a proposal of my own. My AWA would be a combination of our regulars (no old guys save for Steve Corino and Japan, however), a few hands from AWA promotions that weren't being used by Dale (House, Zac Vincent, Rob James) and a pre-WWE Ted Dibiase Jr. He was being booked regularly by Brew City, and he was working cheap. He hated it. He especially hated the idea of using Ted Jr., for reasons that never were properly explained. Instead, he was going to base the promotion around Arya Daivari, Shawn's younger brother. He was going to be an All-American face, while also being a proud Muslim. As much as I hate to admit it, it wasn't Dale's worst idea. (That would come later.) Unfortunately, "Hulkster" Daivari lasted only two shows. It was all a set up. He was a terrorist all along. Fantastic.
I started to do less and less for Dale after the Daivari swerve. I only got lured back in when I discovered that Masato Tanaka was the new champ. It was Dale's newest vision. I immediately lined up an interview with Tanaka, who was willing to do face-to-face (or rather, phone-to-phone) with me. I was psyched. Two days before my interview, Dale broke off all relations with both Zero1 and HCW/Linda Bade due to Dale consolidating his power. In all honesty, it felt like a divorce. Masato Tanaka got to live with mom in a nice house in Hawaii and I was stuck in Minnesota with crazy old dad. I didn't think it could get any worse. Boy, was I wrong...
One day, Dale came to me with this crazy idea he called "mixed fighting." Each show would have wrestling matches, shoot fights and boxing matches. And mix style matches (boxer vs. wrestler, wrestler vs. shoot fighter, etc) would happen on a fairly regular basis. And the new champ was going to be some untrained guy who was on an early season of Big Brother. No, I'm not talking about Jessie Godderz, either. This guy had ZERO training. Did I mention he was going to beat Larry Zybysko for the title? Yeah. And Team Macktion wasn't going to get back together. And Kirby and Chasyn the jackass would still be kept apart. I had all I could take. I was gone. I tried pitching a few stories to Pro Wrestling Illustrated, but Stu Saks said my style didn't work with the magazine. The girlfriend and I moved to Atlanta shortly thereafter.
My last experience in the wrestling industry was after we moved. I had contacted Bryan Logan about doing some stuff for his new "not AWA," American Wrestling Affiliates. Bryan had left the AWA a few months after I did and took Larry's AWA belt with him. His show, presented in cooperation with Tony "totally not Ricky Steamboat" Givens' Championship Wrestling promotion in Kingsport, Tennessee, was full of rip-offs. Wannabe versions of Kane, James Mitchell, Ricky Morton (who inexplicably got to share a moment with the real thing), Jerry Lawler and "The Natural" Dustin Rhodes were all given the star treatment. It was also filled to the brim with run-ins, screw jobs and a pole match so ill-advised that it would embarrass even Russo himself. The main event between Logan and Givens ended with a Dusty finish. In all, that show did what even Dale freaking Gagner could not: Kill my desire to work in the business. I wrote two more articles for Bryan, but that was it. I was done for good.
In the year plus I worked for the AWA(s), I ended up with $30, a magazine, Steve Corino's personal email address, a copy of the PWI 500 that makes a passing mention to my "Team Vision" angle and a fun story to tell at interviews. It was my work for Dale that got me the job for my next two scumbag bosses. (Truly another story for another time.) As for the loose ends:
- Dale's "mixed fighting" idea was turned into the "Fighting World Championship" belt. The first real champ (excluding Ricky Landell, who held the belt's predecessor, the AWA United States Championship) was Keith Walker. He was one half of the Skullcrushers in the NWA.
- Dale lost the lawsuit. The promotion became Dale Gagne's Wrestling Superstars Live in 2008.
- After Masato Tanaka went to go "live with mom," the AWA World Title went to Larry Zybysko. He dropped it to Bryan Logan, but again, he and the physical title left town due to Dale being Dale. Logan's AWA title is now known as the NWA Smoky Mountain Heavyweight Title. And when I mean "title," I'm talking about the lineage only. Larry eventually got his vintage title belt back.
- Kirby Mack and Chasyn Rance the jackass never had a proper one-on-one match in the AWA.
- Team Macktion would finally take on Team Vision in early 2009, a year and a half after everyone stopped caring. It was also, to my knowledge, not officially sanctioned by Dale. Yes, I'm still bitter.
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