Defunct promotion you wish would've suceeded

[Ozman]

World Class was the first wrestling promotion I watched on syndicated tv as a kid back in late 83-84. Wish they would have gone national.

[XIII]

World Class. There’s just something about a Texas wrestling promotion, granted they went boom and bust with the 80s oil boom, but I love World Class in spite of Fritz’s shenanigans.

[saneiac]

Time travel, reincarnation, mind control, decapitations, cannibalism, ancient cursed relics, demonic possession, a competitor that is an actual dragon in human form...

Yeah, I miss Lucha Underground.

[MC Blowfish]

I would have to go with either AWA or World Class. I remember watching both of them on ESPN and sometimes AWA was on one of our local channels. I loved watching them both. It was a shame to see them both go away.

[Alice Syndrome]

Jul 19, 2022 16:02:05 GMT -5 Tea & Crumpets said:

FWA.

Alex Shane has more than his share of carny problems but for a hot minute FWA had a chance of being a major British promotion. 1PW, Rev-Pro, ICW, PCW, Defiant, none of them have ever for me quite captured the feeling of scale FWA had for a time and its demise led to a ton of talented early 00s British wrestlers being lost in the shuffle.
Plus my two darkhorse picks for "most deserved a better career" Paul Burchill and Katie Lea got started there and were f***ing awesome.

That whole rebrand, split with XWA, and all of that made it such a mess. It felt like with the IPW/RPW split in 2012 and the launch of Progress they basically had to reboot Britwres from square 1 to make it relevant again.

[zero744]

Jul 20, 2022 5:45:03 GMT -5 Xxcjb01xX [PIECE OF: SH-] said:

CHIKARA couldn't survive the man that ran it unfortunately.

There was a time where Sinclair watched CHIKARA, and genuinely questioned if they invested in the wrong wrestling company, they were on fire, and almost all of wrestling cared about the small, goofy, crazy lucha hybrid promotion in PA

The shutdown angle killed it, it was a gamble that failed, rumors (a lot of which weren't flattering) about the real reason it shut down sucked some life out of it, the comeback was amazing, but they lost steam badly essentially right as the FLOOD angle ended. It became very apparent that the OCD booking of Quackenbush wouldn't survive like it did in 2010 when people like Claudio and Sara Del Rey left, when essentially half the roster left in the span of 2-3 years and weren't replaced by wrestlers who could carry the same load (Rumors swirled they were intentionally undertrained so they'd stop leaving the company for greener pastures by the way)... who also themselves, left in some cases (See: Wheeler Yuta).

Felt like the breaking point was the "Secret Season", another bold strategy but it didn't pay off, and it just felt like things slowly eroded over time until well, we all know how and why it shut down (If not I did make a thread about it) in the end and it sucks.

There are CHIKARA-esque successors out there, including in PA, but CHIKARA is one I wish could have succeeded... if there's any consolation, seeing about half the roster from the prime CHIKARA era in AEW proves that promotion did something right.

Being personally screwed by Quack, which we discussed in DM’s a couple years ago, I wish Chikara would’ve stuck around and gone the distance. I was a fan and found out first hand Quacks tactics. Using “tryouts” as a way to pay for a certain someone’s training. But damn if I didn’t love Chikara and supported the performers after that.

[David-Arquette was in WCW 2000]

Jul 19, 2022 16:42:55 GMT -5 lucas_lee said:

UWF-i, BML, and BattlArts I love the style of those matches and the rules and such. It made for really compelling worked shoot matches

Ah UWFi is just fantastic. I discovered that back in 2008 whilst browsing through random channels at around midnight and was immediately hooked.