YBFREE.comIn Pursuit of Human Interests
| YBFREE.com In Pursuit of Human Interests |
Archives | BLOG | Auctions | Shoppe | Message Board | Company Info | Search |
Check Out USA Pro Wrestling at www.usaprowrestling.com
In last week's installment I talked with Frank Goodman on how to keep a promotion afloat with storylines that are fresh and interesting despite how often they are stolen by bigger companies. This week I continue the discussion, talking about promtion, magazines that ignore USAPW and how the company will move forward in a discussion about the future of the business and USAPW.
With ideas running thin and no real competition for the WWE, business has been shrinking and while USAPW is still putting on good shows, the company is still feeling the pinch. "It's a rough ride now since WCW and ECW ceased operations," said Goodman. "WWE needs good competition to force them to be great all the time. No Indy fed can compete with the WWE, so until there's a big company to give the WWE a run for its money, things will be so, so and independents will not get the runoff from the WWE popularity like it did in the past."
This slow down has made it hard for Goodman to find many venues looking to carry wrestling. Going from 40 shows in 1993 and 30 in 1994, starting in 1999, Goodman only ran 12 to 18 shows each year. "That's all we can run since we have only a handful of venues," he said. "The same place can't be run more than once every six to eight weeks, or it will get burned out. It's hard, but for me, Indy wrestling is great and we are still pulling in good numbers. I see nobody other than us and Ring of Honor (ROH) having decent crowds and with all the publicity they get, ROH should be drawing thousands, not hundreds."
Promotion is a key outlet to get fans to shows, but with wrestling not as popular, many wrestling magazines that popped up during the wrestling explosion have fallen by the wayside with only PWI and 1Wrestling.com considered to be among the elite are left. 1Wrestling.com has covered USAPW extensively (although he recently blasted the company for ignoring his important press releases while printing those that have less news), respecting the independent field as a whole, but despite producing many of the stars of tomorrow, even drawing Jonathon Coachman and Big from the WWE to see one of their shows, PWI seems to ignore the company. Goodman isn't about to beg for their return.
"We always received a ton of coverage when Bill Apter was at PWI, but the people running things now only like who kisses their butts and we don't," Goodman said. "It's their job to cover us and not our job to force ourselves to be covered. We draw an average of 800 per show and in 300 shows, never once under 350 people, and as many as 3,000. No other independent fed comes close and not to mention, we are in the largest market in the world and are the largest Indy fed in the U.S. bar none and we sell close to, if not more videos than ROH, but we are still at the magazine's beck and call. We get pushed aside for crap groups [editor's note: he is not talking about ROH] that draw 50 fans and stiff their talent."
Well, no one has to kiss our ass to be covered. So, without further adieu, we would like to point out that on Saturday, November 29, USAPW will present at 7 p.m. an End to an Era, the last show at the Elks Lodge, featuring Raven (current champion) vs. Al Snow for the USAPW World Championship, Shane Douglas vs. The Sandman, Axl Rotten vs. Balls Mahoney in what is sure to be a blood fest, DRS vs. The USAPW World Tag-Team Champions The Flock, Mike Kruel vs. Simon Diamond, Billy Reil vs. Crowbar, Slyk Wagner Brown vs. Striker, Prince Nana and Monsta Mack vs. The Solution and a Triple Threat X-Treme Championship Ladder Match between Grim Reefer, Deranged and Sonjay Dutt. D-Lo Brown, Chris Candido, Bam Bam Bigelow, Sunny (The Return of the Triple Threat), Low-Ki, Mike Tobin, The Christopher Street Connection, Masked Maniac, Ken Sweeney and Low Life Louis Ramos are also expected to attend. The card is subject to change. Check out www.usaprowrestling.com for more information and to buy tickets. The website also features Goodman's column as the Masked Maniac, other columns, news, rankings, multimedia, a great links section and the world's famous USA Pro Message Board.
In addition to all this, Goodman even presents a semi-daily hotline for fans to call and listen to rants and raves about pro wrestling while Goodman visits his favorite fast food place Arby's and gets sick every time. It's a lot of fun and gives fans an opportunity to leave a message when Goodman is done with his daily dumping of USAPW news and gossip. You can check that out by calling 1-516-214-8333.
So, what's next for the man who says he would make an excellent addition to the WWE writing team, although no one would listen? "We used to want to do a pay-per-view, but after sitting down with the pay-per-view companies and seeing how much we had to shell out, we saw that it wasn't feasible," he says. "We were even offered the TNA spot over a year ago and In Demand came to three of our shows, but it's not for us. We are happy running our shows as is and if anything comes along that doesn't require us to shell out nutty money, we would explore it. Right now, we'll continue promoting quality shows and as long as the fans keep coming, we'll continue giving them what they want, the number one independent promotion in wrestling."
Check back here for a look at the Elks Lodge; its' impact in wrestling and the farewell to the wrestling world when USAPW presents its final show there this weekend.
Send your questions and comments about this article to Bandwidth@ybfree.com.