Post by UWC Office on Sept 6, 2022 19:10:06 GMT -5
Beyond the Mat
November, the birth month of UWC by Jay Jefferson
It's been a while since I wrote one of these, Beyond the Mad write ups. In fact, it's been almost a year. Well the calendar has turned to the month of November. The month of November is important in the land of UWC. That's because it's our birth month. That's right, 15 years ago on November 30th UWC was created. It's been a long wild trip. But here we are plugging along and as strong as ever if you ask me. We've seen people come, people go. Now even our colors and logo are different, (A much needed change IMO). I want to talk about what led to the creation of UWC all those years ago back in 2005.
It was November 2005. I was a part of a fed called Honor Wrestling League (HWL), run by Kevin who now runs Lion's Road. I had come off stints of running feds before, PWF and TWN which were somewhat successful but didn't catch fire. I had come off a stint as a handler in More Power Wrestling and had a successful stint as the feds booker, before the owner took back over the reins and ruined the fed within a few short weeks. Side note here. I could write or do a week long podcast or write ups on the ups and downs of More Power Wrestling, ugh, lol. Anyway, I remember I was sitting looking at the GameFaqs fed board (which is still up btw). Which at the time was the place to be if you were in the game or wanted to showcase your fed. I was looking around at some of the feds on there and I was in shock of how many boring copycat feds of WWE or ECW or some fed that was "Hardcore" The game was in a state of a stand still of all these awful copycat ideas. No one was stepping outside the box outside of many HWL at the time. But nothing that was like, "Wait a second I have to take a look at that place". A lot of the characters were the same. They were Undertaker or Kane rip offs and were these dark goth characters that had no depth and now room for advancement. They were all the same. I was still feeling creative and had ideas after my stint as head booker of MPW and wanted to do something different than what I saw. So, I got the idea of going old school and creating a territory fed but add elements of modern wrestling and add flavors of Puro (which was not as popular as today outside of Japan) to it. I wanted different colors than anyone else. Kevin who runs Lion's Road had this idea of a fed called Pro-Wrestling Spirit but Spirit was under another translation. Plus, I was a huge fan of Pro-Wrestling NOAH at the time. The colors he had were green and block. So, I asked him to add those colors that he wasn't using to make UWC, he didn't. Now, I needed a name. I went through several ideas, Pro-Wrestling NOVA, Pro-Wrestling Honor, Universal Wrestling Network, Universal Championship Wrestling, or Down South Wrestling or even just calling it Championship Promotions. But, I was reading the HWL results and was thinking the use of, "League" was a cool idea. I was a big fan of Bill Watts' UWF, so I took Universal Wrestling and added League and UWC was born.
To start UWC off we have the UWC World Championship which at the time was called the UWC Heavyweight Championship, UWC Heritage Championship, UWC Jr. Heavyweight Championship which was transitioned into the Pride Championship which was our Pure Title, and UWC Tag Team Championship. At the end of 2006 we added the Southeastern Championship for up and comers, having unified the Pride into the Heritage. UWC didn’t hold PPV events, I didn’t feel it was realistic and always wanted to keep things in the realm of realism. We had a supercard every month. We produced the first Coronation Cup in 2006 the first Coronation Cup Tag League. Our World Title was defended in other promotions submitting it as a truly top title. So UWC was created and the first show of two matches grew to a roster of 25+ by the end of 2006. UWC was producing a weekly show with writers who wrote promos at the time with no word limit and no promo limit. In some cases writers were putting out 5-7 promos a week.
UWC was created to give the landscape something different. I hope we’re still doing that after all these years. I’ve tried to walk away from UWC twice and do something different. All the while there were three letters that hung over me no matter what other fed I tried to do and those are UWC. It’s as much a part of me as I am of it. I am having as much fun now as I ever have doing this. Through the years we’ve had people who threw fits, tried to slander my name, make fun of my health conditions. I always let it slide, never saying anything in public. Because I knew for example if 5 lost their minds over a game and acted like children, we had 30 + who were having a blast and that makes it all worth it. Even after all this time putting an angle together and seeing two people take your vision, tweek it and make it their own too and make it work and make it a masterpiece it’s still all worth it after all these years.
So there you have it. UWC you’re officially 15 now. It’s been a long strange trip and I hope everyone is enjoying the ring and continues to enjoy what we’re creating now.
November, the birth month of UWC by Jay Jefferson
It's been a while since I wrote one of these, Beyond the Mad write ups. In fact, it's been almost a year. Well the calendar has turned to the month of November. The month of November is important in the land of UWC. That's because it's our birth month. That's right, 15 years ago on November 30th UWC was created. It's been a long wild trip. But here we are plugging along and as strong as ever if you ask me. We've seen people come, people go. Now even our colors and logo are different, (A much needed change IMO). I want to talk about what led to the creation of UWC all those years ago back in 2005.
It was November 2005. I was a part of a fed called Honor Wrestling League (HWL), run by Kevin who now runs Lion's Road. I had come off stints of running feds before, PWF and TWN which were somewhat successful but didn't catch fire. I had come off a stint as a handler in More Power Wrestling and had a successful stint as the feds booker, before the owner took back over the reins and ruined the fed within a few short weeks. Side note here. I could write or do a week long podcast or write ups on the ups and downs of More Power Wrestling, ugh, lol. Anyway, I remember I was sitting looking at the GameFaqs fed board (which is still up btw). Which at the time was the place to be if you were in the game or wanted to showcase your fed. I was looking around at some of the feds on there and I was in shock of how many boring copycat feds of WWE or ECW or some fed that was "Hardcore" The game was in a state of a stand still of all these awful copycat ideas. No one was stepping outside the box outside of many HWL at the time. But nothing that was like, "Wait a second I have to take a look at that place". A lot of the characters were the same. They were Undertaker or Kane rip offs and were these dark goth characters that had no depth and now room for advancement. They were all the same. I was still feeling creative and had ideas after my stint as head booker of MPW and wanted to do something different than what I saw. So, I got the idea of going old school and creating a territory fed but add elements of modern wrestling and add flavors of Puro (which was not as popular as today outside of Japan) to it. I wanted different colors than anyone else. Kevin who runs Lion's Road had this idea of a fed called Pro-Wrestling Spirit but Spirit was under another translation. Plus, I was a huge fan of Pro-Wrestling NOAH at the time. The colors he had were green and block. So, I asked him to add those colors that he wasn't using to make UWC, he didn't. Now, I needed a name. I went through several ideas, Pro-Wrestling NOVA, Pro-Wrestling Honor, Universal Wrestling Network, Universal Championship Wrestling, or Down South Wrestling or even just calling it Championship Promotions. But, I was reading the HWL results and was thinking the use of, "League" was a cool idea. I was a big fan of Bill Watts' UWF, so I took Universal Wrestling and added League and UWC was born.
To start UWC off we have the UWC World Championship which at the time was called the UWC Heavyweight Championship, UWC Heritage Championship, UWC Jr. Heavyweight Championship which was transitioned into the Pride Championship which was our Pure Title, and UWC Tag Team Championship. At the end of 2006 we added the Southeastern Championship for up and comers, having unified the Pride into the Heritage. UWC didn’t hold PPV events, I didn’t feel it was realistic and always wanted to keep things in the realm of realism. We had a supercard every month. We produced the first Coronation Cup in 2006 the first Coronation Cup Tag League. Our World Title was defended in other promotions submitting it as a truly top title. So UWC was created and the first show of two matches grew to a roster of 25+ by the end of 2006. UWC was producing a weekly show with writers who wrote promos at the time with no word limit and no promo limit. In some cases writers were putting out 5-7 promos a week.
UWC was created to give the landscape something different. I hope we’re still doing that after all these years. I’ve tried to walk away from UWC twice and do something different. All the while there were three letters that hung over me no matter what other fed I tried to do and those are UWC. It’s as much a part of me as I am of it. I am having as much fun now as I ever have doing this. Through the years we’ve had people who threw fits, tried to slander my name, make fun of my health conditions. I always let it slide, never saying anything in public. Because I knew for example if 5 lost their minds over a game and acted like children, we had 30 + who were having a blast and that makes it all worth it. Even after all this time putting an angle together and seeing two people take your vision, tweek it and make it their own too and make it work and make it a masterpiece it’s still all worth it after all these years.
So there you have it. UWC you’re officially 15 now. It’s been a long strange trip and I hope everyone is enjoying the ring and continues to enjoy what we’re creating now.