Post by Road Warrior Shark on Jun 26, 2023 19:58:23 GMT -5
~~~ Fade into a press conference at the Hilton-Americas in downtown Houston. Two familiar faces to wrestling fans step up to the dual podiums: Conrad Thompson and Bruce Prichard. They are introduced to the crowd of fans and reporters. ~~~
Conrad: Good afternoon, and thank you for being here today. This is a monumental day in my life and hopefully one that wrestling fans will remember for years to come.
Bruce: If you listen to Something to Wrestle, our award-winning podcast, you know we’ve both been working on a couple of projects independently behind the scenes for the past couple of months.
Conrad: So very fast and very suddenly, these two projects started to run parallel to one another, and so Bruce and I said, look, we’re already business partners, we get along and have a track record of success, so why not pull these two together and see what happens.
Bruce: Once Conrad laid out his vision, it just made so much sense for us to bring them together, under one umbrella.
Conrad: Look, we are all familiar with the UWA, the premier governing body in pro wrestling for many years now. Through some of my contacts in the business, the rumor and innuendo was that World Wrestling Federation territory wasn’t doing very well and was on the verge of collapse. The WWF has a great number of talented wrestlers under contract, and some of them reached out to me in an effort to see what I might be able to do to keep their jobs and lively hoods intact.
Bruce: Meanwhile, as most of you know, I got my start here in Houston working for Paul Boesch. Last fall, Paul embarked on a reboot of World Class Championship Wrestling under the UWA banner. Paul ran several successful events over the following months, and things were going quite well, or so it seemed.
It turned out the financial backers he had relied on to get things underway had not been truthful when they documented the amount of liquid assets available to Paul as the promotion got started. Paul made arrangements for buildings and paying staff based on those false numbers. He woke up one morning to find the coffers empty, bank drafts bouncing back at him, and collectors harassing him left and right.
Paul’s wife called me, and I extended the olive branch to him. Paul was an old school guy who took people at their word. He was very frustrated with what was happening, and he had gotten to the point where he just wanted out.
Conrad: Bruce had been telling me about the situation, and I’m a wrestling guy, and fortunate to have made some decent money in my lifetime. I had told Bruce that If he wanted to buy the assets of the promotion, I would back him. Paul could recoup some of his losses, and I thought maybe we can stream the footage or something on our website, AdFreeShows.com.
Then the word came that the WWF was in trouble, and it all just clicked. What if we just sort of combined the two entities? The competition in the WWF’s core markets was very saturated, where the WCCW strongholds were ready for someone to come in and deliver the type of shows they were accustomed to. We decided to take the talent already in place, assume the contracts we want and buy out the others, and reboot WCCW. Bruce can run the day to day, and I’ll be the money man behind him steering the ship.
Bruce: We sat down and started to work out the details. We examined the roster, negotiating deals with the guys who we wanted to retain and settlements with the ones we could not afford to keep. We also had some very serious discussions with Mr. Tunney and Mr. Crockett.
Conrad: So long story short, World Class is coming back to the UWA. It will look a little different that when Paul launched his company last year, but we are committed to giving the people in that region the best possible wrestling shows that we can.
Bruce: Thanks again for joining us today, and be on the lookout for further announcements from WCCW in the coming weeks.
Conrad: Good afternoon, and thank you for being here today. This is a monumental day in my life and hopefully one that wrestling fans will remember for years to come.
Bruce: If you listen to Something to Wrestle, our award-winning podcast, you know we’ve both been working on a couple of projects independently behind the scenes for the past couple of months.
Conrad: So very fast and very suddenly, these two projects started to run parallel to one another, and so Bruce and I said, look, we’re already business partners, we get along and have a track record of success, so why not pull these two together and see what happens.
Bruce: Once Conrad laid out his vision, it just made so much sense for us to bring them together, under one umbrella.
Conrad: Look, we are all familiar with the UWA, the premier governing body in pro wrestling for many years now. Through some of my contacts in the business, the rumor and innuendo was that World Wrestling Federation territory wasn’t doing very well and was on the verge of collapse. The WWF has a great number of talented wrestlers under contract, and some of them reached out to me in an effort to see what I might be able to do to keep their jobs and lively hoods intact.
Bruce: Meanwhile, as most of you know, I got my start here in Houston working for Paul Boesch. Last fall, Paul embarked on a reboot of World Class Championship Wrestling under the UWA banner. Paul ran several successful events over the following months, and things were going quite well, or so it seemed.
It turned out the financial backers he had relied on to get things underway had not been truthful when they documented the amount of liquid assets available to Paul as the promotion got started. Paul made arrangements for buildings and paying staff based on those false numbers. He woke up one morning to find the coffers empty, bank drafts bouncing back at him, and collectors harassing him left and right.
Paul’s wife called me, and I extended the olive branch to him. Paul was an old school guy who took people at their word. He was very frustrated with what was happening, and he had gotten to the point where he just wanted out.
Conrad: Bruce had been telling me about the situation, and I’m a wrestling guy, and fortunate to have made some decent money in my lifetime. I had told Bruce that If he wanted to buy the assets of the promotion, I would back him. Paul could recoup some of his losses, and I thought maybe we can stream the footage or something on our website, AdFreeShows.com.
Then the word came that the WWF was in trouble, and it all just clicked. What if we just sort of combined the two entities? The competition in the WWF’s core markets was very saturated, where the WCCW strongholds were ready for someone to come in and deliver the type of shows they were accustomed to. We decided to take the talent already in place, assume the contracts we want and buy out the others, and reboot WCCW. Bruce can run the day to day, and I’ll be the money man behind him steering the ship.
Bruce: We sat down and started to work out the details. We examined the roster, negotiating deals with the guys who we wanted to retain and settlements with the ones we could not afford to keep. We also had some very serious discussions with Mr. Tunney and Mr. Crockett.
Conrad: So long story short, World Class is coming back to the UWA. It will look a little different that when Paul launched his company last year, but we are committed to giving the people in that region the best possible wrestling shows that we can.
Bruce: Thanks again for joining us today, and be on the lookout for further announcements from WCCW in the coming weeks.