What A Great Year It’s Been For British Wrestling

This year, British wrestling has had a great up-turn in fortunes. We’ve had some awesome shows & matches from a wide range of promotions in England, Scotland & Wales.

England has seen the birth and growth of PROGRESS out of London and PCW (Preston City Wrestling) have continued to put on great shows up in the north west, just like Future Shock Wrestling. Also running out of Nottingham & the Cambridge area, SWE (Southside Wrestling Entertainment) have put on some stellar shows and, to my knowledge, were the only UK group to get newly-signed WWE star PAC to work a British show, which is great work by promoter Ben Auld.

Anyone who knows me from my podcast The Indy Corner will know that I’m a big fan of Wolverhampton based promotion Fight Club: PRO. The guys have put on a shed load of excellent shows this year, and it’s not that I’m putting them over any of the other British promotions, but I have been to every FCP show this year and they have never failed to impress me.

Some of the highlights have been ROH stars Eddie Edwards, Davey Richards and Michael Elgin coming in. Wait I hear you say! They’re not British wrestlers and, of course, you’d be correct, but these guys have come in and had great matches with British guys from the FCP roster such as MK McKinnan, Trent Seven & Dave Mastiff.

FCP is such a unique experience for a British wrestling show. All the imports usually go back to the US and put over the promotion as a great place to work. McKinnan, the current FCP champion has had a stellar year, defeating the aforementioned Eddie Edwards to win the FCP title and he has also been to a 30 min time-limit draw with NJPW star Prince Devitt (while injured I may add).

Just under a week before that, MK took part in a tag match for SouthSide (with Jonathan Gresham against The Leaders of Marty Scurll & Zack Sabre Jr.) that many are saying could be a serious contender for MOTY (it was the night before this show that MK got the injury that he carried though to the Devitt match). Maybe just behind Noam Dar, MK has had probably the best year as far as British workers go.

Overall, British wrestling has been awesome this year. OK many shows have had imports on and they have provided some great matches, but a lot of these matches have involved British guys so that says a lot for the talent we have on our little island.

That’s it for now, I hope you haven’t been too bored with my marking out over MK McKinnan but you know, credit where it’s due and that.

Each week you can hear me on The Indy Corner podcast that I co-host with Paul Kissock, archives can be found over at http://theindycorner.podbean.com. You can also subscribe to us on iTunes and some of the various videos I’ve taken at British shows (mainly FCP) can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/user/dahardcoreone

Until next time,

Stuart Rodgers @WLHSTU @TheIndyCorner

http://wrestlingslasthope.com