I thought I would start with talking about a UK promotion that could take on the big American companies, so today, I’m talking about IC-DUB and the buzz around the promotion being warranted.
Humble Beginnings
ICW started over 10 years ago by a guy who was not satisfied by what was going on around him, which I can respect right out of the gate .
Mark Dallas created a promotion that caters to a dying breed of fans that was turned away from WWE and TNA, Mark created choice in the slowly growing evolution of pro-wresting in the UK.
Things were slow at the beginning, with only being centered in Maryhill Community Centre, ICW finally got their big break when VICE and the BBC got involved with ICW, highlighting two wrestlers, Grado and Jack Jester who was set to dethrone Mikey Whiplash for the ICW Championship at that year’s Fear and Loathing event.
Grado is one of the main reasons BBC and VICE picked up ICW, as it was a character that was not to the extreme like all the other personalities that ICW showed to the masses.
Insane Fight Club
BBC commissioned a second episode of “Insane Fight Club” and focused it on expanding out of Scotland, which was big for the company and Dallas himself. The buzz grew into people selling out arenas every time ICW came into their town and with stellar cards to match its hype.
I got the word about this guy released from the “List of Doom” releases from WWE in 2014 was coming back to ICW, so I was interested to see where it was going. It was Drew Galloway (formerly Drew McIntyre in the WWE), it was huge for ICW.
He then went on to win the ICW World Championship when he returned to the company, which was cool as WWE didn’t give him a shot at their World title, just the IC Title then he lost it to Grado, who was working a stint with TNA and still is I believe (haven’t watched TNA properly since MVP debuted at The Hydro).
Road to Hydro
Speaking of The Hydro, that leads me to the last part of this story, ICW was always performing at either at The Garage, Barrowlands and many other Scottish venues then rumours were circulating that ICW was expanding to the Hydro in Glasgow and it did happen last Sunday, it was the best PPV of the Survivor Series weekend, in my opinion.
The SSE Hydro held ICW’s Fear and Loathing 9 PPV (which I watched on the FITE app), which saw Kurt Angle, Grado, Joe Coffey, Lionheart and surprisingly WWE’s Finn Balor (wrestled in ICW as his real name, Fergal Devitt) as a guest commissioner as Mick Foley could not be their due to WWE double booking him for Survivor Series and WWE took priority of Mick (Mick was scheduled to appear in Finn’s eventual role).
In my opinion, ICW is one of the best promotions in the UK, maybe in the world in a couple of years time, I can see ICW selling out SSE Wembley in 2018 or 2019, as they always say, timing is everything.
Thank you for reading my first article as a part of Team SLTD, hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing about Insane Championship Wrestling.
See you next week, same time, same great place, CIAO!
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