Who We’ll Want as Wrestlers

Over the past two weeks we’ve been swamped with inquiries from guys all over the country wanting to know how they can join the AACW roster.  We’ve answered so many questions, I’ve decided to write a full-blown post to discuss it a bit.

First, let’s talk about how we’re going to recruit.  When the time comes (remember, we’re still in our formative stage right now), we will hold an audition.  We expect a huge turnout, and only about 30-35 guys will make the cut.  So what will we be looking for? Let’s talk a bit about that.

First, you must be at least 18 years old.  No exceptions.  That’s just for legal reasons, folks.

Second, it’s not a requirement, but you get major points if you’re 27 or younger.  We’re looking for young guys who we can shape into the AACW mold and get lots of years out of.

Next, you must be in good health.  We will require all our competitors to get written doctor’s approval to compete as a pro wrestler and participate in a grueling physical conditioning program.  We don’t want anyone dropping dead on us.

You must be somewhat athletic.  You don’t have to be Arnold Schwarznegger or Terrell Owens, but you do need some basic physical ability.  If you’re out of shape right now and you want to wrestle, do yourself a huge favor and start pumping the iron and pounding the bricks.

Preferably, you have received zero instruction as a pro wrestler.  Does that surprise you? Well, it shouldn’t.  We’re looking to train our guys right, and a lot of guys who have been to wrestling schools or even worked in the indies were trained wrong.  It’s a lot easier to train someone completely new than to have to get guys to unlearn things that are wrong.

OK, now the really important stuff.  These are the things that will really score points in our judges’ minds.

You must love pro wrestling.  You must have it in your blood.  We’re not looking for singers or wanna-be actors who want to use wrestling as a springboard to a singing or acting career.  Not that that’s even possible for anyone except, maybe, Hulk Hogan, but you’d be surprised by what some people think.

Your work ethic must be second-to-none.  Our physical conditioning program is going to be brutal.  Our ring instruction will be intense.  We are going to hammer our guys into chiseled granite.  If you’re wimpy or a whiner, don’t bother applying.  To get an idea of the type of training our guys will receive, go to YouTube and type in 300 training.  Watch the video “300 Workout (Behind the Scenes).”

We will not have fat, skinny, or flabby wrestlers in AACW.

You must be willing to make sacrifices to realize your dream.  We don’t want guys who say things like, “Sorry, I can’t wrestle this week because my girlfriend and I are in a fight,” or, “I can’t practice tonight because my buddies and I are going out,” or “I don’t want to have to work a 9 to 5 job while I pursue my wrestling career.”

Charisma.  You can’t be shy.  You have to be able to perform.  You have to be able to talk.  If you have a social anxiety, get over it.  Practice doing your best impersonations of Ric Flair, Hulk Hogan, Muhammad Ali, The Rock, Terry Funk, and Presidents Clinton and Bush in the mirror.

You must be a team player.  We intend to build this promotion as a team effort.  We’re not looking for guys who just want to advance themselves.  We’re looking for guys who want to advance the entire AACW team.

Finally, the attribute that scores the most points is…

Drumroll, please…

Attitude.

We want guys with a winning, can-do attitude.  We want guys who are dedicated, motivated, positive, driven, and energetic.  We want guys who are confident but not cocky.  We want guys eager to learn and work hard.

We want guys who won’t let anything stop them from succeeding.

Is that you?

The Lessons of WSX

Something amazing happened in 2006, but not many people noticed.

It was called Wrestling Society X.

What was so amazing about it? Simple – a new pro wrestling promotion with only one established star on its roster found its way to major network TV.  It was like a shooting star – it burned amazingly bright momentarily and then just as quickly disappeared from our consciousness.

What is so striking about WSX is the fact that it almost made it – almost.  It was a professional production taped in a high-end Hollywood studio with very high production values.

So what happened? Is WSX proof that people just don’t care much for pro wrestling anymore? Well, to answer that question, let’s learn from the WSX experience.  Let’s discuss what they did right and what they did wrong.

First, what they did right:

• Closed studio venue.  The WSX “bunker” was nothing at all like a bunker.  It wasn’t even a warehouse or arena.  It was a studio.  What’s right about that? A number of things.  First, it allowed the producers of WSX to control their shooting environment and keep their production costs down while still taping a quality show.

• They didn’t bite off more than they could chew.  Too many promotions try to do too much too soon.  Right out the gate, before ever establishing a loyal audience, they start touring.  The problem with this is, touring takes up lots of time and resources – time and resources that would be better spent developing the show and building up the audience.

• New, young, fresh talent.  This is what I liked most about WSX.  WSX blew off all the WWE and TNA retreads and instead combed the indies for the most talented and dedicated up-and-comers they could find.  The world is full of talented young athletes, and WSX proved that a wrestling show can be very entertaining without guys who have appeared in a Wrestlemania event.

• First-rate production values.  WSX did a fine job with its camera work, editing, titling, and sound.

Now let’s take a look at what was wrong with WSX that doomed it to failure:

• Their show was only half an hour.  Granted, the producers of WSX had no real control over this as it was dictated by executives at MTV, but no matter what the reason, half an hour is too little time for a wrestling show.  Sixty minutes is too little for a wrestling show.  It doesn’t matter how you use the time – thirty minutes is way, way too little.  Doing a wrestling show in thirty minutes is like trying to cook a turkey in five minutes by turning the temperature up to 800 degrees.

• Obscure musicians.  Need I say any more? When will pro wrestling promoters stop trying to make wrestling something it’s not? And when will they learn that cross-promotion efforts in wrestling shows very rarely work.  History is replete with cross-promotion efforts that flopped.  Think of it – WCW had monster trucks, NASCAR, and the Wizard of Oz.  WWF(E) had the WBF, XFL, and “No Holds Barred.” It doesn’t work.  Why? Because pro wrestling fans want to see wrestling, not music videos, bodybuilding competitions, bad football, or Dungeon of Doom monster trucks.

• Finally, and more than anything else, it was just so cheesy and phony.  And for wrestling fans to describe a wrestling show as “too phony,” man, you’ve really crossed the line.  The silly explosions, phony camera shaking, electrified fences, pyrotechnics, exploding crates, and all the really, really bad acting that went along with it all were so bad the show was just unwatchable.

Imagine, if you would, had WSX not done the phony cartoonish gimmicks.  Say that instead of half an hour they had a ninety minutes.  Say they threw out all the guest musicians and had a professional broadcast team behind the microphones.

Suppose they had their young, passionate performers concentrating on wrestling rather than doing wild stunts and bad acting.

Imagine what could have been…

This, folks, is what AACW will be.

How AACW Will Make Money

How will AACW make money? Excellent question! Trust me when I say we’ve researched this issue very thoroughly and we’ve developed a very sound, multi-faceted profit-generating strategy.

Before I tell you what it is, let me say this: The lynchpin to our strategy is giving our audience what they want – high quality, action-packed pro wrestling.

So how will we make money? To answer that question, let me toss out one of my own: How does the show “The Simpsons” make money? The answer is simple: Advertising, merchandising, and syndication.

For almost 20 years, the Fox Network has made money from “The Simpsons” by selling commercial spots in the show.  They get top dollar for the commercial spots in the show because “The Simpsons” has such a large audience.  But that’s not all.  Not only does “The Simpsons” have a large audience, its audience is comprised of what advertisers commonly call the “golden” demographic of 15-34 year-old males.

Why do advertisers consider the 15-34 year-old male demographic “golden”? Because 15-34 year-old males have money and it burns holes in their pockets.  So companies that sell things like video games, cell phones, electronics, fast food, soda, acne treatments, or anything else that appeals to young males are desperately trying to reach this audience, and they’ll pay good money to do it.

Now let’s talk about merchandising.  How many people do you know have a Homer Simpson doll, Bart Simpson t-shirt, or Simpsons video game? The money “The Simpsons” merchandise has generated is staggering.

Next, syndication.  Local TV networks make money by showing re-runs and then inserting – you guessed it – commercials into those re-runs.  They have to pay to run re-runs of shows like “The Simpsons,” gambling that they’ll make more on commercials than they spend to buy the rights to air the shows.

So how does this relate to AACW? In our view, the potential is thrilling.  Consider:

• Pro wrestling appeals directly to the “golden” 15-34 male demographic
• Pro wrestling fans are fanatical about pro wrestling–they eat it up
• Most pro wrestling fans (most, not all) are very dissatisfied with the current pro wrestling offerings

So if we produce an exceptional show, we are confident we can build a very large, zealous audience.  It won’t happen overnight, of course, but over time–by giving fans what they want–our fan-base will steadily grow until advertisers will be asking us to advertise on our shows.

Then comes merchandising.  If our show appeals to our audience and our fans become fanatics they way we intend, merchandise sales will be highly profitable.  Think of it–at the height of the Monday Night Wars, how many people bought and wore nWo shirts? And why did they buy them? Because they loved the nWo angle.

Then once we’ve established a loyal audience, we can begin touring.  Touring will happen after we establish our brand, not before.  Our strategy is to build a fan-base that actively wants to see our shows, then bring the show to them.  Touring too early will kill any new pro wrestling business.  After all, who would pay to watch a promotion no one’s ever heard of before? And if you rent a venue and no one shows, you burn a lot of money–money you can ill afford to waste.

Finally, syndication.  Our plan is to syndicate our show to dozens of Internet video sites.  One of the biggest problems Internet TV faces today is, there are lot of providers but not enough quality content.  To be economically viable, Internet TV companies need content that draws an audience.  So any company that produces quality content gets offers left and right from Internet video sites.  That means our content will appear on multiple websites all over the Net! And they’ll pay us for it.

So in a nutshell, here is the AACW timeline:

1. Build our arena-like TV studio and recruit and train our performers.
2. Aggressively market the promotion by building up anticipation and a pre-launch buzz.
3. Begin filming shows.
4. Air our first show on the Internet amidst lots of fanfare.  If our show is good, early fans will be hooked and word-of-mouth will begin.
5. At this point, all shows are taped in our single venue TV studio “arena.”
6. Reinvest all profits into the business–expand the marketing campaign and pay performers bigger purses.
7. Once we have developed a sizable audience, begin touring in limited venues.  Our weekly show will be taped there, too.
8. Begin merchandising.
9. Expand our touring schedule to more dates and bigger venues.
10. Syndicate our content to other websites.
11. Seek network TV deals.

Turkey Bowl Highlights All That’s Wrong with Wrestling Today

This past weekend TNA booked an event the called the Turkey Bowl.  Evidently it’s supposed to be an annual event held around Thanksgiving.  No where could I have found a better event that showcases everything that’s wrong with pro wrestling today.  If you missed it, the idea is pretty simple.  They threw together a tournament that culminates in a three-way dance.  The guy who scores the pinfall in the three-way dance wins $25,000 and the loser must don Eric Young’s ridiculous turkey costume.

Does anyone recall the Gobbledygooker of WWF infamy?

So the final match came down to Chris Sabin vs. AJ Styles vs. Samoa Joe.  Do you really need to be told the outcome?

Yes, you guessed it – Joe wins and Styles loses.  Joe gets the $25,000 check and the praise while Styles is forced to don the turkey getup.  This was so silly it was hard to watch.  And it was a complete travesty to see one of TNA’s most athletic and dedicated performers be further relegated to the role of bumbling buffoon.

Then throw on top of that Curt Angle dressed up as a pilgrim.  He comes running down from his family Thanksgiving dinner I guess he was hosting backstage to confront Styles about losing.  You get it? Isn’t that funny? We have a pilgrim facing off with a turkey!

For some reason the folks booking wrestling think that cheesy slapstick comedy will win viewers and convince people to buy expensive pay-per-views.  For some reason, wrestling promoters keep trying to make wrestling something it’s not.  Wrestling is not a comedy act, circus sideshow, music video, action adventure movie, or porno flick.

And there’s nothing worse than forcing wrestlers to do something they’re not good at–like comedy.  Being funny is very, very difficult.  It’s a talent.  And it’s best left to people who are good at it–like Jerry Seinfeld or Larry the Cable Guy.

And folks, let’s face it.  If you want slapstick comedy, rent a Three Stooges DVD.  They’re hilarious, and they know how to do it right.  If you want a circus sideshow, go to Ringling Brothers or turn the channel over to Jerry Springer.  If you want modern music, watch MTV.  If you want action adventure, buy leftover copies of Hulk Hogan’s “Thunder in Paradise” or the complete DVD set of “McGyver.” And for crying out loud, if you want scantily clad stripper chicks, either a) go to a strip club, b) buy a copy of Playboy, or c) go to Google, type in the word “girls,” and click the search button.

This is the problem with wrestling today.  It tries to do all of the above but it does none of them well–and the actual wrestling is barely a blip on the radar.  The shows aren’t funny.  The raunchy circus stuff is just ridiculous and the action adventure is usually worse than Hulk Hogan’s “Santa with Muscles.”

Clearly, today’s wrestling promoters have no confidence in the sport of wrestling being able to draw a crowd.  And that’s pretty much like a Ford car salesman driving a Toyota.

Folks, the classic, proud sport of pro wrestling is an endangered species, and it’s about time we band together and do something about it.

AACW Will Not Be an Indy!

It’s only been a few days since we stood up this site and already the response has been very enthusiastic.

We’ve been getting a lot of questions about how the promotion will operate. Let me make something perfectly clear: We are not starting another indy promotion! Our vision is much bigger and much more ambitious than most people realize. AACW will be a network quality TV show with network quality production values and network quality talent. Our production and our performers will be topnotch.

Let me talk a bit about how your typical indy promotion operates.

Believe it or not, most indy promotions make very little money – if any at all – by putting on wrestling shows. So how do they make money, you ask? Simple – from their wrestling schools. That, effectively, is all most indy feds really are – schools that teach wanna-bes how to wrestle. Tuition is an indy fed’s primary revenue source. Not that there’s inherently anything wrong with that – the superstars of tomorrow have to be trained somewhere.

But here’s the deal – pro wrestling schools rarely turn anyone away. If you’re a fairly able-bodied adult and you have cold hard cash, chances are very, very good you’ll be admitted into most pro wrestling schools. The folks who operate pro wrestling schools would be foolish to turn anyone away. Why turn away a paying customer? The problem with that, though, is that anyone these days can become a pro wrestler. Your athletic ability, physical conditioning, charisma, or mic skills don’t matter a bit.

That, folks, is a primary reason why indy wrestling is so rinky dink. Imagine if every deluded, tone-deaf person who showed up at the tryouts for “American Idol” actually got to perform on the big stage. I’m not talking about getting to sing in front of the judges and get torn up by Simon. I’m talking about actually being allowed to get up on the main stage and sing.

No one would watch.

Unfortunately, that’s exactly what the indy promotions do. Wanna be a wrestler? No problem. Show me the money. We’ll train you for a couple months and then throw you in a ring to “perform” in front of a crowd of about 50 people for maybe $20 a match. Ever wonder why WWE and TNA have no up-and-coming competition (other than, maybe, ROH)? That’s why.

We here at AACW intend to shake things up a bit. While we intend to train our own talent, we are going to be very selective. We’re only going to take the best of the best. And our guys will not pay to be trained – we’re going to pay them to perform.

An AACW Snapshot

Allow me to share with you a little of our vision for AACW.

Our goal is to put wrestling back in pro wrestling.  I know that might sound a bit trite since it’s said so often, but we’re very serious about it.  It’s not just a catch phrase or slogan for us.

Our intent is to showcase pro wrestling as a serious, legitimate sport.  There will be plenty of angle and drama, but our storylines will revolve around realistic sports rivalries similar to Muhammad Ali vs. Joe Frazier, Donovan McNabb vs. Terrell Owens, or Sam Crawford vs. Ty Cobb.  Feuds will be triggered by differences over the sport of wrestling, not by silly soap opera melodrama.  You will not see angles like, “Wrestler A kidnaps Wrestler B’s dog,” or “Wrestler A stalks Wrestler B’s wife,” or “Wrestler A’s girlfriend gets impregnated by Wrestler B.”

Our primary goal is to develop wrestling shows where the action, stories, dialogue, and acting are so realistic, the viewer can easily lose himself in the illusion, suspend his ability to disbelieve, and possibly even wonder if what he’s watching is real.  We’re not setting out to delude our audience or turn back the hands of the clock and pretend like pro wrestling’s secrets were never revealed; we intend to be good storytellers by putting together shows that are realistic and believable.

Take the movie “Jurassic Park” as an example.  When Steven Spielberg made that movie, his goal was not to fool his audience into believing dinosaurs are living today among us in the real world.  His goal was to make the dinosaurs look realistic and alive so that the audience would be fooled that the dinosaurs were alive in the movie.  If the dinosaurs looked rubbery and fake, it wouldn’t have mattered how good the movie’s script and acting were – the audience would roll their eyes and say, “Oh, please.  How fake.”

This is precisely what’s wrong with pro wrestling today.  There are simply too many opportunities for the audience to scoff and say to themselves, “That’s ridiculous.  This is so fake it’s not even funny.” As a diehard pro wrestling fan, I still watch some wrestling (not much, but some), but honestly, I’m often embarrassed by it.  There is nothing to it nowadays that is believable or engaging.

An audience’s attention is fragile.  Any staged entertainment – whether it be a movie, play, magic act, or pro wrestling match – involves fooling the audience to some extent.  When watching staged entertainment, the audience wants to be fooled.  But the smallest goof can ruin that experience.  Recall the first “Terminator” movie.  It’s a fantastic movie, but the part where the Terminator’s skin is burned off and he’s breaking the door down by throwing his shoulder into it is so fake-looking, it hurts the film a bit.  The movie is at its awesome climax, but when that obvious stop-motion model enters the scene, the audience can’t help but say, “Oh, how fake.” For that brief moment they are snapped out of the excitement of being lost in the illusion and forced to realize they are sitting in a movie theater.  Fortunately the film is so good, the audience gets drawn right back into the illusion once that scene is over.

This is a lesson that is evidently lost on the writers and promoters of modern day wrestling.  It’s almost as if they say to themselves, “Oh, well.  Everyone knows this is fake, so why bother? Let’s just make this as ridiculous as possible.”

This will never be the attitude of AACW.

So to give you an idea of what AACW will be, let’s take a look at some things you will never see in an AACW show:

• Clowns
• Hillbillies
• Insane asylum escapees
• Love triangles
• Homosexual tagteam partners
• Magicians
• Anything supernatural – vampires, zombies, mummies, yeti, aliens, etc.
• Anyone wearing a gorilla suit
• Evil, crooked referees
• Guest celebrity referees
• Guest celebrity wrestlers
• Guest celebrity champions, like the David Arquette fiasco
• Fake versions of wrestlers, like the nWo Sting
• Wrestlers taking over the promotion and naming themselves president or commissioner
• Wrestlers appearing or disappearing in puffs of smoke
• Wrestlers bringing dangerous weapons like tazers, cattle prods, sledge hammers, or staple guns to the ring

So how do you create a pro wrestling promotion and make it interesting if you remove all the circus elements, silliness, crudity, and smut? Easy – through good storytelling and damned good wrestling.

The Time Is Finally Right

The dream of starting a pro wrestling promotion came to me sometime in…I want to say…1989.  I was wrestling for several independent promotions in south Florida at the time.  Working for these small outfits, I kept thinking of ways how the shows could be better, how they could draw more money, and how the promotions could improve their exposure.  It dawned on me then that the only way I could see the type of wrestling show I was envisioning was to start a promotion myself.

The problem was it was 1989, long before the Internet, direct satellite TV, and digital cable were household commonalities.  In order for me to build the type of pro wrestling promotion I was envisioning, I’d need a TV deal, and back then people didn’t have 200 or 300 channels to choose from.  Back then, a person with a premium cable package had only about 40 channels to choose from.  That meant that TV time was slim pickings.  Plus, there were three major world-class promotions going and a slew of viable up-and-comers nipping at their heels.  Anyone trying to launch a new promotion then would most assuredly get lost in the crowd – even if they could manage to lock up a sliver of scarce network TV time.

I worked in the pro wrestling business in the late 80s and early 90s.  I worked as a performer, wrestling trainer, and part-time promoter.  Like just about every other indy wrestler who’s ever donned a pair of trunks, though, it was impossible to make a living by wrestling alone, so for my day job I operated my own personal training business.

I left the sport with a heavy heart to join the military and finish my college education.  When I left, however, I told myself I’d return someday, and when I did, it would be to build the promotion I had envisioned.

The idea has rattled around in my head for the past 15 years.  I’ve been waiting for the time to be right.

I believe now the time is finally right.

Internet TV is the next logical step in the evolution of television.  Thirty years ago, the “next big thing” in television was cable.  Billionaire Ted Turner realized this early and built an entertainment empire largely on professional wrestling programs shown on WTBS.  Pro wrestling provided him inexpensive programming with a large audience.  WTBS went on to become the giant TBS network and pro wrestling remained a cornerstone of its lineup until the turn of the century.

I believe we have an opportunity to repeat history.  In the very near future, traditional cable TV will be a dinosaur and the Internet will allow an unlimited number of TV channels.  Your TV will become a self-contained computer, and TV shows will be delivered to you on demand via the Web.  It may sound a bit far-fetched now, but it’s already happening.  Companies like Google, Brightcove, BlipTV, and Hulu are all posturing themselves to deliver quality content over the Internet.  We’re talking network-quality shows here, not the “leave Britney alone” rubbish.  Soon, anyone will be able to produce and deliver TV shows, and watching TV over the Internet will be commonplace.

Websites that host these shows are already jockeying for quality content that keeps a large audience coming back for more week-to-week, and that’s where AACW comes in.  A quality pro wrestling program with a fanatical fan-base fits the bill perfectly.  Good pro wrestling delivers exciting serialized programming that never goes stale, is inexpensive and easy to produce, and is directly targeted at the golden 15 – 34 year-old male demographic.

The potential is thrilling.  We have the opportunity to deliver quality, classic pro wrestling to a worldwide audience without having to worry about fickle TV network executives.  And the audience is starving for the very type of promotion we are planning.  Consider that there is only one major promotion – WWE – and a struggling little thing called TNA…

The time is finally right.

Here We Go!

Welcome to the All-American Championship Wresting (AACW) blog!

Are you a fan of pro wrestling? Do you long for the days of classic pro wrestling in the tradition of Ric Flair vs. Ricky Steamboat, Dusty Rhodes vs. Tully Blanchard, and Jimmy Snuka vs. Colonel DeBeers? Are you tired of silly gimmicks, incessant plugs for the next pay-per-view, circus-like angles, lazy booking, cheap heat, obscene behavior, and lousy matches?

Are you sick of pro wrestling being hustled as a smutty soap opera?

If yes, you’ve come to the right place – and we need your help.

My name is Norm, and my partners and I are working to start an all-new professional wrestling promotion in an effort to restore wrestling to its glorious heyday.

Pro wrestling is in my blood, and like millions of other fans, I am ashamed of what it has become.  There is an entire generation of younger fans who have no idea what they are missing.  While I’m sad about how low pro wrestling has sunk, I see a great opportunity – the world is clamoring for great classic pro wrestling, and we can be the ones to deliver it.

We have a vision to create the world’s next major league pro wrestling promotion, but we need the help of the fans to make the vision a reality.  In this blog I intend to share with you all the unfolding developments in our efforts to build AACW from the ground up.

What’s AACW going to be like? That’s the topic of an upcoming post, but to get an idea, take a look at the Vision tab.