The Dart DiariesNovember 2004 / January 2005
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November 25th 2004


After all the excitement of going to the WWE shows all the way in Manchester, it was nice to go back to good old fashioned British Wrestling.

Just a thought as you may have noticed The Rampage has become more of a diary type thing, rather than a rampage as of late.  I suppose I'll keep it that way now, so if you can think of a catchy name I can change to, more diary related please drop me a line!!!

On Octboer 26th, Premier Promotions made their 3rd appearance at Potters Bar in Hertfordshire with a loaded lineup.  Naturally I was in my usual 'second' position for the 4 big singles matches.  On my side I had Kendo Ka Shin, Dave Taylor, Andy Simmonz and Johnny Kidd. 

Highlights of the day were hanging around before the show started and promoter and MC John Freemantle walks into the building, says hello to those present, and precedes to slip on something on the fall and land face first on the floor.  Luckily he was able to laugh it off, which means placing it in Comedy Moment of my Wrestling Year is not in poor taste.  Freemantle was also nice enough to give me a massive stash of posters which I had requested almost a year ago!! 

The show overall was fantastic, and the crowd of 225 were into all the matches, which should come across very well when featured on The UK Roundup show on the Wrestling Channel.

Two days later the UWA staged a pleasent show in seaside town Clacton.  This was the first proper show there since WAW's disastrous visit in early 2003.  They had a crowd of about 100, so the UWA's crowd of about 250 was seen as a success.  The show was very fun, and featured a fantastic match between 2 UWA debutants Charlie Rage and Baxter Burridge.

The show is now available through Pinfall.net, so check it out.

A couple of weeks later was a huge wrestling filled weekend. 

It all began on the friday evening, as Allstar Wrestling returned to Colchester.  This was my first Allstar show since march, so I was rather excitied.  Along with Lee and Lee's mum, we took out front row seats and the action begun.  The first half featured 2 really good matches, and one rather pathetic one.  Paul Tyrell vs. Mikey Whiplash and Chad Collyer vs. Jonny Storm were both top notch openers.  Collyer vs. Storm wasn't as good as the classic they had at the exact same venue almost exactly 2 years ago, but was still great, with Collyer's heel line "shut up your bunch of turkeeeeeeeys" providing multiple laughs. 

After the interval there was a nice little 8 man Rumble, won by Joe E Legend, and the main event of Flatliner & Little Legs vs. Phil Powers & Sammy Ray was a hoot, but by no means a wrestling classic.

After the show we hung around for a while, and my good pal Flatliner got me backstage (you need to buy a pass these days) for free, so I was able to converse with Legend and Collyer.  I also chatted to Burchill about his WWE signing, the news of which had been made public hours before the show.

The next day was a big one.  To kick of Johnny Boy popped round to sort out a few computer items, then after various delays the journey to Uprising 3 begun.  We picked up Lee and "Fleischmark" Tim in Harlow, where poor Lee had been waiting almost 100 minutes for us!!!  I felt bad, but he deserves it for being quite annoying at times.  Comedy moment of the day #1 was when we told Tim to look out for someone matching Lee's description, shortly after wondering what someone of Lee's mental position would think when a total stranger in a strange town he's never been in before would come up to him and say "are you Lee?"  Bear in mind that Lee didn't know Tim was coming.

The journey was full of laughter and great stories, and a very curious moment happened, just as we were arriving, Johnny Boy's CD player decided - at randam - to play the song "Road to Coventry"!!!

When we got there we looked around the town for a while and had some very nice dinner at a big restaurant complex. 

Onto the show - we took out bag row seats in the 3,500 seater venue, which were actually great seats.  We could see everything clearly, more than everything actually, we could see backstage.  Fun in a way, although it did mean we saw Ulf Hermann about 30 minutes before his "surprise" return.  I had predicted it to a tee, but still you don't wanna know that kinda thing.

Overall the show was good, well worth the trip, but I wouldn't have got the train up there for that!  The road trip made it very enjoyable.  After the show we chatted to new champion Alex Shane for a bit, man he loves to talk, he don't care who's listening.  I also got D-Lo Brown and AJ Styles' autographs and a pic with Jimmy Hart.  But, perhaps most importantly, got my picture with Jodie Fleisch, which was taken about a month before he retired, autographed.

The journey home was good fun.  JB dropped us off at Woodford, where me and Lee were to stay at Mario's pad.  Mario had got the train up to the show, so we actually beat him home.  We froze our way to his house, but when we got there, no answer at the door!!!  Luckily his porch was open so we sat in there for a while, waiting.  Lee, being his panicky self was worried we were at the wrong house.  Fool.  We ventured back to the main road, to kill time and see if we would catch up with Mario.  Then as we thought we saw him go past in a taxi went back to the house, where he had just appeared!!!  He wasn't in the taxi though, he came from a different direction, odd eh?

Next morning we woke up, got on the train and went to Croydon for the afternoon showcase from Allstar.  This was another great show, and the crowd was huge, by Croydon's standards!!  Even the back of the seating area had people in it, it's usually not even open!

The match of the night was Collyer vs. Legend, which Legend won.  It also featured an amazing match between Robbie Dynamite and Kid Cool (which was a much better opener than Mayaan vs. Spud vs. Jordan the day before).

The main event was the exact same match as friday, but with Bas Van Kunder taking the place of Sammy Ray!!!

A week later and it was IPW:UK's "show 2".  The first show was called "Extreme Measures", so I think someone ran out of name ideas pretty quickly.  I know the guy running the show, so it's not easy for me to say this, but the show was pretty poor.  While I admore every match having a storyline reason for existing, the booking was mostly poor.  A highly promoted match between Paul Travell and US star Sexxxy Eddy was turned into a 3 way with relative unknown Flaming Red for no real reason, which annoyed most fans.  Overall it was worth going, but if they are gonna do shows on sundays anymore I'd recommend they change it to an afternoon slot.  Even with an early finish of 8pm, getting home wasn't easy.

So, tomorrow is LDN's debut.  I'll be helping to film the event, which will be nice.  We'll see how that goes.  Then we move onto sunday where we head back to Purfleet's Circus Tavern for some Extreme Fighting.  Should be good fun!!

Also, as of December 1st you will be able to vote for the 2nd annual British Wrestling awards, so stay tuned for more details of that this week!!

Until next time, be real.

January 18th 2005


It's been a quiet few weeks, that's for sure.

Since the last Diary I've been to just 3 shows.  First of all, it was LDN's debut show in Hanwell, London.

I can't even remember how I got there, but it was a complicated train journey.  Anyway, when I got to the nearest train station I had to get a bus to some pub, but accidently got off too late, so was eventually picked up by the infamous Sanjay Bagga. 

We drove to the venue, which was indeed a school, but you wouldn't think it.  It was like a mini city!!!  I couldn't believe it.  The actual hall where the wrestling took place, was small, but comfy and cosy, and did the job.

We set up the chairs, then the ring turned up, and we spent a while trying to get the lights to work.

Then the ring (Gerry Norton's) turned up, and was set up, infact if I remember correctly it was completed about 15 minutes before the doors opened.

The show turned out to be very entertaining.  The first match was really bad, but luckily the rest of the show made up for that.  The standout matches were the 4 man tournament involving Ashe, Chris Wyld, Martin Stone and Tony Seton.

After the show almost everybody from the show got the bus back to the train station, and from there my journey home was totally screwed up.  Can't remember the details though!

A few days later was another installment of Extreme Fighting in Purfleet.  This show marked my one year anniversary as part of the film crew and this is also the first time I shall be doing the editing for the video too!  The show was really entertaining again.  We had all the usual problems with annoying selfish little European photographers, who when told not to do something, go ahead and do it twice as much for twice as long, twice as annoyingly!!

Before the show I went down to the Dropkixx training school, which is about a 10 minute walk from Circus Tavern where the Extreme Fighting is held.  This was my first time in a training school when it'd been open (went into the RBW Enfield school when it was closed).  It was a very interesting experience for me.  I wasn't there to train, just to talk to Dropkixx promoter Frank Rimer about filming his shows etc. 

After the Extreme Fighting show we had the usual hour or so wait, then a trip to the Big Blue Bus, and eventually got to the hotel, the name of which escapes me, but it's a lovely little place.  Somehow myself and Tom Lancaster managed to get into a "worked shoot" (I hate that phrase) match in the hotel room, which Tom won by cheating with a fast count. 

A couple of weeks later it was the 3rd RAMWA show in London.  I only decided to go to the show that afternoon, and arrived about 20 minutes before the show was supposed to start.  As always it started late though. 

There was a lot less music this time, and a fair few less people too, but the show was still really good.  But I preferred the last 2 shows overall.

I actually left during the last match, cos I wanted to get home at a decent hour!

Curve, Phil Powers, Sammy Ray, Nikita and John Coppin were all in attendance, which was cool.

A few days later I got the train to Harlow and met up with Charlie Rage outside the Post Office.  We then drove down to the Isle of Sheppy for Dropkixx.

We arrived late, but the show hadn't started yet, so I quickly set up my camera and began filming.

The show was Mel Stuart's retirement show, but he didn't actually wrestle.  He just made a speech.  There was some really good action during the show, but the main event was cut short when Dr. Death started having heart problems and walked out!!

After the show Charlie and myself went and had some dinner at some services restaurant.  I had pizza.  Charlie had a massive steak and about 20 onion rings!!  Oh, and about 5 pints of cola!!

The journey home was a long one, but it was good fun.  We even stopped and rewatched Charlie's match on the camera.

So, that's about it lately.  I was hoping to go to the huge charity show in Cleethorpes this week, but there's just no cheap way of getting there...and a 10 hour round train journey alone doesn't sound too appealing!!

I might go to Croydon tomorrow for Allstar, but an average card is hindering my excitement.

We'll see!!