Preview: FPW Reloaded 3.0 – with a Rumble and a Havoc/Burridge singles clash

There’s lots going on at the Wallington Hall next Sunday (9th February).

First up, there’s the semi-final matches in the ongoing tag-team tournament. FPW have made a point of looking for new talent to add to their roster, and Will Ospreay – one half of the Swords of Essex, who face Project Ego – is one of the newcomers now firmly established as a favourite.

“Will was someone we’d noticed in late 2011,” recalls FPW co-founder Matt Burden. “He’d sent us a compilation video of some of his matches and we were impressed with his athleticism immediately. It was a highlight reel, so of course it was high spots and flips and a pounding bass-line. The fact that he’d edited it himself impressed us and so we asked around. The word from Lucha [where he’d trained] was: ‘Just wait. Let us work with him.’

“And at Summertime Brawl 2012 Will debuted – and now he’s had more training at Lucha, ring experience and a tag-team partner and mentor in Paul Robinson. His work with Mark Andrews at Progress over the past 12 months has been a joy to watch as we’ve witnessed his evolution first hand; Rev Pro have seen his worth also and we’re proud to have been even just a small part of this talent’s growth.”

Facts from Future Pro Wrestling Crowning Glory, Wallington Hall, May 12th 2013

One of the things I enjoy most about wrestling is when there’s something you can get behind and follow – someone to root for and to urge on to triumph, someone to want to see suffer and get their comeuppance. Not too difficult to do (one would think) when you’re broadcasting globally every week; but a bit tougher when you’re a UK company and run a handful of times a year, and your audience is bound to have a collectively short memory.

How fortunate, then, that FPW, for their second anniversary show, ‘Crowning Glory’, hit on the simplest and best of all wrestling fables – the title challenge.

It might seem odd that FPW have managed to run for two years without crowning a champion; as compere and co-founder Matt Burden said in the ring today, it was something they’d discussed as soon as they came up with the idea for a promotion. So this may be judged as long overdue, and well deserving of the occasion being immortalised in cupcakes (see image, above left).

And it was just as straightforward and compelling as anyone could have wished.

Preview: ‘Spandex, Screw Jobs and Cheap Pops’ – behind the scenes at FPW

 This is an extract from the forthcoming book ‘Spandex, Screw Jobs and Cheap Pops’, taken from a chapter profiling some of the top promotions in the south-east of England. Obviously this isn’t the complete section – you’ll have to buy the book to read that! – but some edited highlights. Hope you enjoy.

When you walk into the Wallington Hall, it’s a state of organised chaos. Something about it is reminiscent about an end-of-term disco, as a clutch of boys huddle together in the corner, and the grown-ups march around setting out the furniture, with a group of men wiring up the lights and a group of women in the kitchen laying out the wares for the tuck shop.

Except this is February 2013, not the height of summer before six weeks of holidays, and this is the venue that Future Pro Wrestling have declared home.