It starts as a sound bite in one corner of the stadium a rhythmic chant invoking the arrival of a man so famous that, just like Madonna, he no longer needs two names.
Goldberg. Goldberg! Goldberg!! They scream as others join, stamping their feet on the bleachers until 10,000 punters are caught in the moment, seduced by the biggest thing to happen to pro wrestling since Hulk Hogan.
Goldberg, a 190cm, 120kg mountain of a man who attacks opponents like the gridiron player he once was, is widely believed to earn tens of thousands of dollars every time he steps into the ring.
And Goldberg along with arch rivals Kevin "Big Sexy" Nash and Jeff Jarrett, is heading our way, as a master promoter Paul Danity brings the World Championship Wrestling juggernaut to Australia.
Well-schooled in the art of taking a punt, Danity is a shrewd operator whose longevity in the promotion game means that he knows exactly what he's doing bring the relatively unknown soap opera that is WCW to Australia.
"This deal has taken nearly two years to stitch up" Danity says.
"The only thing I can compare it to was trying to get the Rolling Stones to Australia."
"But it's worth it and on a personal level, I can't remember the last time I was so excited about bringing an act to Australia."
But why is Danity , a man not usually given to passionate outbursts of enthusiasm, so pumped?
To begin with despite the fact that WCW is a fairly low-profile sport in Australia compared to the giants of football and cricket, Danity's well-oiled research covered Australia's licensee agent for Kevin Nash has sold $10 million of Big Sexy's merchandise in the past 12 months.
Danity believes there is a huge, untapped market for pro wrestling in Australia and there's no doubt WCW is big business - wherever it plays in the world.
Since it was taken over by media mogul Ted Turner in 1988, WCW has become a law unto itself, a multi-million-$-making machine with its monolithic HQ in Atlanta Georgia.
And while Australian fans are conversant with some of the bigger names soon to arrive here, what they probably don't know is how tough it has been for every one of those wrestlers to get here.
The road to WCW fame begins at the Atlanta HQ, where at one time 100 to 150 wrestlers contracts are under contract.
Sharon Sidello (WCW's vice president of international development) is moving into dangerous territory here - there's the fine line between what's real and fake in the ring. WCW is remarkably coy about exactly what goes on in the matches and the wrestlers themselves don't take kindly to the merest suggestion that what they do isn't 100% bonfide.
During a live satellite link-up with GB, JJ and KN last week to promote the upcoming tour, all three wrestlers bristled when asked the big question is wrestling real.
"I'll tell you what." Goldberg growled, "let's you and me get in the ring and I'll show you what's real and what's not."
"I've seen them when they come out of those matches and, yes they're hurting".
They have bruises, they do bleed and they do get injured".
You can't fake falling off the top rope on to a mat with a sickening thud, you can't fake a headlock."
WCW kicks off its four-date Australian tour in Brisbane on Saturday, October 7, at the Entertainment Centre at Boondall.
Tickets go on sale this Friday through Ticketek 131 931.
The Brisbane event will feature GB, SV, KN, JJ and several other big WCW names yet to be announced.
Brisbane is the first place outside the US where filming will take place and be beamed via satellite back to the US as part of WCW's regular programming.
Media Man Australia Profiles
Paul Danity
Ted Turner
Wrestling Media Blog. Pro wrestling blog. WWE, WCW, WCW in Australia, ECW, NWA, interviews, promotions, news and more.
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Boxing: A Cultural History, by Peter Temple - The Sydney Morning Herald - 7th July 2008
From Mesopotamia to Madison Square Garden, boxing has enthralled and outraged.
Author Kasia Boddy
Genre Society/Politics, Sport
Publisher Reaktion Books
Pages 480
RRP $76.0
WHY do people love watching men hit each other?
Boxing is widely out of favour now, frowned upon as a violent anachronism. But this doesn't deter countless millions who watch fighting in all its forms on cable television and the internet, where it ranks second only to pornography.
Porn's appeal is obvious. But is watching men fight just as primary a stimulus? Very likely. People have been engaging in and watching boxing, dressed up as a sport and a form of exercise, for all of recorded history, with images of pugilists dated to ancient Mesopotamia.
The literature on the sport that is not a game is voluminous but few writers have attempted large-scale social histories, probably because everywhere you look, you find traces of boxing. No other non-productive activity has reached so deeply and so widely into society.
Kasia Boddy is no faint-heart. She appears to have tracked down every last reference to boxing in prose, poetry, painting, sculpture, film and video and, betraying no enthusiasm for the sport, manages to mention them all in 478 pages.
Boxing's modern history begins in the mean, gin-sodden cities of early 18th-century England, with the growth in popularity of bare-knuckle, no-holds-barred fighting. The smart money was quick to see commercial potential in providing the spectacle of men beating, gouging, choking and kicking each other senseless. The aristocracy, with little to do except drink, ride, gamble and fornicate, were drawn in, too.
So pervasive was boxing's influence that by 1785, Thomas Jefferson could complain that rich young Virginians sent to England to be educated were learning "drinking, horse racing and boxing". For young men of Lord Byron's class, the louche world of what was called the Fancy - boxing academies, prizefighters' pubs and the London fights - was addictive. Not even his mother's funeral kept Byron from his daily sparring.
And long before any other, boxing was an international sport, holding its first world title fight - for world, read Britain and the US - in 1860. In the posh part of the crowd with the nobles, merchants and rich industrialists were novelists Thackeray and Dickens, two of the dozens of famous British writers, including Hazlitt, attracted to the bloody ring.
Once boxing began to generate big money, the simple setting of men on each other like dogs had to go: capitalism needs order and regularity. Prizefighting had to take on rational characteristics.
Timeless brawls gave way to timed rounds. The square of wood or rope replaced the organic circle. Gloves were introduced, rules were invented, eventually a point-scoring system devised. Training of boxers became the norm and boxing schools sprang up.
Now boxing's ugly side could be assigned to the professionals, broken-faced pugs suffering and inflicting pain and injury for money. Amateur boxing, on the other hand, could be held up as a sport fit for gentlemen and a cleansing tonic for the dangerous youth of England's urban slums.
"They work off their restlessness and get rid of the devil in the gymnasium with the boxing gloves … they become infected with some upper-class ideals … honour and honesty, purity and temperance."
As Boddy suggests in an academic way, part of boxing's attraction for some middle-class do-gooders was the opportunities it provided for close contact with young men wearing only skimpy shorts. Indeed, for many commentators, including Byron's biographer Benita Eisler, the Fancy had more to do with sodomy than athleticism. Boxing was the social lubricant that made it possible for upper-class Englishmen to engage closely with brawny young men from the lower classes.
From early on, many of Western society's preoccupations found their bloody intersection in the square ring. In late 18th-century England, for example, the rise to champion status of the elegant Daniel Mendoza brought into the open the anti-Semitism aimed at London's growing population of Jews from abroad. Mendoza is a pivotal figure in boxing, the man who invented the ducking, weaving, back-pedalling "science" of boxing, who first showed that middleweight brain could beat heavyweight brawn. His fights against Richard Humphries (billed as "the Jew" against "the Gentleman Fighter") were sell-outs, making them, says Boddy, the first boxers "whose careers were successfully marketed in terms of ethnic hostility".
Racial prejudice had similar economic potential. Pitting white against black became another staple of boxing promotion in England and the US (and played well in Australian tent-boxing deep into the 20th century).
Jack Johnson - who won his first title in Australia - was the black champion who first set white America's teeth on edge (by marrying white women, three of them). Boddy records that in Reno the band played a tune called All Coons Look Alike to Me when he entered the ring to fight white Jim Jeffries for the world title in 1910.
From John L. Sullivan on, the US would be the home of prizefighting. And if boxing in England was redolent with social and sexual ambiguity, the distinctive smell in American boxing was always of corruption. (Sullivan's conqueror, Gentleman Jim Corbett, said it was a rare fight he was not offered a bribe to throw.)
As Boddy shows at scholarly length, in American books and plays and paintings and films, boxing came to carry a heavy symbolic freight. The gloves and the ring stood for pride and courage, sacrifice and nobility, salvation and redemption. They also stood for corruption, greed, betrayal, pain and death. No other sport - indeed, perhaps no other human activity - has been so fraught with meaning.
As radio spread in the 1930s, black boxers such as Joe Louis became national figures, inspiring downtrodden black Americans from sea to shining sea. When Louis fought Italy's Primo Carnera, the politics of the old world had arrived: the boxers were represented as Haile Selassie of Ethiopia versus Mussolini.
In 1933, Max Baer wore a Star of David on his trunks when he fought the German Max Schmeling. In 1936, it was Louis's turn to take on the German and the whole world was agog. Schmeling won and was flown home in the Hindenburg airship: an Aryan technological triumph conveying a physically superior Aryan.
But it wasn't over. In 1938, Louis fought Schmeling again, at Yankee Stadium. Now war was in the wind and Joe wasn't black any more. Now he was an American boy fighting a Nazi. And he beat him.
Almost everyone who matters in Western cultural history in the past century enters Boddy's ring. While she occasionally seems blind to the obvious or belabours what the blind can see, such is the overall quality of the job here that she can be forgiven anything.
Media Man Australia Profiles
Boxing
Wrestling
Author Kasia Boddy
Genre Society/Politics, Sport
Publisher Reaktion Books
Pages 480
RRP $76.0
WHY do people love watching men hit each other?
Boxing is widely out of favour now, frowned upon as a violent anachronism. But this doesn't deter countless millions who watch fighting in all its forms on cable television and the internet, where it ranks second only to pornography.
Porn's appeal is obvious. But is watching men fight just as primary a stimulus? Very likely. People have been engaging in and watching boxing, dressed up as a sport and a form of exercise, for all of recorded history, with images of pugilists dated to ancient Mesopotamia.
The literature on the sport that is not a game is voluminous but few writers have attempted large-scale social histories, probably because everywhere you look, you find traces of boxing. No other non-productive activity has reached so deeply and so widely into society.
Kasia Boddy is no faint-heart. She appears to have tracked down every last reference to boxing in prose, poetry, painting, sculpture, film and video and, betraying no enthusiasm for the sport, manages to mention them all in 478 pages.
Boxing's modern history begins in the mean, gin-sodden cities of early 18th-century England, with the growth in popularity of bare-knuckle, no-holds-barred fighting. The smart money was quick to see commercial potential in providing the spectacle of men beating, gouging, choking and kicking each other senseless. The aristocracy, with little to do except drink, ride, gamble and fornicate, were drawn in, too.
So pervasive was boxing's influence that by 1785, Thomas Jefferson could complain that rich young Virginians sent to England to be educated were learning "drinking, horse racing and boxing". For young men of Lord Byron's class, the louche world of what was called the Fancy - boxing academies, prizefighters' pubs and the London fights - was addictive. Not even his mother's funeral kept Byron from his daily sparring.
And long before any other, boxing was an international sport, holding its first world title fight - for world, read Britain and the US - in 1860. In the posh part of the crowd with the nobles, merchants and rich industrialists were novelists Thackeray and Dickens, two of the dozens of famous British writers, including Hazlitt, attracted to the bloody ring.
Once boxing began to generate big money, the simple setting of men on each other like dogs had to go: capitalism needs order and regularity. Prizefighting had to take on rational characteristics.
Timeless brawls gave way to timed rounds. The square of wood or rope replaced the organic circle. Gloves were introduced, rules were invented, eventually a point-scoring system devised. Training of boxers became the norm and boxing schools sprang up.
Now boxing's ugly side could be assigned to the professionals, broken-faced pugs suffering and inflicting pain and injury for money. Amateur boxing, on the other hand, could be held up as a sport fit for gentlemen and a cleansing tonic for the dangerous youth of England's urban slums.
"They work off their restlessness and get rid of the devil in the gymnasium with the boxing gloves … they become infected with some upper-class ideals … honour and honesty, purity and temperance."
As Boddy suggests in an academic way, part of boxing's attraction for some middle-class do-gooders was the opportunities it provided for close contact with young men wearing only skimpy shorts. Indeed, for many commentators, including Byron's biographer Benita Eisler, the Fancy had more to do with sodomy than athleticism. Boxing was the social lubricant that made it possible for upper-class Englishmen to engage closely with brawny young men from the lower classes.
From early on, many of Western society's preoccupations found their bloody intersection in the square ring. In late 18th-century England, for example, the rise to champion status of the elegant Daniel Mendoza brought into the open the anti-Semitism aimed at London's growing population of Jews from abroad. Mendoza is a pivotal figure in boxing, the man who invented the ducking, weaving, back-pedalling "science" of boxing, who first showed that middleweight brain could beat heavyweight brawn. His fights against Richard Humphries (billed as "the Jew" against "the Gentleman Fighter") were sell-outs, making them, says Boddy, the first boxers "whose careers were successfully marketed in terms of ethnic hostility".
Racial prejudice had similar economic potential. Pitting white against black became another staple of boxing promotion in England and the US (and played well in Australian tent-boxing deep into the 20th century).
Jack Johnson - who won his first title in Australia - was the black champion who first set white America's teeth on edge (by marrying white women, three of them). Boddy records that in Reno the band played a tune called All Coons Look Alike to Me when he entered the ring to fight white Jim Jeffries for the world title in 1910.
From John L. Sullivan on, the US would be the home of prizefighting. And if boxing in England was redolent with social and sexual ambiguity, the distinctive smell in American boxing was always of corruption. (Sullivan's conqueror, Gentleman Jim Corbett, said it was a rare fight he was not offered a bribe to throw.)
As Boddy shows at scholarly length, in American books and plays and paintings and films, boxing came to carry a heavy symbolic freight. The gloves and the ring stood for pride and courage, sacrifice and nobility, salvation and redemption. They also stood for corruption, greed, betrayal, pain and death. No other sport - indeed, perhaps no other human activity - has been so fraught with meaning.
As radio spread in the 1930s, black boxers such as Joe Louis became national figures, inspiring downtrodden black Americans from sea to shining sea. When Louis fought Italy's Primo Carnera, the politics of the old world had arrived: the boxers were represented as Haile Selassie of Ethiopia versus Mussolini.
In 1933, Max Baer wore a Star of David on his trunks when he fought the German Max Schmeling. In 1936, it was Louis's turn to take on the German and the whole world was agog. Schmeling won and was flown home in the Hindenburg airship: an Aryan technological triumph conveying a physically superior Aryan.
But it wasn't over. In 1938, Louis fought Schmeling again, at Yankee Stadium. Now war was in the wind and Joe wasn't black any more. Now he was an American boy fighting a Nazi. And he beat him.
Almost everyone who matters in Western cultural history in the past century enters Boddy's ring. While she occasionally seems blind to the obvious or belabours what the blind can see, such is the overall quality of the job here that she can be forgiven anything.
Media Man Australia Profiles
Boxing
Wrestling
Professional wrestling in Australia
Professional wrestling in Australia makes up a small but growing part of Australian culture. Unlike the North American or Japanese products which have large, globally renowned organisations such as World Wrestling Entertainment or New Japan Pro Wrestling with several hundred smaller promotions, Australia has approximately 30 smaller independent circuit promotions which exist in all but two of the states, those being the Northern Territory and Tasmania. Tours from the North American product are regularly sold out in capital cities such as Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane.
History
Professional wrestling in Australia first gained distinction in the early 1900s, however there were very few shows promoted. Nonetheless, stars such as Clarence Weber, Jack Carkeek, Clarence Whistler and Georg Hackenschmidt were made. As time went on, the sport's popularity began to grow, particularly in the 1930s as people sought to find relief from The Great Depression.
Throughout the 1940s professional wrestling suffered due to World War II but in the 1950s reached new highs as many stars from overseas were imported and created larger crowds and, in turn, a larger market. Established names such as Lou Thesz, Dr. Jerry Graham and Gorgeous George toured the country during the decade.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Australia established its only major promotion in WCW Australia. WCW had a television deal with the Nine Network, the first in Australia to do so and attracted crowds between 2,000 and 9,000 people on a weekly basis. International stars such as Killer Kowalski, Ray Stevens, Dominic Denucci, Mario Milano, Spiros Arion, Karl Gotch, Bruno Sammartino, Gorilla Monsoon and local stars Ron Miller and Larry O’Dea were all involved with the promotion which grew steadily through the 1960s and was a well known product in the 1970s. However, with the introduction of World Series Cricket, WCW was left with no television deal and was forced to close down in 1978. This sent the Australian market into a large decline. With no access to any product anywhere in the world, the Australian market was almost dead until World Wrestling Entertainment became a prominent figure in professional wrestling in the mid-1980s.
Australia has depended on the North American product since 1985. Hosting tours in 1985 and 1986 kept a solid viewing in the sport through programmes such as Superstars of Wrestling and Saturday Night's Main Event. Small local promotions have tried to take advantage of the popularity of professional wrestling in more recent times, but there has been nothing of note since the demise of World Championship Wrestling in 1978.
However the local scene has been the subject of controversy.
In September 2002, a promotion called PCW presented a show called Carnage, in which two wrestlers faced off in the first-ever barbed-wire match in Australia. The event was billed as a "Great Family Night Out", however before the bout an announcer warned parents to take their children from the Rowville arena if they were upset by blood.
The match saw real blood, fake glass and one contestant setting fire to a chair. The ring ropes were replaced with barbed wire and a bucket of thumb tacks was dumped on the ring floor. Much of the controversy surrounded rumours about the event, suggesting that the outpour of blood was so intense that it 'splattered' onto members of the crowd. Much of this can be attributed to people who had heard about the match giving their take of it on the Internet.
Despite the fact that this event was publicised as having a gory match and the preceding warning, people complained that the match in question was 'too much'. A concerned mother called Melbourne Talkback radio station 3AW, and a wrestler heard this call and also rang in. This resulted in the main media outlets covering the story. For the record, neither of the wrestlers were seriously injured. It also resulted in a police investigation. and a furore within the local Knox City Council.
Individual wrestlers originating in Australia have struggled for the most part to obtain any international recognition. Perhaps the two biggest names when one mentions Australia are the Fabulous Kangaroos - Roy Heffernan and Al Costello. They are the only Australian wrestlers to make it big in the United States and held the WWWF Tag Team Championship, as well as being inducted into the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame. In more recent times Nathan Jones made two WWE appearances at WrestleMania XIX and at Survivor Series later that same year, making him the only Australian wrestler to ever appear on a WWE pay-per-view event. Jones also appeared on two World Wrestling All-Stars pay-per-views, losing to Jeff Jarrett at WWA: The Inception and to Scott Steiner at WWA: The Eruption. Only two other Australian wrestlers have appeared on any pay-per-view event at all. They are Chuck E. Chaos at WWA: The Eruption who lost to Jerry Lynn, and Mark Mercedes at WWA: The Reckoning who lost to Rick Steiner.
Foreign tours
Shows from North American promotions have been held in Australia as early as 1985 when WWE toured through Melbourne, Perth, Newcastle and Adelaide and through Melbourne and Brisbane again in 1986. That was the last Australia saw of a live North American product until WCW did a Nitro and Thunder taping in Melbourne and a Thunder taping in Brisbane and Sydney in 2000.
The next time WWE came to Australia was for the WWE Global Warning Tour in 2002. A crowd of 56,000 packed into Colonial Stadium as well a pay-per-view audience throughout Asia witnessed the first WWE show on Australian soil in 16 years. WWE has visited Australia regularly since Global Warning by touring at least once a year since 2003, with the latest show by the Smackdown & ECW brand's in June 2008 visiting Brisbane, Sydney, Newcastle, Adelaide and Melbourne.
Australia also hosted shows presented by World Wrestling All-Stars and various smaller shows have featured overseas talent, but nothing of note.
Television programming
History
Throughout the 1990s, both WCW Monday Nitro and RAW were broadcasted on free-to-air networks but were put in poor timeslots and were subsequently cancelled because of poor ratings. WWE's major pay-per-views (Royal Rumble, WrestleMania, King of the Ring, SummerSlam and Survivor Series) were all shown up until 2001, when every pay-per-view began being shown.
WWE programming returned in 2000 with RAW being shown on Fox Sports on Tuesday nights. SmackDown! followed and was broadcasted on FOX8 Friday nights but was moved to Saturday nights in 2001.
In September 2002 negotiations between FOX8 and WWE fell through and SmackDown! was cancelled. A special NWA-TNA package replaced it in early 2003 but only lasted a year. NWA-TNA pay-per-views were shown once a month throughout 2003 during a time when they were being presented weekly in the United States. WWE pay-per-views were also lost to Main Event in the same deal that cost Australian fans SmackDown. Village Cinemas showed them for a few months until August 2003 when SmackDown! returned on Saturday nights as well as the pay-per-views, starting with SummerSlam. RAW was moved from Fox Sports to FOX8 and was shown on Friday nights. In order to prevent spoiler hunting on the internet, FOX8 moved WWE programming to timeslots closer to their United States air date.
In February 2005, WWE Heat, WWE Velocity and The WWE Experience were added to FOX8 and set up a large wrestling program on Saturdays and Sundays. Despite Heat, Velocity and Experience all being cancelled in the United States the shows continued to be shown in Australia to fulfill contractual obligations. When SmackDown! was moved to Friday nights in the United States, in Australia it remained on Friday afternoons. ECW on Sci Fi began broadcasting in Australia from September 2, 2006 in the place of WWE Velocity on Saturdays and the WWE Fanatic Series began airing in October 2006.
After just over 3 years, TNA made it's return. Beginning with TNA Sacrifice 2006 on May 27, 2006 on tape delay. This continued for 12 months before events started being broadcast live in May 2007. TNA iMPACT! began airing on April 5, 2008 on FOX8. Just on the second week of airing, TNA averaged more viewers than both WWE Smackdown and WWE Raw.
On June 2, 2008 WWE and Channel nine announced that they would be airing WWE Afterburn on nine every Sunday at 1:30 starting on June 15
Pay-per-view
Pay-per-views in Australia are shown on Main Event, the only provider in Australia. Main Event has been broadcasting pay-per-views for both WWE starting in 1999 until the present time (including the Fanatic Series from 2006) and WCW pay-per-views from 1997 until they were bought out in March 2001. Main Event also began broadcasting TNA pay-per-views in May 2006, starting with Sacrifice. One year later, TNA pay per views were lifted from the 13 day tape delay format to a live format. (Credit: Wikipedia).
Media Man Australia Profiles
Foxtel
Network Nine Australia
Wrestling
History
Professional wrestling in Australia first gained distinction in the early 1900s, however there were very few shows promoted. Nonetheless, stars such as Clarence Weber, Jack Carkeek, Clarence Whistler and Georg Hackenschmidt were made. As time went on, the sport's popularity began to grow, particularly in the 1930s as people sought to find relief from The Great Depression.
Throughout the 1940s professional wrestling suffered due to World War II but in the 1950s reached new highs as many stars from overseas were imported and created larger crowds and, in turn, a larger market. Established names such as Lou Thesz, Dr. Jerry Graham and Gorgeous George toured the country during the decade.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Australia established its only major promotion in WCW Australia. WCW had a television deal with the Nine Network, the first in Australia to do so and attracted crowds between 2,000 and 9,000 people on a weekly basis. International stars such as Killer Kowalski, Ray Stevens, Dominic Denucci, Mario Milano, Spiros Arion, Karl Gotch, Bruno Sammartino, Gorilla Monsoon and local stars Ron Miller and Larry O’Dea were all involved with the promotion which grew steadily through the 1960s and was a well known product in the 1970s. However, with the introduction of World Series Cricket, WCW was left with no television deal and was forced to close down in 1978. This sent the Australian market into a large decline. With no access to any product anywhere in the world, the Australian market was almost dead until World Wrestling Entertainment became a prominent figure in professional wrestling in the mid-1980s.
Australia has depended on the North American product since 1985. Hosting tours in 1985 and 1986 kept a solid viewing in the sport through programmes such as Superstars of Wrestling and Saturday Night's Main Event. Small local promotions have tried to take advantage of the popularity of professional wrestling in more recent times, but there has been nothing of note since the demise of World Championship Wrestling in 1978.
However the local scene has been the subject of controversy.
In September 2002, a promotion called PCW presented a show called Carnage, in which two wrestlers faced off in the first-ever barbed-wire match in Australia. The event was billed as a "Great Family Night Out", however before the bout an announcer warned parents to take their children from the Rowville arena if they were upset by blood.
The match saw real blood, fake glass and one contestant setting fire to a chair. The ring ropes were replaced with barbed wire and a bucket of thumb tacks was dumped on the ring floor. Much of the controversy surrounded rumours about the event, suggesting that the outpour of blood was so intense that it 'splattered' onto members of the crowd. Much of this can be attributed to people who had heard about the match giving their take of it on the Internet.
Despite the fact that this event was publicised as having a gory match and the preceding warning, people complained that the match in question was 'too much'. A concerned mother called Melbourne Talkback radio station 3AW, and a wrestler heard this call and also rang in. This resulted in the main media outlets covering the story. For the record, neither of the wrestlers were seriously injured. It also resulted in a police investigation. and a furore within the local Knox City Council.
Individual wrestlers originating in Australia have struggled for the most part to obtain any international recognition. Perhaps the two biggest names when one mentions Australia are the Fabulous Kangaroos - Roy Heffernan and Al Costello. They are the only Australian wrestlers to make it big in the United States and held the WWWF Tag Team Championship, as well as being inducted into the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame. In more recent times Nathan Jones made two WWE appearances at WrestleMania XIX and at Survivor Series later that same year, making him the only Australian wrestler to ever appear on a WWE pay-per-view event. Jones also appeared on two World Wrestling All-Stars pay-per-views, losing to Jeff Jarrett at WWA: The Inception and to Scott Steiner at WWA: The Eruption. Only two other Australian wrestlers have appeared on any pay-per-view event at all. They are Chuck E. Chaos at WWA: The Eruption who lost to Jerry Lynn, and Mark Mercedes at WWA: The Reckoning who lost to Rick Steiner.
Foreign tours
Shows from North American promotions have been held in Australia as early as 1985 when WWE toured through Melbourne, Perth, Newcastle and Adelaide and through Melbourne and Brisbane again in 1986. That was the last Australia saw of a live North American product until WCW did a Nitro and Thunder taping in Melbourne and a Thunder taping in Brisbane and Sydney in 2000.
The next time WWE came to Australia was for the WWE Global Warning Tour in 2002. A crowd of 56,000 packed into Colonial Stadium as well a pay-per-view audience throughout Asia witnessed the first WWE show on Australian soil in 16 years. WWE has visited Australia regularly since Global Warning by touring at least once a year since 2003, with the latest show by the Smackdown & ECW brand's in June 2008 visiting Brisbane, Sydney, Newcastle, Adelaide and Melbourne.
Australia also hosted shows presented by World Wrestling All-Stars and various smaller shows have featured overseas talent, but nothing of note.
Television programming
History
Throughout the 1990s, both WCW Monday Nitro and RAW were broadcasted on free-to-air networks but were put in poor timeslots and were subsequently cancelled because of poor ratings. WWE's major pay-per-views (Royal Rumble, WrestleMania, King of the Ring, SummerSlam and Survivor Series) were all shown up until 2001, when every pay-per-view began being shown.
WWE programming returned in 2000 with RAW being shown on Fox Sports on Tuesday nights. SmackDown! followed and was broadcasted on FOX8 Friday nights but was moved to Saturday nights in 2001.
In September 2002 negotiations between FOX8 and WWE fell through and SmackDown! was cancelled. A special NWA-TNA package replaced it in early 2003 but only lasted a year. NWA-TNA pay-per-views were shown once a month throughout 2003 during a time when they were being presented weekly in the United States. WWE pay-per-views were also lost to Main Event in the same deal that cost Australian fans SmackDown. Village Cinemas showed them for a few months until August 2003 when SmackDown! returned on Saturday nights as well as the pay-per-views, starting with SummerSlam. RAW was moved from Fox Sports to FOX8 and was shown on Friday nights. In order to prevent spoiler hunting on the internet, FOX8 moved WWE programming to timeslots closer to their United States air date.
In February 2005, WWE Heat, WWE Velocity and The WWE Experience were added to FOX8 and set up a large wrestling program on Saturdays and Sundays. Despite Heat, Velocity and Experience all being cancelled in the United States the shows continued to be shown in Australia to fulfill contractual obligations. When SmackDown! was moved to Friday nights in the United States, in Australia it remained on Friday afternoons. ECW on Sci Fi began broadcasting in Australia from September 2, 2006 in the place of WWE Velocity on Saturdays and the WWE Fanatic Series began airing in October 2006.
After just over 3 years, TNA made it's return. Beginning with TNA Sacrifice 2006 on May 27, 2006 on tape delay. This continued for 12 months before events started being broadcast live in May 2007. TNA iMPACT! began airing on April 5, 2008 on FOX8. Just on the second week of airing, TNA averaged more viewers than both WWE Smackdown and WWE Raw.
On June 2, 2008 WWE and Channel nine announced that they would be airing WWE Afterburn on nine every Sunday at 1:30 starting on June 15
Pay-per-view
Pay-per-views in Australia are shown on Main Event, the only provider in Australia. Main Event has been broadcasting pay-per-views for both WWE starting in 1999 until the present time (including the Fanatic Series from 2006) and WCW pay-per-views from 1997 until they were bought out in March 2001. Main Event also began broadcasting TNA pay-per-views in May 2006, starting with Sacrifice. One year later, TNA pay per views were lifted from the 13 day tape delay format to a live format. (Credit: Wikipedia).
Media Man Australia Profiles
Foxtel
Network Nine Australia
Wrestling
Saturday, July 05, 2008
Transcript of Bret Hart's Hall of Fame speech
“... The one wrestling hall of fame that captures what he was all about. I look around this room here, and there’s a lot of emotion to me. I’m going to try to stay calm and say what I have to say here. I have some very important things that I want to talk about. I see some really important people in my life and in the wrestling world in the audience here. I see Butch Goering, coming all the way out here from California. Talking to Butch, he worked for my father in the ’60s. He knows what it’s like traveling the roads back then, working for my father. Sometimes it was a thousand miles a day wrestling for wrestling fans just when they started, sort of understood wrestling from television. It was a very unique time, and it was the time when Lou Thesz was just sort of establishing a whole new understanding of wrestling through television. Lou Thesz, what a champion, he was always such a great champion, and he earned that right. You look at Red Baron [Baron von Raschke]. I know my father talked a lot about legends in wrestling, but he always talked about Baron Von Raschke all the time. He was a very, very accomplished NCAA wrestler that got into pro wrestling and was respected by every wrestler that ever worked with him. Whatever the finish was, whatever happened in his matches, he was a legend amongst the wrestlers and the fans.
“I see Bob Leonard, who worked for my father for years taking pictures of wrestlers, capturing and documenting, letting people realize the real art of wrestling, and just to capture the pictures of these young athletes dropkicking and head scissors and wrestling holds, making that magic in still pictures. I think Bob Leonard is a very, very important part of my business. Harley Race, I don’t even know how you start. Harley Race to me is the epitome of pro wrestling. He is not only a great wrestler, I don’t know anyone who would want to mess with Harley in wrestling, the fighting or brawling, the real, that moment of man versus man, to know it. Harley Race, he can do whatever he wants to do with anybody he wants, anytime he wants.
"Then there’s Saito here. I know that he wrestled in Japan, a well-accomplished amateur wrestler, got into pro wrestling, paid his dues for hanging with wrestlers that made mistakes that he wasn’t even a part of, sacrificed to come all the way from Japan to be here. I look at Danny Hodge, he’s one of the most, one of the greatest wrestlers in pro wrestling or amateur wrestling there’s ever been. To be in this room with Danny Hodge is a big, big honor to me. I look at Roddy Piper. I could name a lot of wrestlers that helped me in wrestling, gave me advice — Harley Race — but I don’t think anybody did more for me or helped me more, and helped me make those decisions to get me to where I was than Roddy Piper. To come here, he had to fight cancer, and to be part of this tonight, is just that much more special. It’s my understanding and belief that Roddy Piper came here for the sole reason just to hang out with me, to be part of this event, because it was important to me. That means a lot. I came all the way from Rome to be here.
“I flew in, and it was important from watching the news over in Italy, seeing the flood problems here, and knowing that I would be here in a few days. It would have been a lot easier to shoot home to Calgary and not worry about the floods — I’m not a good swimmer. [crowd laughs] It was important for me to be here. It made me proud to know that I was coming here. Mike Chapman, yeah, I talked to him a couple of years ago. I talked for so long, and I learned so much about wrestling, championships, and Lou Thesz, and how the origin of wrestling started, it was like sitting under the learning tree, just sitting there listening to this guy, digesting, knowing this guy knows what he’s talking about. He’s not full of it. He’s not a B.S.-er. He knows what he’s talking about, he knows these people. He’s talked to Lou Thesz. He knows the history. He knows the transition from pro wrestling and amateur wrestling.
“Now, I’m here because I was a pro wrestler. But I also know, I also know, what it’s like to hang a gold medal around my neck. I know what it’s like to wrestle a one-hour match. I know what it’s like to go full blast for that hour. And to lose, I know what it’s like to lose wrestling match by one point, I’ve been there too. I know what it’s like to snap on a knee brace. I know what it’s like to snap on a world title belt. I also know what it’s like to wrestle in front of 90,000, 100,000 people sometimes, just to have that kind of impact, and to make people — I remember wrestling the British Bulldog in Wembley Stadium, England, and make everybody in that 82,000 wrestling fans, they dismissed all their disbelief about wrestling, and wrestling for 35 minutes became real. It was real.
“There’s an art to that. There’s a science to that. It’s hard work, it’s really hard work. [clears throat, silence for at least 20 seconds.] I don’t want to be too lecturous here. What is a hall of fame? To me, a hall of fame is a place where it’s important to speak the truth, to capture history. When someone tells you they’re holding Karl Gotch’s jockstrap, or whatever it is, there’s the real jockstrap. It had better be real. I think wrestling fans want the truth, and that’s kind of what my point is here. My father was all about wrestling. He loved wrestling. He dedicated his life to wrestling; it wasn’t just about amateur wrestling, it was about pro wrestling for the whole business. It was about feeding families and making something out of nothing. Wrestling used to mean — what I always tried to get people to remember about wrestling was the honor of being a pro wrestler. There’s something about that term, doing the honors for somebody, and knowing that there’s somebody that is going to be the champion, and going to be the guy that carries the load for everybody, and everybody is going to profit by the fact that he’s Lou Thesz, and he makes people believe that wrestling is real, that he’s a real champion. It’s not just the champion, there’s a whole team of wrestlers that make this whole show, make the whole story, it’s not just the cameraman and the referees and the people that let everybody in. It’s more than that. It’s people that dedicate their lives to wrestling.
“I’ve watched wrestling, and been a part of wrestling, since I was 5 years old. I sold programs and made my first 10 cents on wrestling. It’s just something that I’ve had a passion for since I was born. I think it was my calling to be wrestler. If someone had told me when I was 16 years old that I would tour the world, be the champion, and be a hero to kids, and at the same time, to be here, amongst such great amateur wrestlers, the people who were heroes to me when I was 16 years old, people I had the deepest respect for. People like Danny Hodge. I knew all about Danny Hodge when I was 16, I appreciated Danny Hodge even though I’d never met him. But I knew all about him because I respected wrestling. I think my point is, I’m honored to be here. I know this isn’t my place to gripe about stuff, but I have a serious issue with people who write books about wrestling who don’t honor the truth.
“And you, sir, you do not honor the truth of wrestling. Greg Oliver writes these books on wrestling and it’s all made up. It’s not the truth. It’s just baloney, you know. I wrote a book that took seven years, I gave everything I had to write about some of the deepest tragedies, the truth about my life as a wrestler. For someone like this that sits in the room with me to say that on his Web site that my truth is not the truth, it’s just wrong for me to be in the same room as these people. They don’t honor the truth of wrestling.
“When you buy their books, I think you have to look at that and say these people are not telling the truth. They don’t know anything about wrestling. I’ve never seen them in the back. I’ve never seen them in the dressing room. I’ve never seen them at anything to do with wrestling. They don’t know anything at all about my business. They don’t know anything about me. They don’t have any respect for what I do or for anyone else. So I’m going to step aside now, and I just want to say that it’s not right for me to be in the same room as people who don’t do honor and justice to my profession. You either have a choice of leaving, or I will. [Silence. Someone says “get up” or “get out.”]
“I speak the truth about wrestling and I take pride in what I do. [Applause starts slowly but picks up. Sound covers part of the speech.] ... How it was and how it was done, how it should be done. These guys over here, it makes me laugh that Greg Oliver here rated me behind Sky Low Low, as, I think the 13th-greatest Canadian wrestler. I have news for him — he’s wrong. Sky Low Low was a much better wrestler than me, but he was only half the man that I was. But anyway, my point is, you know, I take a lot of pride in what I do. It means a lot to me that people would come here and be part of this, because wrestling was important to me, and I hope it was important for you. But it’s important that people tell the truth.
“When you write about wrestling, you talk about wrestling, especially when you’re among these kind of people, you owe it to tell the truth. If you want to come here and be a charlatan, well, you’re in the wrong place because this is a room filled with legends, and people that paid their dues in wrestling. We want the truth to be told about wrestling. Take your sorry-ass lies about wrestling and how you make it up, and save your books, because they’re not the truth. This is a room filled with truth. Thank you.
[Applause] I’m talking to you, Greg Oliver. Either you go or I go. [Greg Oliver waves goodbye to Hart] Greg Oliver’s going to stay. I’m going to go to my room. [A few fans yell “We want Bret,” smattering of applause, then silence for 20 seconds. Someone says, “Thanks, Bret” and applause starts again.]”
Media Man Australia Profiles
Bret Hart
WWE
Wrestling
“I see Bob Leonard, who worked for my father for years taking pictures of wrestlers, capturing and documenting, letting people realize the real art of wrestling, and just to capture the pictures of these young athletes dropkicking and head scissors and wrestling holds, making that magic in still pictures. I think Bob Leonard is a very, very important part of my business. Harley Race, I don’t even know how you start. Harley Race to me is the epitome of pro wrestling. He is not only a great wrestler, I don’t know anyone who would want to mess with Harley in wrestling, the fighting or brawling, the real, that moment of man versus man, to know it. Harley Race, he can do whatever he wants to do with anybody he wants, anytime he wants.
"Then there’s Saito here. I know that he wrestled in Japan, a well-accomplished amateur wrestler, got into pro wrestling, paid his dues for hanging with wrestlers that made mistakes that he wasn’t even a part of, sacrificed to come all the way from Japan to be here. I look at Danny Hodge, he’s one of the most, one of the greatest wrestlers in pro wrestling or amateur wrestling there’s ever been. To be in this room with Danny Hodge is a big, big honor to me. I look at Roddy Piper. I could name a lot of wrestlers that helped me in wrestling, gave me advice — Harley Race — but I don’t think anybody did more for me or helped me more, and helped me make those decisions to get me to where I was than Roddy Piper. To come here, he had to fight cancer, and to be part of this tonight, is just that much more special. It’s my understanding and belief that Roddy Piper came here for the sole reason just to hang out with me, to be part of this event, because it was important to me. That means a lot. I came all the way from Rome to be here.
“I flew in, and it was important from watching the news over in Italy, seeing the flood problems here, and knowing that I would be here in a few days. It would have been a lot easier to shoot home to Calgary and not worry about the floods — I’m not a good swimmer. [crowd laughs] It was important for me to be here. It made me proud to know that I was coming here. Mike Chapman, yeah, I talked to him a couple of years ago. I talked for so long, and I learned so much about wrestling, championships, and Lou Thesz, and how the origin of wrestling started, it was like sitting under the learning tree, just sitting there listening to this guy, digesting, knowing this guy knows what he’s talking about. He’s not full of it. He’s not a B.S.-er. He knows what he’s talking about, he knows these people. He’s talked to Lou Thesz. He knows the history. He knows the transition from pro wrestling and amateur wrestling.
“Now, I’m here because I was a pro wrestler. But I also know, I also know, what it’s like to hang a gold medal around my neck. I know what it’s like to wrestle a one-hour match. I know what it’s like to go full blast for that hour. And to lose, I know what it’s like to lose wrestling match by one point, I’ve been there too. I know what it’s like to snap on a knee brace. I know what it’s like to snap on a world title belt. I also know what it’s like to wrestle in front of 90,000, 100,000 people sometimes, just to have that kind of impact, and to make people — I remember wrestling the British Bulldog in Wembley Stadium, England, and make everybody in that 82,000 wrestling fans, they dismissed all their disbelief about wrestling, and wrestling for 35 minutes became real. It was real.
“There’s an art to that. There’s a science to that. It’s hard work, it’s really hard work. [clears throat, silence for at least 20 seconds.] I don’t want to be too lecturous here. What is a hall of fame? To me, a hall of fame is a place where it’s important to speak the truth, to capture history. When someone tells you they’re holding Karl Gotch’s jockstrap, or whatever it is, there’s the real jockstrap. It had better be real. I think wrestling fans want the truth, and that’s kind of what my point is here. My father was all about wrestling. He loved wrestling. He dedicated his life to wrestling; it wasn’t just about amateur wrestling, it was about pro wrestling for the whole business. It was about feeding families and making something out of nothing. Wrestling used to mean — what I always tried to get people to remember about wrestling was the honor of being a pro wrestler. There’s something about that term, doing the honors for somebody, and knowing that there’s somebody that is going to be the champion, and going to be the guy that carries the load for everybody, and everybody is going to profit by the fact that he’s Lou Thesz, and he makes people believe that wrestling is real, that he’s a real champion. It’s not just the champion, there’s a whole team of wrestlers that make this whole show, make the whole story, it’s not just the cameraman and the referees and the people that let everybody in. It’s more than that. It’s people that dedicate their lives to wrestling.
“I’ve watched wrestling, and been a part of wrestling, since I was 5 years old. I sold programs and made my first 10 cents on wrestling. It’s just something that I’ve had a passion for since I was born. I think it was my calling to be wrestler. If someone had told me when I was 16 years old that I would tour the world, be the champion, and be a hero to kids, and at the same time, to be here, amongst such great amateur wrestlers, the people who were heroes to me when I was 16 years old, people I had the deepest respect for. People like Danny Hodge. I knew all about Danny Hodge when I was 16, I appreciated Danny Hodge even though I’d never met him. But I knew all about him because I respected wrestling. I think my point is, I’m honored to be here. I know this isn’t my place to gripe about stuff, but I have a serious issue with people who write books about wrestling who don’t honor the truth.
“And you, sir, you do not honor the truth of wrestling. Greg Oliver writes these books on wrestling and it’s all made up. It’s not the truth. It’s just baloney, you know. I wrote a book that took seven years, I gave everything I had to write about some of the deepest tragedies, the truth about my life as a wrestler. For someone like this that sits in the room with me to say that on his Web site that my truth is not the truth, it’s just wrong for me to be in the same room as these people. They don’t honor the truth of wrestling.
“When you buy their books, I think you have to look at that and say these people are not telling the truth. They don’t know anything about wrestling. I’ve never seen them in the back. I’ve never seen them in the dressing room. I’ve never seen them at anything to do with wrestling. They don’t know anything at all about my business. They don’t know anything about me. They don’t have any respect for what I do or for anyone else. So I’m going to step aside now, and I just want to say that it’s not right for me to be in the same room as people who don’t do honor and justice to my profession. You either have a choice of leaving, or I will. [Silence. Someone says “get up” or “get out.”]
“I speak the truth about wrestling and I take pride in what I do. [Applause starts slowly but picks up. Sound covers part of the speech.] ... How it was and how it was done, how it should be done. These guys over here, it makes me laugh that Greg Oliver here rated me behind Sky Low Low, as, I think the 13th-greatest Canadian wrestler. I have news for him — he’s wrong. Sky Low Low was a much better wrestler than me, but he was only half the man that I was. But anyway, my point is, you know, I take a lot of pride in what I do. It means a lot to me that people would come here and be part of this, because wrestling was important to me, and I hope it was important for you. But it’s important that people tell the truth.
“When you write about wrestling, you talk about wrestling, especially when you’re among these kind of people, you owe it to tell the truth. If you want to come here and be a charlatan, well, you’re in the wrong place because this is a room filled with legends, and people that paid their dues in wrestling. We want the truth to be told about wrestling. Take your sorry-ass lies about wrestling and how you make it up, and save your books, because they’re not the truth. This is a room filled with truth. Thank you.
[Applause] I’m talking to you, Greg Oliver. Either you go or I go. [Greg Oliver waves goodbye to Hart] Greg Oliver’s going to stay. I’m going to go to my room. [A few fans yell “We want Bret,” smattering of applause, then silence for 20 seconds. Someone says, “Thanks, Bret” and applause starts again.]”
Media Man Australia Profiles
Bret Hart
WWE
Wrestling
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