Backstory
It’s August 2005, and the summer is well under way. World Wrestling Entertainment has been riding high now for the past few years, and is THE promotion in North America. Granted TNA have grown rapidly over the past year also, but they are still nowhere near to the level that the WWE has established. My name is Steve White, I’ve been in the business for around 5 years now, and this is my story.
I’ve been watching wrestling since the 1980’s, who could forgot Andre The Giant being body slammed by Hulk Hogan, or the feuds between Randy Savage and Ricky Steamboat. As a teen I lived, slept and breathed wrestling. I simply couldn’t find any other way to gain the adrenaline rush that I found whilst sitting in the front row at what was then known as ‘Prime Time Saturday Night’ I loved the entertainment we were offered as well as the actual wrestling itself.
It wasn’t until 5 years ago; I looked for more in wrestling. Yes that’s right, until five years ago I was merely like each and every one of you, a fan. I was the one who couldn’t miss an edition of WWF RAW, WCW Nitro. I was the one who couldn’t get enough of ECW and the product they offered. But 5 years ago I made a decision. I wanted to make a career out of wrestling. Now, I wasn’t stupid I knew I could not wrestle to save my life. But I knew that wasn’t going to stop me, I was going to work in wrestling even if I was just Eric Bischoff’s cleaner. I set about contacting the major wrestling promotions back in late ’99 and not surprisingly, they told me politely as possible to “fuck off.” I knew I had to prove that I was different to all the other candidates they saw come and go each day, each week, each month, and each year.
I decided the best way to go was to look at the internet. It was around this time that the internet becoming a big player in wrestling, and there was a definite market out there for the wrestling product, and so wrestling websites were popping up left, right and centre. I quickly bought together a small team of ex-co workers, friends, brothers of friends, friends of brothers of friends, the list is endless. The website was open on the first on January 2000, and was simply known as Grapple Fanatics. We were the site of the millennium, and before we knew it were attracting thousands of visitors a day. I ran with the website for the best part of three years, before I decided I wanted more. I was struggling at the time, I needed money and couldn’t afford to spend time and much needed cash on the website. Whilst in essence the website paid for itself, in that we earned some money from a membership section etc, I just didn’t have the will to continue.
So now it was January 2003. I was about to close Grapple Fanatics, and had become a well known face in the internet wrestling community. I knew I wanted to go further in the wrestling world but I just didn’t know how to get there. You can imagine my shock a few days after I had closed the website when I got a letter through from World Wrestling Entertainment offering me a job with the company. The company had recently got through the transition from being known as the World Wrestling Federation, to World Wrestling Entertainment, and had a whole new attitude. I was invited to come to titan towers and have a meeting with the big man himself Vince McMahon. So that day I grabbed everything I had shoved it in a suitcase and informed my Landlord I would be leaving. I grabbed the little cash I had left and got on the next plane to Stamford.
To cut a long story short, the meeting with Vince McMahon went extremely well, and before I knew it I was working with the WWE booking team on the shows such as Raw and SmackDown. Everything ran smoothly for the next few months, and I was happier than I’d ever been. I had a decent job, a decent salary, a roof over my head, what more could I possibly want or need. I thought nothing could go wrong, and it didn’t for another two years.
So January of 2005 came around, and it was my two year anniversary of working with World Wrestling Entertainment. I felt accepted for once in my life, into a family, a wrestling family, a family I could relate too. However, I was starting to have negative thoughts about the way the company was run. There were far too many people backstage with too much power, and it got the point that at No Way Out, the angles I scripted were completely scrapped. I had no problem with this, but I would have at least like to be informed before this happened. I bit my lip and tried to continue, but I knew that I was going to ultimately resign.
So here I am now, August 2005, and it’s been two months since I officially stopped being an employee of World Wrestling Entertainment. I had decided back in June that I was done with the wrestling world for good, but living in Stamford that was difficult to avoid. I moved to California, and tried to move on there, and I did. Well, I did for a month. Wrestling was too much of a drug for me, and I once again was being drawn to it. I knew I had left the WWE on Bad Terms, and that I had no chance of getting another job there. But what could I do? I made the decision there and then. I was going to set up my own wrestling promotion and make it grow.
I had $50,000 left from my days with the WWE, so I immediately invested that into the promotion. I owned an apartment in California, and had paid off the rent, so luckily for me that was not much of a problem. I put my apartment in Stamford for sale and sold it for $150,000, hence making a total of $200,000. This was my start up capital, $200,000. It isn’t much when you consider what I wanted to do with it, but it was all I had and would have to do for now. All that I knew was that it was a start and damnit; it was the first rung on the ladder. I also realised that on this kind of budget, I would have to do a lot of work myself, with little help. I knew I could do it, and World Wrestling Anarchy was born.
To Be Continued…
It’s August 2005, and the summer is well under way. World Wrestling Entertainment has been riding high now for the past few years, and is THE promotion in North America. Granted TNA have grown rapidly over the past year also, but they are still nowhere near to the level that the WWE has established. My name is Steve White, I’ve been in the business for around 5 years now, and this is my story.
I’ve been watching wrestling since the 1980’s, who could forgot Andre The Giant being body slammed by Hulk Hogan, or the feuds between Randy Savage and Ricky Steamboat. As a teen I lived, slept and breathed wrestling. I simply couldn’t find any other way to gain the adrenaline rush that I found whilst sitting in the front row at what was then known as ‘Prime Time Saturday Night’ I loved the entertainment we were offered as well as the actual wrestling itself.
It wasn’t until 5 years ago; I looked for more in wrestling. Yes that’s right, until five years ago I was merely like each and every one of you, a fan. I was the one who couldn’t miss an edition of WWF RAW, WCW Nitro. I was the one who couldn’t get enough of ECW and the product they offered. But 5 years ago I made a decision. I wanted to make a career out of wrestling. Now, I wasn’t stupid I knew I could not wrestle to save my life. But I knew that wasn’t going to stop me, I was going to work in wrestling even if I was just Eric Bischoff’s cleaner. I set about contacting the major wrestling promotions back in late ’99 and not surprisingly, they told me politely as possible to “fuck off.” I knew I had to prove that I was different to all the other candidates they saw come and go each day, each week, each month, and each year.
I decided the best way to go was to look at the internet. It was around this time that the internet becoming a big player in wrestling, and there was a definite market out there for the wrestling product, and so wrestling websites were popping up left, right and centre. I quickly bought together a small team of ex-co workers, friends, brothers of friends, friends of brothers of friends, the list is endless. The website was open on the first on January 2000, and was simply known as Grapple Fanatics. We were the site of the millennium, and before we knew it were attracting thousands of visitors a day. I ran with the website for the best part of three years, before I decided I wanted more. I was struggling at the time, I needed money and couldn’t afford to spend time and much needed cash on the website. Whilst in essence the website paid for itself, in that we earned some money from a membership section etc, I just didn’t have the will to continue.
So now it was January 2003. I was about to close Grapple Fanatics, and had become a well known face in the internet wrestling community. I knew I wanted to go further in the wrestling world but I just didn’t know how to get there. You can imagine my shock a few days after I had closed the website when I got a letter through from World Wrestling Entertainment offering me a job with the company. The company had recently got through the transition from being known as the World Wrestling Federation, to World Wrestling Entertainment, and had a whole new attitude. I was invited to come to titan towers and have a meeting with the big man himself Vince McMahon. So that day I grabbed everything I had shoved it in a suitcase and informed my Landlord I would be leaving. I grabbed the little cash I had left and got on the next plane to Stamford.
To cut a long story short, the meeting with Vince McMahon went extremely well, and before I knew it I was working with the WWE booking team on the shows such as Raw and SmackDown. Everything ran smoothly for the next few months, and I was happier than I’d ever been. I had a decent job, a decent salary, a roof over my head, what more could I possibly want or need. I thought nothing could go wrong, and it didn’t for another two years.
So January of 2005 came around, and it was my two year anniversary of working with World Wrestling Entertainment. I felt accepted for once in my life, into a family, a wrestling family, a family I could relate too. However, I was starting to have negative thoughts about the way the company was run. There were far too many people backstage with too much power, and it got the point that at No Way Out, the angles I scripted were completely scrapped. I had no problem with this, but I would have at least like to be informed before this happened. I bit my lip and tried to continue, but I knew that I was going to ultimately resign.
So here I am now, August 2005, and it’s been two months since I officially stopped being an employee of World Wrestling Entertainment. I had decided back in June that I was done with the wrestling world for good, but living in Stamford that was difficult to avoid. I moved to California, and tried to move on there, and I did. Well, I did for a month. Wrestling was too much of a drug for me, and I once again was being drawn to it. I knew I had left the WWE on Bad Terms, and that I had no chance of getting another job there. But what could I do? I made the decision there and then. I was going to set up my own wrestling promotion and make it grow.
I had $50,000 left from my days with the WWE, so I immediately invested that into the promotion. I owned an apartment in California, and had paid off the rent, so luckily for me that was not much of a problem. I put my apartment in Stamford for sale and sold it for $150,000, hence making a total of $200,000. This was my start up capital, $200,000. It isn’t much when you consider what I wanted to do with it, but it was all I had and would have to do for now. All that I knew was that it was a start and damnit; it was the first rung on the ladder. I also realised that on this kind of budget, I would have to do a lot of work myself, with little help. I knew I could do it, and World Wrestling Anarchy was born.
To Be Continued…
