XPW

[Kool Aid Man]

Did this promotion have any potential?

I was not exposed to much of XPW outside of that the message boards said and I did manage to purchase a DVD of one of their PPVs shortly after they folded.

From what I understand the XPW was basically a coked up ECW. Part of your perspective will be if you think hardcore wrestling has a place as a stable in wrestling, or if you think of the success of ECW and it's adoption by WWF and later WCW was reactionary and a brief rebellion against mainstream wrestling.

It seems as if XPW's parent company ultimately led to it's demise with very shady and disturbing video vignettes they were producing. However, had that not happened they may or may not still be around.

I will say this. I don't see a company that pushes the envelope with homosexual wrestlers, and porn starts revolving in and out of the storylines being successful on mainstream TV, much less competing with the WWE. However, I do see the XPW having potential leveraging it's skin industry ties with a premium channel like Cinemax that actually shows pornography.

 

[PsychoCrushaaaaaaaaaaaaaa]

Eh XPW tried to fill the void left when ECW folded. The problem i had with it was, in my opinion only, ultra violent hardcore wrestling gets old fast. when guys dont have any real wrestling talent and spend 10 minutes just smacking eachother with whatever they have on hand works from time to time but as your sole source of material?

i also couldnt' stand the announcers, jesus christ they were annoying. the couldve been CZW before CZW took off but i think the owner sank all his money in that "rape" and "snuff" porn he made. i think he had a few potentially good guys on his payroll but thats really it.

 

[Jimmy Carter]

I followed XPW from debut to demise, and it didn't seem to "fill a void" so much as capitalize on the image that ECW/WWF promoted at the time. This West Coast promotion veered into more sleaze material than the major companies, but that might be expected when the boss also runs a porn company (from which he siphoned female talent into the wrestling product).

Looking past those "xtreme" surface elements, the promotion had a few genuinely entertaining acts along with a production style that might be better compared to ROH today than ECW. Original characters like Supreme, Messiah and Homeless Jimmy meshed well with veterans such as Shane Douglas, Sabu and Jerry Lynn, even if the XPW Originals were prone to sloppy mistakes and relied consistently on garbage formula (mind you, this is compared to SABU).

The announcers made the weekly shows and major events a bit of a chore sometimes. Revisiting their inane banter is enough to make one long for the fiery dynamic chemistry of Michael Cole and Josh Matthews. Kris Kloss especially annoyed with his high-pitched girl scream (palely imitating Joey Styles' "Oh my GOD!" for particularly violent spots), and Larry usually drifted all over the place such that a three hour RAW announce team seems laser-focused by comparison.

Even refugees from the fallout of ECW were not enough to prop the company up for long. Maybe if the company had moved away from the hardcore elements and sought out more skilled young talent they might have had a chance, but who is to say? Better Southern California promotions have risen in XPW's wake, so perhaps that can be seen as a silver lining. Still, no promotion in the area since then has produced a reliably goofy weekly TV show.