In 2005 FWA was still the main promotion for 'informed'/hardcore British fans, but was fading from its height and facing competition for those fans from upstarts like IPW:UK, LDN and SAS. The Wrestling Channel was running on Sky, making more of those fans than ever before. [cont]

FWA was restructuring after losing its arse on their 'supershow' in Coventry at the tail end of 2004. The TWC International Showdown supershow in that same arena in March 2005, though, had been a big success, with its loaded lineup of imports from TNA, ROH, NOAH and more [cont]

Meanwhile Steven Gauntley, who ran video game and wrestling figure store '1-UP Games' with his wife Rosie, had the idea of starting his own promotion. The idea would be to attract fans by presenting regular cards packed with international talent to extent not seen before. [cont]

Gauntley assembled his team of Joe Dombrowski & Anthony Kingdom James (IWC), Rick Peters (GSW) and Peter Staniforth (PTW) and, through their contacts, the show became a reality, securing top-line stars from TNA, former ECW names and other independent performers. [cont]

The biggest coup of all, however, may well have been managing to get MATT HARDY, who had absolutely tonnes of legit online buzz about him at that time following his WWE release and the Edge-Lita saga. The first 1PW show's title was even named after him: "A Twist of Fate". [cont]

But, things didn't go according to plan. Hardy re-signed with WWE and, despite originally being told he could honour the 1PW date, was pulled from the show by his new bosses. Alex Shane's latest Coventry supershow, who also had Hardy booked, suffered the same, erm, fate. [cont]

In a bit of wheeling-dealing, 1PW were able to do a deal and secure Al Snow and Tommy Dreamer from WWE as a make good for pulling Hardy. The debut show was also renamed "A Cruel Twist of Fate" in recognition of the change. The line-up still looked packed by any standard [cont]

Similar to Shane's Supershows, 1PW arranged additional UK bookings for some imports to recoup some of the cost of bringing them in. So, the night before I saw Raven, D-Lo Brown and a trashed Sandman at a wZw show in Middlesbrough Town Hall (see my thread from yesterday) [cont]

So, the day arrived. I think I was just treating it as any other one-off supershow rather than start of a promotion itself. There was a pre-show battle royal for ringside ticket holders (I only had tiered seating). That was won by Darren Burridge to "win a 1PW contract". [cont]

Just over the road, Doncaster Rovers were playing Bradford City that afternoon, and they wheeled out Snow and Dreamer at half time to get into a scuffle with the Donny mascot to try and drum up last minute interest. [cont]

Main doors opened and wrestlers were all sat out at their tables. Loads of fans there, including all the familiar faces you saw at all these types of things across the country, so they'd clearly appealed to the hardcores. Pals of mine had driven from the south coast. [cont]

(These are all my own photos from this point, btw, taken on the day with my 2005 entry level digital camera) [cont]

There had clearly been no expense spared. It looked great. The lighting was better than anything I'd seen on a British show before and my first impression was that it looked like it wouldn't look out of place on TV - most BritWres shows of that era looked like THE SHITS. [cont]

Jonny Storm & Jody Fleisch vs. Jerry Lynn & Chris Sabin was a good TNA X-Division-style all-action opener, full of all the cool moves and stuff to start things off with a bang. [cont]

Tracy Smothers vs. Blue "Meany" (sic) wasn't much, but played for laughs and was what it was. Smothers got over massively in 1PW in a cult popularity kinda way, and became one of their signature names with his promos, dancing and general willingness to look a bit daft. [cont]

The all-British 6-man was a bit rubbish; a big disappointment considering I normally thought all of these lot were good (except for Shabazz, that is - he was ROTTEN) Abyss came out after to destroy them, with Sterling James Keenan (today's Corey Graves) as his 'handler' [cont]

D-Lo Brown vs. Sterling James Keenan was basic. Keenan was a complete unknown to British (and, tbf, most US) audiences, so was a bit of a weird one to fly in, but Kingdom James knew him and had the idea of building around him as "the 1PW guy". Y'know, instead of a Brit. [cont]

And THEN it was time for Steve Corino vs. Al Snow. Oh boy, how to describe this? Right: Corino was the revived AWA World Champion at the time, and doing the role of old school traveling world champion and liking the idea of doing 70s-80s classic world title style bouts. [cont]

So, for about 25-30mins they did this really slow, very dull, methodical, technical match that bored the crowd into complete silence (and sent many to the bar, toilets or merch tables). Then, Corino did a heel fake injury bit that lasted another 10mins and fooled no-one. [cont]

Finally, having done all that, they just ignored everything they had done for the last 35-40 minutes and turned it into a comedy match where they traded signature WWE finishers for laughs. Completely awful. 45 minutes that felt like 2 hours and for absolutely no reason. [cont]

Low Ki v Iceman was a good hard hitting match that resembled a FIGHT. Good fun. Iceman didn't have much recognition on the UK scene out of the north-east, but he'd become a top star in 1PW. Hilariously, a miscue meant he came out against the American to 'Born in the USA' [cont]

Low-Ki had apparently turned up in a bad mood, didn't know Iceman, and wasn't up for taking much of his stuff or giving him much, so it became the hard hitting strike battle we got. I enjoyed it, and previously (relatively) unknown Iceman got over well with these fans. [cont]

Doug Williams vs. Austin Aries was good, but definitely a step below what might have been expected from those two at this stage. The story goes that Aries was apparently badly jet-lagged, which affected the match. [cont]

Raven vs. Sandman started 1-on-1. They didn't do much, aside from Raven failing to get the crowd to boo him, then a few minutes in Tommy Dreamer turned up with a shopping trolley full of weapons (obviously been to the Asda over the road) making it a "3... WAY... DANCE!!!" [cont]

It was a sloppy, typical weapons brawl, but was LOADS of fun, probably the show highlight. ECW nostalgia was at an all-time high coming off One Night Stand/the documentary DVD, and experiencing a Sandman entrance live was awesome. Incredible energy and a red hot crowd. [cont]

The main event pitted regular TNA opponents AJ Styles and Abyss against each other and they worked well together. This was a really slick, really good, really enjoyable bout that was worthy of being main event. SJK tried to get involved & Abyss went in some drawing pins. [cont]

The show had massively overrun (lasting close to 5 hours) and hadn't featured any real 'killer' matches (though several very good ones), but it felt like a success and there was a positive energy coming away from it, like 1PW was a new force, what FWA wished it could be. [cont]

During the show they announced a Blackpool-Doncaster double header as their follow-up in January. The Blackpool one never happened, for some reason, and it became a Doncaster Double instead. Then that became 1PW's pattern: double-show weekends in Doncaster every 2 months [cont]

The Jan, Mar and May 2006 weekenders would be even more star-studded than this debut, with TNA headliners, ex-ECW stars and big-ticket ex-WWE stars (Bret Hart, Christian) making appearances. It was excess, and everyone could see it wasn't sustainable, but it was a RIDE. [cont]

I got bored with 1PW and stopped going after that May 2006 weekend. While they were still doing big 1,500+ crowds, every show felt exactly the same, there were no real storylines to keep things interesting so I felt I'd seen it all and wasn't really missing out any more. [cont]