Ten Years Later: Why Independent Wrestling Companies Don't Need TV Shows
So one of the biggest mistakes most indy wrestling companies make is deciding they need to add a TV show somewhere. Why do you need TV? Is it so you can feel famous? Is it to get more people to come to your show? Is it to make money off of all the people lining up out the door to buy commercial time during indy wrestling broadcasts?
Here is why it’s usually a mistake. For one thing, wrestling for a taped broadcast with a hard camera is a different presentation all together than wrestling for a live audience. If there is a hard cam, you need to make sure you are working it. This may mean ignoring the live crowd more than you would normally do. Second reason TV is bad, the production values are almost always terrible. Just because you know how to put on a good indy wrestling show, it doesn’t mean you know how to produce a television show. You can’t run a commercial saying how family friendly you are, and then have a tables match with someone bleeding in the next segment. And most feds usually you lack the quality cameras, the proper lighting, the multiple camera angles, and most importantly the quality commentary needed to make good tv wrestling. I have heard commentators so bad on some taped indy shows it actually makes the match seem worse. And thirdly, most people don’t have matches good enough to be shown on TV. You can get away with a lot more in front of a live crowd than you can for a TV audience. The live crowd can’t change the channel. If you see two skinny guys wearing baggy shorts doing really bad Irish whips on a tv show, you aren’t likely to go buy a ticket to see it live.
Well in 2002, Oklahoma Championship Wrestling owner John Crow decided OCW needed TV. He bought the Saturday night time slot just after midnight on then what was the local UPN. We came on just after “Elimi-date”. When I first heard about TV, it sounded awesome to me. We taped it every Tuesday afternoon at a bar over by TU campus. As booker, Rocco Valentino was the default show producer/director but John Crow was still in charge. For the first few episodes, he tried to make Rick Vyper, the OCW ring announcer, the host of the show.
The first few shows were more or less introducing the wrestlers of OCW. Rocco brought in a lot of workers and most of them, even the ones that had mic skills, just seemed to freeze up when the camera came on. Maybe it was taping it on a Tuesday in the middle of a crowded college bar that just didn’t allow people to transform into their characters. I was doing well enough on my promos at the events that Rocco had me come in for a TV segment and let Vyper interview just before they showed one of my matches. I have to say I cut a decent on the fly promo as Vyper interviewed me. It was basically 30 seconds of me with my highlighted blond hair pulled back in a pony tail with and earring talking about how I was so good I didn’t need to hook a leg when I made covers. In a cocky manor I looked straight at the camera and told everyone they needed to take noticed of me as I was the “future” of pro wrestling.
After a few episodes, things weren’t working out with Vyper on TV. As great as he was as a ring announcer, it just wasn’t working for TV. Rocco’s character was great for tv. He came off as very relaxed and polished. He was co-hosting, and he and Vyper just didn’t have any chemistry. Some segments were kind of hard to even watch. Not to mention the very low budget production values, bad lighting, and even worse audio. Rocco made a production decision that kind of changed my life. He decided to pull Vyper and try me on as his co host. I was one of the few people that showed personality on camera, and also projected my voice enough for the cheap audio equipment to pick up good sound. And it turns out Rocco and I had chemistry on camera. The segments with he and I became more fun to watch than the actual wrestling matches. We started filming at other locations, including Just Another Hole piercing studio, Classics Hamburgers, Rent to Own furniture, Western Sizzlin, Mikey’s Gym, and even a massage parlor one time. The live location usually just gave us more energy to feed off of and things just got smoother and smoother.
As with most things John Crow was in charge of, the TV show eventually failed. Half the time it was because he failed to get the tape to the station on time. When shows don’t air, sponsors stop paying for ads. Most of the commercials were so cheaply made that they were probably happy to have them not air. John wasn’t making enough money off commercials anyways to pay for TV anymore and eventually he moved the show from UPN to a cable access station only 300 people could even pick up on their televisions. And shortly after that, the show died. But from that TV experience, I learned a lot. Rocco and I eventually revived our tv show years later for Tornado Pro Wrestling in the form of an internet only broadcast. Without anyone to tell us what we could or couldn’t do, our show got funnier and less wrestling related as each episode occurred. As for OCW, the end of TV marked the beginning of the end. But there would be a few more fireworks, including the official last day of OCW, when John Crow seriously promised to splatter my brains out with his brother’s gun.