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Ten Years Later: The Beginnings of TPW

Posted: Dec 22nd 2011 By: CMBurnham

As of February 2003, I had been in wrestling for about a year and a half. I had already seen the final demise of two different feds in OPW and now OCW. The death of OCW was kind of a relief. John Crow, the former OCW owner, was a depressing individual to be associated with. I wanted to be a big time wrestling star for the WWE one day and I knew John?s terrible business style would keep that from happening. OCW had the makings of a good product but was being driven into the ground. The problem (or at least in my mind) was John Crow, and now John was gone.

I took wrestling very seriously. I had refused to get a better job, because I needed my nights and weekends off to wrestle. As far as I was concerned, wrestling was my job. Blockbuster Video was just something I did during the day to pay some bills. I refused to go to college, because I needed to dedicate myself to my craft. I watched every wrestling program that came on the television, as well as tape traded with people all over the country to get Japanese, Mexican, and Indy tapes like Ring of Honor. I kept a notebook by my bed to update any moves that would come to me in my sleep. I will admit that it reached a point where I took wrestling way too seriously.

Well after OCW, nobody quite knew what was going to happen next. We all put a lot of pressure on Rocco Valentino to get back into promoting. Reluctantly, he decided to explore that option. He really did not want to promote again. After promoting OPW for years, he knew it would be almost impossible to get that level of success. Promoting can be a financial drain. He started his search for a venue to promote wrestling in by going back to the old bowling alley to see if they would reconsider allowing shows there. They said maybe, but then said no. When Pete Maguire, Rocco?s former business partner in Oklahoma Pro Wrestling, started his legal battle with Rocco over what he felt he was owed, the bowling alley would not allow anyone in to pick up the wrestling ring or any of the OPW gear until the legal issues were resolved. It had been locked up for over a year. It was when Rocco went and visited them that they told him to get that stuff out of there. They needed the space and weren?t going to store it any longer. We used to refer to the OPW ring as a Cadillac of Rings. It was a perfect to bump on but looked and sounded stiff. It was well made. When Rocco got that ring back from the bowling alley, he didn?t want to hang on to it because he knew Pete would just sue him for it. So he sold it to some mark. That mark was yours truly, Justin Lee. That is how seriously I took wrestling. I did a $2000 cash advance on my credit card to buy a wrestling ring. I promptly put in my parent?s backyard where it sat for a year.

After the demise of OCW, many of the OCW boys tried to get on with SRPW, the rival fed that hated Rocco. Well the group of guys loyal to Rocco, known then as the Compound, refused to go to SRPW. We would rather wait a year to ever wrestle again than be disloyal to the guy that gave us all our first jobs. Luckily, it didn?t take a year. Rocco decided that since the first Lucha show he helped promote back in OCW with Chavo Sr. went so well, he would see if we could use that arena weekly. The arena was in the Mexican shopping center. It was a Latino night club called Club Azul. There was a small problem: How do you promote a Mexican wrestling show with a bunch of white guys as the stars? The answer: masks. Also, there was a Mexican gentleman named Victor who was an expert at Lucha. For years Rocco had been letting him bring his son up to the OPW arena and practice his Lucha style. Victor even allowed me, Kenny, and Brent Albright to take part in his Lucha style drills. Rocco asked him if he would be willing to start training some other Mexicans so we could get a few Luchadores in the show. We did have one Mexican on our crew (Well, sort of Mexican). Russ had been wrestling as an overweight effeminate manservant to Splash Jackson. He wore short shorts, a half shirt, and a bow tie. We decided to make him into Romero Contreras, the cool Mexican baby face (or technico as they call it in Lucha).

The other problem was that we didn?t have a ring announcer who could speak Spanish. Up until this point, the ring announcing in OCW had been done by Brian Lakewood, Jenna Love, Amanda St George, and even sometimes by John Crow. Rocco was thinking about paying the guy they used on the first Lucha show to come in weekly from Texas. Obviously a lot could go wrong with that. This guy had obligations of his own in Texas and may have to miss shows occasionally. Rocco asked if any of us knew anyone who spoke Spanish. I did in fact know a guy. While working days at Blockbuster, I was told about a guy on the night crew who was a huge wrestling mark. He wanted to interview me for a paper about Pro Wrestling he was writing for a college class. It just so happens that his name was Ray Martinez, and he was fully bilingual. I arranged for Rocco and this guy to meet. After that meeting, we had a ring announcer.

I had a problem though. Rocco wanted me to put on a mask and be a Luchadore. In my mind, a mask was kiss of death. My last show at OCW I had finally main evented. The crowd was chanting my name and I was as over as I had ever been in my whole life. Plus, I was trying to get my name out there in the indy wrestling world. I was sending tapes out and posting videos to the web. How was I supposed to get booked if I looked like a jobber in a mask? How was the WWE going to notice me? Well Rocco has a way of convincing me I will be a huge superstar if I just listen to him. So, I became a Luchadore. I chose the name El Furioso, because during John Crow?s attempt to take Sonny C to court over the old OCW ring, he called us the furious five (Rocco, me, Sonny, Russ, and Burt). Kenny Campbell also put on a mask and became El Anarquia. My signature color remained yellow and his was red.
Well our first show got sabotaged by John Crow. All the Spanish speaking papers that had promoted the first Lucha show would not this time because John Crow had told them all that this was an illegally run show with a stolen ring. They didn?t want to be involved after hearing this. This hurt our crowd size. It was hard for us to find ways to promote in the Mexican community without having very many Mexican workers. Despite the acts of sabotage, on March 7th, 2003, Tornado Lucha Libre made its debut. Ray Martinez was such a good ring announcer you would have thought he had been doing it for years. All of the loyal guys were on the card, including Romero, Sonny C, AWOL, Butch Dalton, Anthony Jackson, Amanda St George, and Jenna Love. El Furioso and his buddy X-Cal defeated D-Day (Burt) and El Anarquia in a Lucha style match that was awesome. After months of drama and stupidity under John Crow, wrestling was finally fun again. But that would soon change.