DIARY OF A MAT MAN 18
(19 Feb 2008)
by Joe E Legend
(19 Feb 2008)
by Joe E Legend
Soooooooooooooo......
I'd suppose at this point I should apologize for such a delay in my
writings. OK, I'm sorry. There have been a few reasons for these delays, most of
them not exactly great, but I think you'll have to give the nod to one of them
being a pretty good distraction. Firstly, simply laziness. For pretty much the
last half of 2007 I was bored with the wrestling industry, and kinda fed up
with dealing with a lot of the cement-heads who call themselves
"experts". They're not. I got totally tired of listening to the IWC
burying EVERYTHING to do with this business and doing it while looking down
their noses at it. These are people who call themselves "fans". There
are a lot of good people within this industry (outweighed by the bad and
stupid, but some real gems if you're willing to look) and I was really getting
tired of people online leaning on them and trying to bury their efforts. I
really believe if someone feels they can do a better job in this business, they
should lead by example, not by snotty comments. "If you want to be
better... BE BETTER!!" - Joe E Legend, and if you don't want to adhere to my
quote, or if you wish to get one from a more respected source: "Be the
changes in the world you wish to see" - Ghandi.
It's really time for the fans of this business to start to give it some credit and back it up a little instead of constantly knocking it down. If you don't like something, by all means, say something. But if WWE, TNA, ROH, or anyone else are doing something right, GIVE 'EM A LITTLE CREDIT FOR A CHANGE!! I've been the first one to lean on TNA (for personal as well as professional reasons) but when it comes to pure talent (ie. Angle, Cage, Shelley, Sabin, Williams, Booker, etc.) I'll ALWAYS put over their hard efforts to get over a company that's trying so hard to isolate itself from its audience. So that's one (main) reason for the delay.
The other is that I'M GONNA BE A DADDY!!!! TWO TWIN BOYS!!!! Since I found out I've kinda been letting a lot of other stuff slide (totally irresponsible, I know) but I'm so "over the moon" about this that I'm gonna forgive myself. So, with that out of the way, I guess we can move on to da bid-ness at hand...Rasslin'!! Honestly, I can't remember where I left off last time, so I'm just going to pick up things from October and hope for the best. In October I went back to the UK for All Star Wrestling and as always, I had a lot of fun. We did the "Butlin's" run and for anyone in the UK who is making their holiday at a Butlin's resort, I have to recommend the wrestling shows as they are always high energy and family friendly. It's not the usual indy "hardcore" stuff with a lot of swearing (none for All Star) and blood. Just a quality wrestling event (shorter than most, 3 matches but it's a free event for Butlin's patrons) with some hard working talent. In November I went to Wienheim for ACW again and was really impressed with the audiences they are drawing. I believe I worked a 3-way dance with Ulf Herrman and Martin Stone and all in all it was pretty good. The audience for ACW are loud and appreciative and I enjoy performing for them. I also got to do a return gig for PWA whom I haven't worked for in about 2 years for a number of reasons, mostly just scheduling conflicts but my return to Munich for them was a good time. It was a small but enthusiastic crowd and working with PN Neus is always a reason for me to show up happy. Then it was off to France for ICWA where I was put over for their "World Title" by Raven. We had an excellent match that the (over) sold out crowd really went for.
Right now I think France might be the hottest area in Europe for wrestling. After that, I went to Austria and wrestled for CWC and I have to say they put on a first class event. I did another 3-way dance with Chris the BambiKiller and Darren Burridge and the crowd was HOT for this one. I got to go out during intermission for a "meet and greet" and the fans there were wonderful. I followed that up with an event for GSW and was honored to witness first hand the efforts of the BEST TEAM IN WRESTLING TODAY...The Motor City Machine Guns!! Shelley and Sabin are students of mine and I always thought they were excellent on their own but together they simply have the timing, grace, stamina, intensity and raw talent that made me a fan of the business again. I can honestly say that my bitterness that I referred to at the beginning of this column started to wane away watching 2 of my students make me so proud. If TNA doesn't put the tag belts on these 2 for a LONG time, they should be ashamed of themselves!A match between them and Kendrick and London would simply be an early contender for "Match of the Century" and would have my vote immediately. December rolled around and as always, things slow down with the wrestling business then, so I got a little rest but still got a few air miles on my card. I went back to Russia to work for IWF and got Raven booked to work with me in front of about 5,000 fans in a ring which was set up about 80 meters off of the floor!! I am normally booked as a face but the promoter wanted Raven to be the face so I wound up working heel, but not hardcore. There were a lot of fans in the crowd with "Legend" signs with pictures of me on them and after the show I made sure to come out and sign as many as I could. Russian fans are AWESOME!! Went back for ACW and worked in front of ANOTHER sell out!! Great! Spent the rest of the month in Hanover (home) and got Raven on to work with again for EWP for 2 days. We went to an Indians game (one of the 2 Hanover hockey teams) to do the "celebrity" thing before the game and Raven got EXCELLENT heat! I really thought some of the fans were gonna jump him! Either way, the EWP shows were great and I worked with Raven both days (singles and then a tag) and enjoyed his and his wife's company the entire time. I've put the word in for him and he should be accompanying me on a tour of South Africa in May. Should be fun!
In January I went for a visit to Canada to see my family (it's probably the last free time I'll get to visit before the twins are born) and wound up working a main event for RWI near Hamilton. I was put over for the RWI title and the crowd were great the whole night. One of the best things though, was that I finally got to hang out with the man who trained me for the ring after not seeing or being in contact with him for more than 10 years. Ron Hutchison. He is a wonderful man, a wonderful human being and a wonderful trainer and I owe a lot of what I have to his generosity, his kindness, his patience and his honesty. Week after week he would spend hours in the ring with us giving us all of the finer points of wrestling along with a straight ahead approach regarding dealing with people within the industry that is simply immeasurable in value.
Without his help:
-I never would have gotten the proper training I needed in the ring.
-I never would have gotten the grasp of "match psychology" that I put such a premium on now.
-I never would have gotten my first tour of Japan (let alone 9 more).
-I never would have gotten skilled enough to be offered a tour of Germany (where I met my wife).
-So, I never would have gotten married over here and wouldn't be an expectant dad.
Ron, from the bottom of my heart. THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING!!! All right, enough mushy stuff!!I returned to Germany and worked another event for GSW where it was announced that on their Major show of the year (International Impact), I'll be co- Main Eventing as I have a match with Christian Cage! He's one of my best friends and a guy whom I helped train and bring in to the business whose talent, class and success has made me so proud (and a little jealous, I gotta be honest!). I haven't worked with him since something like 1995, so this will be a real treat for me. Now, it's February and I've just worked for ACW (sold out AGAIN!! Holy Cow!!) and I just returned from France over the weekend where I worked an (over) capacity event defending (!) the ICWA title against Eric Schwartz. The crowd was great and re-affirmed that France is probably the hottest territory around right now. Nothing against anywhere else, but French events are selling out larger venues FAST! That brings us up to speed regarding where I've been for the last while.
Other things to note: I'm currently involved in co-hosting a radio show out of Ireland. It can be found at: www.themaineventradio.com and we discuss current trends and such in wrestling and have guests on to discuss them with. Recently, we had Raven in a rare interview and he was SO entertaining. Also, last week we had Steve Corino on who has just retired from wrestling and is now working with "Special Needs" kids. I think it says a lot about his character that this is where he is taking his life now and he has all of my respect for working in this field.In the future, once Steve has his foundation settled, I'll try and get a link up in case anyone wants to donate time or money to this noble cause. Not many people bring something good to this business, I think Corino deserves a standing ovation for doing it now! I have also been hired to write a column online. The website is: www.wrestlezone.com and the column is called: "The Book of Legend". It's an excellent website and there are a lot of good columnists there to get perspectives from such as Raven, Konnan (who is doing much better regarding his health. Thanks to whomever prayed for him.), Disco Inferno, Kevin Kelly and more. Check it out. Furthermore, I've been formally booked for the big "American Wrestling Superstars" (we won't mention I'm a Canadian who lives in Germany) tour of Ireland in March. Chris Masters, Test, Sandman and a host of others will be there and I've been told tickets are going fast. I'm trying to get a live recording of my radio show going for one of the events during the "meet and greets" we're doing before each show. So if that works out and you have a question you've been DYING to ask one of these guys, you might get to do it in person at one of these events. Check out the website for the radio show for more details. Beyond that, I'm supposed to have South Africa, Kuwait, Spain, Germany, Austria, the UK and more announced in the next few weeks to keep an eye in my calender for details regarding that.Thanks for checking this out, thanks for your patience in waiting for it and I hope you'll come back again. Check out the other sites listed above. They're quite impressive.
All the best and God Bless.
Joe E Legend
www.legendwrestling.com
www.myspace.com/legendwrestling
It's really time for the fans of this business to start to give it some credit and back it up a little instead of constantly knocking it down. If you don't like something, by all means, say something. But if WWE, TNA, ROH, or anyone else are doing something right, GIVE 'EM A LITTLE CREDIT FOR A CHANGE!! I've been the first one to lean on TNA (for personal as well as professional reasons) but when it comes to pure talent (ie. Angle, Cage, Shelley, Sabin, Williams, Booker, etc.) I'll ALWAYS put over their hard efforts to get over a company that's trying so hard to isolate itself from its audience. So that's one (main) reason for the delay.
The other is that I'M GONNA BE A DADDY!!!! TWO TWIN BOYS!!!! Since I found out I've kinda been letting a lot of other stuff slide (totally irresponsible, I know) but I'm so "over the moon" about this that I'm gonna forgive myself. So, with that out of the way, I guess we can move on to da bid-ness at hand...Rasslin'!! Honestly, I can't remember where I left off last time, so I'm just going to pick up things from October and hope for the best. In October I went back to the UK for All Star Wrestling and as always, I had a lot of fun. We did the "Butlin's" run and for anyone in the UK who is making their holiday at a Butlin's resort, I have to recommend the wrestling shows as they are always high energy and family friendly. It's not the usual indy "hardcore" stuff with a lot of swearing (none for All Star) and blood. Just a quality wrestling event (shorter than most, 3 matches but it's a free event for Butlin's patrons) with some hard working talent. In November I went to Wienheim for ACW again and was really impressed with the audiences they are drawing. I believe I worked a 3-way dance with Ulf Herrman and Martin Stone and all in all it was pretty good. The audience for ACW are loud and appreciative and I enjoy performing for them. I also got to do a return gig for PWA whom I haven't worked for in about 2 years for a number of reasons, mostly just scheduling conflicts but my return to Munich for them was a good time. It was a small but enthusiastic crowd and working with PN Neus is always a reason for me to show up happy. Then it was off to France for ICWA where I was put over for their "World Title" by Raven. We had an excellent match that the (over) sold out crowd really went for.
Right now I think France might be the hottest area in Europe for wrestling. After that, I went to Austria and wrestled for CWC and I have to say they put on a first class event. I did another 3-way dance with Chris the BambiKiller and Darren Burridge and the crowd was HOT for this one. I got to go out during intermission for a "meet and greet" and the fans there were wonderful. I followed that up with an event for GSW and was honored to witness first hand the efforts of the BEST TEAM IN WRESTLING TODAY...The Motor City Machine Guns!! Shelley and Sabin are students of mine and I always thought they were excellent on their own but together they simply have the timing, grace, stamina, intensity and raw talent that made me a fan of the business again. I can honestly say that my bitterness that I referred to at the beginning of this column started to wane away watching 2 of my students make me so proud. If TNA doesn't put the tag belts on these 2 for a LONG time, they should be ashamed of themselves!A match between them and Kendrick and London would simply be an early contender for "Match of the Century" and would have my vote immediately. December rolled around and as always, things slow down with the wrestling business then, so I got a little rest but still got a few air miles on my card. I went back to Russia to work for IWF and got Raven booked to work with me in front of about 5,000 fans in a ring which was set up about 80 meters off of the floor!! I am normally booked as a face but the promoter wanted Raven to be the face so I wound up working heel, but not hardcore. There were a lot of fans in the crowd with "Legend" signs with pictures of me on them and after the show I made sure to come out and sign as many as I could. Russian fans are AWESOME!! Went back for ACW and worked in front of ANOTHER sell out!! Great! Spent the rest of the month in Hanover (home) and got Raven on to work with again for EWP for 2 days. We went to an Indians game (one of the 2 Hanover hockey teams) to do the "celebrity" thing before the game and Raven got EXCELLENT heat! I really thought some of the fans were gonna jump him! Either way, the EWP shows were great and I worked with Raven both days (singles and then a tag) and enjoyed his and his wife's company the entire time. I've put the word in for him and he should be accompanying me on a tour of South Africa in May. Should be fun!
In January I went for a visit to Canada to see my family (it's probably the last free time I'll get to visit before the twins are born) and wound up working a main event for RWI near Hamilton. I was put over for the RWI title and the crowd were great the whole night. One of the best things though, was that I finally got to hang out with the man who trained me for the ring after not seeing or being in contact with him for more than 10 years. Ron Hutchison. He is a wonderful man, a wonderful human being and a wonderful trainer and I owe a lot of what I have to his generosity, his kindness, his patience and his honesty. Week after week he would spend hours in the ring with us giving us all of the finer points of wrestling along with a straight ahead approach regarding dealing with people within the industry that is simply immeasurable in value.
Without his help:
-I never would have gotten the proper training I needed in the ring.
-I never would have gotten the grasp of "match psychology" that I put such a premium on now.
-I never would have gotten my first tour of Japan (let alone 9 more).
-I never would have gotten skilled enough to be offered a tour of Germany (where I met my wife).
-So, I never would have gotten married over here and wouldn't be an expectant dad.
Ron, from the bottom of my heart. THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING!!! All right, enough mushy stuff!!I returned to Germany and worked another event for GSW where it was announced that on their Major show of the year (International Impact), I'll be co- Main Eventing as I have a match with Christian Cage! He's one of my best friends and a guy whom I helped train and bring in to the business whose talent, class and success has made me so proud (and a little jealous, I gotta be honest!). I haven't worked with him since something like 1995, so this will be a real treat for me. Now, it's February and I've just worked for ACW (sold out AGAIN!! Holy Cow!!) and I just returned from France over the weekend where I worked an (over) capacity event defending (!) the ICWA title against Eric Schwartz. The crowd was great and re-affirmed that France is probably the hottest territory around right now. Nothing against anywhere else, but French events are selling out larger venues FAST! That brings us up to speed regarding where I've been for the last while.
Other things to note: I'm currently involved in co-hosting a radio show out of Ireland. It can be found at: www.themaineventradio.com and we discuss current trends and such in wrestling and have guests on to discuss them with. Recently, we had Raven in a rare interview and he was SO entertaining. Also, last week we had Steve Corino on who has just retired from wrestling and is now working with "Special Needs" kids. I think it says a lot about his character that this is where he is taking his life now and he has all of my respect for working in this field.In the future, once Steve has his foundation settled, I'll try and get a link up in case anyone wants to donate time or money to this noble cause. Not many people bring something good to this business, I think Corino deserves a standing ovation for doing it now! I have also been hired to write a column online. The website is: www.wrestlezone.com and the column is called: "The Book of Legend". It's an excellent website and there are a lot of good columnists there to get perspectives from such as Raven, Konnan (who is doing much better regarding his health. Thanks to whomever prayed for him.), Disco Inferno, Kevin Kelly and more. Check it out. Furthermore, I've been formally booked for the big "American Wrestling Superstars" (we won't mention I'm a Canadian who lives in Germany) tour of Ireland in March. Chris Masters, Test, Sandman and a host of others will be there and I've been told tickets are going fast. I'm trying to get a live recording of my radio show going for one of the events during the "meet and greets" we're doing before each show. So if that works out and you have a question you've been DYING to ask one of these guys, you might get to do it in person at one of these events. Check out the website for the radio show for more details. Beyond that, I'm supposed to have South Africa, Kuwait, Spain, Germany, Austria, the UK and more announced in the next few weeks to keep an eye in my calender for details regarding that.Thanks for checking this out, thanks for your patience in waiting for it and I hope you'll come back again. Check out the other sites listed above. They're quite impressive.
All the best and God Bless.
Joe E Legend
www.legendwrestling.com
www.myspace.com/legendwrestling