10 Wrestling Companies WWE DESTROYED | partsFUNknown
Of all the defunct wrestling promotions out there which one do you miss the most? Let us know in the comments!
00:00 - Start
01:07 - 10
02:05 - 9
03:06 - 8
04:12 - 7
05:09 - 6
06:08 - 5
07:04 - 4
07:55 - 3
08:50 - 2
09:54 - 1.0
10:00 - 1
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Of all the defunct wrestling promotions out there which one do you miss the most? Let us know in the comments!
00:00 - Start
01:07 - 10
02:05 - 9
03:06 - 8
04:12 - 7
05:09 - 6
06:08 - 5
07:04 - 4
07:55 - 3
08:50 - 2
09:54 - 1.0
10:00 - 1
SUBSCRIBE TO partsFUNknown: https://bit.ly/2J2Hl6q
TWITTER: https://twitter.com/partsfunknown
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/partsfunknown/
Buy wrestling merchandise here: wrestleshop.com
Read more Feature content here on WrestleTalk.com: https://wrestletalk.com/features/
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SportsTranscript
00:00 You guys remember WCPW? That was a weird old time in my life. Taking a powerbomb through
00:05 a table called by Jim Ross before Rampage Brown ripped off my trousers and threw them
00:09 so they landed on Jim Cornette. What a weird and completely factual sentence. So, a short
00:13 while into WCPW's life, while Joseph Connors was our champion, NXT UK was announced and
00:18 a bunch of wrestlers who regularly featured on our shows were offered contracts. Obviously
00:22 they took them, bloody hell who wouldn't, but those contracts precluded them from working
00:25 in certain other UK promotions. Promotions like, you guessed it, WCPW. Bang, there goes
00:30 a significant part of our roster. Some could consider it a targeted attack if you're feeling
00:34 particularly tinfoil hatty, but it did get me thinking, where else has WWE either intentionally
00:39 or accidentally exerted its veiny, sweaty influence to crush another promotion into
00:45 the dust? I'm Adam Hailing from PartsFarunknown, here are 10 Wrestling Companies WWE Destroyed.
00:51 And if you would like this particular wrestling based company to not be destroyed, you can
00:56 help us out by subscribing to PartsFarunknown. It is way more important than you think, it
01:02 really really helps us out, and it's free. So click on the button and the bell, it helps.
01:07 Number 10, World of Sport. Did WWE launch NXT UK to try and kill WCPW? No, no, no they
01:14 didn't. We'd like to think that we were the little promotion that could, puffing out our
01:16 chests and stepping to the big dog, but no I don't think WWE really cared about our YouTuber
01:22 heavy IndyFed. Did WWE launch NXT UK to try and kill the 2016 reboot of World of Sport,
01:27 the iconic UK wrestling platform that ran for 20 years from the mid 60s to the mid 80s
01:32 and made household names out of Big Daddy, Giant Haystacks and others? Yeah, that's probably
01:36 quite more likely. The British wrestling scene was on fire in the mid 2010s as a result of
01:41 promotions like Progress, ICW, RevPro and the like. Could ITV have successfully capitalised
01:45 on that to relaunch World of Sport as an enduring brand? Possibly. ITV's generally a bit sh*t
01:50 so it's not a dead cert, but it certainly didn't help when WWE descended and signed
01:54 half of BritRes to exclusive contracts that prevented them from working with companies
01:58 like, I dunno, World of Sport. Still, thank goodness everyone watches NXT UK and it was
02:02 absolutely worth cannibalising the British wrestling scene for.
02:05 Number 9, AWA. Let's head a bit further back in time now to the 80s, widely regarded as
02:09 one of wrestling's finest end to end decades. The 1980s were the advent of pay-per-view
02:14 and advances in nationally syndicated television saw a monumental shift in the wrestling scene
02:19 with some of the more drastic changes a direct result of the actions of Vince McMahon and
02:23 WWE. The US was carved up into territories at the time, each with their main event talent,
02:28 and it was an unofficial agreement that territories would not poach other promotions' top stars.
02:32 Vince planted his grapefruits directly on that unwritten rule and raided all the territories,
02:37 luring away their main event scenes and flooding his midcard with some of the best characters
02:41 in the industry at the time. But few companies suffered more than the American Wrestling
02:45 Association, the AWA, with WWE stealing away AWA's most valuable star, Hulk Hogan. To be
02:52 fair to Vince, AWA made that defection very easily by repeatedly getting cold feet about
02:57 putting their big belt on Hogan. Vince had no such qualms. Following Hogan's departure,
03:02 the AWA never fully recovered, even if it did limp on for another decade.
03:06 Number 8, Georgia Championship Wrestling. In 1984, Georgia Championship Wrestling was
03:11 40 years old and was one of the jewels in the National Wrestling Alliance's big bulging
03:15 crown, being the first NWA-affiliated promotion to air a wrestling show on national TV. Vince
03:21 saw this national TV slot and thought, "yummy, yummy, in my tummy." Jack and Jerry Briscoe
03:26 sold their shares in Georgia Championship Wrestling to Vince McMahon in 1984 in exchange
03:30 for nearly a million dollar re-dos and jobs in the WWE for life. Co-owner Oli Anderson
03:36 did not know about this and was very unhappy, but Oli Anderson would be very unhappy seeing
03:40 a newborn Corgi smiling at him. The sale of GCW included the promotion's coveted time
03:45 slots which Vince used to create WWF World Championship Wrestling. Mad as that sounds
03:51 looking back. That show would promote other WWE shows and recap WWE matches, much to the
03:56 chagrin of the Southern audience who turned away from the show in droves. Ric Flair said
04:00 in his book that an unnamed source offered the Road Warriors five grand to injure the
04:04 Briscoes in revenge for their part in crippling GCW, but apparently Road Warriors refused
04:08 to do it. What a friendly pair of post-apocalyptic murder bastards.
04:12 7. Evolve
04:13 Evolve was an all-you-can-eat indie super fed buffet, providing a one-stop shop for
04:18 all your favorites from ROH, Dragon Gate USA and PWG. Putting on excellent wrestling from
04:23 2010 to 2020, at least for fans who even knew it existed. Independent wrestling was a difficult
04:28 business to be in at the start of the 2010s as there had yet to be the resurgence of interest
04:32 and the increase in accessibility that would come later on. In 2015, at the height of indie
04:36 mania, Evolve entered into a relationship with WWE. In exchange for access to their
04:40 video library, WWE and NXT talent would occasionally appear on Evolve shows from time to time,
04:45 and Evolve's show was even put on the WWE Network to go head to head with AEW's Fight
04:49 for the Fallen in 2019, for WWE would purchase Evolve outright in 2020. The details of Evolve's
04:55 final days have always been a bit murky, but whether WWE simply put the promotion out of
04:58 its misery or decided to throw money at one of the indie scene's most recognizable promotions
05:02 to make it go away, the only place you'll see Evolve now is on the WWE Network, and
05:07 even then, you've got to dig for it.
05:09 6. Stampede Wrestling
05:10 Stampede Wrestling was one of the biggest wrestling promotions in the history of the
05:14 Great White North, built on the passion, technical wizardry and stony faced semi-annoyance intrinsic
05:19 to the Hart family. Then came the mid 80s and Vince going all supermarket sweep on the
05:23 territories, grabbing whatever he could to cram into his trolley before Dale Winton told
05:27 him to stop, these are some deep UK TV references. In 1984, Stampede was in a bad way, having
05:32 been shut down for 6 months following an infamous riot at one of their shows. Hart sold Stampede
05:37 to McMahon in '84, and Vince took with him Dynamite Kid, Davey Boy Smith and a little
05:41 known youngster named Brett F*** Hart for his roster. The territory was supposed to
05:46 be sold for a cool $1 million, but after only a fraction of it was paid, Vince McMahon said
05:50 he couldn't honour the agreement, and Stu was free to start up again if he so chose,
05:54 even though Vince had already snaffled all the top stars of the territory. They would
05:57 relaunch with the likes of Owen Hart, Chris Benoit and Brian Pillman, but would only last
06:01 a few years before folding again due to strained relationships and a poor economy. Vince, you
06:06 ruthless bastard.
06:07 5. The USWA
06:09 The spiritual successor to world-class championship wrestling from Texas, aka the once white-hot
06:14 home of the Von Eriks, the United States Wrestling Association never truly captured the magic
06:18 of its predecessor. In the early 90s, the company actually had a talent exchange with
06:22 the WWF, which ended up seeing Jerry Lawler and others make appearances for the company.
06:26 Fun fact, at one point Papa Shango was the USWA Unified World Champion. What a prestigious
06:31 world championship that is. However, what ultimately led to the death of the promotion
06:35 was the fact that it held all of its marquee live shows on Monday nights, and guess which
06:39 day of the week suddenly became very important in the mid-90s. The Monday Night Wars saw
06:45 a big drop off in the number of people willing to venture beyond their couch for their weekly
06:49 wrestling. WWE and WCW's control of the airways slowly strangled the USWA, and on
06:54 October 3rd 1996, the company drew the smallest crowd in Memphis wrestling history, a mere
07:01 372 people, and the company called it quits shortly after.
07:04 4. Smoky Mountain Wrestling
07:06 You could argue that Smoky Mountain Wrestling never really stood a chance. As old school
07:10 as old school can get, Smoky Mountain Wrestling was founded by professional cloud-yeller Jim
07:15 Cornette to be good old Southern grappling, moustache-twirling villains, earnest babyfaces,
07:20 on-to-earth gimmicks, and people really caring about the rules. Unfortunately, he founded
07:24 it in the 90s when people cared about edgy content, anti-heroes, and limp biscuit in
07:30 that order. Also, it was founded in the first half of the 90s shortly after the wrestling
07:34 boom died and people super didn't care about wrestling anymore. Despite forming working
07:38 relationships with both big dogs on the scene, swapping talent with both WCW and WWE, Smoky
07:43 Mountain could never get a foothold on television. Without a reliable weekly time slot the promotion
07:48 limped on before WWE dealt the official killing blow, signing Cornette to work for them full
07:52 time, leading to him shuttering the promotion for good.
07:55 3. Jim Crockett Promotions
07:57 AKA Vince McMahon's biggest rival of the 80s, the promotion built around Ric Flair,
08:02 the hottest wrestling star in the world whose name was not Hulk Hogan. And oh the lengths
08:06 that Big Vince would go in order to sabotage JCP. It's truly sensational, mean girls
08:12 levels of psychological torment. In addition to his signature move, poaching talent away
08:16 from the company with the promise of bigger paydays, Vince scheduled the first ever Survivor
08:20 Series to run against Starrcade, JCP's biggest card of the year, scheduled the first ever
08:25 Royal Rumble to go head to head with Bunkhouse Stampede, and even strong armed pay per view
08:29 providers telling them that if they ran shows like Starrcade, they would lose the rights
08:33 to run Wrestlemania 4. Believe it or not, many of them chose Wrestlemania 4. JCP could
08:38 not compete with his frantic Stanford Dick swinging, and by the end of 1988 they were
08:42 on the verge of bankruptcy, forcing the company to be sold to a certain famous billionaire.
08:47 And believe it or not, we might come back to him later.
08:50 2. ECW
08:51 Do you remember ECW? It was shot in a car park, and the wrestlers hit each other with
08:55 bin lids and said piss and dick and that. It was a game changer. I'm a sarcastic asshole,
09:00 but the truth is, there are fewer promotions that ever felt more relevant or of its time
09:04 than ECW in the mid to late 90s. However, the problem with being a trendsetter and introducing
09:09 the Western market to some of the best wrestlers and talkers of their generation was that people
09:13 with more money would come along and steal those trends for their TV shows. Such was
09:17 the life for ECW. They'd generate the world's best roster, it would be raided by WCW or
09:21 WWE, they would have to scramble to find more. Locked in third place and struggling to stay
09:26 on TV.
09:27 ECW was being broadcast on TNN in 2000, and after an incredibly fractious relationship
09:31 with the network, ECW was pulled off the air to be replaced by none other than WWF Raw.
09:37 Without the added revenue from television, they were unable to stay afloat and declare
09:40 bankruptcy officially in April 2001. And to Paul Heyman's credit, he waited 90 days
09:45 after the company was closed to declare bankruptcy so the banks could not recollect any of the
09:48 payouts given to the wrestlers for the last shows. Nice little fact about Paul floating
09:52 in a sea of bounce check stories.
09:54 And number one, NXT 1.0. I'm just kidding, but also not really to be honest. But anyway,
10:01 number one, WCW. Having a boot on your throat will do that to you. For six straight years,
10:06 WWE had one goal - beat World Championship Wrestling, a feat it initially failed quite
10:11 spectacularly at when the NWO briefly took over the entirety of global wrestling, helping
10:15 to jumpstart the second wrestling boom. Eventually, WWE pulled ahead, owing to a combination of
10:20 yes, Vince and Austin, but also WCW repeatedly shooting themselves in both feet with sawn
10:25 off shotguns, burning huge piles of money every single year on fat contracts for uncooperative
10:31 stars, holding pay-per-views like Hogwild where the fans attended for free, generating
10:35 zero dollars on the gate, rock concerts, duelling monster trucks and other very silly things.
10:41 Despite making insane amounts of money in 1997, the show's decline in quality, made
10:45 worse when Vince Russo and his frenetic car crash style moved over from WWF in a move
10:49 so detrimental it could almost be seen as intentional sabotage, soon saw the company
10:54 losing millions of dollars every single year as WWE took strides towards total market dominance.
11:00 Shortly after the decision was taken to remove WCW from TV, WWE purchased the company, leading
11:04 to the infamous Vince promo about the fate of WCW being in his hands. One more smoking
11:12 ruin for the pile.
11:14 And that's our list of all the defunct promotions in wrestling history. Which do you miss the
11:18 most? Let us know which one and why in the comments, don't forget to like and share
11:21 this video around if you enjoyed it, and make sure you subscribe to partsFUNknown for more
11:24 silly wrestling content. Jam that jam.
11:27 [Outro]