Ah, yes. The Territories. To many wrestling purists, pro wrestling as they knew it – the era that started with the formation of the NWA in 1948 – died in 1991 when the AWA folded. All of the NWA’s best territorial flagbearers had either been bought out or ravaged by the WWF or acquired by Jim Crockett’s WCW precursor version of the NWA. But when the AWA folded in 1991, it marked the final death knell for the territorial system that had covered North America for over 40 years. Sure WCCW and USWA lasted a little bit longer, but their demise was inevitable when Verne Gagne threw in the towel. With WWF and WCW pulling so ahead of the pack with such speed and power, the territories fell to the point where the NWA was left a fractured assemblage of the smallest regional promotions. No more arena shows for the once proud National Wrestling Alliance. It was back to the Bingo Halls.
Don’t Look Now, But Wrestling Territories Are Back
But one of the small regional promotions that was left after the great WWF/WCW symbiosis was Eastern Championship Wrestling out of Philadelphia. And instead of remain part of a sinking (or at least heading back to the dockyard for repairs) ship, ECW segragated itself from NWA in and declared itself Extreme Championship Wrestling, when “The Franchise” Shane Douglas won the NWA World title and immediately announced he was the first ECW Champion in August of 1994. And this the era of Extreme was born. And while ECW never truly came close to being a threat to WWE or WCW during the Monday Night Wars, their creative storytelling, hardcore action and penchant for finding underutilized or undervalued talent from around the world who became Legends elsewhere. There is no denying the influence that ECW had on pro wrestling in the 1990’s.
While many regional promotions remained in the new NWA (including an upstart company named TNA in 2002), many began to start up and remain autonomous. Northeast Championship Wrestling, Chaotic Wrestling, Big Time Wrestling out of Boston, the Samoan’s World Xtreme Wrestling, CZW, Dragon Gate USA, Chikara and Ring of Honor out of hot bed Pennsylvania, Chicago’s Shimmer and Windy City Pro, so many promotions that began to take advantage of the burgeoning internet craze, long before the WWE or WCW had realized what was happening. Suddenly these promotions no longer had to rely on TV contracts – they could get their events online for people to watch all over the world.
While ECW was folding and hardcore matches were waning in the WWE Universe, Philadelphia’s Combat Zone Wrestling stepped in and filled the craving for those who loved the passionate (yet dangerous) levels of extreme wrestling, when they opened their doors in 1999, while Xtreme Pro Wrestling (XPW) did likewise on the West Coast in Los Angeles. Pennsylvania launched two more with Ring of Honor (ROH) and Chikara in 2002, followed a year later on the West Coast with Pro Wrestling Guerrilla (PWG). By 2004, TNA withdrew from the NWA to become it’s own governing promotion, based out of Florida. Ring of Honor founder Gabe Sapolsky – a former employee of the original ECW – left the company in 2008 only to go on and found first the American franchise of Ultimo Dragon‘s Japanese promotion Dragon Gate, followed in 2010 with EVOLVE (originally created with WWE’s Daniel Bryan after he was fired from WWE for the Nexus tie affair).
Their early adeptness at utilizing the internet long before the WWE understood it’s power, these indies – groups independent of the NWA – began to create cult like followings akin to the buzz that ECW had in it’s first years, when they were the stuff of whispered legend and fans traded VHS copies of copies in earnest. But now there was thirty of them. And they weren’t just regional pockets of your own country fighting for air time. Now there are promotions from America, Canada and Mexico sharing YouTube with promotions from Britain, Germany and Japan. Sharing the internet, and sharing their talent. But instead of following under the ego-centric power structure of the NWA – which ruled with it’s own singular umbrella World Champion – these new territories honour and recognize each promotion’s own champions, often competing against them on each other’s events. A territory build out of respect rather than by fear.
Only this time, instead of wiping them out, the WWE is finally giving them their accolades. Perhaps in as close as a “You were right” we’ll ever get out of Vince McMahon in regards to encouraging a healthy independent territorial system as a breeding ground over his preferred assembly line, the WWE has gone out of it’s way to promote the indies in the past year or so, rather than seemingly and willfully ignoring their existence.
Former indie stars like CM Punk or Daniel Bryan were having some of the stand-out indie matches included in DVD collections. Indie stars like Samoa Joe, James Storm, Johnny Gargano and Tommaso Ciampa were involved in storylines or TV narratives under their indie monikers rather than a WWE handout. Champions from other promotions were being recognized as such, such as adding Sting and The Dudley Boyz‘ TNA titles into their championship totals, to acknowledging AJ Styles IWGP World title or even to James Storm as a “former World champion” during his brief NXT stint.
And with WWE’s new alliance with Gabe Sapolsky’s WWN group, WWE has just invested in training grounds like EVOLVE and Britain’s Progress. Which all leads to the Global Cruiserweight Series on the WWE Network in July, where the WWE attempts to bring in many of the stars from these indies to showcase on a grander platform.
Which is why I hope WWE never goes “too indie” or that some of the indies never get “too big”. This is the most amazing time to be alive if you’re a wrestling fan. The territory days may have been an imperitive and essential time in the history of pro wrestling, but to the fans back then, they never got to absorb it all then like we can do now in hindsight. Their TV deals were mostly regional. Mid-South fans never saw AWA, WCCW fans couldn’t watch Stampede Wrestling.
But now we’re spoiled. We can watch WWE RAW on Monday, TNA Impact on Tuesday, Lucha Undergound and NXT on Wednesday, Smackdown on Friday, ROH on the weekend, then pepper the rest with internet streaming of CZW, Chikara and the rest. All while subscribed to New Japan World.
The new Territorial Revolution will be televised.
Photo by Holly Lengyel
