Lucha Forever, the upstart indie promotion founded in late 2016 by UK wrestlers Ryan Smile and Will Ospreay, has announced today on its website that it will be shutting down. Lucha Forever held it’s first event, The Dawning of Forever, on April 17, 2017, and debuted with the new FloSlam streaming service, with a main event featuring Travis Banks winning the Lucha Forever Championship in a match against Shane Strickland. Ryan Smile made the announcement on their website.
As 2017 is set to close out, there have been many questions and speculations regarding the future of Lucha Forever in 2017 and beyond into 2018.
We can officially confirm that as of December 2017 Lucha Forever Wrestling Ltd will no longer be a trading company. This affects any listed events going forward unless stated otherwise within this statement. This is no decision made lightly, but a decision made correct in light of the current state of the company.
Our aim with this statement is to provide much needed insight into the events and situations that have led to this decision and to again as noted above to provide much needed information on how this may affect any other persons involved, fans, staff and talent.
In an effort to be completely frank regarding this decision, simply put, our business plans and product proved to be unsustainable. When launching Lucha Forever we never dreamed it would of populated as quick as it did. We picked up some immense traction and seemingly started to run before we could walk. We ran so much that even once the company slowed down to a light ‘jog’ so to speak, it had already worn itself down.
There were many times where I, myself, personally should of perhaps stood in and pumped the brakes, but I constantly felt a drive to continue and to push forward, a decision that in hindsight I wish I could have been more alert to sooner. When you put all of your energy, be it mental, physical or financial into something, you grow an emotional connection to it, this can blur the reality at times and as sad as it is to have to type such a statement, I also have to take responsibility.
The truth is, is that as a private limited company unable to continue trading, we could exploit our options to liquify this company and walk away, however I want to ensure that before I do that, that I put everything right.
This includes ensuring any monies owed to any party/parties is refunded, and working with several other well known UK promotions to ensure that nowhere we visited is left without any awesome pro wrestling. The likes of Birmingham/West Midlands has several great promotions/companies already running, however Southampton never had anything regular running when we had our first event there. We will be working to transition a calendar in 2018 with, again as noted, a top UK promotion who we are sure will continue to bring great action to Southampton.
Manchester, you have some great promotions, homegrown and travelling, but we came to you and with the help of you amazing fans changed Tuesday nights likely forever!! – #TuesdayNightGraps was easily one of our most entertaining events of any month, an opinion shared in abundance throughout our whole team and gave fans in-house and on demand an opportunity to see their known and beloved talents in ways they probably never have before. We introduced so many new talents and simply had a ball once a month on a Tuesday night. We again will be working with another UK promotion to help hand over the dates we had already announced for 2018.
#TuesdayNightGraps lives on…
One major aspect of this statement is to also let our fans know, regarding situations such as merch, tickets, cancelled shows etc what we will be doing about this. Everyone will receive refunds for anything purchased and not received or any show tickets for cancelled shows, basically any monies owed to anyone will be covered. This is not something we view lightly and assure you will be our priority. This goes out across the board to any staff and our talents too. We are NOT going to walk away from this responsibility at all. A time frame will be determined within the next 7-8 days, and we will email/contact all affected with more.
Our On-Demand service will remain as it is until March 2018, where our back catalogue will then be found on a partnered vendors on-demand service. This will be clearly announced by them at that time. There are still several shows of the 17 to go up, and they will eventually all be available.
In the efforts to be absolute clear, this is our only statement on the state of the company. The aim is to provide clarity and absolution. We won’t be commenting further on anything other than what is stated.
We will however within the next 10 days via our Twitter page @LuchaForeverUK be hosting a Q&A, this Q&A may be used as an opportunity to present any queries or questions or simply to share your memories over our time. To many it’s only 7 months but with 17 shows of matches, we can appreciate and actually would appreciate a bit of a slow walk through our journey. We will answer as much as we can and interact as much as we can. This Q&A will then be our last call before officially closing down our social media pages.
This page on our website will remain up for the duration of December before the website is then pulled at the end of January 2018.
The sheer patience and understanding of many has been wholeheartedly appreciated, and for the frustrated of you, we understand and appreciate that at times we have been the fuel on that fire.
We started Lucha Forever to provide a fun alternative promotion, that offered great variety and even greater times. I truly hope as we close this statement that we were able to provide that for all the fans.
We only ask that you continue in droves, as many already have, to continue to support the amazing UK wrestling companies all over the country.
For every single fan, helper, staff member and talent that worked for this company over our duration and to all of those named and un-named that have gone above board to help and assist us in the past 5 weeks, I from the bottom of my heart thank you very, very much.
Ryan
