▲ 17 r/BritishWrestling
National Wrestling League - Newcastle 9th August
So NWL (youtube) held their first event in Newcastle last night and it was pretty good fun. I won't discuss the matches because I believe the intent is for them to be published to the Youtube Channel as a show so I'm not sure how the spoiler rules apply.
What worked.
- The 15 minute, multi-fall format was really interesting. With the time ticking down in both halves it gave a nice way to create tension.
- High production values. Lots of little touches made the event feel much more than the sort of community centre gym local production wrestling I'm used to. I particularly enjoyed the inflatable entrance way.
- They've clearly hit the parents and kids market. The number of 5-12 year old's in the building on a Sunday night took me by surprise. And the kids really seemed to be enjoying it.
- The regional team format brought some instant heat to matches that otherwise wouldn't have had any.
- Tim Strange. First time seeing him and would recommend.
- Loved seeing the special guest Owner and the special guest wrestler.
- Banging Entrance music for the teams.
What I'm less sure on
- The flipside of the regional teams is that it can split the crowd loyalties from the action in the ring. Someone for the London team in Newcastle can work as babyface as they want but the crowd's not going to be behind them.
- The other downside of the regional teams is the crowd is behind "The Hitmen" or "Yorkshire" rather than the wrestler's themselves. This was added to by the match graphics and audio being the Teams so the names of the wrestlers aren't displayed and often the ring announcement was difficult to hear over the entrance music.
- At the Vertu Arena there were screens on three walls with the score and time but not on the West wall. As someone in the East Stand this was a little annoying to have to look away from the match to check the clock.
- A really petty one. On the match display, between the scores was a ":" instead of a "-" and because the whole score was centred rather than the ":" being fixed to the centre at "1 : 0" or "2 : 1" then colon wasn't on the centre line because of the font width.
Overall I'm looking forward to the league taking off. I think it could be an interesting gimmick to run over a whole season. And there's room to throw in friendlies that don't follow the 15 minute time limit rules if that becomes too much of a limitation.
u/SPACKlick — 10 days ago