The early WCPW was awesome, but once the original 5 left and they stopped bringing in outside talent, they became the same as other UK feds that had the exact same talent on the roster. BUT, they did a lot of good in a short period of time and I gotta commend them for it.
Agreed it sadly peaked during the pro wrestling World Cup and then the rebrand and they just lost a lot of fans I would still watch until their final year as defiant but was never really the same promotion
I think their biggest mistake was taking it off UA-cam. Seriously it was the first wrestling I had followed in so long just simply because I could watch it for free and at anytime.
@joshuabelmonte12 Exactly. News channels can monetize coverage of real life atrocities on UA-cam but WCPW couldn't show people pretend fighting. So backwards
I had the pleasure of refereeing on the first WCPW show (and others) and the first Defiant show. Very enjoyable experience and great way to finish off my 14 year refereeing career.
They really did put on an excellent product. Watching them was my first time seeing a lot of the stars of today. So many of the original WCPW roster was signed by WWE they couldn't put on the same kind of show.
I heard the guys on Cultaholic do a WCPW/Defiant retrospective. They blame the downfall of wcpw on the wrestling world Cup. Lot of money spent on indie stars which didn't have much to do with Loaded storylines. The rebrand to Defiant had been planned from before the Cultaholic guys left
There was also the issue of big companies only allowing WCPW to use their talent if they went over such as Lethal rarely losing or Kushida winning the World Cup.
`The WCPW run is, without exaggeration, my favourite time period in wrestling. As a fan of 26 years, I can only hope to one day again be as invested and engaged with a wrestling company as I had the pleasure to be. The day the youtubers left the company was the day WCPW died for me.
You know it's crazy that Adam Blampied helped write this fascinating show with interesting storylines and great matches while still to this day saying writing wrestling shows isn't hard. I actually believe him and WWE's incompetent writing is even more baffling.
What are you talking about? I loved wcpw but lets be real here: it was adam b becoming gm was legit like the authority storyline in wwe that whatculture would complain about. They became what they hated.
WCPW is such was such a strange and wonderful phenomenon, at the time of it's launch, i was thirsty for indie content, but didn't have the means to watch them, WCPW was an easily accessible, well-put together product that, i'll cherish for a long time.
As a fan of King Ross Twedell, Adam Pacitti, Plumpy, and Jack the jobber I’m just so happy and impressed that at such a young age they were able to accomplish so much! 🍻❤️
@@AlexH787 Same here. Up until then I had only seen him wrestle a few other matches on Loaded and thought he was okay. But that match really showed he could go. I remember wanting him to lose that match to rooting for him because his victory was such an uphill battle. Came across as a really good underdog.
My guess it's that they intended to make money out of the ticket sales for the tapings and have ad revenue as a complementary option, but in the end what I think that what really killed them long term is that having those big names all the time just wasn't sustainable. They were obviously hurt by events out of their control like the first Adpocalypse and WWE beginning to ravage the UK/EU scene, but the shift in perspective against them was not only by the now Cultaholic guys leaving Whatculture, but also changing to a PPV model only after the rebranding, which was a final nail in the coffin of alienating the audience they built on UA-cam. I appreciated the last run of UA-cam free-shows they put on as Defiant, but is hard not to think now that they did that knowing it was their swan song.
I feel NWA Powerrr did the same when stopped doing UA-cam free shows then deleted their UA-cam backlog and then forced their day 1 fans to sub to FiteTV with no promo too ease people into that transition
WCPW WC got me back into wrestling. I figured “oh, Rey Mysterio is on there” and got to watch Will Ospreay for the first time. So, with that being said: “thank you WhatCulture”.
My favourite WCPW moment is Gabriel Kidd winning the Internet Championship in a Triple Threat against Cody Rhodes and Joe Hendry, snapping his losing streak and winning his first match. I hope he will blossom into a great wrestler down in NJPW.
WCPW had outside sponsors, also. It wasn't just ads. You didn't mention Blampied leaving the group when he "took advantage of people by using his fame." A lot of talent stopped working their shows because of the situation.
As someone who grew up watching wrestling in Puerto Rico and witnessed half a dozen companies start and fail in their quest to become relevant, it all boils down to having enough money to burn and the connections within the industry in order to succeed. IWA was massive here in the late 90's to mid-2000's, but once the owner died it slowly started to go downhill as he had the cash and connections all over the world to keep it going.
That world cup was amazing! I was getting back into wrestling around this time, so it was a great introduction into the big players on the uk and indy scene
Interesting video...I had no idea WCPW did so well at the beginning. Just remember as it being something that they'd mention occasionally on the channel.
Started watching wrestling in 1989. stop watching when vince bought the wcw. WCPW and NJPW is the reason for me coming back to wrestling.. Now thank the Lord for AEW!!
AEW is just a better ran version of TNA not much to be thankful for seeing as the ratings aren’t much better than a rerun of any superhero show on the CW
@@mrbluesteen not really compare ratings to a CW show TNA actually pulled better ratings during their heyday than AEW is doing right now TNA on Spike was doing a 1.7 most weeks AEW is doing better live attendance but the booking the hot shoting the mark style booking outside of Daniel Bryan has Punk really done anything Adam Cole Big Show Mark Henry Christain Cage Colt Cobana I can keep going its just alt style WWE ..... TK needs to hire a booker but he won't he needs a Paul Heyman to develop his talent book stories manage his tv production to amplify the positive hide the negative Its not delusion its simple truth its a better funded version of TNA
Sadly WhatCulture as a whole lost me when the pillars (sans Simon) left. They were the personalities of WhatCulture. They built the following. Yes WCPW was, in a sense, its own entity, but it was built off of those personalities. Why else would the Pacitti Club and BX even be a thing in the lore of the "deep cut" wrestling market? Why would we all slap our head, when someone asks us "why," and reply with, "HERE'S WHY?" And most importantly, why would we all consider ourselves sexual wank pheasants, and know exactly when the time strikes JOHN O'CLOCK MOTHER F'ERS?! It was a collective journey amidst a budding wrestling UA-cam market, that everyone now tries to emulate. Everyone's thumbnails, personas, delivery, etc, is all trying to be like the Adams, Jack, Ross, Simon, Sam, etc. They are the true innovators of this, and truly deserve this type of recognition. Plus, who didn't like an Adam vs Adam punishment for PPV picks, and the greatest World Title in UA-cam history?
The Pro Wrestling World Cup was the peak for that company, I was really hoping that would push them over the edge into a mainstream company but alas, it didn't :(
I don't know if you have but I think it would be fun to see you cover 5Star Wrestling which lasted I think 3 months before folding... I don't think anyone back stage knew how to run a wrestling program, or even a TV show
The fact that The Big 5 of WhatCulture Wrestling were able to do that in itself was so impressive. It’s a damn shame it died quick cause it had wonderful talent.
I watched WCPW every week when it was on UA-cam. The same with MLW and NWA Power. When they quit putting weekly shows up on UA-cam that’s when I lost touch with them.
I personally can't stand Whatculture (with the tedious clickbait list videos and kinda bland personalities) but i did appreciate them trying their hand at making a wrestling promotion. Competition is always a good thing, and it was nice to see another Indie wrestling company see moderate success for awhile.
WCPW/Defiant it lived so fast but died so young but as I said before I really enjoyed the promotion and it was WCPW that introduced me to alot of the UK talent that we see now in WWE and AEW today. So they will always hold a special place in my heart.
I know this is gonna piss off a lot of people, but I always knew WCPW wouldn’t last. They never had a huge financial budget. Big wrestling companies such as WWE, NJPW, TNA/Impact, and AEW have had enormous financial budgets when they were created. Thus making it possible for them to survive longer. But alot of smaller indie promotions have little financial budgets making almost impossible to them to survive decades.
Sure, it’s easy to say “I knew they wouldn’t last” due to their smaller budget and big stars, but this video isn’t about whether they should have lasted longer or what they could’ve done to last longer, it is a celebration of the fact that “the boys” on YT could put on a better show than WWE with one thousandth of its budget.
The problem with larger UK wrestling shows like DEFIANT and WWE UK, is there are tonnes of smaller promotions using the same guys .. why would any one pay a premium to see home grown guys like ligero, connors etc when you can see the same matches for a fiver at your local sports centre
They complained about companies putting the company owners as on screen characters and then did the same because they were a bunch of marks, marks for themselves no less. Why did anyone think the company was a good idea?
I enjoyed watching WCPW. My favourites to watch were the UK wrestlers... Martin Kirby was my personal favourite, especialy the storyline with adam pacititi, joe Hendry, Big Damo, Rampage Brown and Joseph Conners were great. I always thought the imports were nice shiny extras which were added on. Also a special mention for Doug Williams in the battle royal and the whole Brexit/Daily Mail reading thing... that was hilarious.
I remember WCPW. The day they lost me as viewer was the day when they tried to introduce pay-per-clip. They actually wanted to actively charge people for viewing their clips, so I made the logical decision any consumer would do and decided to sever my ties with them as consumer.
YT with their logic harmed it but also people forget the Adam issue harmed them and people didn't wanna pay for events. Shame YT harmed them so much on demonization yet things like CNN and NBC are exempt even though their material is more harmful and false than small channels. Many channels had the same issue which is a shame but still WCPW had a good run and hopefully we see another company make a run like that in the future.
They did make an impact on WWE, as I don't believe NXT UK exists without them. They gave BritWres a worldwide audience and exposure they otherwise would not have gotten. WCPW proved that not just the UK, but the whole world, could fall in love with British wrestling
Don't forget that although he didn't wrestle Austin Aires did appear at the first Defiant show and won the World title soon after. You could even see him with the Defiant world title on Impact when he was the belt collector. Pac would also appear a few times. Also I will always have a soft spot for WCPW/Defiant. I met my Partner at a show and we are about to celebrate our 4 year anniversary
Yes but you have sort of answered your own question. The reason because of the lesser talent is because you pointed it out in the first reason; a far less income due to the ad apocolyse. They're not doing it because they no-longer wanted to have big talent but because of a lack of income. So this isn't a "third" reason, it's a knock on effect due to the first point.
Honestly, WCPW was an amazing pipe dream that somehow became real and a lot of people who worked those events still have a lot of positive things to say about the whole thing, even though it was such a small company, realistically
I’ve been to shows in Manchester as wcpw, and as defiant. The crowds were large and loud for wcpw after the first show they did there. Lights out Manchester was a smallish crowd but was really loud , bulletproof on the other hand was packed and stupidly loud. When it went to defiant. The crowd numbers dropped after the show with ospreay vs Walter. When they came back with Aries as champ and did the whole ipw invasion the numbers live there were really low. I could feel something didn’t feel right and seeing how many people they expected and the reality of the amount of people that actually came was disappointing.
I think the key differences between Defiant and WCPW and what killed it were the talent and the energy (both revolving around the promotion and whatculture). WCPW/Defiant were hit, like every britwres promotion, by the birth of NXT UK. Suddenly all the big UK indie talents were gone and signed with near exclusivity to NXT UK. The lack of big names ruined British indie wrestling just as it was hitting its stride. WCPW was also hit by WWE’s general talent acquisition. Unlike other British promotions, one of WCPW’s big selling points was how much big name former WWE or current ROH/NJPW talent they attracted. Not every company can say they had Kurt Angle or Regularly had Cody Rhodes. Not every company has indie wrestling’s biggest names as their champions on a regular basis. WWE signing the majority of the indies destroyed that. Also, the departure of the big 5 from whatculture just took the wind out of the sails of everything whatculture. I personally dropped off of their content the moment I heard they were leaving, that included WCPW. Whilst I’m glad it happened, they were all unhappy and we now have cultaholic were those boys are doing what whatculture did but better and with genuine happiness behind it, it just made whatculture so much less interesting. Clery and Wilbourne are cool and all but they have nothing in Pacitti and Blampied. Whilst the UA-cam lads weren’t the souls focus of WCPW, their involvement really made WCPW feel different and it made the promotion feel like “ours”. They were having the time of their lives on camera and it let us live vicariously through that. Whatculture’s popularity dwindled and so did the promotion. I also think that, whilst superficial, the name and presentation change really made the promotion feel less interesting. The whatculture name linked it directly to UA-cam, the fans, and the content we loved. Defiant was just so generic and less personal.
They featured such good matches from a lot of talent I had previously not known, but would grow to like a lot. One match that I remember well was WCPW tag champs "War Machine" defending against Germany's own Die jungen Löwen. At first sight, one might think that the two German junior heavyweights would be no match for Hansen and Rowe, but it played a lot like the Road Warriors vs the Midnight Express; the smaller team using the time-honored tactics against such giant brutes... speed, deception, and cheating. The Young Lions would lose the match of course, but they did look credible during it.
One person who absolutely hated WhatCulture Pro Wrestling? The owner of Windy City Pro Wrestling, a local indie in Chicago. Apparently to this day he has WCPW Loaded episodes blocked in the US!
I will say I feel like the main reason the big names vanished from Defiant was companies starting to hoard talent (mainly WWE, of course) and prevent them from working anywhere else. Basically, like many other UK promotions, NXT UK is just as much to blame for killing Defiant as anything else.
Ave watched Simon Miller n wwe what culture vids for 3 years great getting an insight into how it began n to see only Simon left Adam on abt his 4th chanel lol n obv Jack n Adam cuktaholic
This was a very fun promotion to watch and introduced me to the current uk wrestling scene. Where is martin kirby these days, he entertained the hell outta me? 🤣😂🤣
Indie companies have this thing about them that they need to feast on their home grown talent. It is obvious that most of these companies do not have an school to back them up. So is easier to lose money. More so if you're doing weekly shows with big stars, thats not going to work... Also with the original five leaving, that was it. We all knew something whats going on... I loved both iterations, it was truly great, but everything was changing, WWE was creeping on Europe and that was it. It was a beautiful time to be an independent wrestling and british wrestling fan, but that was it. At least we enjoyed it.
I loved wcpw. It was great, they put on great matches for UA-cam and had some moments pivotal to wrestling history. but honestly I think UA-cam's rules against wrestling content hurt them the most financially.
The main issue I had with WCPW is the local guys weren't made to look on par with the big import names. It wasn't 1PW levels of bad but they should have given more local guys a big push.
the system is still broken with youtube, not only demonetisation but other dumb stuff that youtube leaves to bots to deal with and makes it a pain to sort out once the bot randomly nukes things.
It’s such a shame WCPW never brought Hogan & Bischoff so they could take the company “to the next level”.
O.o
Adam Blampied has self-proclaimed himself as the son of Bischoff numerous times during his tenure in WhatCulture, why need for the original
@@hecksters423 I think that's a joke.
Bischoff was on WCPW programming for a while.
@@hecksters423 all the needed was bischoff and someone to play bischoff's daughter. And they could run the incest storyline Vince always wanted.
The early WCPW was awesome, but once the original 5 left and they stopped bringing in outside talent, they became the same as other UK feds that had the exact same talent on the roster. BUT, they did a lot of good in a short period of time and I gotta commend them for it.
spending all of that money was not sustainable in the least
That's literally this whole video.
Agreed it sadly peaked during the pro wrestling World Cup and then the rebrand and they just lost a lot of fans I would still watch until their final year as defiant but was never really the same promotion
True after Adam (Both),and jack left what culture whent dead now I only Simon Miller the rest are just meh
Who was the 5tu member
I think their biggest mistake was taking it off UA-cam. Seriously it was the first wrestling I had followed in so long just simply because I could watch it for free and at anytime.
Blame UA-cam for demonitizing it, that really helped accelerate the downfall
@joshuabelmonte12
Exactly. News channels can monetize coverage of real life atrocities on UA-cam but WCPW couldn't show people pretend fighting. So backwards
I had the pleasure of refereeing on the first WCPW show (and others) and the first Defiant show. Very enjoyable experience and great way to finish off my 14 year refereeing career.
Man I'd bet those were some fun times.
They really did put on an excellent product. Watching them was my first time seeing a lot of the stars of today. So many of the original WCPW roster was signed by WWE they couldn't put on the same kind of show.
I heard the guys on Cultaholic do a WCPW/Defiant retrospective. They blame the downfall of wcpw on the wrestling world Cup. Lot of money spent on indie stars which didn't have much to do with Loaded storylines. The rebrand to Defiant had been planned from before the Cultaholic guys left
It was a really good watch that video
@@jginger245 what's the title of that video
@@ousmansano21 cultaholic remembering wcpw a podcast special its 2.30 h long but a good watch and some interesting behind the scenes stuff
@@jginger245 ok thx bro
@@jginger245 shame topten didn’t watch it
The exodus of the OG WhatCulture folks is what did it for me. 100%.
The saddest part is that UA-cam Livestreams didn't have Superchats back then. Imagine if they did, they could have make more money
And channel memberships, having that revenue stream would have helped a lot to have a more secure bottom line
Good point!
There was also the issue of big companies only allowing WCPW to use their talent if they went over such as Lethal rarely losing or Kushida winning the World Cup.
I really enjoyed WCPW while it was around. I stopped watching Whatculture when the most of the lads you mentioned left to form Cultholic.
`The WCPW run is, without exaggeration, my favourite time period in wrestling. As a fan of 26 years, I can only hope to one day again be as invested and engaged with a wrestling company as I had the pleasure to be. The day the youtubers left the company was the day WCPW died for me.
DPW
You know it's crazy that Adam Blampied helped write this fascinating show with interesting storylines and great matches while still to this day saying writing wrestling shows isn't hard. I actually believe him and WWE's incompetent writing is even more baffling.
I wish WWE would give him a lead writing job already
What are you talking about? I loved wcpw but lets be real here: it was adam b becoming gm was legit like the authority storyline in wwe that whatculture would complain about. They became what they hated.
He was hardly involved in creative
Watching him book on wrestletalk and say it ain’t hard… he has an eye for it
@300Thieves This. It doesn't matter what people like, it only matters what Vince likes. If Vince doesn't want something, it doesn't happen.
WCPW is such was such a strange and wonderful phenomenon, at the time of it's launch, i was thirsty for indie content, but didn't have the means to watch them, WCPW was an easily accessible, well-put together product that, i'll cherish for a long time.
As a fan of King Ross Twedell, Adam Pacitti, Plumpy, and Jack the jobber I’m just so happy and impressed that at such a young age they were able to accomplish so much! 🍻❤️
Watching WCPW helped me get back into wrestling. The first match between Martin Kirby and Will Ospreay is still one of my favorite wrestling matches.
saw this live and it blew my mind, made Martin Kirby my favourite wrestler
@@AlexH787 Same here. Up until then I had only seen him wrestle a few other matches on Loaded and thought he was okay. But that match really showed he could go. I remember wanting him to lose that match to rooting for him because his victory was such an uphill battle. Came across as a really good underdog.
My guess it's that they intended to make money out of the ticket sales for the tapings and have ad revenue as a complementary option, but in the end what I think that what really killed them long term is that having those big names all the time just wasn't sustainable. They were obviously hurt by events out of their control like the first Adpocalypse and WWE beginning to ravage the UK/EU scene, but the shift in perspective against them was not only by the now Cultaholic guys leaving Whatculture, but also changing to a PPV model only after the rebranding, which was a final nail in the coffin of alienating the audience they built on UA-cam.
I appreciated the last run of UA-cam free-shows they put on as Defiant, but is hard not to think now that they did that knowing it was their swan song.
I feel NWA Powerrr did the same when stopped doing UA-cam free shows then deleted their UA-cam backlog and then forced their day 1 fans to sub to FiteTV with no promo too ease people into that transition
@@KidTonyGaming I agree, cus I was a weekly fan and now I haven't watched since the change
WCPW WC got me back into wrestling. I figured “oh, Rey Mysterio is on there” and got to watch Will Ospreay for the first time. So, with that being said: “thank you WhatCulture”.
Wrestling Bios is now the best UA-cam wrestling channel!
My favourite WCPW moment is Gabriel Kidd winning the Internet Championship in a Triple Threat against Cody Rhodes and Joe Hendry, snapping his losing streak and winning his first match. I hope he will blossom into a great wrestler down in NJPW.
WCPW had outside sponsors, also. It wasn't just ads. You didn't mention Blampied leaving the group when he "took advantage of people by using his fame." A lot of talent stopped working their shows because of the situation.
Early WCPW was awesome. BX vs Pacitti Club. Big Damo vs Rampage. It was awesome
As someone who grew up watching wrestling in Puerto Rico and witnessed half a dozen companies start and fail in their quest to become relevant, it all boils down to having enough money to burn and the connections within the industry in order to succeed.
IWA was massive here in the late 90's to mid-2000's, but once the owner died it slowly started to go downhill as he had the cash and connections all over the world to keep it going.
That world cup was amazing! I was getting back into wrestling around this time, so it was a great introduction into the big players on the uk and indy scene
I can't remember when I discover WCPW but it was amaze how this wrestling promotion was run by UA-camrs
It’s such a shame WCPW/Defiant died. They introduced me to some of my favorite people from the UK wrestling scene. I miss that company to this day.
You could do the day lucha underground died if you haven't yet
Interesting video...I had no idea WCPW did so well at the beginning. Just remember as it being something that they'd mention occasionally on the channel.
Started watching wrestling in 1989. stop watching when vince bought the wcw.
WCPW and NJPW is the reason for me coming back to wrestling.. Now thank the Lord for AEW!!
AEW is just a better ran version of TNA not much to be thankful for seeing as the ratings aren’t much better than a rerun of any superhero show on the CW
@@seanodeli7031 ratings and popularity have no effect on my enjoyment of somerthing
@@seanodeli7031 You sound delusional
@@mrbluesteen not really compare ratings to a CW show TNA actually pulled better ratings during their heyday than AEW is doing right now TNA on Spike was doing a 1.7 most weeks AEW is doing better live attendance but the booking the hot shoting the mark style booking outside of Daniel Bryan has Punk really done anything Adam Cole Big Show Mark Henry Christain Cage Colt Cobana I can keep going its just alt style WWE ..... TK needs to hire a booker but he won't he needs a Paul Heyman to develop his talent book stories manage his tv production to amplify the positive hide the negative Its not delusion its simple truth its a better funded version of TNA
Video Suggestion: The day the UA-cam Channel WhatCulture Wrestling died 😂
Sadly WhatCulture as a whole lost me when the pillars (sans Simon) left. They were the personalities of WhatCulture. They built the following. Yes WCPW was, in a sense, its own entity, but it was built off of those personalities. Why else would the Pacitti Club and BX even be a thing in the lore of the "deep cut" wrestling market? Why would we all slap our head, when someone asks us "why," and reply with, "HERE'S WHY?" And most importantly, why would we all consider ourselves sexual wank pheasants, and know exactly when the time strikes JOHN O'CLOCK MOTHER F'ERS?! It was a collective journey amidst a budding wrestling UA-cam market, that everyone now tries to emulate. Everyone's thumbnails, personas, delivery, etc, is all trying to be like the Adams, Jack, Ross, Simon, Sam, etc. They are the true innovators of this, and truly deserve this type of recognition. Plus, who didn't like an Adam vs Adam punishment for PPV picks, and the greatest World Title in UA-cam history?
It was so sad when WCPW shut down, they really loved wrestling and put on some great shows
Let’s not forgot NXT UK took all they big names before they died
WCPW was fun while it lasted.
The Pro Wrestling World Cup was the peak for that company, I was really hoping that would push them over the edge into a mainstream company but alas, it didn't :(
I legitimately thought this was MarkyD123 until Angle informed me this was Top10 💀
SHUV IT MANNN
Wait what?! I'm on the wrong channel!
I don't know if you have but I think it would be fun to see you cover 5Star Wrestling which lasted I think 3 months before folding... I don't think anyone back stage knew how to run a wrestling program, or even a TV show
The fact that The Big 5 of WhatCulture Wrestling were able to do that in itself was so impressive. It’s a damn shame it died quick cause it had wonderful talent.
3:40 “Haroku Takahashi” LOL WHAT, you’re joking right?
Did Simon Miller play a part in this? I miss him. He had a style that was rare.
In the early days yeah. Him and Ross were the original commentators
He still makes lists and wrestles. Also, his "Ups and Downs" are one of the best wrestling reviews ever
Simon also has his own UA-cam channel.
@@boyankovachev7982 you sir get a GOLDEN ⬆️
They're a website that still do lists that make you click through a page per entry for the ad revenue. Embarrassing
I watched WCPW every week when it was on UA-cam. The same with MLW and NWA Power. When they quit putting weekly shows up on UA-cam that’s when I lost touch with them.
is this a reupload? Could've swore I've seen this before
I personally can't stand Whatculture (with the tedious clickbait list videos and kinda bland personalities) but i did appreciate them trying their hand at making a wrestling promotion. Competition is always a good thing, and it was nice to see another Indie wrestling company see moderate success for awhile.
they are all woke idiots as well, I stopped watching their crap years ago
I stopped watching WhatCulture after Adam Blampied left the channel.
When Adam Blampied did the j-o-b to personal accountability
Maybe Tony Khan can hire former What Culture Pro Wrestling (Defiant) ower Adam Pacitti as an AEW excutive.
WCPW/Defiant it lived so fast but died so young but as I said before I really enjoyed the promotion and it was WCPW that introduced me to alot of the UK talent that we see now in WWE and AEW today. So they will always hold a special place in my heart.
Yeah when I found out about WCPW I got to see some good wrestlers I never seen because I live in America
My boy Simon is carrying them right now.
If it wasn't for WCPW i would have never been introduced to Local Hero Joe Hendry...and for that I'm very thankful for its short lived life.
I know this is gonna piss off a lot of people, but I always knew WCPW wouldn’t last. They never had a huge financial budget. Big wrestling companies such as WWE, NJPW, TNA/Impact, and AEW have had enormous financial budgets when they were created. Thus making it possible for them to survive longer. But alot of smaller indie promotions have little financial budgets making almost impossible to them to survive decades.
Sure, it’s easy to say “I knew they wouldn’t last” due to their smaller budget and big stars, but this video isn’t about whether they should have lasted longer or what they could’ve done to last longer, it is a celebration of the fact that “the boys” on YT could put on a better show than WWE with one thousandth of its budget.
The problem with larger UK wrestling shows like DEFIANT and WWE UK, is there are tonnes of smaller promotions using the same guys .. why would any one pay a premium to see home grown guys like ligero, connors etc when you can see the same matches for a fiver at your local sports centre
They complained about companies putting the company owners as on screen characters and then did the same because they were a bunch of marks, marks for themselves no less. Why did anyone think the company was a good idea?
It’s crazy to think people I’ve met on the street created a wrestling promotion and were even mentioned on wwe tv.
They were mentioned, really, when?
Sure lol
I enjoyed watching WCPW. My favourites to watch were the UK wrestlers... Martin Kirby was my personal favourite, especialy the storyline with adam pacititi, joe Hendry, Big Damo, Rampage Brown and Joseph Conners were great. I always thought the imports were nice shiny extras which were added on. Also a special mention for Doug Williams in the battle royal and the whole Brexit/Daily Mail reading thing... that was hilarious.
This is awesome. Nice trip down memory lane...got a subscriber
I remember WCPW. The day they lost me as viewer was the day when they tried to introduce pay-per-clip. They actually wanted to actively charge people for viewing their clips, so I made the logical decision any consumer would do and decided to sever my ties with them as consumer.
YT with their logic harmed it but also people forget the Adam issue harmed them and people didn't wanna pay for events. Shame YT harmed them so much on demonization yet things like CNN and NBC are exempt even though their material is more harmful and false than small channels.
Many channels had the same issue which is a shame but still WCPW had a good run and hopefully we see another company make a run like that in the future.
They did make an impact on WWE, as I don't believe NXT UK exists without them. They gave BritWres a worldwide audience and exposure they otherwise would not have gotten. WCPW proved that not just the UK, but the whole world, could fall in love with British wrestling
Love that Ben Potter is on that voice over video. TRIPLE JUMP!!!
Don't forget that although he didn't wrestle Austin Aires did appear at the first Defiant show and won the World title soon after. You could even see him with the Defiant world title on Impact when he was the belt collector.
Pac would also appear a few times.
Also I will always have a soft spot for WCPW/Defiant. I met my Partner at a show and we are about to celebrate our 4 year anniversary
WCPW, and the Pro-Wrestling World Cup in particular, was my gateway to independent wrestling. Still grateful for that
the first defiant card appeals to me more than the last WCPW card
Thanks for this vid m8 great info Ave been dying to know 😁😁
Yes but you have sort of answered your own question. The reason because of the lesser talent is because you pointed it out in the first reason; a far less income due to the ad apocolyse. They're not doing it because they no-longer wanted to have big talent but because of a lack of income. So this isn't a "third" reason, it's a knock on effect due to the first point.
Honestly, WCPW was an amazing pipe dream that somehow became real and a lot of people who worked those events still have a lot of positive things to say about the whole thing, even though it was such a small company, realistically
Who is this Hiroku Takahashi that you speak of? He looks a lot like Hiromu Takahashi ...
I think the thing that also helped killed wcpw and whatculture as a whole was the launch of whatculture extra
I’ve been to shows in Manchester as wcpw, and as defiant. The crowds were large and loud for wcpw after the first show they did there. Lights out Manchester was a smallish crowd but was really loud , bulletproof on the other hand was packed and stupidly loud. When it went to defiant. The crowd numbers dropped after the show with ospreay vs Walter. When they came back with Aries as champ and did the whole ipw invasion the numbers live there were really low. I could feel something didn’t feel right and seeing how many people they expected and the reality of the amount of people that actually came was disappointing.
I think the key differences between Defiant and WCPW and what killed it were the talent and the energy (both revolving around the promotion and whatculture). WCPW/Defiant were hit, like every britwres promotion, by the birth of NXT UK. Suddenly all the big UK indie talents were gone and signed with near exclusivity to NXT UK. The lack of big names ruined British indie wrestling just as it was hitting its stride. WCPW was also hit by WWE’s general talent acquisition. Unlike other British promotions, one of WCPW’s big selling points was how much big name former WWE or current ROH/NJPW talent they attracted. Not every company can say they had Kurt Angle or Regularly had Cody Rhodes. Not every company has indie wrestling’s biggest names as their champions on a regular basis. WWE signing the majority of the indies destroyed that. Also, the departure of the big 5 from whatculture just took the wind out of the sails of everything whatculture. I personally dropped off of their content the moment I heard they were leaving, that included WCPW. Whilst I’m glad it happened, they were all unhappy and we now have cultaholic were those boys are doing what whatculture did but better and with genuine happiness behind it, it just made whatculture so much less interesting. Clery and Wilbourne are cool and all but they have nothing in Pacitti and Blampied. Whilst the UA-cam lads weren’t the souls focus of WCPW, their involvement really made WCPW feel different and it made the promotion feel like “ours”. They were having the time of their lives on camera and it let us live vicariously through that. Whatculture’s popularity dwindled and so did the promotion. I also think that, whilst superficial, the name and presentation change really made the promotion feel less interesting. The whatculture name linked it directly to UA-cam, the fans, and the content we loved. Defiant was just so generic and less personal.
Can you do a video on 5 star wrestling in the UK
I managed to go to a couple of WCPW shows and had a great time. I miss this promotion.
They must of had pAul haymen running the checkbook 😂 😂 😂
They featured such good matches from a lot of talent I had previously not known, but would grow to like a lot. One match that I remember well was WCPW tag champs "War Machine" defending against Germany's own Die jungen Löwen.
At first sight, one might think that the two German junior heavyweights would be no match for Hansen and Rowe, but it played a lot like the Road Warriors vs the Midnight Express; the smaller team using the time-honored tactics against such giant brutes... speed, deception, and cheating.
The Young Lions would lose the match of course, but they did look credible during it.
WCPW helped me like wrestling again
Don’t forget that NXT UK took most of their roster
I really disliked Adam Cleary. He always came off as mega smug to me.
it’s great to bring in all those big indie names but that money goes away real quick compared to just starting with more local cheaper talent
One person who absolutely hated WhatCulture Pro Wrestling? The owner of Windy City Pro Wrestling, a local indie in Chicago. Apparently to this day he has WCPW Loaded episodes blocked in the US!
There are episodes floating around still
The show was good because of Adam Blampied. He was the main star.
I will say I feel like the main reason the big names vanished from Defiant was companies starting to hoard talent (mainly WWE, of course) and prevent them from working anywhere else. Basically, like many other UK promotions, NXT UK is just as much to blame for killing Defiant as anything else.
Anytime UA-cam people start acting like wrestlers, having characters, belts, cutting promos on each other and so on is the day they die.
Wcpw basically introduced me to British indie wrestling
Ave watched Simon Miller n wwe what culture vids for 3 years great getting an insight into how it began n to see only Simon left Adam on abt his 4th chanel lol n obv Jack n Adam cuktaholic
This was a very fun promotion to watch and introduced me to the current uk wrestling scene. Where is martin kirby these days, he entertained the hell outta me? 🤣😂🤣
The World Cup was fantastic!!!!
WCPW the promotion that introduced me to Zero Miedo 👌🏼Ⓜ️❤️
I'll have fond memories of that 2016-2017 of whatculture especially when it comes to WCPW.
For me it was when they stopped doing the weekly shows and had a period of just iPPVs that I couldn’t follow.
to think the prestige carried this company few years ago along with pops like Marty Scurll , Young Bucks , Adam Cole (bay bay) , Martin Kirby...
But hey, now we have Adam Wilborn and Andy Murray
Yay??
"destineeeeeeee this is my destineeeeeeee"
Who remembers?
Nobody
Indie companies have this thing about them that they need to feast on their home grown talent. It is obvious that most of these companies do not have an school to back them up. So is easier to lose money. More so if you're doing weekly shows with big stars, thats not going to work... Also with the original five leaving, that was it. We all knew something whats going on... I loved both iterations, it was truly great, but everything was changing, WWE was creeping on Europe and that was it. It was a beautiful time to be an independent wrestling and british wrestling fan, but that was it. At least we enjoyed it.
WCPW made a suprisingly big splash, but then WWE jumped into the UK scene and bought all their big names and it was never the same really.
I loved wcpw. It was great, they put on great matches for UA-cam and had some moments pivotal to wrestling history. but honestly I think UA-cam's rules against wrestling content hurt them the most financially.
I wanted WCPW to succeed. It’s too bad it didn’t work out.
The main issue I had with WCPW is the local guys weren't made to look on par with the big import names.
It wasn't 1PW levels of bad but they should have given more local guys a big push.
100% agree, the moment wcpw let go the original 5 I checked out. They had the mind for it because of the passion they had for wrestling.
Who the hell is Hiroku Takahashi?
Unfortunately I became a Wrestling fan A year before it shut down
Minor thinkg Adam B was actually a major booker for WCPW, both Adams were actually.
the system is still broken with youtube, not only demonetisation but other dumb stuff that youtube leaves to bots to deal with and makes it a pain to sort out once the bot randomly nukes things.
So according to the description Adam Pacitti isn’t at Cultaholic that’s need to me how come I always see him on there