PCW’s Steven Fludder - It was a sour end to what was an amazing show

I had read reports that WWE champion Alberto Del Rio had torn his quad. The Tuesday evening before the show I recieved the call telling me he was pulling out. Now I was not too bothered about him wrestling as the roster I had was so good he is not even essential, however fans pay for a meet and greet with certain talent and I didn’t want to let them down. With that in mind I told him flights are booked I would like you to come do a signing instead but he was having none of it saying his employers don’t want him to travel all that way injured (though Australia the week after is ok?). It was a contracted appearance and I am considering my options as to be honest and open its very bad business on his part to pull out. I did sense that things were not right when AAA a Mexican promotion announced they are running the Sunday after my shows and the only flight was from London getting there an hour after it started. So from around January Alberto asked for my phone number and Skype saying he needs to talk and I did say call any time and he never did until last minute. Such was my gut feeling things were not right I only booked his and Ricardo flight and visa the week before the show. I also have had various conversations with other promoters saying I sense things are going pear shaped. When you negotiate as many international deals as I have and it’s contracted with the deposit payment sent there is no need for email tennis and I am not one for small talk. Anyway after all said and done he pulled out of my show and the AAA show in Mexico was cancelled anyway. Alberto did not work the rescheduled date a few days later as was contracted to wrestle in Australia. Quite frankly I am baffled how an Australian contract has more power over a UK contract and that AAA allowed him to travel and wrestle in Australia when a week prior he pulled out of my contracted dates. I won’t point fingers as I don’t need to this is a truthful account of what happened so you can make your own mind up.

With Albero being one pull out unfortunately we had one more. Justin Gabriel who had visa issues getting out of the USA. I did all I needed too in going to a visa broker so he can work in the UK but a complete oversight on their part meant he needed some kind of stamp to leave the USA and he did not have this.

The show must go on and I did not sleep the week of the show as I did feel a need to fly in replacement talent. Carlito and Christopher Daniels were brought in at the last minute and eased the fans tension. It usually takes me up to month to source talent and seal deals. This time it was done in an hour!

Next up was the shows. Now these went as planned and exceeded expectations. I will never say I am the best at creative storytelling but this show I really thought had it all and I was overjoyed with fan feedback. I won’t go into too much details about the shows as to be honest they are the smoothest part of my week.

With all that out of the way you would think that my week was over. Well not exactly as when one of the international talent got back to his room in the Travelodge he found all his belongings in bin bags behind reception. For the second time that weekend they had made a big error with the bookings and rather than call or email me on my contact details supplied they just bagged up all his stuff. I had twelve rooms booked from one to three nights and common curtesty and sense you would call me if you feel there is any issues. The day before they were trying to tell one of the talent they should vacate the room when it was booked for another day and they admitted their error. After all this we asked for the manager to call us and we had a voice mail saying I have been told to call you, implying they didn’t even know what they were calling about. I try rotate the hotels I use for talent to stop the fans staying in the same hotel but will do my best to avoid that one in future. So me and my wife missed the final after party dealing with that. It was a sour end to what was an amazing show.

The Sunday I had to say goodbye to a talent, Uhaa Nation, was written out of PCW storylines like a character is killed off in a soap. One last pub crawl with a great talent and a great guy. I will miss having him around but that is the wrestling business and people come and people go. Not many I can call a friend and Uhaa was just that, so good luck in the future buddy.

Uhaa departed on March 16th and it was not until March 20th when I recovered from the rollercoaster of emotions I experience the week before. I now have another show March 29th that I need to get promoting and planned out. Read more about that by visiting the Preston City Wrestling website at www.prestoncitywrestling.com