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Indy Wrestling News broke the news Friday morning that Tod Gordon was leaving Pro Wrestling Unplugged and the company's future was looking bleak. In part one of this two part series we take a look at Pro Wrestling Unplugged and it's origins.
The Backstory
Though it was created in 2004, Pro Wrestling Unplugged can be traced back five years earlier when owner Johnny Kashmere, with the help of several friends, promoted his first event under the Renegade Rasslin' banner. The show was essentially the same formula that was used five years later: a promotion run by wrestlers for wrestlers. Though the plan was made to run regularly, the promotion only ran once and folded shortly thereafter. The most significant thing to come from the Renegade Rasslin' experiment was, oddly enough, a shirt that simply had the word "Wrestler" on the front. The shirt would be used later for the Softcore Connection, a group that was started in Combat Zone Wrestling that included Kashmere and partner Trent Acid, and would also become one of the first Pro Wrestling Unplugged shirts.
PWU's actual creation came as a result of Johnny Kashmere's and Trent Acid's falling out with Combat Zone Wrestling and it's owner John Zandig. Kashmere made his debut with CZW in July of 1999, a month after friend Trent Acid had made his. Kashmere and Acid were both a part of a clique of Philly wrestlers that had trained under The Pit Bulls of ECW fame, and soon other members of that clique started working for CZW too, including The Wifebeater and Nick Berk. Kashmere's influence in the company would grow, and by early 2000 he had promoted a CZW show and even had some influence on the creative process. The relationship would take a turn for the worse though in September and would never fully recover.
The Backseat Boyz were created by well known indy manager Donnie B and made their first appearance together as a tag team on a NWA New Jersey show in September of 1999. The team would instantly become a success and less than a month later would begin working for Jim Kettner's East Coast Wrestling Association, where they won their first tag team title, and a wide range of other groups all over the Northeast. In CZW though the two would not begin teaming until mid-2000. By September they had already become one of the top acts in the company and their matches with Ric Blade and "Sick" Nick Mondo had gotten the attention of wrestling fans and the wrestling media from all over the world.
In a continuation of their series the two teams were scheduled at the second Cage of Death, which was held outside, to have two singles matches where Acid would face Mondo and Blade was with Kashmere. Acid and Mondo had their match first and Kashmere and Blade was scheduled to go on a little later. As it got darker though Kashmere began to balk at doing the match because he felt uncomfortable working Blade in that environment. Blade wore glasses but could normally wrestle without the aid of contacts so he did not bring any which made Kashmere uneasy. Kashmere had been suffering from neck issues for over a year, and felt he was putting his health at risk so he refused to do the match. An argument ensued between he and Zandig which lead to Kashmere quitting and going home. Kashmere would return to the company by November but the relationship between him and Zandig would never recover. Kashmere would quit or was fired, depending on who you believe, a couple more times before the ultimate blow up.
By 2003 the Backseat Boyz had become one of the top tag teams in the country and had wrestled all over the world. They had cemented themselves as one of the cornerstones of CZW and were well respected by the fans for their loyalty and contributions, but as 2003 came to a close rumors of Trent and Johnny playing politics began to surface and were topics of discussion amongst diehard CZW fans on the internet and at shows. Acid and Kashmere treated these rumors, and many of the fans that talked about them, with contempt and distain. This would foreshadow a new adversarial relationship with fans that would haunt them, and Pro Wrestling Unplugged, for years to come.
The final blow up between Johnny Kashmere and CZW would occur in February of 2004 over creative issues, amongst other things, and he was initially followed by partner Trent Acid. The two would go on to bury Zandig, it's creative team, CZW staff, wrestlers and more in a shoot interview done with RF Video that, due to owner Rob Feinstein being caught soliciting sex on the internet from someone he believed to have been a 14 year old boy, hadn't even been released before Acid's planned return to the company had already been finalized for April. Acid's return though would be short lived and came to an end when Acid no-showed CZW's 2004 edition of The Best of the Best tournament that July. This second departure by Acid would lead to a war of words that was more venomous than even the one before it and was primarily directed towards CZW's assistant booker Mike Burns, who remained silent publicly about it all and who Acid blamed for his departure. The ironic thing about Acid's anger towards CZW creative was that had Acid appeared at CZW's Best of the Best he would have won the CZW Heavyweight title, a fact that until now has not been made public.
It was under these turbulent circumstances that Pro Wrestling Unplugged was born, and they would be an omen of things to come.
Keep checking back as we'll be putting up part two in the next day or two. Part two will cover the beginning of PWU to the present. We'll talk about Tod Gordon, his departure, issues the company has had to deal with, and issues that the company might have to deal with if they chose to continue running without Gordon.
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