Alex Shane

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 The neutrality of this article is disputed.
Please see the discussion on the talk page.(March 2008)
Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved.
This article does not cite any references or sources. (March 2008)
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.
Alex Spilling
Statistics
Ring name(s) Alex Shane
LX Blade
Billed height 6 ft 5 in (196 cm)
Billed weight 290 lb (132 kg)
Born November 15, 1979 (1979-11-15) (age 28)
London
Trained by Andre Baker
Debut 1995

Alex Spilling[1] is a retired English professional wrestler who is best known by his ring name "The Showstealer" Alex Shane. Though retired from wrestling, Shane still works as an events promoters, wrestling teacher and Mentor whilst outside of wrestling he currently works as a life coach and is currently writing a self help book.

Contents

[edit] Career

Alex Spilling began wrestling for the NWA Hammerlock promotion in 1995 under the tutelage of Hammerlock owner Andre Baker. After several years with the promotion, Spilling along with others fell out with Baker and left the to work for a new TV company UWA. During his time in UWA, Spilling formed a tag team with Guy Thunder and developed much of his in-ring ability and mic skills as well as creating his heel persona, Alex Shane.[2]

In 1999 he was taken under the wing of second generation wrestler Dino Scarlo along with new UK up and comer Jody Fleisch. The two, despite their differing talents and styles, became Scarlo's new projects and thanks to his help groomed both of them into two of the countries most important wrestlers in the last twenty years. Scarlo's training really begun to show over the next few years and both credit it as the most important factor in their growth as wrestlers and people.

During this time, Shane was first approached by the newly revived Frontier Wrestling Alliance promotion. He and Guy Thunder worked the companies second show and it wasn't long after this that FWA booker Elisar Cabrera realised Shane's potential; ensuring Shane found major success in the promotion as its top wrestler and British Heavyweight Champion.

Shane's success in the company continued and saw him open his own wrestling school, Capital City Pro Wrestling. The school trained around 35 wrestlers previously or currently on the UK scene including Hade Vanson who recently signed a contract with WWE. CCPW became the official London home of the FWA, who allowed Shane to become more involved in the company, where instead of payment he got the chance to help Elisar Caberra run the first-ever FWA London show at Barking, Essex in 2001. During this time, Shane left CCPW made appearances in a newly formed promotion known as Universal Championship Wrestling, it was here Shane was repackaged as LX Blade[3] a cartoon type robot character. The character was abandoned when the promotion folded after just two shows.

While promoting his CCPW venture, Shane to appeared as a guest on the talkSPORT radio show hosted by Tommy Boyd. Shane would soon become a regular co-host and with his knowledge of wrestling soon made the previously loosely based wrestling show the UK's first fully fledged national wrestling radio show which often saw angles being played out within the show including one that involved Shane attacking Boyd and being forcefully removed from the show.

During his time on the radio show in 2001, Shane returned to the FWA under his most successful persona "The Showstealer." Shane also worked alongside Boyd to help FWA produce one of its largest early shows, FWA Revival in 2002, which was broadcast on national TV. However, a falling out with Boyd would see Shane leave the radio show and Boyd attempt to buy out 75% of the shares of the FWA, including Shane's. This led to a controversial incident during a match in the FWA on March 22, 2002, where Shane faced Karl Krammer and suffered a serious neck injury. The "accident" was later revealed to by part of a storyline that allowed Alex to leave FWA temporarily due to the fall out with Tommy Boyd and his business partners who intended to sale Boyd the shares.

However, before the sale could go through Boyd was relieved from his Talksport radio duties. With out this major platform to promote FWA the sale to Boyd was put on hold. Due to popular demand, Shane was soon brought into to replace the radio programme with a brand new show, Wrestle-Talk. It wasn't long before Shane used this new position and power to buy out his former business partners and become the majority share holder of FWA. By the time he has finished Shane used his new show format to draw in an estimated 400,000 listeners a week. The show even went out twice a week during the summer season with a Thursday night show added to the programme schedule. Sadly the owners of Talksport, who never even wanted wrestling on their station in the first place, felt that the show was not what their brand was about. In December of 2002 they made the hugely unpopular choice to pull the show from the air with just 4 days notice to prevent Shane preparing to take the successful show to another station and promoting it on air in his last weeks. It was however Alex and his fans who had the last laugh as the negative response was so serious that the station had to pre record the replacement shows as the phone lines became jammed with angry listeners. Many of who pretended to be calling in to congratulate Talksport for the new show and then rip it to shreds the moment they got on air. The replacement show lasted just a few months and was pulled due to abysmal ratings.

By the time Alex left Talksport he was firmly seen as the UK's top spokesperson for British wrestling. He has now also used it to take FWA from tiny halls to selling out far bigger venues such as the Yok Hall, London which Shane used to debut his ground breaking British Uprising one event at a silencing critics by introducing £50 front row tickets for the event. With the normal top price for UK show tickets being just £10 both Alex and Dino Scarlo received cries to resign from FWA due to the beliefe that this price increase would destroy the company. Yet to the amazement of everybody but Shane and Scarlo the top price tickets flew out. The show is still considered today to be one of the best British wrestling events of all time and was the first to use expensive lighting and pyrotecnics in UK wrestling history.

From this point in October 2002, Shane, alongside his new business partner and mentor Dino Scarlo, set out to develop his new vision for the future of FWA, producing larger shows and gaining more income from higher ticket prices to allow him to involve more international talent. This period is consiered the most successful runs that UK wrestling has had with regards to gaining new fans and receiving press attention world wide since it was taken off ITV in 1988. Shane Sacrlo, Sloan, Cardall and crew were now seen as the new pioneers of the European industry.

Along with the success outside the ring, Shane teamed with Ulf Herman to defeat the UK Pitbulls and win the FWA Tag Team Titles upon his return on October 25, 2002. Not before long Shane turned on Herman dropping his baby face image to become one of the top heels in the UK. After become heel, Shane left the tag team matches to once again enter into singles competition for the first time in several years.

One of Shane's most notable in-ring FWA moments was with boxer Danny Williams, during an angle that nearly got out of hand, which started when Alex Shane informed the crowd that Danny's agent had banned him from taking part in any sort of wrestling angle in the company, Alex Shane then claimed he was going to grab as much publicity as he can and began to insult Danny Williams and his entourage, Williams genuinely appeared to lose his cool when, as he walked away, Shane called him a homosexual and spat at his teenage brother-in-law, inciting a pull-apart brawl. The worked fracas, that nearly ended up in disaster at the FWA show made it to the Daily Mirror newspaper and national news programmes.

Shane would feud with Jack Xavier, Steve Corino and Doug Williams, and once again become British Heavyweight Champion at the British Uprising 3 event and later pick up a second tag title reign while still being the companies managing director and booker as well as also writing and directing the FWA's TV show until March 28, 2005 when he deciding to sell his shares.

After Shane sold the FWA to a group headed by Powerslam's Greg Lambert he joined forces with the Wrestling Channel to do something that was previously considered impossible. After only drawing 1,800 people 5 months before to the same building on March 14th 2004 he promoted International Showdown. Pulling a record breaking UK crowd of 3,400 at a front row price of £75 Showdown remains the British wrestling standard setter to this day. Featuring the worlds top independent stars such as Mick Foley, Mitsuhiro Misawa, AJ Styles, Samoa Joe,Chris Daniels and CM Punk the event was also a huge critical success too being branded "as good as it gets" by notoriously critical UK magazine Powerslam.

Shane went on to run the Skydome for an unprecedented third time for Universal Uproar in November of that year headlined my Japanese legend Kenta Kobashi's UK debut and Mick Foley coming out of retirement to wrestle in a gripping 8 man tag match. This would also be Shane's career highlight as he defeated his former hero, Foley, by pin fall. The card also set the record for most expensive ringside seat for a British event at £85 front row.

On May 29th 2005, while still FWA British Heavyweight Champion, Alex Shane won the WAW British Championship from "The Dark Angel" Ashe in a cross promotional show called "May Mayhem 3" between WAW and FWA in Bournemouth, Dorset. At this point it was one of 8 UK tittles Alex held as he was quickly becoming seen as the top main event calibre heel in the UK. It was long time protégé and friend Hade Vansen who pinned Joe Legend to win The Champions Series Final at FWA New Frontiers on February 5, 2006 at Broxbourne Civic Hall to become the new FWA British Heavyweight Champion. Vanson took Alex Shane’s title in the five-way main event (which aside from Vanson, Shane and Legend, also featured "The Phoenix" Jody Fleisch and "The Wonderkid" Jonny Storm) with help from the Showstealer’s (kayfabe) ex-girlfriend Nikita. Shane would later relinquish his converted WAW British title to allow himself once again to concentrate more on the backstage workings of the business.

It was here that Shane disappeared from active wrestling. Many felt that it was part of one of his "inside" story lines that caused him much negative Internet reaction but it was later revealed that he required surgery on a tumor in his neck. He held off on this for over a year and even began building up for a come back match with Martin Stone in the heated FWA vs IPW:UK feud but just weeks before the contest he was forced in to having emergency surgery as the tumor was now affecting blood flow to his brain. He has not wrestled since.

In March 2006, Shane was announced as the new head of European Marketing and promotion for top American promotion Ring of Honor. In August of that year he promoted the groups first overseas tour and shocked pundits by drawing a bigger crowd for the companies debut in England than their figures back in their home of the US. It was also the companies biggest grossing weekend with tickets at $150 dollars front row compared to their usual $25 in the States. The company returned in March 2007 with the final ROH appearances of company legend Samoa Joe topping the last tour numbers and drawing around 2200 to the same building over two days. Yet again another ROH record setting weekend.

In April of the same year, just 8 weeks later, Alex promoted his most daring events to date. A giant 16 promotion world wide tournament called "King of Europe Cup". With 4 shows in 2 days (two matinees and two evening events) the weekend did a report 2100 plus ticket sales although due to the ROH shows in the same building so close to the event, the sales were lower than originally hoped for. However the original and never before used concept for the show was a critical success and firmly placed the event, won my UK star Nigel McGuiness, as a regular fixture on the European Calender.

Outside of wrestling Alex is writing a self help style book using many of the lessons he has learned from his 14 plus years of wrestling himself, promotion, media appearances and teaching. He also still runs specialist training seminars around the UK and writes monthly articles for Fighting Spirit magazine for young wrestlers about getting the most out of your wrestling career whilst combining his many life coaching and world view philosophies. Alex is currently working as the head UK tour liaison for American promotion TNA Wrestling, with the first UK event beating all projected first day sales figures; the rush for tickets was so large, in fact, that it crashed the server hosting the online sales system for over an hour [4].

Shane is credited with being the main person responsible for the boom in the British wrestling industry since the turn of the decade. Along with his mentor Dino Scarlo, Mark Sloan and Ralph Cardal amongst many others he managed to raise the price of UK wrestling tickets from £10 front row to £85 allowing promoters to up their production values and talent budgets. He helped train, mentor and inspire a massive number of today's wrestlers and promoters be it directly or indirectly and used his public speaking talents and promotion skills to get the once uninterested UK wrestling press to finally cover the domestic scene. Since he begun promoting Britain now has more wrestling per square mile than any other country in the world.

[edit] In wrestling

  • Finishing and signature moves
  • Nicknames
  • "The Showstealer" Alex Shane

[edit] Championships and accomplishments

  • The Wrestling Alliance
  • World Association of Wrestling
  • WAW British Heavyweight Championship (1 times)
  • British Championship Wrestling
  • BCW Heavyweight Championship (1 times)
  • Capital City Pro Wrestling
  • CCPW Championship (1 time)
  • Other Titles
  • GPW British Championship (1 time)
  • OPWO World Heavyweight Championship (1 time)
  • RAMWA Southern Area Championship (1 time)
  • IWP North East Heavyweight Champion (1 time)

[edit] References

  1. ^ Online World of Wrestling
  2. ^ Capital City Pro Wrestling results (July 5th 2000) Chris Ryan imitates the original UWA Alex Shane gimmick. From Geocities.com. Retrieved 24/11/06.
  3. ^ "All In To Coventry For The Wrestling" (October 5, 2000). Skydome Coventry News website. Retrieved 24/11/06.
  4. ^ Total Nonstop Action Wrestling On Spike TV!