If you are a British wrestling fan, youll know that following the WWE can be an extremely frustrating prospect. For those of you reading this outside of our little group of rocky green islands, here are the two options for watching WWE programming here in the UK. You can pay an exorbitant monthly fee to Sky TV, who spread most of their content over multiple channels in order to charge you far more money than they need to. Or... You can f*ck off. You could try YouTube, of course, but, with the advent of the WWE Network (not coming over here until 2015 at least), WWE have been really hot about removing their shows and PPV events from the Internet. ...Of course, there are always sites like www.spyware.com, www.infestmyharddrivewithtrojansandbizarrehentaipornplease.com or www.computervirus4me.org, but they arent exactly a safe prospect... When WWE does deign to come over here for live events, they dont always bring their A show, either. Youll be unlikely to see any major title changes, storyline announcements or events that have much impact at all and the top WWE stars sometimes (but not always, it must be said) use a UK tour as an opportunity for some much needed R&R. TNA, on the other hand, really seems to love us Brits. Last years UK tour featured title changes, major storyline events and the full roster (minus naughty old Jeff Hardy, whos previous extracurricular interests saw him unable to pay us a visit this time around) putting on what were easily the best TNA shows of the year (especially in Scotland). TNA pulls out all the stops when they visit the UK and they treat their UK fanbase extremely well. In addition, TNA does consistently good viewing figures here and the live events usually sell out as soon as they are announced. In the UK, if you want to watch TNA, all you have to do is set the TV up to record Impact Wrestling, which airs every Sunday night on Challenge TV. You can actually watch Challenge with a freeview box and not actually spend any extra money at all. For many UK wrestling fans, TNA is the only televised product that they can actually watch. The UK has GREAT indie promotions like Preston City Wrestling (PCW), Insane Championship Wrestling (ICW) and PROGRESS wrestling, amongst loads of others, all of which can put on a tremendous live show...But what about when you just want to eat junk food and watch wrestling on TV? Because of all this, TNA is really over with the UK fans. They put the effort in with the Brits - and we, for the most part, reciprocate. Hell, they even crowned the first British born World Champion in over a hundred years! Because TNA is so fond of us Brits, it could also become a good place for our homegrown stars to get international recognition, too.
I am a professional author and lifelong comic books/pro wrestling fan. I also work as a journalist as well as writing comic books (I also draw), screenplays, stage plays, songs and prose fiction.
I don't generally read or reply to comments here on What Culture (too many trolls!), but if you follow my Twitter (@heyquicksilver), I'll talk to you all day long!
If you are interested in reading more of my stuff, you can find it on http://quicksilverstories.weebly.com/ (my personal site, which has other wrestling/comics/pop culture stuff on it).
I also write for FLiCK http://www.flickonline.co.uk/flicktion, which is the best place to read my fiction work.
Oh yeah - I'm about to become a Dad for the first time, so if my stuff seems more sentimental than usual - blame it on that!
Finally, I sincerely appreciate every single read I get. So if you're reading this, thank you, you've made me feel like Shakespeare for a day! (see what I mean?)
Latcho Drom,
- CQ
