In the early 2000’s, World Wrestling All-Stars, an Australian-based pro wrestling promotion opened up and began holding shows across the UK, Europe, Australia, and the United States. From October 2001 to May of 2003, WWA helped close the gap left by two-thirds of the largest promotions in the world closing up shop: WCW and ECW. How would I have handled the book in the short time? Only one way to find out!
Okay… but, why rebook World Wrestling All-Stars!?
For the few short years World Wrestling All-Stars was around, it was able to host a handful of shows mostly away from North America. This is one reason I wanted to try my hand at rebooking the promotion. This struck me as unique, as some pretty big American names in the sport at the time started with them from the very beginning. Stars such as “Big Poppa Pump” Scott Steiner, Sting, “Total Package” Lex Luger, “Double J” Jeff Jarrett, and more, all landed in World Wrestling All-Stars following the closure of World Championship Wrestling and Extreme Championship Wrestling in 2001.
Another part that drew me to rebooking WWA, was that it would be a manageable undertaking. With a short operational period and a compact roster, I saw it as a fun challenge to try out. I knew with a limited number of Pay-Per-View events and being mostly a live event business model would be a good departure from Bob Colling, Jr. and I’s rebooking project of WCW that we’re currently working on.
With that said, I do plan on taking the liberty of ‘filling in the gaps’ with the timeline. Instead of sparse pay-per-views scattered rather randomly, I’m going to go ahead and plan to have WWA host a PPV every other month or so. Unlike the real timeline, I will also be booking five, small, live events per month, each and every month. There will be no gaps of programming or shows. I will be sticking to replicating what really happened as far as timing and dates, but the rest will be made up in line with what perhaps could-have-been.
Lastly, hopefully I can shed a light on the promotion and introduce some to what they put out. Eventually, WWA would be basically absorbed by Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA), as their titles would be merged and unified and most of the WWA roster would join the ranks of TNA.
During one of professional wrestling’s gray areas, WWA provided a continuation for guys that didn’t immediately decide to join the WWF. The company tried to make the transition as seamless as possible, keeping up decent production values and securing some top-shelf talent.
I look forward to digging into this one and hope you’ll enjoy a break from the norm with this project!