Well, FINALLY the interviews have returned
After a bit of an issue w the last one, here we are. NECW promoter and wrestling historian Sheldon Goldberg was gracious enough to comply with my request. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did, and feel free to comment on the thread on the indy section. Thanks, and hopefully soon I'll have info on the next interview.
1. When did you become a fan, and who were some of your favorite wrestlers in those days?
My first memories of wrestling were watching with my maternal grandmother, who passed away when I was 4. She was the big wrestling fan in our family. I really didn’t pick it up again until the mid-1960’s when I was taken to a few shows at the old Boston Arena. This was Tony Santos’ promotion, not the old WWWF. Wrestling was not on TV in Boston from about 1959 to 1967 or so. When it started airing on channels 38 and 56 in Boston, that’s when my interest went into overdrive. By 1970, I was really hooked. My favorites back then were Bruno Sammartino, who was my childhood idol, Victor Rivera, Jay Strongbow, and later Karl Gotch who had a short run with Rene Goulet as the WWWF Tag Team Champions.
2. As a wrestling historian, how do you compare the way wrestling was perceived then, versus how it is today, by fans, media and the talent alike. What are some of the reasons pro wrestling was so popular with the "sport mentality" in those days? Also, in the current climate, do wrestlers have respect for the "talent that shaped the sport" such as Bruno Sammartino, the late Killer Kowalski and others?
Back in the 60’s and 70’s, wrestling was presented more as a sport. The mainstream media looked down at it, but they still had stories every now and then in the Boston newspapers that were always in the sports page. One of the things about wrestling in that era is that it was very hard to get into. You either had to be recruited by someone in the business or born into it. In those days, a pro wrestler made more money in many cases than a pro football player. The late Ernie Ladd, who was an All-Pro football player in the 60’s made much more money wrestling than he ever did in football. You had top professional caliber athletes that populated the business then. All of that contributed to the aura that pro wrestling had of legitimate athletes and tough guys that populated it, which is why it was more popular with the “sport mentality” as you put it. Today, wrestling schools are more numerous and commonplace and the standards for athletes (as well as the trainers) are significantly lower.
Another thing about the perception of wrestling today is that kayfabe is dead. The McMahons let the genie out of the bottle, so to speak. It’s not like people didn’t know it was a work, but it was never flaunted like it’s been since then. I don’t think kayfabe would have lasted anyway, because we live in a world where everything is exposed in the media and cynicism runs wild. My favorite part of promoting wrestling is watching little kids get so into it and see their eyes wide open with wonder about seeing wrestling live and up close. That’s the world we miss when we grow up.
Something else about pro wrestling that has changed is that it has shrunk in the past decade or so. How many true heavyweights are there on the independents in New England? They are exception rather than the rule. Wrestling is “as big as life” rather than “larger than life.”
In the current climate, I think there are many wrestlers who do not respect the pioneers of the business, simply because they didn’t grow up with them and have no knowledge of how it was. There is a lost generation today. We don’t have a generation of quality veteran wrestlers who can lead by example. Today’s talent doesn’t have the knowledge of what territorial wrestling was like or what it took to be a working pro wrestler in those days. There are exceptions and I think the guys who bother to look back at the history and develop an understanding for it, tend to respect the business as a whole more and tend to be more successful because they have a greater reverence for it.
3. If Vince McMahon really hadn't turned wrestling into basically a "monopoly" for the national companies, do you think the territory system could still work today? What are your thoughts on how the territory system worked, was it flawless, flawed, or somewhere in the middle?
I think the territory system – on a smaller scale – could still work today. In fact, about 6 weeks before he passed away, I had a telephone conversation with Gary Hart, which was such a great gift to me, because he had so much wisdom and was so encouraging to me about NECW. He believed that if Jim Crockett had not tried to compete directly with WWF and if Verne Gagne had stayed within his area, those promoters/promotions would still be in business today. That view is shared by a number of people I know in the business, and Ric Flair even talks about that on the latest Flair DVD set.
The territory system was genius in many ways. It allowed talent the chance to work in front of fans and on TV consistently and it kept promotions fresh. If you were a wrestler and you had been in an area for a year or so, and you started to get stale, you could go somewhere else, get a new lease on life, then come back six months or a year later and be fresh all over again. The flow of talent from place to place and the ability to circulate new faces in regularly kept the business going and kept talent sharp, because you learned new styles and worked with different people.
Today, there are very few wrestlers currently active who worked in the territory days. Other than Shawn Michaels, Jeff Jarrett and Sting, the pickings are slim. The level of polish those wrestlers got from working on the road night in and night out is gone from today’s pro wrestling and we fans, as well as the business, are the poorer for it.
4. From a business standpoint, many point to Hulk Hogan’s win over the Iron Sheik, and the launch of "Vince's vision", as a turning point in Pro wrestling history? How do you personally feel that has changed wrestling, and is it all positive changes?
Because of cable TV, it was inevitable that there would have been a national wrestling promotion. The true genius of the McMahons is how they marketed the WWF (later WWE) brand into becoming a household word and the style of wrestling they presented into what most people recognize as professional wrestling.
Is it all positive? Well, wrestlers can make a lot more money than they could before, so that’s positive. Nowhere near as many can work on a full-time basis anymore, so that’s a negative. If we sat down and rattled off the names of every movie star we knew of, and then sat down and did the same for full-time working pro wrestlers, you’d run out of wrestlers way sooner than you’d run out of movie stars. So it’s easier to be a movie star than it is to be a pro wrestler and if you give enough thought to that, I think you’d agree it’s not good. On the other hand, the fact that a pro wrestling company is publicly traded on the stock exchange says that pro wrestling is viable as a business, so that’s good. In all, it’s a mixed bag. The big successes have been tempered by what the cost of those successes (fewer working opportunities, etc.) has been.
5. What led you to decide to create New England Championship Wrestling? Who were some of the stars on the early events, and who do you credit as being most helpful in the early days of making NECW such a success?
I had been working with the last “Boston Bad Boy” Tony Rumble on his NWA New England, previously the Century Wrestling Alliance since 1993. When Tony died suddenly of a heart attack in 1999, his widow took over the business and made some very bad business decisions. At the time, I was not looking to become a promoter, but I got some encouragement from a number of people, and after giving it a lot of thought and accepting what it would entail, I decided to go ahead and do it.
At the time, there was a big void in the wrestling scene in New England. What passed for independent wrestling here was essentially one concept – get a couple of big names to be the main event and use the local guys as filler. Most of the shows being presented at the time were sold shows being bought by telemarketers to use as fundraisers. In the late 90’s after WWF introduced DX and as Steve Austin was starting to catch fire, the high schools where a lot of these shows took place started saying no to wrestling due to the more adult content of WWF TV. The telemarketed shows were drying up.
After Tony passed away and I made the decision to start up, I decided that rather than try and imitate what everyone else was doing, I would take things in another direction and use only locals – no big names at all – and try to create a local following. An important point that I need to make here is that I did this and took this approach, because I saw a lot of guys who could have been marketable on some level not getting that chance because they were never given the ball to run with. I knew it would be a long, hard road going in, because it meant a lot of grass roots promotion and marketing with limited resources. In a lot of cases, the talent really didn’t understand what it means to be the guys that were being depended upon to draw. It was a new approach at the time and a lot of people thought it would fail completely. We held our own though and eventually, others started following and imitating what we were doing.
The first NECW champion was former Kowalski trainer, Mike Hollow. Bob Evans, Alex Arion, Maverick Wild, Slyk Wagner Brown, Fred Curry, Jr. and The Egomaniacs were all top stars in the beginning. Mercedes Martinez was someone who blossomed in NECW in the first couple of years of the company.
Former WCW referee, Scott Dickinson is the person I credit most with getting NECW off the ground. He was the company’s first booker and he really led me in a good direction in the early going. It’s safe to say that if Scott Dickinson were not involved, it wouldn’t have gotten off the ground.
6. You later formed an NECW, which had some of the stars and owners of another successful New England promotion, PWF Northeast. Compare this version of NECW, with your early one.
What happened was actually a merger between NECW & PWF Mayhem, with the decision made to operate under the NECW name, because it was the best and most marketable name to operate under.
What had happened – and I will try to express it in positive terms rather than negative – is that NECW as I had started it, hit a wall. It was becoming a bigger business and a bigger set of responsibilities. At the same time, my dad was dying, I was working full time and running 24 plus events a year with NECW. Instead of the troops rallying around the company to help make it bigger and better, certain people undermined the business by steering things toward their agenda and not what would be successful for the company. The quality of the promotion had been compromised.
About this time, Matt & Kyle Storm approached me about going into business with them. These were two people I genuinely liked and respected. While I don’t want to put words in their mouths, they had done a great job with PWF, but also understood that a time comes when you need to evolve. We met and one thing was clear to begin with – we all wanted to do better and win. It was also clear that we could accomplish more as one company than we could as two. Frankly, it was a relief to be in business with people who truly wanted to grow and be better than they were. You cannot succeed in anything if you are intimidated by talent that is better than you are or ideas that are better than yours. You have to always do your best to be the best. The business deserves it, the talent deserves it and the fans deserve it.
This current version of NECW – the merged company – approaches what I had hoped it would become. There is still a long way to go, and we will never stop trying to improve. But as far as booking, production and business operation goes, it’s a damn good company and one of the best independents in the business. If you look back on everything that NECW has done and the innovative things it has introduced, the talent it has showcased and helped to become stars, it’s pretty amazing and it’s a great legacy. It changed wrestling in New England for the better. It’s especially impressive because it was done by regular guys with regular jobs, not someone with a trust fund from their parents or big investments and financial resources. We did this on talent and knowledge and hard work. I am very, very proud of it and proud of the men I am in business with. We have a great team and our best is yet to come.
7. For someone reading this who has been thinking of attending their first NECW event, give us an overview of the type of show you guys run, and what a fan can expect for a night of NECW.
Coming to an NECW event, you are going to see a great athletic event that is family friendly, won’t insult your intelligence as a wrestling fan and will deliver action that rivals anything you will see anywhere. The talent is the best in New England and the track record of who has worked in NECW over the years bears that out. You will get all of this at a price that will allow you to bring your family to enjoy a great night out without going broke. You will also be among people who care that you have a great time and are outwardly grateful that you chose to spend your time and money with us.
8. By seeing a lot of other indy companies come, some staying and getting stronger, some just staying, and some going, as well as some who are a bit on "Shaky ground", what do you think are some of the biggest problems you see in indy wrestling today? Also, some of the most positive things your see.
The biggest problem I see in independent wrestling is the poor training of talent. I’m not talking about wrestling ability. I am talking about the poor training in terms of knowing the business and how to conduct yourself as a professional. There is a lack of respect for the business of wrestling, because how to do business isn’t taught. I see talent many times undermining the very companies that are trying to promote them as an attraction someone would pay money to see. I see talent who do not understand the concept of a push and how to respect it, or what holding a title means and what their responsibility is as a focal point of a promotion. Few people are taught to have that kind of integrity anymore because so few trainers have come up through the pro ranks.
Another problem is the recent trend of amateur promoters running what I call “funzie-onezies” – shows that are basically pile-ons for talent looking to scam a payday out of a guy who is going to lose more money in a single night than our company has ever lost in a year. People like this hurt the business in the long run and the talent make it worse by enabling or encouraging them.
The positives are that there is a good base of talent in the area, there is an audience out there that will accept the independent wrestling experience and that audience is growing. There are a lot of shows and a lot more guys work a lot more often than they did 10 years ago in New England, so the level of talent has improved.
9. If you could only use ONE word, how would you describe the job of independent wrestling promoter?
Win
10. How strong or weak do you think the future of Pro Wrestling is, both on an independent and National level, and explain please.
What we call independent wrestling is the only growth area in the business. The outlook is strong if you know what you’re doing and have a strong vision for the business, though even at it’s best, it’s a ton of work and a bumpy road. If you don’t know exactly what you’re doing or have no experience in the business, you have zero chance.
Nationally, TV is always going to need cheap original programming and I don’t see WWE or TNA going anywhere for a very long time. It would be hard for an upstart company to compete nationally, because there aren’t as many cable networks out there with enough penetration to give a company looking to compete nationally a chance. It’s also incredibly expensive to compete as a national entity. TNA went through something like $50 million dollars and is only now a profitable entity.
10. Do you have any closing thoughts or things to add Sheldon, and thank you very much.
First, thank you for asking me to do this interview and letting me share my thoughts in this forum. I look at promoting wrestling as an honor and a privilege. To those who have worked for us in the ring, your efforts are always respected and we have worked hard over the years to create the finest stage to showcase your talents. To those who have supported NECW as fans, thank you for that support. It means the world to us.
Sheldon Goldberg
Host: The Mouthpiece Wrestling Show
Friday at 6 PM EST • WWZN Boston • 1510 The Zone •
www.1510thezone.com
Co-Owner/Promoter
New England Championship Wrestling
www.NECWwrestling.com •
www.NECW.TV •
www.WorldWomensWrestling.com
