Real Quality Wrestling and Great Muta

January 12th 2007 was incredibly memorable as Real Quality Wrestling hosted The Great Muta's European Debut at York Hall in London. Here's the story as covered in my biography "Do or do not!"

Our next York Hall show was on January 12th and about a week before Alex came to see me letting me know of a situation that was shaping up in Doncaster. Stephen Gauntley, the owner of 1PW had booked Japanese wrestling legend The Great Muta to appear at his show on Saturday the 13th and he had now announced that the company had gone bankrupt and would be cancelling the show. Keiji Muto, the identity of Muta, had gone online giving British wrestling a major black eye stating that it’s not safe to do business here and so on. Alex asked if there was anything I could do, so I told him to see if we could switch Muta to our show on the Friday to save face and restore faith in the British wrestling scene. It took substantial phonecalls but the deal was done, the price arranged and with Muta’s wage confirmed along with wages for Kikutaro, Nosawa and Akira Raijin and a contribution to the flights we were on. I announced that tickets which had been bought for The Great Muta’s appearance at the Doncaster Dome would be honoured at the York Hall show, which seemed to be well received but again the wrestling industry is full of people that love to hate. On Thursday 11th January Alex, Elina and myself travelled in a white stretch limousine to Heathrow to meet the legend, gave him and his wife a short tour of London before taking him to the hotel. In order to restore his faith I gave him his full fee there and then as I did with the other workers and the agreed costs, so that all that remained was the show the next day. As I left the hotel and headed back to Dagenham in the limo with Elina I felt satisfied that I’d done the right thing. It wasn’t a cheap deal but one that was certain to create some positive waves for the British scene which is what I was all about. Alex used the phrase ‘Umbrella company’ which is true in that I wanted to help any wrestling organisation of repute that needed it as far as I could. I couldn’t just stump up money but I was building up a team with expertise and equipment that could cost-effectively bring a quality to the final shows. The RQW TV shows were going well and the coming weekend had promised to provide more footage as 3CW had decided to hold a show on the cancelled 1PW night called “1PW will Not Die” and approached me to film and provide the sound, which I agreed to as once again it would prevent the British wrestling public from being kicked in the teeth. The Sunday required a trip to Great Yarmouth for Chickfight 7, organised by Dann Read on behalf of Jason Deadrich of the Chickfight Organisation in San Francisco. I had agreed to film it in return for the UK DVD release rights and I also ended up sponsoring the ring.

The York Hall show started off wrong as I had trusted somebody else to provide the ring on Alex’s suggestion based on the looseness of my rings ropes, and there was no sign of him and no communication until about 4pm when he finally showed up, set up the ring and I was disgusted as it didn’t look camera ready at all, plus it had a dirty white canvas, but I had no choice at this late part of the game, the stage being all set and tested and ready to go. The show went well with everybody giving their absolute best, and I was amazed at how many Japanese press followed The Great Muta around, but that was cool as we had a lot of pictures in Japanese magazines and newspapers in weeks to come. We crowned the first RQW Cruiserweight Champion on that night as well as Bubblegum beat “The Heretic” red Vinny to lift the gold. Martin Stone put on his best against the might of The Great Muta but the green mist and the Shining Wizard proved too much for ‘The Guv’nor’ and The Great Muta left the ring victorious. “No Pain, No Gain 2007” was a moderate success, although not as many 1PW ticket holders had taken advantage of my offer but that was their choice. I had been blessed to meet Kieron Lefort who had been the old editor for the FWA shows, and he had done the live vision mixing since show one, but he was soon to become a much bigger part of the organisation.