Best of the North West

RWL Goes Interfed

By the time of RWL Best of the North West, RWL was still very much in its early days. This show, however, represented an important step outside of the small group that had formed the promotion.

During the UKBYW era, interfed shows were a major part of the scene. Rather than featuring wrestlers from a single backyard promotion, an interfed brought together multiple promotions and their rosters for one event.

RWL had found somewhere in Manchester with an actual wrestling ring where they could bring several of those promotions together.

There was just one small problem with that.

The GPW Training School

The venue was actually the GPW Training School, where CorZ, Nixy Nix, Ice and Mike McMichaels were all training professionally at the time.

Having access to the building presented RWL with the perfect opportunity to run its first interfed.

So CorZ booked it.

He did not, however, have permission from GPW promoter Johnnie Brannigan to run an RWL show there.

Somehow, RWL managed to run Best of the North West without Brannigan finding out.

In fact, he wouldn’t discover what had been happening until RWL returned to the same building a month later for its second interfed, Overdose.

That is a story for another show.

XWA and HGWA Arrive

Joining RWL for the event were two other promotions from the North West scene: XWA and HGWA.

XWA, Xtreme Wrestling Arts, was a Warrington-based backyard promotion whose roster included the likes of Ice, Fozzy and Mike McMichaels.

HGWA, Hazel Grove Wrestling Alliance, represented the Hazel Grove and Stockport area, bringing wrestlers including Alex McConnell, Chris Goodwin, Mike McKnight and Kid Wreck.

Best of the North West wouldn’t prove to be a one-off meeting between these promotions.

A Relationship With XWA

RWL’s relationship with XWA continued beyond this show, with members of the RWL crew making regular train journeys to Warrington to wrestle on XWA events.

That relationship continued through the early years of RWL and into 2008, when XWA eventually folded.

Unfortunately, much of XWA’s own recorded history is now considered lost media from RWL’s perspective. The original footage may still survive somewhere amongst the VHS and Mini-DV tapes belonging to Ice, but RWL no longer has access to it and its current whereabouts are unknown.

As a result, footage of some of the RWL crew’s appearances for XWA may still physically exist, waiting to be rediscovered.

A Lasting Relationship With HGWA

The relationship with HGWA would prove even longer lasting.

What began with wrestlers from Hazel Grove and Stockport appearing at RWL’s first interfed developed into a close working relationship between the two promotions.

RWL and HGWA would continue to work together throughout the years that followed, with that relationship carrying all the way through to RWL’s hiatus in 2018.

Looking back, Best of the North West therefore represented far more than simply an opportunity to fill a card with wrestlers from other promotions. It established connections that would become part of RWL’s history for years to come.

HGWA Makes a Statement

It was HGWA that opened the show, and they weren’t arriving quietly.

The HGWA Championship was on the line as reigning champion Kid Wreck defended against Mike McKnight and Chris Goodwin in a Triple Threat Match.

With three of HGWA’s own competing for its championship on an RWL event, the visitors had an immediate opportunity to show exactly what their promotion could bring to the table.

Familiar Rivals

RWL’s two champions then found themselves across the ring from one another once again.

RWL Champion Jayyy faced RWL International Champion Nixy Nix in a non-title match, continuing a rivalry that had already featured heavily during RWL’s earliest recorded shows.

The two had already met several times by this point, including the inaugural Shoeless Aggression Match at Death By Diamond Cutter, and Best of the North West added another chapter to their growing history together.

Brother vs Brother

Next, it was XWA’s opportunity to take centre stage.

Mike McMichaels faced his brother Ice, bringing an already established XWA rivalry into RWL for the first time.

The brothers had plenty of history before arriving at Best of the North West, and their familiarity showed. The result was a match that stood out as a classic by the standards of early RWL, giving XWA its own opportunity to make an impression.

The Founders Collide

The main event brought things firmly back to RWL.

For the RWL Championship, Jayyy defended against CorZ.

This wasn’t simply champion against challenger. It was one RWL founder against another, with two of the people who had spent years wrestling together before RWL’s recorded history now meeting with its championship at stake.

After the cardboard, borrowed cameras and makeshift surroundings of the first recorded shows, the two founders of RWL now found themselves inside a wrestling ring in Manchester, competing for the RWL Championship.

And they left everything they had in it.

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Three promotions, one wrestling school nobody had actually asked permission to use, and the beginning of relationships that would shape RWL for years to come. Best of the North West was the moment RWL began looking beyond its own backyard.