Remedy III

Remedy III

After taking the blue tarp all the way to St Anne’s for Mum, The Cat’s Dead, RWL eventually returned to familiar territory for Remedy III on 19 May 2007.

The XCW Arena was once again home.

The blue tarp, however, wasn’t.

Instead, the wrestling area had somehow regressed back to a collection of cardboard that hadn’t even been taped together particularly well.

It wouldn’t make it to the end of the show.

What Happened to Remedy I and II?

There’s an obvious problem with the name Remedy III.

There is no Remedy I or Remedy II anywhere else in the surviving RWL archive.

Both did happen, at least as far as the very blurry memories of those involved can establish, but neither was recorded and no photographs, results sheets or other physical evidence are known to survive.

Remedy I was about as early-RWL as it gets.

At a birthday party for Valo’s brother at the local YMCA, Valo and Jayyy wrestled each other on a bouncy castle.

That was the show.

Remedy II somehow found an even smaller venue, with Valo and Jayyy wrestling again, this time in Jayyy’s attic at his mum’s house.

Neither match was filmed. More than two decades later, all that remains of either event is a vague recollection that they happened.

Which means Remedy III occupies a slightly unusual place in the archive.

It isn’t the third edition of a well-documented RWL event series.

It’s the first Remedy for which RWL actually has something tangible left to preserve.

A Spotty Road to Remedy III

The period between Mum, The Cat’s Dead and Remedy III is one of the more fragmented parts of RWL’s early history.

RWL believes that another RWL show took place during this period, but almost nothing about it is currently remembered and no physical record of it is known to survive.

There is no footage.

No photographs.

No surviving card or results.

Beyond the recollection that another show happened, it remains a blank space in the RWL timeline.

That doesn’t mean there wasn’t much wrestling going on.

Quite the opposite.

During 2007, Valo and Jayyy were fully active with National Alliance Wrestling (NAW), travelling around the country to wrestle at events in places including Luton and Houghton Regis, Aylesbury and Newcastle.

The complete history of those appearances has yet to be reconstructed within the RWL archive, but RWL was increasingly becoming only one part of a much wider wrestling calendar for the pair.

And NAW wasn’t the only relationship continuing outside RWL.

NCW: Beginning Of The Storm

At Overdose: The Interfed, Cassius had travelled to Manchester representing DCW, facing “Cyanide” Danny Cooper as part of RWL’s second interfed.

Following Overdose, DCW changed its name to NCW, and the relationship between the two promotions continued.

This time, members of RWL made the journey in the opposite direction, travelling to Doncaster to appear at NCW’s Beginning Of The Storm.

Unlike the unidentified RWL show from this period, Beginning Of The Storm is well documented. The details of the event are known, and footage survives in music-video form as part of the RWL video archive.

Beginning Of The Storm was promoted by NCW rather than RWL, but is included here as part of the wider history of RWL and its relationship with other promotions during 2007.

The trip to Doncaster was another sign of just how quickly RWL’s world was expanding.

Only months earlier, most of the promotion’s wrestling had taken place on cardboard in Blackburn.

Now its wrestlers were travelling around the country, appearing for other groups and building relationships throughout the wider UKBYW scene.

Then it was back to Blackburn.

Back to the XCW Arena.

And, somehow, back to cardboard.

What Survives of 2007

The gaps surrounding this period are therefore slightly misleading.

A lot was happening. A lot less survives.

Alongside RWL’s own shows, members of the roster were travelling around the UK, working with other groups and becoming increasingly involved in the wider UKBYW scene.

Unfortunately, RWL’s surviving video archive from 2007 is particularly spotty.

A number of the MiniDV tapes used to record shows during this period were later recorded over, destroying the original recordings and leaving no master tape for RWL to return to and recapture at a higher quality.

In some cases, later copies and edits survived.

In others, very little did.

Remedy III falls somewhere in the middle.

The original tape is gone, but the show itself isn’t.

Its surviving footage comes from a low-resolution DVD burned at the time, which Valo still has among his collection of old RWL discs.

The quality is a long way from the original MiniDV recording, but without that DVD, Remedy III could easily have become another gap in RWL’s 2007 history.

Sometimes the copy becomes the archive.

The Phukin-Schit Challenge Continues

The show opened with Teh Gr8 Schitzu taking on Adam Watson as part of the ongoing Phukin-Schit Challenge Series.

For once, Watson wasn’t hosting Watson’s Lounge.

He was simply wrestling.

For Schitzu, meanwhile, the challenge remained much the same as ever:

Could Teh Gr8 Schitzu finally win one single match?

At this point, that was becoming an increasingly reasonable question.

One in a Row!

Watson remained involved for the next match, this time facing Kazuki “Lightning” Lyger.

And remarkably, Lyger arrived with something they hadn’t previously been able to boast about:

a winning streak.

Admittedly, it was a winning streak of exactly one match.

But everybody has to start somewhere.

Could Lyger make it two?

From the Vault

Before returning to the live action, Remedy III took a look backwards with an RWL From The Vault segment.

Shown in full was [lfp] vs R*WL from Leaping Spoonkick From Hell, revisiting the match between CorZ and “Cyanide” Danny Cooper and The Sentinel and Nixy Nix.

It was an early example of RWL incorporating its own growing history into its shows.

Even in 2007, apparently, RWL already had a vault.

The Cardboard Gives Up

Back at the XCW Arena, Shawn O’ Mercy faced Kazuki “Lightning” Lyger.

The cardboard had also been booked for the match.

Unfortunately, it decided it had done enough.

Having spent the show loosely covering the grass, the makeshift ring base finally gave way during Mercy vs Lyger.

By the end, even RWL’s poorly assembled cardboard had begun leaving the show early.

It was time to carry on without it.

CorZ Becomes Valo

Before the next match, CorZ came out to address the crowd.

What followed became one of the most important identity changes in RWL history.

CorZ was no more.

From this point forward, he would be known as Valo.

Unlike the collection of names and characters that had come before it, this one stuck. Valo would remain his name for the rest of his wrestling career.

The crowd wasn’t particularly impressed with the announcement.

As they turned against him, Valo responded in kind, completing a heel turn alongside the change in identity.

A new name had arrived.

So had a new attitude.

And waiting for him was Jayyy.

Hardcore for the RWL Championship

Jayyy entered accompanied by Ginger G, previously seen at RWL events under the name Darren Holden.

The RWL Championship was on the line, and the newly christened Valo was challenging for it under Hardcore Rules.

With the cardboard having already surrendered, the surrounding XCW Arena became increasingly useful.

The match featured the sort of improvised weaponry that early RWL was becoming very good at finding.

Traffic cones came into play.

So did the wooden ramp.

There were lighttubes, while the natural environment provided the considerably less appealing combination of stinging nettles and thorns.

And then RWL discovered another weapon that would remain available for years.

Gravity.

The First Hill Spot

During Jayyy vs Valo came the first known example of what RWL would come to call a “hill spot”: a move or dive performed down one of the hills surrounding the wrestling area.

It wouldn’t be the last.

As RWL’s backyard years continued, hill spots became an increasingly familiar part of the promotion’s particular approach to hardcore wrestling, especially once RWL eventually reached the Stone Circle venue.

Here, though, it was something new.

RWL had already used cardboard, shopping trolleys, plasterboard, lighttubes, traffic cones and whatever else happened to be within reach.

Now the landscape itself was becoming part of the show.

A New Valo

By the end of Remedy III, the XCW Arena looked slightly different.

The cardboard was gone.

And so was CorZ.

The wrestler who had begun RWL’s recorded history as Corey Carver, before becoming CorZ, had finally adopted the name that would follow him through the remainder of his career:

Valo.

For a show preserved only through a low-resolution DVD copy, Remedy III contains one of the clearest dividing lines in early RWL history.

The Remedy name had technically existed before it.

Valo had technically existed before it too.

But this is where both finally became part of RWL’s surviving recorded history.

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Remedy began on a bouncy castle, continued in an attic and finally reached some badly assembled cardboard on a patch of grass. The cardboard didn’t survive the show and the original recording didn’t survive the years, but the name Valo certainly did.