Turning Medieval

Back to Reality

After Overdose: The Interfed had brought together wrestlers from across the UKBYW scene inside a professional wrestling training school, RWL’s next event was something of a return to reality.

It was back to the grass.

Back to the taped-together cardboard ring.

There had, however, been an upgrade.

RWL now had two shopping trolleys as top ropes.

The trolleys had been acquired from B&Q when the crew went shopping for hardcore supplies for the show, alongside sheets of plasterboard that could be turned into makeshift tables.

Some of that plasterboard was also used to create RWL’s latest technological advancement: an entrance-way.

Two pieces of plasterboard with “RWL” spray-painted across them were propped up using street construction signs, while a piece of checkerplate metal served as the entrance ramp.

WrestleMania it was not.

But it was progress.

Welcome to Turning Medieval

More importantly, the show marked RWL’s first appearance at a new location.

Still based in Ewood, the field would eventually become the spiritual home of RWL’s backyard era.

Over the years that followed, the location became inseparable from the promotion itself. To the wrestlers, friends and people who followed RWL during those years, the field would forever be known simply as Turning Medieval, taking its name from this very show.

What began as another patch of grass on which RWL could build its cardboard ring would become one of the most important locations in the promotion’s early history.

A Hardcore Champion Will Be Crowned

The show opened with CorZ arriving armed for battle.

Sort of.

Carrying a plastic sword from a pound shop and a “shield” that was actually an aluminium serving platter, CorZ announced that Turning Medieval would revolve around a round-robin tournament.

For the first time, RWL would crown an RWL Hardcore Champion.

Every tournament match would be contested under Hardcore Rules, giving the newly purchased plasterboard and assorted collection of makeshift weaponry plenty of opportunity to justify their existence.

CorZ vs Project S20

The tournament began with CorZ facing Project S20.

The match also contains one of the more questionable pieces of editing preserved from early RWL.

At one point, CorZ attempted a running 450 splash.

He didn’t quite make the full rotation.

Rather than simply allowing the footage to reveal CorZ landing on his feet and subsequently falling forward into something vaguely resembling a splash, the resulting music video features an extremely obvious cut and transition in an attempt to hide what actually happened.

It did not hide what actually happened.

The Mysterious Shawn O’ Mercy

Next came Adam Watson vs Shawn O’ Mercy.

Mercy made his entrance wearing a mask, apparently in an attempt to prevent anybody from realising that the masked man was Shawn O’ Mercy.

Unfortunately, it was very obviously Shawn O’ Mercy.

His elaborate disguise didn’t stop the approximately five people in attendance from recognising him either, with Mercy receiving a “Welcome Back” chant despite having only missed Best of the North West and Overdose.

Apparently two shows away was enough to warrant a triumphant return.

Mercy remained involved as the round-robin continued, facing Project S20, before S20 returned again to take on Adam Watson.

Enter Kazuki “Lightning” Lyger

The Hardcore tournament briefly gave way to the RWL Championship, as Jayyy defended against newcomer Kazuki “Lightning” Lyger.

Lyger was RWL’s latest masked creation, heavily inspired by Jushin “Thunder” Liger and born largely because CorZ happened to have yet another wrestling mask lying around.

Unlike some of RWL’s more purely comedic characters, however, Lyger was designed to straddle both worlds. The character was ridiculous, but they could still have proper wrestling matches alongside the comedy.

There was also a considerably more practical reason for the mask.

Underneath it was Nixy Nixxx.

Following the fallout surrounding Best of the North West and Overdose, GPW’s upper brass had told Nixy that they were no longer to take part in RWL.

That created another problem.

At the time, Nixy was the reigning RWL International Champion.

With the Nixy Nixxx character being dropped from RWL shows, the RWL International Championship was vacated following Overdose. Nixy’s reign ended without them losing the championship in a match.

Nixy themselves, however, weren’t quite finished with RWL.

The solution was apparently very simple:

Put on a mask and become somebody else.

And so Kazuki “Lightning” Lyger was born.

The new character allowed Nixy to continue appearing in RWL without wrestling as Nixy Nixxx, and Turning Medieval marked Lyger’s first appearance.

Naturally, the entire plan depended rather heavily on the mask staying on.

It didn’t.

Partway through the match with Jayyy, Lyger’s mask began to fall off.

Rather than abandon the character, Lyger disappeared off-camera, found another mask, put that one on instead and returned to continue the match.

Nothing suspicious here whatsoever.

Sorry, I’ve Got a Paper Round

There was another interruption during Jayyy vs Kazuki “Lightning” Lyger, although this one had nothing to do with wrestling.

CorZ’s mother, the legendary Christine, arrived with an important reminder.

CorZ had to go and do his paper round.

And so proceedings had to take a short break.

After travelling to Manchester, running interfeds featuring wrestlers from around the country and getting himself into trouble with a professional wrestling promoter, CorZ was still ultimately a teenager with papers that needed delivering.

RWL could wait.

The First Hardcore Championship

Eventually, attention returned to the tournament.

At the top of the round-robin standings were Shawn O’ Mercy and CorZ, setting up the main event to determine the first RWL Hardcore Champion.

Remarkably, despite their history together, this was also the first time CorZ and Shawn O’ Mercy had wrestled each other on camera in RWL.

And with a championship at stake, the pair pushed RWL’s idea of hardcore wrestling further than it had gone before.

By later standards it wasn’t particularly extreme, but for RWL at the time it represented another escalation.

Makeshift tables came into play. CorZ delivered a sequence of three attempted piledrivers, with the third being reversed into a back body drop onto the checkerplate metal entrance ramp.

The new entrance-way had survived almost an entire show before becoming a weapon.

There was even an elaborate moment in which CorZ was “electrocuted” on a powerline.

The powerline was, of course, grounded and completely safe.

That didn’t stop RWL from treating it with all the dramatic seriousness of a man being electrocuted during a wrestling match.

From a plastic sword and serving-platter shield at the beginning of the show to two tournament leaders fighting over the first Hardcore Championship at the end, Turning Medieval had delivered exactly the kind of chaos its name promised.

A Field Gets a Name

In hindsight, the most enduring legacy of Turning Medieval wasn’t any weapon, match or even necessarily the championship introduced that day.

It was the field itself.

RWL had arrived with its taped-together cardboard, two shopping trolleys, sheets of plasterboard and a collection of ideas, and accidentally given its backyard era a home.

Turning Medieval stopped being merely the name of a show.

It became the name of the place.

And for everyone involved with RWL during those years, it would remain that way.

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After briefly discovering a much bigger wrestling world at Overdose, RWL came home to cardboard, grass, shopping trolleys and a field that was about to become part of its identity. Turning Medieval had found its name.