‘What The Hell Was I Thinking?!!’ - Confessions of the World’s Most Controversial Sex Symbol (25 page)

When I landed back in L.A., while I was waiting on everything to follow-through with XWF, Brian was still staying with me, and I felt horrible that he hadn’t been included in the XWF’s debut. He was an extremely talented wrestler, but that was all he knew, which worried me even more for him because I could see he was depressed.The Blue Meanie was great at his profession, but he had no other options, and ironically, it was his having painted himself into that corner that first sparked the idea for that we could starting our own wrestling league. I hated seeing him so depressed about the state of his career. Even as mine continued to rise, we had a great reception whenever we teamed up together on the road, so I knew between that and my reception at XWF that the fan base was there to build upon foundationally. In addition, I had made a great number of contacts between the indie shows, ECW, and XWF, so I had a rolodex of talent to call upon in the case our idea ever moved past theory. At that point, I was still holding out hope that XWF would take off, but weeks passed with no word on when the next show would be.

As the year came to an end, the only shows XWF had since the big debut a month earlier had been several local shows in Florida with the older talent like the Nasty Boys and The Road Warriors as the stars.They hadn’t invited me down to participate in any of them, even though we all knew it was the local shows that grew buzz for the bigger events, and gave the fans a chance to become familiar with new talent. Everyone already knew who the veterans were, and that couldn’t carry the day alone, it never did. I’d seen it with ECW, on the indie circuit, where I would get just as much crowd response as any veteran I was in the ring with, and now I was seeing the same sad charade play out all over again here. The difference by this point rested in the fact that I’d learned enough about the business over the past couple years to know what NOT to do, which was overstock your talent roster with older faces. Wrestling fans have a short attention span as is, and not only weren’t the older wrestlers physically capable of pulling off the same wild stunts they’d been famous for 10 years prior, but more importantly, the crowd could see that, and it put them to sleep every time. My eyes were wide open to this, and I saw it as a solution to Brian’s depression, as well as perhaps a possibility to carve out some security for my future in the business. XPW, Rob Black’s joke of a league, was also a sinking ship at this point, the greatest evidence of that being Vince McMahon’s lack of interest in throwing them a lifeline. He’d bought out ECW when its sails started to sag, recognizing Paul Heyman as a talent that Rob Black would never be. He wasn’t out of business yet, but there was definitely an opening in the market I spied that I knew would eventually open even wider as Rob’s hopes continued to dim. I spent the holidays of 2001 with my mother in New York City, and brought in the New Year back in L.A. with the Atomic Punks, a popular Southern California Van Halen tribute band. My resolution for 2002 was to immediately dive headfirst into the planning stages for my own wrestling league. From my time in the sport, I knew how to take a hit, and felt I could withstand whatever chauvinistic pressures would be applied initially in an attempt to keep me out of the managerial level of the sport. Men had run the world of wrestling forever, and I knew it was time to change that paradigm permanently.

By New Year’s Day I was already selling the Blue Meanie on my idea for starting our own wrestling federation — which I wish to re-iterate again for the record was MY IDEA, from the outset. To Brian’s credit, he did come up with the name, but it was my concept and my operation since I was planning to bankroll it entirely. I emphasize that because it pisses me off to this day because the sheer level of blood, sweat and money I put into getting 3PW off the ground has never been acknowledged. I’ll never take any credit away from Brian in terms of his talent in the ring, and his coming up with the name, which I loved from the outset, but make no mistake — outside the ring and behind the curtain I was pulling the strings from day one. I was the brain behind the operation, and the wheels were churning in my head non-stop as I began plotting our future.

I had plenty of motivation due to the run-around XWF was continuing to give their contract wrestlers. By the start of 2002, the delays had become permanent, and what pissed me off most about it was the fact that they wouldn’t be up front with us about the real reason why — Vince McMahon. He had seen the company as a threat, from what I heard and had been rumored to conspire behind XWF losing their T.V. syndication deal. As bad as I might have felt for them, they had they been straight up with everyone about it, I had no sympathy left by that point. If you can’t get it together, just say so and be fucking honest, and let the talent look for a more stable home. It was tying the hands of wrestlers who’d been conned into thinking they had a future they clearly didn’t, and while we were all potential competitors, XWF wasn’t at that point so what did it matter anyway? This attempt to lead everyone on endlessly is what ultimately solidified my resolve to start my own wrestling league. I was ambitious, was a natural promoter, had a business degree, and for the first

time, was being given an opportunity to combine all those assets into one investment. The most promising thing about my prospects for succeeding was my investing in myself and I knew that would keep me hungry.

I had nothing to lose at this point and new market share to gain if we played our cards right. While I had shut my porn site down, I continued with my dance feature gigs throughout the month, banking my considerable earnings from those shows toward our start-up costs for my new league, which by this point Brian — to his credit — had named 3PW (Pro-Pain-Pro Wrestling.) I also rounded up little investments from here and there, but the lion-share of our start-up capital came out of my pocket. For our first 3PW show, which was held at the old ECW Arena in South Philly on February 15th, 2002, I booked all the talent, coordinated the scheduling for hotels/airfare and even lined up the venue we held our debut at — the ECW Arena in Philadelphia, PA. I felt there was no better launching pad from which to announce that REAL indie wrestling had returned to the ring, and the venue owner must have liked my concept, because he gave me a great deal on the rent! We definitely were paying homage to the spirit of what ECW had stood for in its heyday, but wanted to make sure the world of wrestling knew we represented the start of a new era for wrestling: one where the sport’s first female promoter was intent on making her mark!

I booked the first’s show’s talent based off who I thought would make us money, drawing from my years wrestling with many the likes of the Sandman, Steve Corino, Crowbar, CM Punk, and Colt Cabana among others.These wrestlers were all ex-expatriates of the big-name leagues that Vince McMahon had swallowed up: WCW, ECW, etc. Collectively, they made up what would be the start of many star-studded rosters to come over the next two years. I had a vision: to popularize our own championship matches, create new ring-rivalries that would be exclusively battled out in our ring, to make a TRUE indie powerhouse, for lack of a better term.

Of course, we got off to the same start as every other league had — we sold out about half of the house, even in spite of the fact that we flyered to death, and had tickets available at all the major ticket outlets — Ticketmaster, etc. We worked our asses off. While I was handling the booking of talent and venue, Brian was heading up the street-team and working on the website. Together, we were taking the credibility and experience we’d built up between us as a team at ECW and on the indie circuit, and

pouring it all into the magic that became our first successful show was all the validation Brian and I needed to continue. We were also helped out by the reality that we were launching our company in the dead of winter in Philadelphia. Considering that we’d thrown the show together in just over three weeks, we both felt really good about how we began, in spite of what could have been better attendance numbers. We put on a stellar-show for those who did show up, and more than anything else, for me, the greatest high came from being in the ring again, on my own terms, calling my own shots. With only the fans to answer to, I knew things could only get better.

By the time of our next show, May of 2002, it was clear we were onto something. Buzz had spread to wrestling fans throughout the East, because our sophomore show was twice as packed as the debut had been. In the interim, my competitors on the indie circuit had already started talking shit about me, and the Blue Meanie and I were being given plenty of chances in the wrestling press to reply, clearly reflecting the media’s interest in our new endeavor. It was intriguing, the idea of a female-run wrestling league, and my reputation for having steel balls must have preceded me, because in interviews, I never got anything but encouragement from the journalists chronicling 3PW’s rise.

Consider Wikipedia’s summary of my strategy for the company’s talent roster starting out: ‘Following the close of Extreme Championship Wrestling, many former ECW veterans, such as Raven,The Sandman, Al Snow and Sabu, made frequent appearances in the promotion…Independent wrestlers including Rockin’Rebel, Monsta Mack, Ruckus, Joey Matthews, AJ Styles and Lo Ki also competed in the promotion…In the beginning, 3PW brought in wrestling legends like Dusty Rhodes, Terry Funk, Abdullah The Butcher and Bam Bam Bigelow to compliment the roster of young and upcoming talent.’

As we planned our sophomore show, evidence of the aforementioned buzz came with former ECW booker Todd Gordon’s phone call to us about joining the team. Brian and I were both elated at the idea, and brought him right aboard. He gave us a tremendous amount of street credibility, which is what we needed, and so rather than rush into another show the next month, we decided to take our time to plan our next show. We scheduled our next show for late May, and took the rest of the spring to set up our promotion properly. It had been so rushed with our debut show that we all wanted to take the time to do it right, which meant taking out ads in the paper, printing posters and flyers…I mean, we promoted the FUCK out of that show! The real draw though was the talent we booked for what became the first-ever 3-Way Body Bag match between New Jack, Sabu, and Sandman. We doubled our crowd at the second show, drawing around 900 people, and we even had a local league, Ring-Of-Honor Wrestling, try to run their own show head-tohead against me on the same night. We outdrew him as well, but it was more evidence to me of the fact that 3PW Wrestling was a fast-growing name.

When dealing with the inevitability of competitors trying constantly to steal our thunder, one thing I was a big bitch about was that I wouldn’t let other people flyer for their events at my shows. That I guess is something they’d been used to getting away with before I came on the scene. I was also very strict about the locker/dressing room backstage; I didn’t let anyone back who wasn’t involved with the production. I didn’t like my wrestlers’ privacy being invaded because that’s half of how all the drama at ECW had happened. It also prevented any spies in the vein of Rob Black’s to infiltrate our operation and try to steal ideas from it. I was so good at what I did, and I don’t care if people called me a bitch, or cunt, or whatever, I proved myself to be one of the best indie-promoters there ever was. Unlike a lot of the other operations out there, all of my wrestlers got paid on time, IN CASH, which no one else did, and Brian, Todd, everyone I had working for me did so on a salary. These people all worked for me as employees, and everything was negotiated through me. I was capable of playing as dirty or as nicely as my competitors wanted to, but one thing we made loud and clear with our second show’s success was: 3PW wasn’t going anywhere but UP!

Heading into the summer, there was another new company coming around called NWA TNA (Total Non-Stop Action) Wrestling, which was run by Jeff Jarrett, formerly of WCW, and they had some money behind them and were running pay-per-views at the time. Apparently they’d been keeping tabs on 3PW because they approached Brian and me that summer about appearing together on some of their PPVs. We didn’t see it as a conflict with our own company, especially since they had a visibility level with television we were aiming to eventually graduate to with 3PW. It was also welcome because our June 3PW show was very slow; it’s very difficult in the summer in that part of the country because

you’re competing with weekends at the Jersey Shore, which drew our attendance down. So we kept the budget relatively low on that show, knowing it would be a slow month. Still, the crowd went wild at that show when we rolled Bill Alfonso out of a body bag and into the ring for his match with the Sandman, and Sabu, and we called that show ‘The War Renewed.’ Our goal with that match was to pick up where ECW left off. That’s how people described it when it was over. So even though the crowd was lighter than May’s attendance had been our profile as a company continued to rise by the caliber of the matches we were putting together.

Then rumors started swirling that Rob Black’s XPW was going to try and compete on our turf. To me, that was a fucking joke, and no more a real competitor than this little backyard wrestling federation that had started up locally around the same time. We decided to take July off and hold our next 3PW show after Labor Day, and spent the interim working on the side for TNA. Once I’d started wrestling for them, Francine was brought in to have a head-to-head match with me in the ring, and she looked so horrible I actually felt bad for her. The match began with she and I started to engage in a cat fight backstage, which they showed on the jumbo-tron once we got to the ring. I did all the microphone work, called her out to the stage, and we had an even bigger cat-fight in the ring — before Brian finished her off with a pile driver. It was funny to me because it pissed her off so much to be in that position, where she’d always cock-blocked my spotlight time in the past. This was the best payback I could have asked for, being in a new league, where we were both on the same level, and I was considered a bigger star than she was in how they scripted the match’s outcome.

That August, we held a lower-key 3PW wrestling event, ‘Babes, Belts and Blood,’ which featured a title match for Dusty Rhodes vs. Bam Bam Bigelow vs. Kevin Sullivan. For that event, I also thought it would be a smart move to sponsor a promotional wet T-Shirt ‘Miss 3PW’ contest designed to promote the forthcoming September show. I remember inviting Ron Jeremy to come in and emcee the event, and it went off beautifully with the crowd.

Ron Jeremy:
I was also impressed with the fact that Jasmin had retired from the porn business and was still popular. A lot of girls will often wait and keep performing past their prime. They go on the road and feature, and do a porn film once in a while to keep themselves current on that circuit, but Jasmin loved entertainment and being in the limelight, and knew how to keep herself there by expanding beyond porn and into wrestling. I think that was very smart, and others tried it after her and weren’t nearly as successful.

Jasmin:
As we went into planning our September 3PW show, I got word that Ring-of-Honor was planning to run a head-to-head show with us on the same night, so we took the gloves off. We hired who had just been released from the WWF — and I made sure he was off the market and booked for 3 shows after that. I utilized that strategy a lot when I was booking wrestlers for 3PW shows, wherein I would lock them in for 3 or 4 dates at a time, so they’d stay exclusively in our camp. Our September show, ‘This One’s For You,’ which was held on the 21st at the ECW Arena, was fucking PACKED! Our main event was Sabu vs. Syxx pac (formerly known as X-pac of the WWE,) and I booked Missy Hyatt, the ‘First Lady of Wrestling’to come down. She and I had an appearance together called the ‘Three Way Strip Off,’ where we stripped out of an evening gown into our bra and panties. It evolved into this huge catfight in the ring. It was amazing to be employing all these legends I had grew up watching — especially Missy Hyatt, who was one of my heroes in the sport. That feud between Missy and me in the ring was one of my highlights looking back at my wrestling career.

We passed fire code on the September show, and after that, the word was out, to the point where before the night was even over, we were getting requests for tickets to the next show, which we hadn’t even planned yet! We were finally in demand, and we even turned a small profit on the September show. Most importantly though, everyone got paid, largely thanks to my knowing everything there is to know about budgeting while not looking cheap in the process: for instance, with the corporate rate deals I did with hotels I put our wrestlers up at. For the first couple shows, I’d had everyone at the Holiday Inn, but I found a better deal with the Ramada for the September show, and it was a nicer hotel at that. Anyway, once word got out that 3PW paid CASH, plus expenses, it became a chorus of ‘That’s the company to work for; they’re fucking cool.’It’s funny too because by this point 3PW had an 800 number, and we had every idiot in the industry calling up to get work with us, and many of them weren’t humble about it either. Still, we put up with it because THEY were calling US, and my goal was to continue expanding our roster.