Being a professional wrestler can be such an enjoyable experience, yet, sometimes such a frustrating one.

There is that old school opinion that wrestling is built from respect and that your time and your actions deserve the opportunities that you get. I know my place in the scheme of things, I have my rung on the ladder, but regardless, when it comes to the show, it is just as valuable as those who rest on the rungs above me and I appreciate that there are people below me who contribute to a show just as much.

The frustration lies in the false buddy buddy attitude of just getting on. I have seen people being false just for exposure and this culture is getting more popular in the UK Scene. It worries me that if you are someone’s mate you’ll get more exposure than someone who works damn hard for their reputation.

The easiest route though is TV exposure, there are so many wrestlers who crave it. Even I must admit the appeal of watching yourself wrestle but it is becoming the wrong goal I feel, the wrestler’s first duty is to entertain the audience and, as I have heard criticisms of some of the TV based wrestling companies, the focus can be lost from the live audience to the TV audience.

Remember that the UK Scene is predominantly small promotions working small regions, so national coverage is a little bit of overkill. No, really, why the hell would someone from Portsmouth visit a promotion in Liverpool?

Which brings the mystery of the draw, what exactly makes a draw? A famous person? Someone from TV? Let me ask you, unless they are from popular wrestling culture (i.e. WWE) would your average wrestling punter know or care about your wrestling channel champion?

The other question is would a TV watcher get off his/her butt for anything but a TV program?

1PW has proved in the past that if you have enough draws you’ll pull the interest of a good base of smark, TV fan and wrestling fan to make a reputation for yourself, but we have all learnt from 1PW that draws cost more money than is reasonable to run a promotion.

Don’t get me wrong, a lot of good draws are classic workers, Johnny Storm for instance knows how to entertain an audience and help his fellow worker at the same time, I should know, I have worked with him and alongside him enough to pick up his ethics to a show. Good draws can inspire a locker room to put on the best show they can and that is what you need to bring up an audience watching your show live.

Brandon Thomas summed it up succinctly to me once, he said “The worst thing is with a really good show is that video [or TV] can never show the atmosphere of a show, there is always something missing.”

And you know what, he is right!

I feel sorry for our TV watching UK Scene fans, they are missing out on the integral part of what makes UK wrestling so great, the atmosphere.