After hearing al the noise and rumbling concerning Sovereign Championship Wrestling (SCW) this year I just had to talk to some of its stars about the new storylines, characters and plans for the future of SCW. So with this in mind I sat down with 4 of SCW’s main protagonists Kevin Stevens, Samhain, Mayhem and Lee Coles in a roundtable interview.
As there is a lot to talk about the interview is split in to three parts here is part 1.
Part 1
So guys can you each fill me in on your roles and characters at SCW?
Kevin Stevens: At the moment, I’m just a wrestler. I’ve spoken to Samhain, who owns Sovereign Promotions about possibly booking the Commonwealth division in the future. I’m a big mark for the Cruiserweights, and the Commonwealth title in SCW is our version of a Cruiserweight Championship. Behind the scenes, I help to promote SCW and also work on the website.
My character is actually going through a change at the moment. He’s recently turned face, and I’ve got an idea of where I want him to head. I’m making the transition from a singles wrestler to a tag-team wrestler at the moment, before that I was a cocky heel. Me and Lee Coles both broke into the business together, after training together, and we both came into SCW with no fan-fare or anything like that, after leaving K-Star Wrestling without even having a match there. In our first match, we were both booked to wrestle each other. It was a last minute deal, which neither of us was expecting, as we only went to the SCW show that day for a trial. We drew up a short plan for the match, where we were both SCW trainees, but we needed a heel and a face scenario, to get the fans into the contest. So during the match I started to fight dirty to win the match. Lee was wrestling straight the entire time. This lead to me getting some amazing heel reactions and turned into a storyline and the feud with me and Lee that lasted a whole year. The face turn I’ve recently taken, will be my first run as a face. I’m not sure how it’ll work or how the fans will react to it… but I have high hopes, as towards the end of my heel run, I got some pretty decent face pops unexpectedly.
Mayhem: My role..That’s a tough one. I’d like to think I’m some where in the mid to top of the SCW ranks. Backstage I’m told I am the unofficial locker room leader and a role model to some folks (Lee and Kev included so they say!lol) because I always try to be a professional in everything I do, whether I’m winning, loosing or special guest refereeing. My character is called Mayhem and he is some what of a bad-ass!lol. Seriously, Mayhem is the guy you love to hate. He comes out, runs his mouth about how great he is and then REALLY aggravates the fans by backing up what he says. I’m going to be trying out a baby face version of the Mayhem character on this upcoming show, so we’ll see how far that can run, as up to now I’ve been a heel (I did try to be a face against MTX in a very pro-MTX crowd. Guess what…I was a heel by the end of the match).
Samhain: I’m samhain , the dark and brooding one … I make my statements with my fists and feet … in real life, I’m the booker, so if anything goes wrong, I’m the one that gets all the stick from the guys !!! …Just kidding, nothing EVER goes wrong. LOL
Lee Coles: I’m Lee Coles the other half of the tandem Old School Students, I’m a power house that uses submissions and power wrestling; with it I am a face.
Now SCW is coming back to force this year after a little break which of you guys were involved with the organisation when it first started?
Kevin Stevens: I’m relatively new to SCW. I’ve been there little over a year. It’s always had a great atmosphere in the time I’ve been there, and now it’s up and running again, there’s no difference. It feels as if the break didn’t even happen. The most notable thing about the new SCW, if you wanna call it that, is there’s a lot more guys backstage now, and everyone is working about 10 times harder than I’ve seen them working before. I’ve witnessed that personally. It’s nice when everyone’s so into making it a success, because it drives you to be better just that little bit more.
Mayhem: I’ve been in SCW for a long while (late 2000 is when I joined) but not since the very beginning. A friend of mine introduced me to then SCW owner/booker Poison and he invited me to train with the guys as I hadn’t wrestled in a long while because of my back. Soon enough I was refereeing shows for SCW before making the switch to the active roster with a gimmick I believe is still some what unique. I’d work the first match of the night and if I lost be forced to referee the rest of the show. That was extremely tiring!lol
Samhain: Well, without trying to sound big headed, I was there at the start all the way back in June 2000, and I’ve only missed the one show, and that was due to an angle we were running.
There are other guys who have been with us from the start, Latz, Kiddy Snax, Carnage, who is our current Heavyweight Champ, and Hunters Inc, our current tag champs. All great guys who bust their butts each and every time out of the gate, just the same as the rest of us.
Lee Coles: you guys were involved with the organisation when it first started? I never broke in to SCW until last April.
What have you been doing during the gap?
Kevin Stevens: During the gap, I headed up to UCW in Wiltshire to do some stuff with them. Nothing really came of it, though, due to monetary issues on my part. I was nursing a knee injury at that point, and so a lot of work was the last thing I wanted to do anyways. So I focused on wrestling journalism and got a job with Total Wrestling magazine, SLAM! Wrestling and an online ezine company. I just wrote and got myself back to full fitness, lifting weights. The general stuff.
The good thing about gaps like that, if you have to take a positive out of them, is that you get so many new ideas and things you wanna try, in your head. I didn’t really look at it as a negative, I looked at it as a “creative window” where I could sit back and watch what others were doing, and come up with a lot of new ideas of my own to better them. Those of us who spoke to Samhain, saw that he was getting a desire for wrestling which I hadn’t seen in him previously before. The reason SCW took a break was because of a few reasons, but one of them was Samhain’s desire fluctuating to the point where he didn’t wanna put on shows anymore. After speaking with him a few times, I could see that it wouldn’t be long before SCW was back up and running, because the desire was there for all to see. So by the time SCW was back, I had all these fresh ideas, and I felt better than ever.
Mayhem: Errr…not a lot really. I’m a single parent of 2 very active children. The cost of professional babysitting these days is so prohibitive that I’m restricted to wrestling when my mom can baby-sit for me (which isn’t often cos she works full-time). I have been trying to keep in shape with the help of some Matt Furey work out sheets and some very long walks though!
Samhain: As far as the promotion goes, just sorting out the shit that comes with the business, insurances, training, general promotions, the website etc… In my personal life, I’ve been getting divorced and helping my mother with some health issues. After all, there are times when even wrestling has to take a backseat.
Lee Coles: I tried out with a company called UCW in Swindon I also had an injury I was shaking off so not much I was in the gym training a lot though.
It is well documented that a lot of wrestlers have used SCW as their launching pad for their careers like Jack Xavier do you guys see SCW as a launching pad or are you striving to make SCW an even bigger force to be reckoned with?
Kevin Stevens: I think EVERYONE within the SCW locker room, is there to make SCW a success. The work-rate in SCW is un-comparable. It might not be the biggest show in town, but the talent we have is equal to anything I’ve seen in FWA, FCW, KSW… wherever. The passion there is over-whelming. Guys like Brandon Thomas, who were in FWA, which is considered “bigger things” in the UK industry, was still competing on SCW shows and taking risks and bumps he didn’t have to take, in-front of a crowd of about 50 people, in order to make SCW a success. He didn’t do it for himself, the crowd wasn’t the greatest, he was already a recognised talent. He was doing it for SCW, and I can say the same for everybody else I’ve seen in the SCW locker room recently.
Sometimes we don’t get the biggest crowds, but we go out there with the mentality that, sure, tonight there is only 50/60 people… but next time, there’s gonna be 100/150 people, then the time after that, who knows? That’s because the show we give, no matter how many people there are in the audience, is always amazing. Simply because every last one of us, wants to make SCW a success and a force. We all work for different promotions occasionally, and we all love working for them other promotions and gaining experience from it. But speaking for myself personally, and I dare say a lot of others feel the same as me… SCW is home.
Mayhem: Yes, SCW is a launching pad, but I’d like to see that change. We have lost some home-grown talent to other companies over the years. What really bugs me is the way some of those guys forgot where they came from and blew SCW off with out so much as a thank you for the opportunity (blatant Vince McMahon line there!lol).
SCW can be so much more than it is at the moment and has been in the past. It seems a lot of people can’t get over what happened at the Zandig (from CZW) show in 2001,and we are still tarnished because of it. Only a couple of weeks ago I heard some one saying that SCW was a promotion that relied solely on hardcore matches which is just total bullshit! Some weapons are used OCCASIONALLY on SCW shows, but I can really only think of 1 match in recent times where there was a blatant No-Holds-Barred anything goes gimmick, and that was my feud ending match with Samhain (crush) at setting the scene.
Samhain: I’m going to have to be cryptic in my answer here, SCW IS A FORCE ALREADY, if you don’t understand how, look at our history, you should begin to understand.
SCW as a launch pad??? Suppose so, all depends how you wanna look at it. You mentioned Jack Xavier, I knew him when he was a red shirt security … SCW gave him a start, and he forged his own path from there … best of luck to him, he hasn’t expected anything to be handed to him, he’s grafted for it. Other guys from SCW have gone on too like Brandon Thomas, and Ian Desiple in the FWA. It’s all good as far as I’m concerned.
Lee Coles: I am personally trying to make SCW a force to be reckoned with as I feel at home with these guys I mean as big as we may not be, we have the heart of the WWE beating in us, we want to burst that so we can show this country what we can do.
Have you worked with any other promotions?
Kevin Stevens: I’ve worked a cross-over show with MPW, done some stuff with AIWF and UCW, and as I mentioned earlier… was trained at the KSW gym. I do accept outside bookings, but as far as that goes, I haven’t done as much work outside of SCW as a lot of other guys. I keep SCW as my main priority, and just generally wanna focus on getting myself and SCW as good as I can, before branching out to other companies too much. As I said, though, I do accept outside bookings and my contact information can be found at my new web-site (OldSchoolStudents.tk). Me and Lee Coles have formed a tag-team and are currently only taking tag-team bookings, but if you’re interested and need a good tag-team, give us a look.
Mayhem: We have in the past. We did a show last year with MPW from Coventry which was quite good, but didn’t lead to anything else. As I mentioned before we have worked with John Zandig and Wifebeater from CZW on a show heavy with other British talent. It is something I’d like to explore in future, working with/for other promotions. But the terms and conditions would have to be right, as well as the storylines and angles.
Samhain: Since joining SCW I’ve only done a 3 month stint on the Holiday camp circuit, so as I could accelerate my learning curve … beyond that no, SCW is my first, last, everything, and apart from that I work a very demanding day time job, so I made the sacrifice and made SCW my priority. It has been frustrating at times, but in all honesty, I would not have had it any other way.
Lee Coles: I started my career in K-Star Wrestling in 2000 I left due to injury the same year then in 2002 I went back and trained with Tough Guy Barry Malone, I have wanted to form a tag-team with my best friend and bitter rival Kevin Stevens for some time.
Adam Sibley