“We’re delighted to announce we’re now working alongside Pivotshare to bring you Discovery on Demand! More news soon!” – Discovery Wrestling, 28th March.
It was with this tweet that Discovery Wrestling conveyed the excellent news that they had now begun their partnership with Pivotshare. Aligning Discovery with Pivotshare, a company who is well known for its reliability with wrestling promotions such as ICW, CZW, Progress, AAW, WSU and many others worldwide which allows fans from across the world to see the events with easier access via an On Demand service.
It should be noted that this is an amazing accomplishment by a young wrestling promotion and when you analyse Discovery’s history from the very beginning, you can see that it took a lot of hard work by the Discovery team, the wrestlers and their adaptability to get them to this moment.
Looking back to the month of June 2014, there were rumblings of a new Scottish wrestling promotion débuting in Edinburgh. Previously the Scottish capital had hosted other successful promotions such as W3L, SSW and Insane Championship Wrestling events.
Wrestling fans were eager to see what this new promotion would bring to the table in the central belt of Scotland with established companies such as ICW, BCW PBW, SWA, PWE & Pride Wrestling already in existence. All these promotions are all localised in the West of Scotland while promotions such as WSL, SSW and Reckless as well as WrestleZone operate in the East. All equally doing fantastically well. Looking back it’s easy to say that the pressure was already on the Discovery Wrestling team.
At their début show, the original two matches lined up were Grado vs Al Snow as well Damo vs Rampage Brown with more to follow on October 11th. But trouble was soon to arrive just as Discovery secured Chris Sabin, Mike Mundo and current Progress Wrestling Heavyweight Champion Marty Scurll to join the show:
“Especially with this being our first show we want to be open and honest with our fans and break the news to you that due to his filming commitments with the BBC Grado has pulled out of the event on the 11th of October. Obviously we are extremely gutted by this and know you will be too. However, we have a few things up our sleeves to more than make up for this disappointment” – Discovery Wrestling, 24th September.
For fans, this was originally disheartening but Discovery had another announcement ready to make sure fans weren’t disappointed for long and the naysayers who revelled in the new promotion’s teething problems soon went back to cursing them again as the company announced they would have former WWE Superstars Cryme Time as their replacement with former WWE Smackdown G.M Teddy Long appearing via satellite.
Despite international star, Shanna missing the show due to injury, the promotion’s début on the 11th of October in Edinburgh at the Meadowbank Sports Centre was a successand with the fans. Almost immediately afterwards the team were looking forward to the next event in April.
“We’ve been hinting for a while we had something pretty special lined up for April…..and here it is!!! Coming to Edinburgh on April 10th – none other than The Young Bucks”
The Jackson brothers have been all over the world… TNA, ROH, PWG, and now two time NJPW Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Champions….and now they’re coming to Scotland!!” – Discovery Wrestling, 12th February.
Hosting a smaller yet successful event in March, all the attention was then placed on Discovery’s ‘SuperKick Party’ in April with this event being of equal success to their début. Once again the team never stopped in it’s focus to progress further in bringing stars to Scotland but they weren’t relying on only that to bring in the fans. Discovery’s aim was to capture both die-hard and casual wrestling fan at the doors as they put an emphasis on providing matches involving UK stars you wouldn’t regularly see in one show.
The next show planned to have two stars from the USA arriving except only one would show, that being Tommaso Ciampa while the other star Bram wouldn’t be able to appear due to legal reasons. Immediately the team brought Grado who undoubtedly was one of the most popular wrestlers back into the fold. Also Discovery would continue to hunt for a venue that they would call home in Edinburgh and on this occasion it would be Napier University’s Sighthill Camp, a short term solution but ultimately a better set-up for capacity and control.
Fast forwarding to 2016 and on April 10th the company will host International star and Ring of Honor Champion; Jay Lethal who will but his ROH Title on the line against” Iron Man” Joe Coffey in the Corn Exchange, Edinburgh. As well as a barrage of other matches announced involving Lewis Girvan facing Aspen Faith, Debbie Sharpe against Lucy Cole and a fatal four-way match to be the number one contender to Lewis Girvan’s Interim Y-Division Championship.
Gone is the fluctuating between many different venues as Discovery seems to remain in Edinburgh between The Jam House and Corn Exchange. Another thing that has developed over the years is that the unwavering loyalty that the promotion has gained and this is down to the company’s undeniable honesty when it comes to situations out with their control. Along with their customer service which remains to be one of the best in UK. Continuously willing to please their fans at any given moment, it’s understandable why fans look forward to their events.
With the April 10th event on the cards and the partnership with Pivotshare, it’s clear that Discovery Wrestling have plans on making sure they are here for the long haul.
*Our thanks to Graeme K Cunningham Photography.for the images used in the feature and to Craig Hermit (@craighermit) for the article.
SCOTTISH WRESTLING NETWORK | SWN 