A new book tells the inside story of how the revival of British independent wrestling hit its peak before things began to unravel.

One Fall to a Finish: Inside the British Wrestling Boom Years and Beyond is author Greg Lambert’s unique first-hand perspective on a thriving period for the UK scene.

In 2018, British wrestling was dominating the TV landscape like it hadn’t done for decades.

With the comeback of wrestling to ITV, the launch of a new WWE brand in the UK and the first ever live weekly wrestling TV series based in the country, once again British wrestlers were the talk of the world.

What could possibly go wrong? One Fall to a Finish tells all.

One Fall to a Finish also brings to an end a trilogy of books covering a roller-coaster 20-year story of British wrestling fighting back to prominence.

The trilogy began with Lambert’s debut release ‘Holy Grail: The True Story of British Wrestling’s Revival’ (2012) and continued with ‘Ropes and Glory: The Emotional Rise of British Wrestling’ (2017).

Picking up from where Ropes and Glory left off, One Fall to a Finish covers the period from when British wrestling returned to ITV for the first time since the late ‘80s, with the pilot World of Sport (WOS) show on New Year’s Eve 2016.

It goes on to document how WWE retaliated by creating its own British wrestling brand, beginning with the first WWE UK Championship Tournament in January 2017.

One Fall to a Finish also takes an in-depth look at other successful promotions of the era, including Progress, Revolution Pro, ICW, WAW and What Culture/Defiant Pro Wrestling.

Then it covers the escalating battle between WOS and WWE during 2018, including the historic 10-part WOS series and the launch of NXT UK.

Big UK names including Drew McIntyre, Tyler Bate, Piper Niven, Pete Dunne, Alba Fyre (Kay Lee Ray), Will Ospreay, Grado, Zack Sabre Jnr and the Knight family are all featured, as One Fall to a Finish delves deep into the stories behind these thriving years for British independent wrestling.

One Fall to a Finish then explains why the bubble burst on the UK wrestling boom, the impact of the Covid pandemic and the Speaking Out movement in 2020, and where British wrestling stands today as it attempts to recover from such a tumultuous period.

The book is dedicated to, and touchingly pays tribute to, the late Adrian ‘Lionheart’ McCallum, top British wrestler and a long-time PCW colleague of the author. McCallum tragically took his own life in 2019, aged 36.

In a similar vein to the first two books, One Fall to a Finish also follows Lambert’s own unlikely career in British wrestling across a variety of positions including TV commentator, storyline writer, ring announcer, manager and backstage producer.

This includes his central role in the barely believable tale of 5 Star Wrestling, a company which in 2018 landed the first UK-based wrestling series on live television in almost half a century, only to collapse and go out of business just five weeks in.

Lambert, who co-hosted the 5 Star Wrestling TV show alongside TNA star Joe Hendry and was also assistant writer on the series, gives a detailed insider account on what happened behind-the-scenes in 5 Star and why the company failed.

He also shares his experiences of working for other leading UK promotions PCW and NGW, of being part of the WOS UK tour in 2019, and the difficulties he faced in dealing with the end of his own professional wrestling career in his home town of Morecambe, where he’d been the driving force for 15 years.

One Fall to a Finish also features interviews with some of the leading figures of the UK wrestling scene, who add their own fascinating insight into the story of its boom period.

They are UK-based American wrestling personality SoCal Val, top independent star Mark Haskins, AEW star Zak Knight, WOS champion Justin Sysum, former NXT UK roster members Sam Gradwell and Sha Samuels, UK scene veterans Steve Lynskey and Danny Hope, wrestling booker and journalist Dan Richardson, die-hard wrestling fan Ben Corrigan and Rev Pro promoter Andy Quildan.

Photographs are provided by Tony Knox, and include a stunning cover image of Will Ospreay mid-flight during a match on British soil against WWE superstar Gunther.

One Fall to a Finish: Inside the British Wrestling Boom Years and Beyond, is available now exclusively on Amazon in both paperback and e-book versions.