15 YEARS AGO TODAY: I was one of 1,300 people in the Doncaster Dome as notorious mid-00s BritWres promotion 1PW opened its doors for the very first time with its inaugural event 'A Cruel Twist of Fate'. Let me tell you the story (as I remember it, anyway...)...
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In 2005 there were still travelling town hall shows like All Star going from town-to-town for families and kids. FWA was still the main promotion for hardcores but was fading and facing competition from upstarts like IPW:UK, LDN and SAS. The Wrestling Channel was on Sky.
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FWA was restructuring after losing its arse on their 'supershow' in Coventry at the tail end of 2004. The TWC International Showdown supershow in that same arena in March 2005 had been a big success, though, with its loaded lineup of imports from TNA, ROH, NOAH and more.
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Meanwhile Steven Gauntley, who ran video game and wrestling figure store '1-UP Games' with his wife Rosie, had the idea of starting his own promotion. The idea would be to attract fans by presenting regular cards packed with international talent to extent not seen before.
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Gauntley assembled his team of Joe Dombrowski & Anthony Kingdom James (IWC), Rick Peters (GSW) and Peter Staniforth (PTW) and, through their contacts, the show became a reality, securing top-line stars from TNA, former ECW names and other independent performers.
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The biggest coup of all, however, may well have been managing to get Matt Hardy, who had tonnes of online buzz about him at that time following his WWE release and the Edge-Lita saga. The first 1PW show's title was even named after him: "A Twist of Fate".
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But, things didn't go according to plan. Hardy re-signed with WWE and, despite originally being told he could honour the 1PW date, was pulled from the show by his new bosses. Alex Shane's latest Coventry supershow, who also had Hardy booked, suffered the same.
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In a bit of wheeling-dealing, 1PW were able to do a deal and secure Al Snow and Tommy Dreamer from WWE as a make good for pulling Hardy. The debut show was also renamed "A Cruel Twist of Fate" in recognition of the change. Still, the line-up looked packed by any standard.
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Similar to Alex Shane's supershows, 1PW arranged additional UK weekend bookings for some of the imports to recoup some of the cost of bringing them in.

So, the night before 1PW I got to see Raven, D-Lo Brown and a trashed Sandman at a wZw show in Middlesbrough Town Hall.
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So, the day arrived. I think I was just treating it as any other 1-off supershow rather than the start of a promotion itself. There was a pre-show battle royal for ringside ticket holders (I only had tiered seating). That was won by Darren Burridge to "win a 1PW contract".
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Main doors opened and wrestlers were all sat out at the gimmick tables. Loads of fans there, including all the familiar faces you saw at all these types of things across the country, so they'd clearly appealed to the hardcores. Pals of mine had driven from the south coast.
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There had clearly been no expense spared. It looked great. The lighting was better than anything I'd seen on a British show before and my first impression was that it looked like it wouldn't look out of place on TV - most BritWres shows of that era looked like the shits.
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Jonny Storm & Jody Fleisch vs. Jerry Lynn & Chris Sabin was a good TNA X-Division-style all-action opener.

Tracy Smothers vs. Blue "Meany" (sic) wasn't much, but played for laughs and was what it was. Smothers got over in 1PW in a cult popularity kinda way.

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The all-British 6-man was a bit rubbish, though. A big disappointment considering I normally thought all of these lot were good (except for Shabazz, that is - he was rotten).

Abyss came out after to destroy them, with Sterling James Keenan (Corey Graves) as his 'handler'.
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D-Lo Brown vs. Sterling James Keenan was basic. Keenan was a complete unknown to British (and, tbf, most US) audiences, so was a bit of a weird one to fly in, but Kingdom James knew him and had the idea of building around him as "the 1PW guy". Y'know, instead of a Brit.
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And THEN it was time for Steve Corino vs. Al Snow. Oh boy, how to describe this? Right: Corino was the revived AWA World Champion at the time, and doing the role of old school traveling world champion and liking the idea of doing 70s-80s classic world title style bouts.
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So, for about 25-30mins they did this really slow, very dull, methodical, technical match that bored the crowd into complete silence (and sent many to the bar, toilets or merch tables). Then, Corino did a heel fake injury angle that lasted another 10mins and fooled no-one.
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Finally, having done all that, they just ignored everything they had done for the last 35-40 minutes and turned it into a comedy match where they traded signature WWE finishers for laughs. Completely awful. 45 minutes that felt like 2 hours and for absolutely no reason.
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Low Ki v Iceman was a good, hard hitting match that resembled a FIGHT. Good fun. Iceman didn't have much recognition on the UK scene out of the north-east, but he'd become a top star in 1PW.

Hilariously, a miscue meant he came out against the American to 'Born in the USA'
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Low-Ki had apparently turned up in a bad mood and wasn't up for taking much of Iceman's stuff or giving him much, so it became the hard hitting strike battle we got. I enjoyed it, and previously (relatively) unknown Iceman got over well with these fans.
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Doug Williams vs. Austin Aries was good, but definitely a step below what might have been expected from those two at this stage. The story goes that Aries was badly jet-lagged, which affected the match.

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Raven vs. Sandman started as a one-on-one. They didn't do much of anything then a few minutes in Tommy Dreamer turned up with a shopping trolley full of weapons (obviously been to the Asda over the road) making it a "THREE... WAY... DANCE!!!"
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Match itself was a sloppy, typical weapons brawl, but this was LOADS of fun, probably the show highlight for many. ECW nostalgia was at a high coming off One Night Stand/the DVD, and experiencing a Sandman entrance live was awesome. Incredible energy and a red hot crowd.
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The main event pitted regular TNA opponents AJ Styles and Abyss against each other and they worked well together. This was a really slick, really good, really enjoyable bout that was worthy of being main event. SJK tried to get involved & Abyss went in some drawing pins.
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The show had massively overrun (lasting close to 5 hours) and hadn't featured any real 'killer' matches (though several very good ones), but it felt like a success and there was a positive energy coming away from it, like 1PW was a new force, what FWA wished it could be.
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During the show they announced a Blackpool-Doncaster double header as their follow-up in January. The Blackpool one never happened, for some reason, and it became a Doncaster Double instead. Then that became 1PW's pattern: double-show weekends in Doncaster every 2 month.
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The January, March and May 2006 weekenders were even more star-studded than this debut, with TNA headliners, ex-ECW stars and big-ticket ex-WWE stars (Bret Hart, Christian) making appearances. It was excess, and everyone could see it wasn't sustainable, but it was a ride.
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I got bored with 1PW and stopped going after that May 2006 weekend. While they were still doing big 1,500+ crowds, every show felt exactly the same, there were no real storylines to keep things interesting so I felt I'd seen it all and wasn't really missing out any more.
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They also quickly developed a fiercely-loyal cult core fanbase that blindly defended 1PW against every criticism people were rightly making about it, even constructive, which was a massive chore. "Thank You Steven" chants and the 'Book of Appreciation' became a point of fun.
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Gauntley also seemed to be feeling the pressure. He'd listen to the blinkered fans and label anyone who criticised 1PW as 'haters' or 'jealous'. He fell out with other promoters, wrestling magazines, The Wrestling Channel. Wrestlers knew what he'd pay so put their fees up.
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By the start of 2007, with no change in business strategy, the money ran out. They announced 1PW was finished and entering liquidation, just as 1PW was preparing for their January event that was to have featured the UK debut of Japanese wrestling legend The Great Muta.
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RQW ended up putting on a show in London to save Muta's booking (Muta famously declaring the UK "a dangerous place to do business" after this incident), while a combination of RQW, 3CW and A-Merchandise stepped in and ran the Doncaster event as a tribute/farewell to 1PW.
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The 1PW story didn't end there, however. Gauntley apparently found new backing and revived 1PW just a few weeks later. Learning lessons from before, though, he would run smaller workies' venues monthly, with more local talent, to build to a few big Dome shows each year.
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Gauntley gave up 1PW in 2008, from which point it went through a series of different ownership teams, none really able to make a financial success of it. Show became less frequent and less relevant, and finally stopped altogether before it could reach its 5th anniversary.
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1PW wasn't around long but certainly grabbed a lot of attention and are still discussed today. The shows were mostly decent and production values top end, and they got a lot of fans into watching British wrestling. But it was ultimately the organisational side that let them down.

There were numerous British talents who would go on to be key scene names in the next decade that got their first 'big' exposure in 1PW.

Their influence could also be seen in Southside and PCW that started up in their wake, essentially being "1PW, but better managed".

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1PW's excess also effectively ended the 'supershow' era of big showcase events full of individual imports, with the trend changing to entire 'foreign' promotions (ROH, PWG, TNA, NOAH, Dragon Gate) being brought over to put on authentic events, a trend which continues to this day.