Blunder Down Under: A Look At The World Wrestling All Stars

Brian Damage

In 2001, pro wrestling was in a very serious rut. The once red hot industry of the mid 1990’s had lost plenty of steam and was in a downturn as covered here. Promotions like ECW and WCW had folded and thus, made Vince McMahon and WWE the only real game in town. It was the downfall of these groups that led a host of wannabe promoters to try and form their own wrestling organizations to be an alternative to Vince’s sports entertainment monopoly.

Enter Australian concert promoter Andrew McManus, who was one of the first people to try and capitalize on wrestling’s need for a second option. McManus had made millions for himself promoting musical acts like Aerosmith, Fleetwood Mac, Whitney Houston and KISS. He knew there was a hunger for pro wrestling in his native country and saw how successful WCW had when on tour Down Under. McManus formed his own promotion and called it World Wrestling All Stars and the WWA headquarters would be based out of Brisbane, Australia.

To achieve his vision of what he wanted World Wrestling All Stars to be, McManus hired former WWF and WCW head creative writer Vince Russo. Unfortunately or fortunately (depending on your views of him) Russo backed out of his deal with WWA when he learned he would have to uproot his family and live in Australia. Instead, Russo recommended someone who would be perfect to take over the booking of the company…Jeremy Borash. Russo had developed a friendship with Borash while both were in WCW. He was young and eager to make an impact in pro wrestling. Borash was hired as a booker/head of talent relations and an announcer.

It was Jeremy’s connections to the wrestling world that allowed WWA to secure several former WCW, ECW, WWF and independent talents that WWE didn’t want. Wrestlers like Jeff Jarrett, Konan, Buff Bagwell, The Road Dogg, Eddie Guerrero, AJ Styles, Frankie Kazarian, Christopher Daniels and many more were brought on board. Despite not having a much needed television deal….World Wrestling All Stars began touring throughout Australia in October of 2001. The tour would culminate with their very first pay per view entitled Inception.

WWA Inception featured an eight man tournament called The Seven Deadly Sins tournament to crown a new WWA world champion. The tournament final saw Jeff Jarrett defeat The Road Dogg to win the vacant title. Juventud Guerrera defeated Psicosis in a ladder match to become the new cruiserweight champion and featured matches such as Norman Smiley versus Crowbar and Gangrel versus Luna Vachon in something called a Black Wedding match. The pay per view happened in October of 2001, but aired in the United States in January of 2002.

Bret Hart, who had sworn off wrestling during this time period was hired to act as the WWA’s Commissioner. He was paid a reported 40,000 dollars to come out of retirement and become the company’s on screen authority figure. Other big names that were eventually brought in included Scott Steiner, Sting and Lex Luger. All of which commanded big pay days from the promotion.

The WWA would start to tour all over the world in places like the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Switzerland. All these tours happened despite still having no television contract to speak of. They would instead hold pay per views to try and generate income. In total, World Wrestling All Stars held five pay per views in the time the company was open for business. They included the aforementioned Inception, Revolution, Eruption, Retribution and The Reckoning. All of these shows were held overseas…with the exception of Revolution which was the WWA’s first and only attempt to crack the United States market.

The show emanated from Las Vegas, Nevada and had an attendance of 2,800 fans. The main event that was booked and advertised was Jeff Jarrett defending the WWA world title against Randy Savage. The problem was…Savage decided to no show the event and Brian Christopher was chosen as an emergency replacement. No shows and wrestlers coming and quickly leaving would become the norm for WWA through its existence. Many wrestlers would come in, only for the WWE to offer guaranteed contracts for more money and the wrestlers would take the money and run. Keven Nash was on his way to WWA, but Nash became suspicious of McManus and decided to take the offer from WWE instead. The same for wrestlers like Scott Steiner and Eddie Guerrero.

It was becoming apparent that the WWA was losing a lot of money and the roster were beginning to look elsewhere for work. Jeff Jarrett was one of those wrestlers who left the company to form his own. which would be known as TNA. Jarrett would bring several of the WWA wrestlers with him to help get TNA wrestling off the ground. The writing was certainly on the wall for one of pro wrestling’s first promotions after the extinction of both ECW and WCW.

The company’s final pay per view called The Reckoning occurred on May 25th, 2003 in Aukland, New Zealand. A crowd of about 3,000 saw the WWA go head to head with Jeff Jarrett’s TNA in an inter promotional event. The show saw Jarrett unify the WWA world title with his NWA world title by defeating Sting. It also saw the WWA cruiserweight title merge with the TNA X Division title as Chris Sabin defeated Jerry Lynn, Frankie Kazarian and Johnny Swinger in a Fatal Four Way Match.

The Reckoning was a way to wrap up this once promising venture from Andrew McManus. A sort of series finale to wrap up all the loose ends. Something that many failing wrestling companies never get the chance to do.