Brian Damage
Professional wrestling is filled with great “feel good” stories. One that immediately comes to mind, is what is currently happening on WWE’s Smackdown. The current Universal champion Roman Reigns will defend his title at the 2021 Royal Rumble against WWE official Adam Pearce. For fans not familiar of Pearce, he was and is more than just another face in a suit.
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Brian Damage
Ever since the WWE went into a national and then a global expansion beginning in the 1980’s, we have seen professional wrestling go through many cataclysmic changes. We’ve seen the territorial system get wiped out, we’ve seen Jim Crockett Promotions wave the white flag and sell to Ted Turner. We have witnessed the once proud AWA fall…as well as ECW and eventually WCW.
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Brian Damage
If the name Howard Lipkint doesn’t sound familiar…he does have his place in professional wrestling lore. You see, back in January of 2000, Lipkint along with Ted Dibiase formed a start up national wrestling promotion. The hope was that this promotion could one day compete with both WCW and the WWE. The name of this new wrestling company was WXO.
What did WXO stand for? Nothing. Granted, I’m sure it stood for something….but it was never revealed and/or explained. So here we had this brand new wrestling promotion that somehow got a TV syndication deal…yet it had a name that stood for nothing.
I have to give credit where credit is due…Ted Dibiase and Howard Lipkint did manage to get it on TV and the production value wasn’t all that bad. Cheesy? Perhaps, but they did have the WXO up and running and into the wrestling history books. The way the promotion was described by the announce team…it was old school wrestling with a modern twist.
Speaking of the announce team…it was pretty decent. The announce team consisted of the always capable Chris Cruise and former Fabulous One/Midnight Express-er ‘Sweet’ Stan Lane. Stan Lane had the voice of an announcer and wasn’t too shabby behind the mic either as a color analyst.
The roster seemed to be a work in progress…as some guys were advertised but never appeared such as Big Van Vader. There was a mixture of former WCW and WWE guys like ‘The Dominator’ Fred Ottman (Tugboat/Typhoon/Shockmaster)….Erik Watts…Mike Enos….Barry Horowitz….Barry Darsow…The Shane Twins….Johnny Ace….Mike Burton (Bart Gunn)…Al Green….and Dan ‘The Beast’ Severn…just to name a few.
No champions were ever crowned and there was only one TV taping that churned out 3 shows at an hour a piece. The WXO scheduled and advertised another set of tapings at Universal studios for later in the month…but were abruptly canceled and the WXO was never heard or seen from again….
Ring the Damn Bell 