WrestlEurope
00domenica 6 gennaio 2008 22:52
Alex Shane posted it on UKFF few minutes ago:
"Firstly I would like to take the time to say happy new year to everyone. 2007 was a great year for big events on UK soil with the first ever KOE Cup, The Ring of Honor return tour and Legends Showdown. However, as big as 2007 was, 2008 is set to be even bigger and that seriously is no empty salesman patter.
Because of this I have taken an important step with regards to this years KOE Cup. It was always my intention to have an annual UK event that brought the world’s best talent under one roof for a highly anticipated show that became a regular fixture on the world wide wrestling calendar. After promoting events in the past with a similar desire like FWA British Uprising and TWC International Showdown I really feel like the KOE Cup will become this event. Because it is independent and is not promoted by a single company that needs build up shows to help it gain interest, unlike Uprising for example, it can be run every year with an increasing heritage and interest from fans that only requires one show annually to maintain its appeal.
The first one was very unique and everyone involved felt that it was a great success creatively with awesome reviews across the board from the wrestling press. We did however suffer from ROH’s decision to cancel their already planned Broxbourne event and run two nights at Liverpool. This was not my call despite being the tour promoter (I was very concerned by their actions in doing it in fact) and it left me in the bizarre position of having two of my own weekends of events competing with each other in the very same building no less. This clearly hurt the KOE Cup 2007 attendance despite us drawing over 2,100 tickets sales for four shows in two days. The fledgling event was no match for Samoa Joes last ever ROH weekend and thus the tournament draw suffered. I was sadly forced to learn something very valuable about over saturation of the market because of this and am very keen not to do it again with this years Cup when there now is some real excitement about the second years event.
With this in mind I would like to announce that due to some recent developments I have made the decision of holding back the King of Europe Cup 2008 event until the second half of the year. Although there were some dates leaked out last month for the KOE Cup this year (which were not official) the announcement was being held back purposely because of several other big shows that were being discussed to take place around the same time. As one of these two events I am heavily involved in, there seemed little sense in holding this years KOE Cup in the same 8 week period as what will be two other such massive European events the likes of which have NEVER been held on these isle.
The point of the KOE Cup weekends is to give UK fans a Wrestlemania style weekend in Europe full of action packed, smarter wrestling shows and a big party. To do this on top of the other, similar, events planned to be taking place around this time would end up being a real financial burden to British fans who wanted to attend all three. With this in mind I have taken the step of holding back the KOE Cup 2008 until after the summer of this year.
One of the two events I am referring to is of course the debut European show from Pro Wrestling NOAH. As I have a long history with both Doug Williams (who helped found the KOE Cup) and Mark Sloan (who founded FWA) it only makes sense for me to hold back the Liverpool events as there is already an unfortunately minuscule amount of time between the NOAH event and the other show planned to be taking place in Coventry that month. Leaving the KOE Cup shows until later in the year allows these shows to be extremely close but not directly hurting each others ticket sales as the shows rosters will be COMPLETELY different. I will be working with Mark to help make sure that as close as these shows will be (which was sadly unavoidable) we will help not hinder each other.
Sadly I cannot confirm (or deny) any rumours about what this other show (or shows) is as official announcements are yet to be made but I can confirm that it will once again give UK fans the chance to see some amazing shows on these shores featuring a lot of talent that is rarely in Europe anymore if ever. This new project will be the start of something big in the UK of that I am sure and will offer UK fans event more variety in the wrestling they are able to see live in the UK.
The KOE Cup will be back with a bang in the later half of 2008 but until then British fans have a hell of a lot to look forward too. "
credits: Alex Shane