A Comedy of Errors - The Hollyweird Grappling Company

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A Comedy of Errors - The Hollyweird Grappling Company

A podcast series by Jay Armstrong

 

Episode List

Prologue - An Introduction to J.K. Stallings and Hollyweird Grappling Company

 

It is December 1996 in Hollyweird Time.

 

Hollyweird Grappling Company

#2 in the world

Hollywood TV airs on NCTV (USA) and Maple Leaf Sports (Canada), with the announce team of Jason Azaria and Kyle Rhodes

<div style="padding: 10px; border: 2px solid #000000; margin:10px;background: #FFFFFF; max-width:40%; ";">Roster

Sam Strong

Rip Chord

Dusty Streets

The All-Star Team (Coach Dick Pangrazzio, Richie Pangrazzio Jr., Larry Vessey & Bryan Vessey)

Black Serpent Cult (Cobra & Viper)

The Blazing Flames (Joey Flame & Teddy Flame)

Whistler

Charlie Homicide

Romeo Heartthrob

BLZ Bubb (with Karen Killer)

The Demons of Rage (Demon Anger & Demon Spite)

Golden Fox

Jimmy Power

The Danger Kid

Liberty

Cowboy Ricky Dale

Danny Rushmore

Dark Eagle

Mucha Lucha (Mr Lucha & Electrico)

The Nation of Filth (Stink & Grunt)

Jack Bruce

Jason Jackson

Savage Fury (Java & Tribal Warrior)

The Untouchables (Eric Tyler, Robert Oxford, Joel Bryant, Paul Steadyfast)

Monty Walker

Ramon Paez

Peter Valentine</div>

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<p></p><div style="text-align:center;"><p><strong><span style="font-size:18px;">Prologue - An Introduction to J.K. Stallings and Hollyweird Grappling Company</span></strong></p><p>

<div style="padding: 10px; border: 2px solid #000000; margin:10px;background: #FFFFFF; max-width:40%; ";"><img alt="1032%20-%20JK_Stallings%20jk_stallings_jr.jpg" data-src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/tewbooru/_images/4ab4af8f0f29e484e5697a110dd68541/1032%20-%20JK_Stallings%20jk_stallings_jr.jpg" src="<___base_url___>/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" /></p><p> </p><p>

So are you sick of hearing about J.K. Stallings yet? I sure hope you're not, because I'm about to spend the next very long while talking about him. I know, I know - it's 2021 and we've spent the last couple of years listening to him dominate the news cycle. Some of you might be suffering from Stallings overload, something I should have probably considered before spending the last several months researching this topic for our series. But let's make a deal. Better yet, a list. We're not going to talk about the following J.K.s Stallings:</p><p> </p><p>

</p><ul><li> J.K. Stallings the self-made tech genius who became a billionaire the same year he graduated high school on the strength of nothing but his own God-given talent and the small $20 million loan given to him by his grandfather (and suspected collaborator in 1933's Business Plot) oil baron Ira Stallings (1995)<br /></li><li> J.K. Stallings the island owner, who caused a minor international incident when he said in an interview he was thinking about declaring himself "King of Stallingsland" for tax purposes (2005)<br /></li><li> J.K. Stallings the "entertainment guru" who lost half a billion dollars over three years with a film studio dedicated to wide theatrical releases of subtitled anime movies (2009)<br /></li><li> J.K. Stallings the cryptocurrency baron whose "game changing" mining wall literally caught fire after only nine months of use (2013)<br /></li><li> J.K. Stallings the "billionaire playboy" who put out those promoted tweets making sure we all knew he was dating Amy Roberts (2014)<br /></li><li> J.K. Stallings the "tech trailblazer" who managed to run a streaming platform first into the ground and then into a Reverie buyout (2017)<br /></li><li> J.K. Stallings the sad single dad from those memes (2018)<br /></li><li> J.K. Stallings the failed presidential candidate (2020)</li></ul><p></p><p> </p><p>

The one glaring success aside, that two and a half decades of hilarious failure in the public eye is just a stunning display of how much money you can piss away if you start young enough and rich enough. Cable news pundits and nerds on Twitter have already done great work tearing apart most of these (in particular I'm a fan of Trevor Reese's Twitter thread listing better names for Stallingsland, my personal favorite being "Server Fire Island"), so there's no need for me to bother covering any of that stuff. But there's a ten year gap in that CV I just posted. What was little Jimmy Stallings doing between 1995 and 2005? Sure, he was CEO of StallingsSoft from his eighteenth birthday until 2003, but he also had a hobby as a wrestling promoter. Rather than covering any of those money losing business ventures I'll be looking at J.K. Stallings’ only successful business outside of StallingsSoft - the Hollyweird Grappling Company - and get into why, despite its financial success, it still belongs on a list next to all those other failures.</p><p> </p><p>

<strong><span style="font-size:14px;">The Hollyweird Grappling Company</span></strong></p><p>

<img alt="1031%20-%20HGC.jpg" data-src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/tewbooru/_images/cc6cab165301631532087e630d7d4615/1031%20-%20HGC.jpg" src="<___base_url___>/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" /></p><p> </p><p>

If there's a worse name for a wrestling promotion than Hollyweird Grappling Company then I haven't heard it, and I'm a lifelong wrestling fan. The name itself is even a lie - the company's head offices were in Anaheim, not Los Angeles. And if there's a worse idea than an unproven name sinking millions of dollars into challenging the Supreme Wrestling Federation in 1997 for the spot of top wrestling company in the United States then I don't think I've heard that, either. The Supreme Wrestling Federation was at the top of the world in 1997 and there hadn't been a legitimate challenger in the United States in nearly twenty years.</p><p> </p><p>

What happened next was kind of a perfect storm.</p><p> </p><p>

<img alt="1033%20-%20sam_strong%20strong.jpg" data-src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/tewbooru/_images/4af7a2d1feef2bf94eba8730ce5253df/1033%20-%20sam_strong%20strong.jpg" src="<___base_url___>/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" /></p><p>

<strong>Sam Strong</strong> was still the biggest name in wrestling even if he hadn't set foot in an SWF ring in over two years. The TV pilot he filmed didn't get picked up for the 1996 season, but he'd done a tour with BHOTWG over in Japan the previous year and shown he could be a draw when he wasn't under Richard Eisen's thumb. It was generally understood that if Strong went back to the SWF it'd be to help build new stars, and that was not something he was interested in doing. He was fifty and he was looking for one last payday before he retired from the ring for good.</p><p> </p><p>

<img alt="1034%20-%20Rip_Chord%20chord.jpg" data-src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/tewbooru/_images/4d31807c3b1593c06456ac8e4f6c6592/1034%20-%20Rip_Chord%20chord.jpg" src="<___base_url___>/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" /></p><p>

If Sam Strong was Richard Eisen's top guy during the SWF's ascension, <strong>Rip Chord</strong> was unquestionably his number two. The man was an international wrestling legend who spent the eighties as a villainous foil to Sam Strong, and his willingness to lose cleanly to a rising Bruce the Giant on his way out the door created a new star for Eisen to build his next generation of talent around. Chord had spent a few years away from the ring, in and out of rehab, but a return with Golden Canvas Grappling in 1996 showed that on the right night he could turn back the clock and wrestle like it was still 1983.</p><p> </p><p>

<img alt="1035%20-%20dusty%20dusty_streets%20streets.jpg" data-src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/tewbooru/_images/0437cea67b598902d718df01727a5549/1035%20-%20dusty%20dusty_streets%20streets.jpg" src="<___base_url___>/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" /></p><p>

Son of a hall of famer, <strong>Dusty Streets</strong> spent most of his career as one of the SWF's great utility players. Never a top guy or a world champion, it seemed his ceiling was as a house show contender to the title whenever a heel was on top. After parting ways with the Eisens in 1990 he found new life with BHOTWG in Japan as one of that company's top gaijin. Dusty was nearing the end of his career, but he was a star on two continents and exactly the kind of guy who could bring legitimacy to a company looking to establish itself.</p><p> </p><p>

<img alt="1037%20-%20coach%20coach_dick_pangrazzio%20dick_pangrazzio%20pangrazzio.jpg" data-src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/tewbooru/_images/c674edbc031b2e4c43f8bfc9f2db0cf1/1037%20-%20coach%20coach_dick_pangrazzio%20dick_pangrazzio%20pangrazzio.jpg" src="<___base_url___>/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" /><img alt="1036%20-%20pangrazzio%20richie_pangrazzio%20richie_pangrazzio_jr.jpg" data-src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/tewbooru/_images/e5aed0129bd853646857f1c258a10e5f/1036%20-%20pangrazzio%20richie_pangrazzio%20richie_pangrazzio_jr.jpg" src="<___base_url___>/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" /></p><p>

<strong>Coach Dick Pangrazzio</strong> and <strong>Richie Pangrazzio Jr.</strong> were a pair of SWF stars from way back, spending the seventies and eighties with the company as it transitioned from an upstart east coast promotion to to the household name it was today. Richie was a perennial midcard threat and his father was his manager. The two stepped away from the SWF to focus on family at the tail end of the nineties. After seven years laying sheetrock as Pangrazzio and Sons (alongside Fiero, Richie's younger brother uninvolved in wrestling), the two started making appearances on the independent scene again near the end of 1996.</p><p> </p><p>

It was a first in American wrestling - five guys with this much name value were all looking for work at the same time. And then you had J.K. Stallings himself, a teenage wrestling fan with money to burn who claimed one of his earliest memories was of watching a Sam Strong vs. Richie Pangrazzio Jr. match with one of his uncles.</p><p> </p><p>

Sam Strong was the first to receive an offer, and legend has it that Stallings’ opener was a 3x5 index card on which he’d just written “Enough.” With Strong onboard and Chord following shortly after, Stallings’ still unnamed wrestling company signed around three dozen other talents in the following month. Offices opened in Anaheim and Stallings started negotiation with a few different networks.</p><p> </p><p>

Three months out from their December 1996 debut the company started its ad blitz. Thirty second TV spots and full page newspaper ads across the United States and Canada advertised the new alternative in North American wrestling: The Hollyweird Grappling Company. As I said before, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a worse name for a wrestling company. Supposedly the name came about because of multiple layers of interference - an early attempt to buy the California Pro Wrestling name from Preston Holt got tied up when another stakeholder objected, then a series of other names were rejected by focus groups. Hollywood Championship Wrestling tested well and was a favorite, but right before orders for promotional material went out Stallings himself stepped in and insisted on a last second change to the inexplicably bad Hollyweird Grappling Company.</p><p> </p><p>

<img alt="1039%20-%20maple_leaf_sports.jpg" data-src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/tewbooru/_images/e542b1fb7be10987c426dd95fe498584/1039%20-%20maple_leaf_sports.jpg" src="<___base_url___>/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" /><img alt="1038%20-%20nctv.jpg" data-src="https://theo.minuspoint.com/tewbooru/_images/7bd45f405be9b581af94d674a03b29a8/1038%20-%20nctv.jpg" src="<___base_url___>/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png" /></p><p>

Pay-per-view providers in the United States and Canada were willing to bite, but without the ad buys from weekly programming the promotion wouldn’t be able to turn a profit. Even with Strong and Chord each signed to a five year commitment it was still difficult to find a network willing to take a gamble on professional wrestling if it didn’t come with the Eisen name. Some backroom dealing eventually led to a one-year agreement with Maple Leaf Sports, contingent on the promotion signing additional Canadian talent. This was shortly followed by a very unfavorable deal with American network NCTV. Not only was NCTV a channel dominated by sci-fi programming - not a demographic known for its wrestling fans, at least in the 1990s - but it came with many, many strings attached: NCTV would keep the ad revenue, and Stallings would need to pay for each episode broadcast. NCTV also demanded that they have final say over who got the still unassigned head booker position in the company. In several ways this was a worse deal than not broadcasting to the United States at all, but Stallings and his team were convinced that if they could survive two years of NCTV they could build an audience and look more appealing to a better network.</p><p> </p><p>

Next episode we’ll get into the first month of Hollyweird TV and how NCTV’s say in who got the book for HGC nearly ruined the company just a few weeks in.</p></div><p></p><p></div></p>

[1PWfan]

Really like the start of this, looking forward to reading more