Nathan Cruz: 10 Years of Stealing the Show in NGW

1. 2008: The First NGW Show

“I was part of the very first show. Back then NGW was run by Luke Ingamells, my tag team partner when I first broke into wrestling in 2007. Luke wanted to be a promoter. So myself and my best friend Matt Myers, we decided to support Luke with it. Those early shows weren’t the best shows by any stretch of the imagination but there was a definite ambition there from everybody. You could tell that NGW, because of the crowds, the location of the Eastmount Centre, it had the potential to become something big. But at the time, and I don’t mean this as disrespectful to Luke, it didn’t have the right people behind the steering wheel. Luke didn’t have the experience as a promoter to really push it. He had one or two people who helped him who didn’t really have a clue about wrestling. But it was still exciting and had that potential.

“On the first show I wrestled Brad Flash. I think they drew about 60-70 people which today isn’t a good number but back in 2008, when British wrestling wasn’t doing that well, that was a decent draw. We were pleased with it. Production was really good on it, not compared with how it is today, but for independent shows at that time. There was a good team mentality. Luke put on a solid main event of Dave Mastiff vs Stixx. I thought, for a first show, it did very well.

“I think there was a gap NGW could fill. All-Star would come to Hull once, sometimes twice, a year, to Hull City Hall. You’d occasionally have promotions such as 1PW or IPW come to the arena next to the KC Stadium. We also had PWA run by the Urban Warrior, which was unfortunately where I had my start. Those shows were awful…awful would be a kind word. So as regards to an independent that was local, like a territory in America, Hull was untapped. There weren’t any regular wrestling shows people could get invested in. Hull is a working class city and wrestling is something that people in Hull can get attached to. We’re a big sport city with the football team, the rugby teams, boxing is a big thing here as well. So it was a natural thing for somebody to capitalise on.

“Matt Myers has been there since day one. Outside of that, I think that’s it. The roster changed quite a bit over time, new people came in. Jack Gallagher was part of those early shows under the name Jack Toxic. Alex Cyanide, he does still do shows occasionally, especially at Butlin’s. Sam Bailey we still use from time to time. So there were a few, but nobody as regular as myself and Myers. The whole point of it being called New Generation Wrestling was they wanted to promote younger talent. So you’d have established guys come in like Stixx and Mastiff, but it was all to enhance the younger talent coming through and give them a start and get noticed. That still carries on to this day with NGW’s Proving Ground shows at the Academy.

“There was a big gap between August 2008 and our next show in February 2009. Then Rich Dunn came on board (as promoter) and that was the turning point.”

• matt myers
• nathan cruz
• ngw
• rampage brown
• Zack Gibson

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