In mid-July, PowerSlam editor Findlay Martin announced he was closing the magazine after 20 year. John Lister, who wrote for the magazine from 1996-1998 and in 2007, looks back on its influence on the wrestling scene in Britain.
When Power Slam first hit the shelves in 1994, to be a wrestling fan was to be part of a very different world to today. It was an era before widespread Internet use (the first fully functional web browser was less than a year old), DVDs were still several years away, and it would be a decade before the term “podcast” was covered.
As a fan, your options for learning more about wrestling were limited. Unless you knew about the underground tape trading scene, you were restricted to expensive VHS releases that took months or even years to hit British shelves. If you had the cash, you could buy imported US magazines which were similarly out of date and, while providing plenty of information about wrestling past and present, were hampered by the need to avoid contradicting on-screen storylines.
As for discussing wrestling with other fans, you had two options. You might be able to talk about it with school friends, though once SummerSlam 92 had passed, wrestling soon stopped being the talk of the playground. Alternatively you could write letters or articles in fanzines, an experience almost identical to today’s Internet forums and Facebook groups – except for the one-month gap between each comment.
Power Slam wasn’t the first wrestling magazine on British shelves, but it was the longest-lasting and the first to really change the way wrestling fans viewed the industry. This was partly an increasingly explicit acknowledgment of the fact that wrestling was a business rather than a pure sport.
That’s not to say that Power Slam “broke kayfabe” from the very beginning. During my initial period with the magazine, writing for the Power Slam readership was a particularly challenging balancing act: you had to write in a way that didn’t shatter the illusions of younger readers, but at the same time had enough of an insider focus to allow those in the know to read between the lines without having their intelligence insulted.
Findlay believed that exposing the truth about the business at this stage would risk running off fans, but at times he found it a frustrating situation. I vividly recall us watching the 1996 Royal Rumble, during which FMW’s Headhunters (repackaged as the Squat Team) were despatched in rapid order. Findlay, having hyped up the pair in the magazine, groaned at the realisation that he would likely be getting letters from baffled readers wondering why they hadn’t lived up to his billing and he’d be unable to simply point to their exit being a WWF booking decision.
Fortunately for his sanity, events such as the Montreal screwjob and the popularising of wrestling on the web opened up the business and within a couple of years Power Slam writers could begin writing more about the real stories behind why wrestlers were winning and losing.
Perhaps more important than the handling of kayfabe was Power Slam’s coverage of wrestling beyond what Brits saw on their television from WWF and WCW. The magazine covered Japanese promotions and US independents, most notably ECW which was featured as far back as its first big named show, Summer Sizzler ’93.
That was largely thanks to the photography services of Philly local George Tahinos, who served the magazine for two decades, later shooting ECW’s successors such as CZW, 3PW and Ring of Honor. George’s vivid shots from ringside (an often hairy place to be given ECW’s wild style) and backstage were vital in illustrating a lively, colorful, extreme product and without them the written descriptions of the matches and angles might have seemed hard to believe.
Thanks to YouTube links, FSM readers who use the digital edition of the magazine are able to quickly access video footage of the bouts and incidents we mention in articles. In its early years Power Slam provided such a service in a more unconventional way: it included listings of readers providing a tape trading service in which you could swop or buy copies of imported tapes of some of the more obscure promotions covered in the magazines.
It proved such a gateway for many readers that in 1994 ECW’s legendary The Night The Line Was Crossed was voted Power Slam’s match of the year by readers, despite never having an official video release or TV airing in the UK.
That’s not to say Power Slam wasn’t very aware of the need to cover the mainstream promotions with more recognisable stars. One of the most surprising things I learned from working with Findlay was that the single biggest factor in an issue’s sales, far above any of the content inside, was the choice of cover star. On the few occasions when he experimented with a shot of a less well-known name, he usually regretted it when the sales figures came in.
While subscriptions and apps mean FSM isn’t entirely reliant on newsstand browsers, it’s a lesson that still applies to some extent today. It’s also the reason why those of us who take advantage of FSM’s willingness to cover less mainstream topics such as pioneer stars like Jim Londos or the wrestlers of the World of Sport era know not to get too upset when we don’t get front cover billing — and in any case, it’s certainly made up for in positive feedback from readers.
While the biggest names were normally the subject of career profiles or news, Power Slam did often carry interviews with notable performers, including the likes of Steve Austin and Bret Hart. While interviewees varied in their approach to discussing match finishes, they were always far more open about the business than in any of the other outlets of the time: the official promotional publications kept to storylines, while the mainstream media usually asked generic and repetitive questions which rarely elicited insightful replies.
No interview was more noteworthy than that with Tom “Dynamite Kid” Billington in 1998. Not only was it a genuine exclusive with a man who had become a virtual recluse from the industry, but it was remarkable for its brutal honesty about the highs and lows of Billington’s careers and the effects of heavy steroid use and the physical style upon his body. (It’s apt then that arguably FSM’s most talked-about and well-received article is a first hand account by Billington’s ex-wife Michelle giving her perspective on their life together.)
So popular was the piece, it led to Power Slam’s parent company publishing an autobiography of Billington that expanded on the interview and remains one of the most honest accounts of a career with nothing held back. Published within a few weeks of Mick Foley’s first book, it was an equally pioneering title in showing that wrestling fans had an appetite for truthful autobiographies.
British wrestling coverage was, it’s fair to say, usually on the back-burner for Power Slam. In the mid-90s the magazine gave some coverage to the likes of the Hammerlock promotion (the starting point for the likes of Doug Williams and Alex Shane) and even ran a monthly column “Daddy or Haystacks?” interviewing British wrestlers of the day. Findlay decided to drop the coverage, explaining that the feedback from readers was virtually non-existent. He was also deterred after he attended a show in person and gave an honest review in the magazine, only to raise the ire of those involved. Although Power Slam was never able to give the same level of coverage to British wrestling (past or present) as FSM does today, credit is certainly due to Greg Lambert for his efforts to cover the domestic industry in recent years.
America was still the big thing for most Power Slam readers, and from a personal perspective, the pieces of mine which received the best feedback were those detailing my trips around the US to see wrestling in venues from the ECW Arena to Dallas Sportatorium by way of Memphis’s Channel 5 studios. It was a format that proved equally popular with travelogues by Findlay, Rob Butcher and Martin Cox, and certainly was a product of its time. The pieces were as much about the experience of life on the road in a foreign country and looking back at them shows just how much has changed since, whether it be UK and US cultures converging (Subway was an exotic oddity to 1996 readers), Internet information making travel planning far easier, or European fans regularly flying to the US for WrestleMania week.
It might be an exaggeration to say that without Power Slam there’d be no FSM, but had Findlay not given me my first paid writing job, there’s a strong chance I wouldn’t be writing for FSM today. And while FSM may have a differing format and style, our mission of informing and educating wrestling fans eager to learn more about this most curious of industries is very much following in the path that Power Slam began 20 years ago.
