All Star Wrestling
All Star Wrestling is a British Professional wrestling promotion also known as All Star Promotions, Superslam Wrestling and Big Time Wrestling and originally known as Wrestling Enterprises , run by Brian Dixon and based in Liverpool, England. Dixon's promotion tours theatres, leisure centres, town halls and similar venues, many of them old venues for televised wrestling in the UK in the 1950s–1980s, as well as holiday camps. It is the oldest active wrestling promotion in the UK, and furthermore the longest-running UK wrestling promotion ever - a record it has held since September 2013, when it eclipsed the 42 years and 11 months lifespan of Joint Promotions/Ring Wrestling Stars. It is also the third oldest professional wrestling promotion still in existence in the world, after Mexico's CMLL and America's WWE.
All Star contributed to the final two years of ITV's regular televised wrestling programme in the UK in 1987-1988 and some of their matches were included on VHS and DVD compilations and repeated as part of the World of Sport programming on The Fight Network, formerly The Wrestling Channel, until it stopped transmission in 2008. They were then repeated on the now defunct Men & Movies channel.
History
1970s - Wrestling Enterprises
Brian Dixon, a wrestling referee and former head of the Jim Breaks Fan Club, established Wrestling Enterprises in October 1970 initially as a vehicle for his girlfriend British Ladies' Champion Mitzi Mueller, who was having difficulty getting bookings from Joint Promotions. One of the company's earliest claims to fame was rebranding Martin Ruane as new character "Giant Haystacks", originally "Haystacks Calhoun" patterned after the US superheavyweight wrestler of the same name and similar image about whom Dixon had read in imported American wrestling magazines. Haystacks would go on to achieve household fame in the UK after he moved to Joint Promotions in 1975 as the tag team partner - and later the archenemy - of Big Daddy.During the late 1970s, Wrestling Enterprises held regular major shows at the Liverpool Stadium and organised a version of the World Middleweight Title after the previous version became extinct with the collapse of the Spanish wrestling scene c. 1975. This title continued until champion Adrian Street emigrated to America in 1981. Wrestling Enterprises also collaborated heavily with another independent promoter, former middleweight star Jackie Pallo. Neither promoter was able to gain a slice of ITV coverage however, as the 1981 contract renewal negotiations resulted in a five-year extension on Joint Promotions' exclusive monopoly of ITV wrestling.
1980s - ITV coverage/ Competition with Joint Promotions
By the early 1980s there was increasing dissatisfaction among both fans and wrestlers with the direction of Joint Promotions, which resulted in a steady flow of top UK talent into All Star Wrestling and away from Joint and the TV spotlight. Title-holders such as World Heavyweight Champion Mighty John Quinn, rival claimant Wayne Bridges, British Heavyweight Champion Tony St Clair, World Heavy-Middleweight Champion Mark Rocco, British Heavy-Middleweight Champion Frank 'Chic' Cullen and World Lightweight Champion Johnny Saint all defected to All Star taking their titles with them, as did many non-titleholders. By the mid-1980s All Star was running shows head-to-head with Joint Promotions and had its own TV show on satellite channel Screensport.When Joint's five-year extension on its monopoly of ITV wrestling expired at the end of 1986, All Star, along with the WWF, was also given a share of the televised wrestling shows for the two years 1987-88. The beginning of this period coincided with the return to full-time action for legendary masked wrestler Kendo Nagasaki under the All Star banner. At the end of 1988, Greg Dyke cancelled wrestling on ITV after 33 years. Whereas Joint dwindled downwards as a touring vehicle for Big Daddy before finally folding in 1995, All Star had played its cards well with regard to its two years of TV exposure, using the time in particular to build up a returning Kendo Nagasaki as its lead heel and establishing such storylines as his tag team-cum-feud with Rollerball Rocco and his "hypnotism" of Robbie Brookside.
1990s - Post-TV boom
The end of TV coverage left many of these storylines at a cliffhanger and consequently All Star underwent a box office boom as hardcore fans turned up to live shows to see what happened next, and kept coming for several years due to careful use of show-to-show storylines. Headline matches frequently pitted Nagasaki in violent heel vs heel battles against the likes of Rocco, Dave 'Fit' Finlay, Skull Murphy and even Giant Haystacks.All Star's post-television boom wore off after 1993 when Nagasaki retired for a second time. However, the promotion kept afloat on live shows at certain established venues and particularly on the holiday camp circuit. Since the mid-1990s, the promotion has mainly been focussed on family entertainment. After the demise of Joint/RWS, All Star's chief rival on the live circuit was Scott Conway's TWA promotion, founded as the Southeastern Wrestling Alliance in 1989. By the late 1990s, many smaller British promoters were increasingly abandoning their British identity in favour of "WWF Tribute" shows, with British performers crudely imitating World Wrestling Federation stars.
2000s - Competition with TWA/ Recent developments
Although All Star never descended into a full-fledged 'tribute show', by the turn of the millennium, many of these tribute acts such as the "UK Undertaker" and "Big Red Machine" were nonetheless headlining All Star shows. Disaffected with this and other matters, Conway cut his links with All Star and declared a promotional war. He began to promote his TWA as an alternative, featuring more serious wrestling. All Star duly adapted to meet the challenge, recruiting a new generation of wrestlers such as Dean Allmark and Robbie Dynamite and signing up such stars as "American Dragon" Bryan Danielson. The promotional war came to an abrupt end in 2003 when Conway relocated to Thailand, closing down the TWA.In recent times, All Star has reached new heights of activity not seen since the post-television boom of the early 1990s, reactivating many more old TV venues, and in the summer 2008 season revived the old tradition of wrestling shows at Blackpool Tower, with a Friday night residency there. All Star has re-established old links with promoters in France, Germany, Japan and Calgary. All Star wrestlers have been widely used to represent Britain by major American promoters, for example the Team UK in TNA's 2004 X Cup which featured four All Star Wrestling regulars James Mason, Dean Allmark, Robbie Dynamite and Frankie Sloan. Mason would also guest on WWE Smackdown in 2008, defeating MVP.
The promotion also runs a wrestling school in Birkenhead, Merseyside, with Allmark and Dynamite as chief trainers. Dixon and Mueller's daughter Laetitia, a popular ring announcer for the promotion, is married to Allmark and the couple have one son, Joseph, the first grandchild of Dixon and Mueller.
In April 2014, ASW established a relationship with Japanese promotion Wrestle-1.
Championships
Current champions
Former championships
Mountevans Committee-established titles
The Mountevans committee was an independent committee which met in 1947 to establish a set of rules and championships for the British professional wrestling scene. Four of the six current titles listed above were set up by the committee. All Star Wrestling hosted many other such championships in the past, some of which have since been moved to or revived by other promotions.| Title | Last All Star Champion | Date won | Location | Previous Champion |
| British Heavy-Middleweight Championship | Danny Collins | September 4, 1990 | Croydon, England | Richie Brooks |
| British Women's Championship | Nicki Monroe | February 1992 | Bournemouth, England | Klondyke Kate |
| British Welterweight Championship | Steve Prince | October 9, 1993 | Croydon, England | Doc Dean |
| European Heavyweight Championship | John Praytor | 1995 | - | - |
| European Middleweight Championship | Jason Cross | December 1995 | - | Mal Sanders |
| European Welterweight Championship | Mal Sanders | September 1994 | - | Kashmir Singh |
| British Empire/Commonwealth Heavyweight Championship | Count Bartelli | 1981 | Liverpool, England | Hans Streiger |
| WWA World Heavyweight Championship | Wayne Bridges | March 28, 1988 | Cheltenham, England | Kendo Nagasaki |
| World Mid-Heavyweight Championship | Johnny South | May 27, 1999 | Bristol, England | Marty Jones |
| World Middleweight Championship | Danny Collins | November 1, 1991 | Bath, England | Owen Hart |
| World Lightweight Championship | Johnny Saint | June 13, 1993 | Bristol, England | Steve Grey |