Some insight from Quildan.
After months of running empty arena shows at the Portsmouth School Of Wrestling, in July 2021, Revolution Pro Wrestling returned to The Cockpit in London, England for their first show in front of fans in over a year.
The advertised main event was Jamie Hayter defending the RevPro Undisputed British Women’s Championship against Skye Smitson. A week prior, it was announced that the title was vacated because Hayter and Smitson accepted WWE NXT U.K. tryout offers.
While guest appearing on The Trish and Sarah Wrestling Podcast, RevPro owner Andy Quildan opened up about the ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’ as it relates to him not being able to use NXT talent. He shared that it centered around PROGRESS Wrestling. Quildan then dove into the Hayter-Smitson situation and thinks there may have been ‘personal reasons’ behind that. Quildan thinks the move was made by someone who’s employed at WWE that used to work at PROGRESS.
Well, I’ll tell you a funny story. I don’t think I’ve ever told this story before. So when we finally got told — because obviously, when it first came out, no restrictions, whatever. I’ve had my dealings. It’s been well documented. It’s no reason to kind of get into it again. But, what the final straw for me with not being able to use NXT talents… I find this hilarious. So, we did a show at The Cockpit, and Travis Banks was wrestling. He was the PROGRESS Champion at the time. Of course, we know the PROGRESS guys were in the office at the time and Jim Smallman, I think specifically. Travis Banks turns up and he’s like, ‘I can’t really do much. I’m injured.’ Whatever. So he’s got like a bad ankle and he’s like, ‘I wanna save myself for WWE tomorrow.’ I don’t know if it was a tryout or if he had already got the deal. I’m not sure the timeline but, whatever. He said, ‘I wanna save myself for this.’ Anyway, so I’m like, ‘Okay. Whatever’ and I try to make the best out of every situation I’ve got and try to utilize my talent to its fullest and at the time, we had one of our contenders, Rob The Gob Lias, he’d just turned heel and we were gonna do a deal where basically, Travis comes out, says he can’t wrestle. Rob goads Travis into a match. Rob beats him in like two and a half, three minutes. But, Travis has got one bad leg. He can’t do anything. So I always say to everyone, ‘Context is all.’ Come back from the match. I remember Travis shows me his phone. He’s got a message from one of the PROGRESS guys — said, ‘What the F is this?’ With a screenshot from someone that tweeted, ‘Rob The Gob Lias submits Travis Banks in three minutes.’ Now, obviously, the upshot of this was Travis Banks was gonna come back and kick the sh*t out of Rob Lias, when he’s healthy. But we’re telling a pro wrestling story. He’s literally like, ‘I can’t wrestle.’ So, we’re like, ‘Okay, you can’t wrestle, but you can give us like two minutes, and how can we turn that into something?’ How can we make something out of nothing basically? Classic pro wrestling 101. But I think they’ve looked at it and been like, they just jobbed out the PROGRESS Champion and they’ve done it deliberately. How can we get them back? Do you know what I mean? Because it was the next day, the next day, they all went off to the WWE thing and the message came back, ‘Sorry, we can’t work with you anymore.’ The next day, and that was the straw that broke the camel’s back, with the WWE stuff. So I find that whole situation hilarious and I think that may have been less a WWE thing and more a PROGRESS thing, and I heard recently as well, so I don’t know if you remember this one but, when we came back from the pandemic, our first show back was headlined by Jamie Hayter versus Skye Smitson. Advertised, first show back. We brought it up on our empty arena shows. That was the main event of our first show back for our Women’s Championship. All of a sudden, WWE are doing a women’s tryout and both Jamie Hayter and Skye Smitson are asked to that tryout. Skye Smitson had never had any interest from WWE before that point, and it just so happened to be on our first show back, and someone who’s still employed with WWE who also used to work for PROGRESS was the person who made that call as well for an all-women’s tryout on that day with those girls. I’m not necessarily saying it’s a WWE thing. I’m saying it might have been personal reasons behind this stuff happening.
In September, Quildan opened up about why an agreement between WWE and RevPro was never reached. He stated that one of the ‘caveats’ was WWE would’ve had the option to buy RevPro.
The promotion presented their ‘Uprising’ show on December 21st at York Hall.
If the quote in this article is used, please credit The Trish and Sarah Wrestling Podcast with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcription.
