AWE Founder Marvin Ward talks shop
The future of AWE: bright. “Fans can rest assured that AWE is here to stay. It is the next big brand in professional wrestling,” said Marvin Ward, the founder of Awesome Wrestling Entertainment, which came out of the gate with a pair of debut shows in 2011 that drew sellouts in Waynesboro, Va., and Palmyra, Va.
The news this week has AWE announcing a Summer 2011 Tour with dates set for Lynchburg, Va., Richmond, Va., Bluefield, W.Va., Spartanburg, S.C., and Gainesville, Ga.
“AWE is here. We’ve made our mark in the industry. The world is looking at us,” said Ward in a two-part interview that ran last week on AwesomeWrestlingEntertainment.com in which he also talked up an October Legends show.
The Legends market is hot right now in professional wrestling on the heels of the successful runup to Wrestlemania 28 staged by WWE that featured a mix of the top superstars of the past and the top superstars of today.
“Older fans love being able to turn back the hands of time to yesteryear,” Ward said. “With the economy where it is right now, the world is in a bad place. There are people out there losing everything they have. They’re losing their jobs, losing their homes. Just for a moment in time, if they could go back and step back into yesteryear and relive their memories, it can take some of that pain away. To me, that’s what it’s all about.”
Awesome Wrestling Entertainment has been polling fans through its Facebook page to get a gauge on who they want to see on the show. Ward, of course, has his own thoughts.
“Fans want to see the legends from back when they were kids. You have your moms and dads who bring their kids out and go, That’s who I grew up on,” said Ward, who grew up a fan of Mid-Atlantic and WCW and eventually worked his way into performing with many of the stars he had grown up idolizing in his stint in the ring in WCW and Smoky Mountain Wrestling from 1992-1997.
A shoulder injury cut Ward’s in-ring career short. He has been promoting shows up and down the Eastern Seaboard since 2001. He still has the wrestler’s mentality, though. Discussing the top stars of the 1980s, for example, he lists “The American Dream” Dusty Rhodes and Ric Flair, the leader of The Four Horsemen. “Back in the days, it was Ric and Tully and Arn and Ole. I used to sit and watch them on television when I was a kid, and I’d say, If I could come through that television and help Dusty out, great God Almighty I would,” Ward said.
The Horseman who riled Ward up the most – without question, Tully Blanchard, who had a memorable series with Magnum T.A. in 1985 and then in 1986 had a program with Rhodes that culminated in a rugged First Blood match at Starrcade ’86.
Talking wrestling with a friend recently, Ward remembers being asked if he could go back in time and step in the shoes of Rhodes, “What would be the first thing that you would do? And I said, Well, honestly, I’d slap that smirk right off of Tully Blanchard’s face. That’s what I would have done,” Ward said.
Ward did get to step in the ring with another of his childhood idols, the late Road Warrior Hawk, as Hawk’s tag-team partner. Ward said he feels that the Legion of Doom was “without a shadow of a doubt” the best tag team of all time, despite the relative lack of push that they got in Mid-Atlantic and WCW, where the team was headquartered in its heyday.
“When you saw The Road Warriors, these big, giant, muscular guys, nobody could have taken them, but they didn’t get the push like Ricky and Robert did,” said Ward, referring to The Rock-n-Roll Express, who had several runs as NWA World Tag Team Champs in the 1980s.
“The Rock-n-Roll Express, don’t get me wrong, great guys, but I just think they were in the right place at the right time. I really think the Rock-n-Roll Express was, and this is going to sound bad, but I think they were overrated. They got push after push after push. I mean, my God, if the Mulkey Brothers would have got as many title shots as the Rock-n-Roll Express did, the Mulkeys would have been on top of the tag-team division,” Ward said.
You can hear a little bit of Doug Gibson in there, can’t you?
“That was a big part of my life. A very important and special part of my life. Some of the greatest times I think I’ve ever had,” Ward said of his in-ring career. “I enjoy what I’m doing right now. If I had to choose between one or the other, I don’t think I could choose. Being Marvin Ward the promoter and Doug Gibson the professional wrestler, they’re both equally important to me. But once I hurt my shoulder and I couldn’t wrestle anymore, I just took the Doug Gibson character and put it away. Didn’t talk about it anymore.
“People ask me, Why don’t you talk about it? It is hard to talk about because it was such an important part of my life. I used to love lacing the boots up and putting the tights on and going out and wrestling. Great memories I have of when I was Doug Gibson. It’s just something that I don’t really talk about,” Ward said.
So Ward has put the wrestler Gibson to bed, focusing on building AWE into a top professional-wrestling company.
“The attention needs to be on the superstars of today, and my job now is taking the Micah Fletchers, taking the Jamin Olivencias, your Ali Akbars, The Aborigine, Short Sleeve Sampson, and making them superstars. I try to keep the attention off of me,” Ward said.
