Acronym RQW Headquarters London, United Kingdom Owner(s) Len Davies | Founded 2005 Founder(s) Len Davies | |
Style Professional wrestling
Sports entertainment | ||
Real Quality Wrestling (RQW) is a British professional wrestling promotion founded by Len Davies. The company has been recognized as an umbrella promotion since 2007; the aim being to showcase other British professional wrestling promotions through the broadcasts of their shows via television and the internet. Len Davies is the owner and chairman of the company as well as their sister company, Spectrum Multimedia. The company began as an independent promotion before becoming an umbrella promotion. Since the transition, the RQW logo has be seen as a quality stamp of approval. International Pro Wrestling: United Kingdom (IPW:UK), and SAS Wrestling are the current sub-ordinate promotions working under the company banner. The company's headquarters are located in Dagenham, Greater London.
Company history
Len Davies is both the majority owner and chairman of the company as well as the owner of their sister company, Spectrum Multimedia, who are responsible for their television programming, home video, music and graphics. In 2005 Phil Powers began promoting shows under the name Real Quality Wrestling, their first show was in Clacton in March. Later on in the year Len Davies volunteered to record the shows for DVD, amongst other duties, but after a difference of opinion in 2006, Powers left the company, allowing Davies to use the RQW name.
The promotion's inaugural event, Clacton Carnage, was held in March, 2005 and in just over a year at their aptly named event A Night of Champions they crowded their first Heavyweight and Women's champion, going to Robbie Brookside and Erin Angel respectively. In 2006 the promotion found a new home at York Hall, a Bethnal Green location with a long history in Boxing, beginning with their Rebirth event in November. Broadcasting began on Sky channel 427 - TWC Fight! in December 2006 with a weekly premiere on Wednesday evenings, being repeated several times throughout the week. A year later they decided to extend their championships further, creating the RQW Tag Team Championship in August 2007 at the "Summer Brawl" event (going to Team Charming) This after crowning a Cruiserweight Champion, Bubblegum in January at the "No Pain No Gain 2007" event which featured the European debut of The Great Muta.. By April of the following year, the RQW Tag Team Championship was unified with the IPW:UK Tag Team Championship to create a unified title won by The Kartel.
By 2008 RQW had downscaled its own productions and instead focussed on representing WAW and IPW:UK, orchestrating a deal for them with an unnamed German TV station that broadcasts all over Europe and working towards international broadcasting through local TV stations and the internet. This however never happened. At the end of that year, with the fall of The Fight Network, RQW furthered its broadcasting links by striking a deal with Pulse TV that would have seen an RQW programme aired every night on a rotational basis with each night being specific to one promotion or theme. The show, scheduled to start in February 2009, also promised to further British wrestling by listing upcoming dates of local indie shows. However, shortly after striking the deal the channel was revealed to be closing down and, in a jaded message on their website, RQW maintained that they were unaware of the channel's closure and pledged to land a deal elsewhere, later operating with Fighters Inc for worldwide broadcasting and Fighting Spirit Distribution, who organised video on demand in France, including French commentary. RQW also started to broadcast free episodes streamed on their website, but stopped after a few shows. Spin off TV programming was created for the blown PULSE deal and now exist as programmes being presented to US and Worldwide Networks and other online media sources. "RQW Classic", "RQW - Special Feature","RQW presents WAW", the new 30 minute programme "RQW Bites" and the NEW "Real Quality Wrestling phase 2" are all part of a package that's been picked up by www.TrueAmericanBusiness.com who are exclusively distributing the programming into areas both traditional and revolutionary.