Introducing...Florida Championship Wrestling

Florida Championship Wrestling

With WrestleMania and the Draft in the books, World Wrestling Entertainment is officially a new season (or as much of a new season as pro wrestling can have.) A new booking year means new feuds, new stories and new stars. And many of these new stars will come from WWE’s own personal developmental territory – Florida Championship Wrestling.

FCW was created by WWE in early 2007 when they folded their previous developmental group, Georgia’s “Deep South Wrestling.” Florida Championship Wrestling is a loosely based-homage of the former NWA affiliate “Championship Wrestling form Florida” that was run from Eddie Graham from the ’60s through the ‘80s. Former long-time pro wrestler Steve Keirn, who is a Florida native and long-time WWE employee, runs the company.

After WWE severed ties with Ohio Valley Wrestling as a developmental territory in early 2008, FCW became WWE’s only official developmental territory. The company has been built and created in WWE’s own image, so that the training, developmental, character creation and everything done is tailored to the company’s satisfactions. Other than Keirn, other long time wrestlers like Dusty Rhodes, Billy Kidman and Mike Graham contribute to these young wrestlers’ training process.

The current roster boasts over fifty young men and women, ranging from young pro wrestling hopefuls, established independent talent looking for their WWE break, beautiful former models looking for wrestling stardom and an incredible wealth of second and third-generation talent. Sons of wrestlers like Mike “IRS” Rotunda, “Million $ Man” Ted DiBiase, “Mr. Perfect” Curt Hennig, “Demolition Smash” Barry Darsow and “Haku” are all getting their proverbial feet wet under the watchful eye of WWE management, guaranteeing pro wrestling legacy that will continue for many years to come.

Critics of the territory claim that FCW is like fast food wrestling training, in that large groups of young talent are molded in cookie-cutter types of WWE performers, the exact type that WWE is looking for. They are molded into very similar looks, styles and movesets that fit current WWE criteria. Long time wrestling fans and experts also decree the loss of the old-school territory system were young wrestlers were able to travel the country learning from various performers and working in front of front a variety of audiences. Also with the loss of Ohio Valley Wrestling as a second training territory, these performers aren’t even given the opportunity to work under at least two different training philosophies.

Also in an effort to trademark these young performers as their own properties, virtually all have changed their name to generic boy-band sounding ring names like Caylen Croft, Dylan Klein and Kris Logan to complement their similar generic looks. Only the generational legacies are allowed to keep their real names, in an effort to play off their built-in history and backstories.

No real stars have graduated from FCW to become a big success on WWE TV so other than third generation legacy Ted DiBiase, Jr., who had been wrestling for a year and a half before joining FCW and Jack Swagger (former University of Oklahoma amateur wrestling star Jake Hager), who had worked for both Ohio Valley and Deep South Wrestling before moving to FCW for his final stage of developmental training.

The territory and training facility is still quite young and has the potential to breed a whole new crop of WWE entertainers, but for now only time will tell if FCW will become a flourishing success or fall by the wayside of the ill-fated Deep South Wrestling.