Putting together a major wrestling show
Behind the scenes of Unlimited Wrestling's big Hamburg debut.
On 2 March, Unlimited Wrestling visited Hamburg for the first time ever, putting on “Violent Delights” at the historic Grosse Freiheit 36. It was a hell of ride with more than a few bumps in the road.
Since its inception, Unlimited Wrestling has been a touring company. We do have a strong homebase in Thale, smack dab in the middle of Germany, and while it's generally easy to get there, we realise that not everybody can make the trip. For that reason, we regularly go on the road to visit other cities.
When we were offered the chance to do a show at Grosse Freiheit 36, one of the most famous venues in Hamburg, we knew immediately we had to do it.
We also knew that it wouldn't be easy.
An event months in the making
While Hamburg has traditionally been a good “wrestling town”, our show “Violent Delights” was by no means going to be a guaranteed success. The other promotion that regularly visits Hamburg has been doing so for a long time; they've had years to build up their brand and their audience. Still, we decided to give it a go and to put our best foot forward.
Early on, I identified three big matches that I wanted to build to: The finale to a trilogy, a first time ever dream match and the start to a new chapter.
With Lexa Valo and Mila Smidt, we lucked into a feud that captured fans’ attention almost from the word go. To date, their first two encounters have been viewed over 145.000 times on the Unlimited Wrestling YouTube Channel.
Mila is a former Unlimited Wrestling Challenge Champion, making her the first woman in a major German promotion to win and hold a title not exclusively meant for women for an extended period of time (Incidentally, Lexa is among those who Mila defeated during her reign). When Unlimited Wrestling introduced the Women's Championship, many fans naturally assumed that Mila would be the inaugural title holder – the title seemed practically tailor-made for her. Once it became clear that Lexa would be her opponent in the title bout, chants of “Mila's gonna kill you” filled the arena almost immediately.
Fans thought for sure they knew where this was going – so when Lexa Valo cheated to beat Mila for the title, they weren't happy. They were even less enthused when beloved Mila, devastated by the loss, quietly vanished from Unlimited Wrestling.
I, however, was extremely happy – because I knew people would be frothing at the mouth to see the re-match 6 months later in Hamburg.
The second match that was set for Hamburg was the first ever encounter between Axel Tischer and Mark Haskins. These two are, without a doubt, among the very best in Europe, so how this match never happened is beyond me – but I knew that I wanted to make it happen in Unlimited Wrestling. Fortunately, both Mark and Axel were keen as well.
The build started with a first interaction during Unlimited Wrestling: New Dawn in September 2024. After eliminating Tischer from the rumble match, Haskins initially declined the challenge to a one-on-one match. Over the next few months, we deliberately kept the two apart, while showcasing their considerable skills against other opponents. When Haskins, eager to earn a shot at the Unlimited Wrestling Championship, finally accepted Tischer's challenge in January, the roof came off the place.
I thought there might be more than a few people who would be swayed to give us a chance based on that match alone. From what I've heard, I wasn't wrong.
As for the main event, we all felt strongly that some variation of Nickolas Kluth vs. Crowchester should close the Hamburg show.
Not only do the two have quite a bit of history, but fan favourite Kluth now holds the Unlimited Wrestling Championship that top heel Crowchester was stripped off in early 2024. Clearly, the elephant in the room needed to be addressed once Crowchester returned to the ring, which thankfully happened at the start of the year.
To kick off this feud, we settled on a huge 6-man tag team elimination match between Crowchester’s stable, Gruppa Ismena, and the top baby faces in the promotion: Nickolas Kluth, company founder Martin Guerrero and Unlimited Original Dominik Fischer.
Once those matches were locked in, the rest of the card was then set up little by little to showcase established talent and selected new faces, such as local heroes Quick & Dirty, internet darling Randleman and Unlimited Wrestling School graduate Konrad Dienstbier.
“Martin just broke his shin”
Of course, the best laid plans of mice and men often awry. I was in London for GCW when I received a message that simply read, “Martin just broke his shin”.
Well, damn. He really couldn't have picked a worse time for that, seeing how we'd just announced him as part of the aforementioned 6-man tag team main event. After a bit of frantic Googling (“broken shin recovery how long”), it became obvious that we would, indeed, need a replacement.
Luckily, Kluth has a storied history in Unlimited Wrestling – a history we were able to mine to find a suitable replacement partner in Jessy Jay.
A stress test worth taking
The card looked great on paper, but there was still a lot of work ahead of us. With the show starting at 4PM, we only had a little over 4 hours over to set up and make the final adjustments, not to mention film pre-tapes. It wasn’t fun, not even a little bit.
But in the end, it was a stress test worth taking. By the time the first bell rang, everything looked great, everyone was ready to go and, most importantly, every seat in the house was filled. The atmosphere was tremendous, and the crowd – many first-timers among them – was into the show from the first bell till the last.
Thank you, Hamburg! We’ll be back, I’m sure.