Special edition of WWNLive Alerts – The state of DGUSA/EVOLVE address
From the desk of Gabe Sapolsky:
2013 has come to a close for Dragon Gate USA and EVOLVE since the last show of the calendar year was DGUSA Freedom Fight 2013 on November 17th. This means it’s a good time to give The State Of DGUSA/EVOLVE Address as we look back at 2013 and prepare for 2014. This isn’t going to be filled with hype or cheerleading type stuff. Instead, it’ll just be a series of bullet points to let you know what’s going on.
This might sound like hyperbole, but it’s as sincere as it gets. The most important thing is that you understand how much we appreciate your support, interest and passion for DGUSA and EVOLVE. We know there is a lot of wrestling out there to watch and a lot of places to spend your money. We cherish the fact that you support us. We value that and it is what drives us to do what we do. Thank you for your support in 2013 and we look forward to a great 2014 together.
A big positive for us in 2014 was the the return to the New York City market as we established Queens and Brooklyn as our homebase. We feel that we have something special developing, especially in Brooklyn at The Lyceum where we had the infamous broken ring match at EVOLVE 24 and the epic Chris Hero vs. Johnny Gargano bout at DGUSA Freedom Fight. We will return to Queens and Brooklyn on February 22nd & 23rd.
Meanwhile, The Orpheum in Ybor City, FL has become a homebase for the WWNLive Family down south with FIP this Saturday night and SHINE the following week. We will then have EVOLVE 25 in Ybor City on January 10th. This will be a big one as we celebrate our 25th card. Besides that, we are always looking to go to different areas. It will start with the WWNLive Experience with DGUSA, EVOLVE, SHIMMER, Kaiju Big Battel and A Wrestling Odyssey on April 3rd-5th in New Orleans. From there, we are in discussions on a Midwest tour and return to New England. Stay tuned, you never know where DGUSA or EVOLVE will go next. Anything is possible.
If you can’t join us in person at shows, we will continue to use iPPV at www.WWNLive.com as our primary means of distribution, whether the shows are live or on VOD. Recently, we have made major strides in our DGUSA & EVOLVE DVD production. This is due to a change in our business plan that has allowed us to put more financial resources into getting these releases out. We know you have heard that we will get DVDs out faster before, but now we are making serious progress. We have three new DGUSA DVDs for the holiday season, EVOLVE 18 is about to come out, DGUSA Open The Golden Gate 2013 will be available for pre-order soon and both DGUSA shows from the Los Angeles area are in production. DVDs will be out on a consistent basis now and we will be caught up in the upcoming months. All the recent releases prove that. We appreciate your patience and it is only with your support that we will get caught up on DVDs.
We are getting ready to start the voting on our DGUSA/EVOLVE 2013 Awards. We want your nominations. Tweet them using hashtag #WWNLiveAwards and let us know who you think should win. Here are the categories:
Wrestler Of The Year
Tag Team Of The Year
Show Of The Year
Match Of The Year
Feud/Rivalry Of The Year
Best Newcomer (single or tag team that arrived in 2013) -Story Of The Year (in ring only) Please limit your nominations to DGUSA and EVOLVE only. Thank you and we look forward to seeing your thoughts on these awards using hashtag #WWNLiveAwards.
This brings us to what I consider the greatest strength of DGUSA and EVOLVE – our roster. This is where I have to stop myself from sounding like a hype machine. I truly love and respect the wrestlers we have on our roster now. There is so much talent, desire and work ethic here. Now things are getting more interesting since we have Chris Hero and Roderick Strong as newcomers on upcoming shows. Of course, they aren’t newcomers as they are two independent wrestling legends. I have a long and deep history with both. We will add to that history, but they have a whole new talent roster to test their skills against. This all leads to EVOLVE in Florida on January 10th-12th. We will have the cards booked out soon and the matches announced.
Stay tuned….
I have to mention something that has come up recently and that’s Davey Richards.
I’m not going to go into our history, but as many of you know it is not a positive one. The bottom line is that none of you really care much about that. What you want is to get the most value for your money, see the best matches possible and witness memorable shows. I will never say a bad word about Davey’s in ring ability. He is a special talent. That is why we were initially going to build EVOLVE around him.
We have a fresh roster for him to step in the ring against. However, I have a major trust issue. I am still criticized to this day for never booking a second Samoa Joe vs. Low Ki match years ago. The reason I didn’t is because I didn’t trust the match to actually happen. The anticipation would have been so high for that match that it would have been impossible to recover from a cancellation. It is my greatest fear. There are times when injuries or travel mishaps get in the way, but we strive to deliver what we promise you and there needs to be trust that it will be deliver.
Well, there is your no frills State Of DGUSA/EVOLVE Address. I hope this gave you some information on where we’ve been and what you can expect. We appreciate you taking the time to read it. We welcome all your feedback by email at Help@DGUSA.tv or by using the above social network buttons. Let us know what you want to see, what you like or what we can do better. We can only improve with your feedback.
Have a great holiday season! We’ll take things back to the ring with match and talent announcements in the next WWNLive Alerts. Thank you.