Trivia / Celtic Championship Wrestling

• Creator Backlash:
  • Marion Armstrong refers to his debut match - where he tried to compete with a broken hand - as "one of the top three worst matches in CCW history".
  • Katey Harvey has disowned the 'Hairspray on a Pole' match that she had with Kazza. The pole they wanted to use was literally the end of a hoover that she was taller than.
  "People just need to let it die."
  • Xavier Burns referred to CCW as "a cancer to Irish wrestling", and admitted he only trained there because it was closer to where he lived than the other Irish promotions.
• Creator Breakdown:
  • By all accounts, CCW was initially run well enough but it went downhill as Lee Cahalane's alcoholism spiralled out of control.
  • Raven Creed hated her time towards the end so much that she only stayed because she was the reigning Women's Champion. She was booked to eventually drop it to Debbie Keitel, and was planning to leave wrestling altogether afterwards. Thankfully, she was persuaded to stay.
• Deleted Role: Siren wrestled a match against Katey Harvey on the 2014 Summer Brawl show that was cut from the video that went online. She never appeared again afterwards.
• Fake American: Both DOC and Xavier Burns use American accents in promos but are Irish in real life.
• Funny Character, Boring Actor: Inverted. Marion Armstrong is a ruthless, humourless brute. Out of character, he's far more goofy and playful.
• Hostility on the Set: The promotion shut down in 2018 because of the roster's growing frustration with Lee Cahalane. Several former workers publicly denounced him in a 2019 interview - citing homophobic remarks, inappropriate behaviour towards female talent, verbal and financial abuse, and unsafe working conditions.
• Real Life Writes the Plot:
  • Xavier Burns was Put on a Bus and kicked out of the Establishment because he moved to Canada.
  • Bingo Ballance's title loss to Ross Browne came about because he had signed with a larger promotion that prevented him from competing for others. Once that ended, he returned to CCW.
• Troubled Production: Despite managing to last six years, things were far from smooth.
  • The CCW training school was a bit of a disaster. Trainees were expected to pay €100 a month for a facility that only cost €300 to rent - that was never cleaned and there would often be broken glass or spilled beer from one too many post-show parties. One wrestler left a bag overnight that ended up stolen (with his tights inside) and rats were often there. The ring was in subpar condition with broken planks of wood that were never replaced because it was "too costly". The trainees never discovered where the extra money they were paying went.
  • In the early days, many new CCW trainees would be booked despite being inexperienced or not in any condition to wrestle. Marion Armstrong tried to wrestle his first match with a broken hand, and NBK were booked despite frequently trying to train while stoned. They were eventually blacklisted after a careless botch led to Lorcan Wood getting a fractured jaw in a match with them.
  • When the promotion started bringing in international talent, some of them would turn up not knowing where they'd be staying after the show. El Ligero came over and ended up spending the night sleeping on someone's floor. Another set nearly missed their flights back home because no one had been told to give them a lift to the airport.
  • Newer talent were often booked in the hopes that they would work for free. LJ Cleary and Valkyrie initially just had their travel expenses covered, but after several prominent matches, asked if they could actually be paid for their work. They were granted this eventually, but Raven Creed confessed she was told to stiff Valkyrie because of it.
  • Female talents were often abused and mistreated. Raven Creed had advances made on her twice by Lee Cahalane as soon as she turned eighteen - one of which happened after her drink had been spiked and she was barely conscious. Both Valkyrie and Lauren La Roux were booked because he wanted to sleep with them (Valkyrie was only eighteen when she debuted for the promotion). Another unnamed female wrestler had a camera filming one of her matches and caught Lee saying that her work was terrible and she'd only been booked because she had "large tits". Another female who went unnamed was also told to "go shake your ass out there and sell some tickets."
  • Lee would frequently be drunk during most of the shows, and Justin Shape recounts one where an intermission lasted for forty minutes because he'd disappeared only to run back yelling at people for not getting the show back and running. Verbal abuse was sadly common among the younger trainees (most of whom were only teenagers). Matt Skylar - who was dating Raven Creed when the second incident mentioned above happened - called Lee out for essentially trying to date rape her, and was punished by not being booked for six months.
  • The final nail in the coffin was when a press conference was called for Revolution 6, which ended up being the promotion's last show. Six people turned up, three of whom were trainees and another was invited to pretend to be a wrestling journalist. The whole debacle was filmed and uploaded to YouTube - where it was mercilessly torn apart by fans and other wrestlers alike. Most of the roster walked out shortly after and set up a Spiritual Successor in Phoenix Wrestling.
• Wag the Director: Xavier Burns's heel turn came out because he kept lobbying for it.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The Establishment storyline was initially planned for Marion Armstrong - who came in to play an on-screen commissioner at the Paddy's Day Massacre show. During the gap between shows, he began training to wrestle and transitioned into that instead.
  • Raven Creed claims she was asked to do a storyline involving an abortion. She refused, feeling it would be in bad taste.
• Writer Revolt: Justin Shape found the CCW ring in such bad shape that he refused to bump off it, leading to his matches relying on comedy or psychology.