Trivia / Defiant Wrestling

• Actor Allusion:
  • WCPW Delete WCPW was named after a Catchphrase by Matt Hardy, who debuted in WCPW in this iPPV.
  • Both True Legacy and True Destiny have Kurt Angle main eventing them. The shows are named after his Catchphrase "It's true. It's damn true".
  • Stu Bennett gets to use the Bullhammer against Zack Gibson at WCPW No Regrets.
    • His schtick as Bad News Barrett also gets some allusions: it's first used by IPW's Billy Wood as the announcement for Mark Haskins vs. Martin Kirby at Defiant #6 ("Defiant, I have some baaaad news for you...") and the man himself uses it at Defiant Chain Reaction when Joe Hendry requests to be part of Team Defiant for that night's Team IPW vs. Team Defiant.
• Colbert Bump: Austin Aries defended his Impact World Championship against Eli Drake on February 15, 2018. The catch? He entered with four title belts to the match: Impact Grand Championship, World Series Wrestling Championship, IPW UK World Championship... and Defiant World Championship.
• Corpsing: During Blampied's list of his accomplishments, he can be seen trying his best not to smile and failing.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • The What Culture Wrestling guys went from simply analyzing, covering, and parodying pro wrestling to actually producing it with their own promotion. Through said promotion, they have had the chance to work with a laundry list of legends and industry icons.
  • Simon Miller went from a wrestle YouTube personality to a legitimate wrestler, debuting at the 30-man rumble at Defiant No Regrets to a huge pop and eliminating Jack Sexsmith and Drake before the latter eliminated him as well in retaliation.
  • Ashley Dunn attended a WCPW show in Milton Keynes, and wished he could perform for the promotion. Fast forward several years later, and he became a tag team champion with Kelly Sixx.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Due to losing the WhatCulture backing after the rebranding, the higher-ups made the sensible decision to turn itself into a promotion to introduce new wrestlers to the scene with a bunch of recognizable faces which were already WCPW originals, rather than relying on imports and part-timers. Thanks to this decision, they managed to bring Loaded back, and created a new "Breakout" division.
• Real Song Theme Tune:
  • WCPW Refuse To Lose had, unsurprisingly, Saliva's "Refuse To Lose".
  • WCPW True Destiny had "Destiny" by Shattered Skies.
    • They also had "No One's Safe" for WCPW/Defiant No Regrets.
    • And "Built To Destroy", the theme for the eponymous WCPW Built To Destroy.
  • WCPW State of Emergency had "3rd. Eye Blimp" by Otis McDonald.
  • WCPW/Defiant Chain Reaction had "Old Bones" by Of Allies.
    • Each of the matches for Defiant Chain Reaction were promoted with one of these: Fivefold's "Just Close Your Eyes" for Kay Lee Ray vs. Millie McKenzie; Royal Bliss's "Monster" for Team IPW vs. Team Defiant; Top Shelf's "Game Over" for Rampage vs. Zack Gibson; and Tekno AXE's "Doing Hard Time" for Jurn Simmons vs. Gabriel Kidd.
  • Defiant's main theme is "Killer" by Katalina Kicks. Also from KK is "We don't care", the theme for Primate vs. Jimmy Havoc for the Hardcore Title.
  • Sean Kustom uses a sample of Imagine Dragons' "Thunder" as an intro for his theme.
• Romance on the Set:
  • Will Ospreay and Bea Priestley.
  • Veda Scott and Mike Bailey.
  • Ricochet and Tessa Blanchard.
  • Travis Banks and Nixon Newell.
• Screwed by the Network: A lot, if certain current and former employees of WhatCulture are to be believed.
  • WCPW's weekly shows went on a temporary hiatus due to management wanting to change the format to a live broadcast instead of it being pre-taped.
  • YouTube's stricter advertising guidelines that made wrestling "restricted" content led them to getting a massive cut in advertising revenue. A live event protesting the changes (WCPW Fight Back) ended up getting them a strike on their account and banned from livestreaming, allegedly for their logo for the event parodying YouTube's own logo.
  • WWE's UK contracts stipulated that wrestlers signed to them could not work for another promotion unless it was one that was already in a working relationship with WWE or if their shows were not broadcast on TV or on a free video platform like YouTube. This meant that the promotion lost several wrestlers, including Joseph Conners, Tyler Bate, Trent Seven, El Ligero and Pete Dunne. Conners did however make a one-off return as a stand-in during the WCPW World Cup, where he lost his match.
• What Could Have Been:
  • If the original members of Whatculture Wrestling (the two Adams, Jack King, Sam Driver, Suzie Kennedy, Kenny Mcintosh, "King" Ross Tweddell and Simon Miller) had all stayed, for a start.
    • Adam Blampied could have become the next Paul Heyman. He was heavily involved in writing and producing the show behind the scenes, could hold his own against Damien Sandow and Eric Bischoff on the mic and was a genuinely charismatic and well-loved internet personality in his own right before stepping into his role(s) both on and off screen. However, he left the promotion on his own terms and was then caught in a sexual harassment scandal, forcing him to retire not only from the wrestling business but from being a public figure on the internet as a whole until he started working for Wrestletalk in early 2020.
    • Adam Pacitti, Jack, Sam and Ross left to start Cultaholic, where they have returned to being wrestling pundits and have explicitly stated that they don't want to try to run a wrestling promotion ever again.
    • Simon Miller came back, first as a competitor in No Regrets 2018, then as General Ameen's assistant (after the return of the weekly show) and then as an active competitor.
  • Pete Dunne. He was brought in to enormous fanfare by none other than Eric Bischoff himself and then... he lost lots of matches, aligned with Travis Banks for almost no reason at all and then was forced to leave the company due to his commitments with WWE. Had he been able to stay there longer, he could have had a meaningful storyline or even a run with a title. It seems almost ridiculous now considering his incredible run with the WWE United Kingdom Championship.
  • Gabriel Kidd vs. Joe Hendry for the #1 Contendership to the Internet Title at WCPW Bulletproof: Championship Showdown was originally going to be the match for the title featuring Joe Hendry and Cody Rhodes (c), but the latter was busy filming Arrow so the match was turned into a Contendership match.
  • WCPW No Regrets would have had a match between Alberto El Patrón and Joe Coffey, but an illness from the former made the match to be cancelled, putting Joe Coffey in the epic 30-man match for the Defiant World Title.
  • Due to visa difficulties, Dave Mastiff and Scott Wainwright couldn't make it for WCPW HendryMania.
  • Due to unknown reasons, Moose couldn't make it in time for his match against Pastor Eaver at Defiant #WeAreDefiant, so it was changed to Eaver vs. Gabriel Kidd, and thus the "Congregation" storyline began.
    • Also related to Defiant #WeAreDefiant, Will Ospreay was going to be the third man alongside Marty Scurll and Joe Hendry in the Defiant #WeAreDefiant three-way for the Defiant World Title, but had to drop due to conflicting schedules with his commitments in Japan.
  • A neck injury forced Chris Ridgeway out of Team IPW for Defiant Chain Reaction, though he was able to make his return to wrestling later on.
  • An injury prevented Travis Banks from showing at the triple-threat match for the Internet Title at Defiant Lights Out; instead of replacing him (because he's the champion), the match was turned into a #1 contendership match between the other two participants, David Starr and WALTER.
  • Due to Primate's retirement, the grudge match between Martin Kirby and "No Fun" Damian Dunne was turned instead into a qualifier for the Magnificent Seven briefcase at Defiant Lights Out.
  • John "Bad Bones" Klinger's crusade to be the only German in Defiant and his subsequent targeting of Lucky Kid was supposed to result in the debut of Ilja Dragunov to take Klinger out, but before the episode revealing this was even aired, it was announced that Dragunov had to drop out due to contractual obligations (as he had signed with NXT UK). It was somewhat salvaged upon airing, as it aired with a disclaimer regarding Dragunov and an additional shot featuring Klinger's replacement opponent Justin Sysum.
  • Kid Lykos was supposed to return at Unstoppable to team with fellow CCK member Chris Brookes and challenge Aussie Open, but injury forced Lykos to drop out of the match. His replacement, as a result of the stolen glasses incident, was Lucky Kid.
  • Due to injury (though heavily suspected to actually be due to him signing with All Elite Wrestling), Jimmy Havoc was forced to drop out of his Hardcore Title defense at Unstoppable, forcing the title to be awarded to Damian Dunne (who quickly rebranded it the "No Fun" Title) and the match itself to be changed to Dunne vs. HT Drake.
  • Injury caused two matches at Lights Out to be changed, as Kanji vacated her women's title (awarding the title to challenger Lizzy Styles and making the match Styles vs. Lana Austin) and Lucky Kid pulled out of his scheduled Internet title challenge (with the debuting Sean Kustom taking his place).

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