Defiant Wrestling

**Defiant Wrestling** formerly known as **WhatCulture Pro Wrestling**(d/b/a**WCPW**) was a British independent wrestling promotion, founded in 2016 by the members of **WhatCulture Wrestling**, the YouTube subsidiary of **WhatCulture.com**as a result of the channel's burgeoning popularity.

As in other professional wrestling promotions, WCPW shows were not legitimate contests, but purely entertainment-based, featuring storyline-driven, scripted, and choreographed matches, though they often included moves that put performers at risk of injury if performed incorrectly.

Defiant held live events available for viewing on the Defiant Wrestling YouTube channel. These events initially centered around the feud between Pacitti Club and BX as they fought over the WCPW World Heavyweight Championship as well as dominance over the promotion and channel; both Blampied of BX and Jack King of Pacitti Club would select wrestlers to compete in scripted matches, with Adam Pacitti acting as general manager.

WCPW was revealed to the public via a YouTube video on May 25, 2016. Despite being in its infancy, WCPW has attracted widespread attention for its professionalism, quality of storylines, and roster, which comprises both homegrown and well known guest talent from around the world.

On July 19, 2016, it was announced that the weekly WCPW wrestling shows would be named 'Loaded'.

Following the departure of Adam Blampied, Adam Pacitti, Jack The Jobber and King Ross from WhatCulture, Stu Bennett was announced to be the new general manager and the promotion was rebranded as Defiant Wrestling.

On August 2, 2019 Defiant Wrestling closed its doors after three years of service.

## History

### What Culture Pro Wrestling (2016–2017)

On May 26, 2016 WhatCulture Wrestling member Adam Pacitti announced the creation of the promotion. Pacitti outlined the promotion as putting B-Generation X and Pacitti Club, stables created by Pacitti and his nemesis another WhatCulture Wrestling member Adam Blampied, into the squared circle. Pacitti became the General Manager of the promotion, and Blampied and Jack G. King were entrusted with the task to find superstars to represent their stables.
WCPW announced their first two wrestling shows for the June 15 and 16, 2016, and they included stars such as Jay Lethal, Noam Dar and Rampage Brown. In addition, it was announced that Lethal would also defend his ROH World Championship at the show. Both shows were taped at Warehouse 34 in Newcastle, drawing an estimated crowd of 100 fans.
On July 19, 2016, it was announced that the weekly WCPW wrestling shows would be named *Loaded*. On the first episode of Loaded, WCPW announced the creation of their first title; the WCPW Championship, with the inaugural champion to be crowned during the promotion's first pay-per-view on July 25. During that time, Eric Bischoff joined the promotion as the temporary General Manager. On September 3 WCPW announced the creation of their women's championship; the WCPW Women's Championship. On September 4 at Refuse to Loose the General Manager Adam Pacitti announced the creation of the WCPW Internet Championship. This idea was proposed by Eric Bischoff, who also came up with the idea for another championship. Following that, all matches contested for the WCPW internet Championship could be watched free to watch on WCPW's YouTube Channel. On September 29, WCPW announced the creation of their own subscription-based video streaming service called WhatCulture Extra, which would include 24 hours of Loaded in full.

On October 22, General Manager Adam Pacitti announced the creation of their fourth active title; the WCPW Tag Team Championship, with the inaugural champions being crowned at the finals of the Adam Pacitti Tag Title Tournament at Delete WCPW.

On January 19 WCPW announced the creation of the Pro Wrestling World Cup. The tournament included 64 wrestlers, form various countries around the world. On February 2, WCPW announced that during 2017's Wrestlemania Weekend that they would travel to the United States for their pay-per-view State of Emergency. On April 13 it was announced that WCPW would co-present the German qualifiers for the Pro Wrestling World Cup tournament with German promotion German Wrestling Federation. On April 24, 2017, it was announced a working partnership with Revolution Pro Wrestling and New Japan Pro Wrestling, with WCPW and NJPW co-presenting the Japanese qualifiers for the Pro Wrestling World Cup tournament. On May 22, WCPW was forced to cancel the return of Loaded due to a Youtube Policy that considered wrestling violent. WCPW then created a pay-per-view named Fight Back and made a petition to bring back Loaded. During Fight Back, WCPW announced the creation of their fift active title; the WCPW Hardcore Championship with the inaugural champion being crowned at Build to Destroy on June 16. On July 25, it was announced the return of the weekly broadcasting show Loaded, after their petition was successful. On September 19, 2017 WCPW announced the departures of several on air talents (Adam Blampied, Adam Pacitti, King Ross, Sam Driver and Jack The Jobber) to persue other projects.

### Rebranding as Defiant Wrestling (2017–2019)

Following the departures of Adam Blampied, Adam Pacitti, King Ross, Sam Driver and Jack The Jobber, WCPW announced Stu Bennett as the new General Manager for the promotion, it was also announced that WCPW would rebrand as Defiant Wrestling in December, with Defiant holding their first pay-per-veiw *We Are Defiant*. This also led to the end of the Loaded, with its final episode being held on October 3, 2017. After We Are Defiant, it was announced that Defiant would create a weekly broadcast show like Loaded named Defiant. But Defiant later went inactive and Loaded later returned. On August 2, 2019 Defiant Wrestling closed the doors.

## Authority figures

### General Manager

* Adam Pacitti (May 26, 2016 – December 1, 2016)
* Martin Kirby (December 1, 2016 – February 13, 2017)

* Adam Blampied – (March 6, 2017-September 19, 2017)
* Stu Bennett – (September 30, 2017–April 28, 2018)
* Primate – (April 28, 2018 –November 8,2018)
* Prince Ameen-(December 16,2018- August 2, 2019)

## Online Content

### Weekly shows

Defiant Wrestling's weekly wrestling show was initially titled WCPW Loaded and was broadcast online and through the WCPW website. The shows were pre-recorded at various venues and shown on tape-delay, generally having been recorded in blocks of two or three episodes in one night. The shows were generally an hour long and consisted of four wrestling bouts along with various backstage promos which built storylines towards the regular special shows which also aired on WhatCulture Extra.

In 2017 the show was discontinued and relaunched as Defiant in line with the rebranding of the company, although the format was largely similar, airing on Access Defiant and Youtube. But Defiant later went inactive and Loaded returned after months of inactivity until the promotion closed its doors.

### Recap and review shows

WCPW also aired a number of recap and review shows over it's tenure. At the launch of the promotion they aired WCPW ReLoaded which was a studio based review of events. This show was dropped after one episode but revived later in the run focussing more on highlight footage, recapping previous events and reshowing full matches from various shows. Each episode would also include a previously unseen match recorded at one of the special or Loaded tapings.

The Whatculture YouTube channel also carried occasional series of review shows including WTF Moments, Top Ten WCPW Loaded Moments and This Week in WCPW.

### Internet Pay-per-view events

Special Shows were longer WCPW and Defiant wrestling shows and act as the culmination of various storylines and feuds. Specials were generally posted to Defiant's paid for service or delivered as a pay-per-view (iPPV) via various channels.

### Footnotes

1. ↑ Pacitti lost his position as General Manager to Martin Kirby on December 1, 2016.
2. ↑ Kirby gave up his position to foccus on persuing the WCPW Championship on February 13, 2017.
3. ↑ On September 19, 2017 WhatCulture announced the departure of Adam Blampied, resigning his position.
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 On April 28, 2018 Primate became the general manager after Bennett's departure. Cite error: Invalid `<ref>` tag; name ":0" defined multiple times with different content