By Mike Lano

Kirk White and everyone at Big Time Wrestling (btwrestling.com) want to thank everyone for another fabulous BTW legends convention(WrestleFest) and show Saturday, March 1st.

I worked hard at getting Bret (who Kirk flew in two days early) on local affiliate tv stations as well as our strongest/top ESPN/Disney sports radio A.M. station in KNBR those two days.  And glad I nagged old KRON tv pal Vern Glenn(longtime NBC affiliate sports news kingpin) who conducted Thursday's KRON channel 4 tv interview with Bret who came during the show and filmed Eugene/Nick Dinsmore's match with BTW standout Jason Styles.  Vern is a local sportscasting legend as "Mr Involvement" and he emailed me this morning his thanks to all at BTW on fantastic convention and show.  Two KRON tv station managers attended the show as well and were impressed with all aspects of BTW.

This was BTW's 5th bigest and bes fanfest convention, held every other year. BTW has promoted monthly shows for well over a dozen years with top legends and their own talent trained by Jason Styles.  Kirk reunited Bret with Jim Neidhart to meet with fans all day plus Rob Van Dam(who filmed his RVDTC.com reality show with all the top stars there), TNA standouts Gail Kim and Christy Hemme, Melissa Anderson(who's also in TNA) and everyone at the APW booth, former GLOW tv star Jeannie "Hollywood" Basson, Honkeytonk Man, Eugene/Nick Dinsmore(who was a real standout on the show doing fantastically creative things in his U-gene character),  TNA highflyer Frankie Kazarian, the Ballard Twins, Chris Masters,  Charlotte convention kingpin Greg Price who brought female star(TNA, etc) Talia Madison, Godfather, Steve Williams, the amazing Harley Race and many others.  Roy Shire/Lebell 60's legend, the original Paul Diamond(who worked for Verne, Stu, Baba, etc) came up at my urging and was blown away by the event. Kenji's wife said he was too ill to attend, but he's enjoyed coming to Kirk's events in past years.

After a successful all-day convention with signings, photos, fan involvement and fun, plus some 20+ booths and sellers;  there was an evening standing-room-only BTW supercard(and I mean the Newark Pavillion was packed.  This venue reminds me in many ways of Tokyo's famous Korakuen Hall, a perfect wrestling venue and Kirk's run BTW there at least 12 years).  RVD  interviewed fans, the Hart Foundation, HTM, Harley, Godfather, Steve Williams, Kim and Christy for RVDtv.com which is worth checking out as a reality show.  RVD in past episodes has discussed the election, war in Iraq, ethical/topical issues of today with stars like Chris Masters and Samoa Joe(who defeated Kaz in a 5-star match on the last BTW show).  New episodes of RVDtv.com every Friday.

Results: Kaz(Frankie Kazarian) got a surprise win over his former UPW training stablemate Chris Masters(they hugged post-match and Kaz asked that Masters return back to BTW for a rematch. Fans chanted "this is awesome" thruout the match which hit Masters with a lot of emotion backstage.  He said he doesn't typically get that appreciative reaction other than the usual fan response to top heels, and really enjoyed his weekend at BTW.  Jason Styles did a bit of cheating to get a pin over U-Gene in a fantastic match.  Gail Kim beat former ChickFight tournament stalwart in Candice Larue (Jesse Hernandez SoCal trained EWF star), Bret Hart came out and gave a surprise promo and told the fans since he couldn't wrestle, Honkeytonk Man would take his place alongside his friend and partner, Jim Neidhart.  They defeated two of BTW's best in Le' Emporer and Shannon Ballard, and the crowd was solidly behind Neidhart and HTMan.  Mother Truckin' Otis(very popular locally, comes out to the Smoky & the Bandit theme song) pinned Dash Riprock, Shoot to Thrill kept their BTW tag titles in a three way dance besting Shane Ballard/Wild Storm and heels Chico Navaro/Ryan Von Kool.  Kirk gave a speech as well, introduced Harley Race who sat at ringside, thanking everyone for making the event a huge success and threw out to the fans tons of autographed photos, and WWE shirts and wristbands(Rey Mysterio), etc.

This is a well-oiled, professionally run promotion;  and unlike the nobodies last October at the Cow Palace,  as Bret said publicly, none of the boys or fans have to worry about Kirk White.   The boys, vendors and fans were all happy;  and we got on the evening news last night who also reported on what a success BTW's Wrestlefest was.

Longtime (since '74) Shire ring announcer, local legend and pal Allan Bolte did the ring announcing(he used to write for Wrestling World magazine with Georgie and myself about a million years ago).