Alex Shane

Infobox Wrestler|name=Alex Spilling


names=Alex Shane
LX Blade
height=6 ft 5 in (196 cm)
weight= 290 lb (132 kg)
birth_date = Birth date and age|1979|11|15|mf=y
death_date =
birth_place = London
resides=
billed=
trainer= Andre Baker
debut= 1995
retired=|

Alex Spilling [ [http://www.onlineworldofwrestling.com/profiles/a/alex-shane.html Online World of Wrestling ] ] is a retired English professional wrestler who is best known by his ring name "The Showstealer" Alex Shane. Shane continues to work as an events promoter and wrestling teacher. He is currently building a career as a life coach and seeks to incorporate self-help thinking into wrestling training, primarily in the form of seminar tours which he currently makes across the UK.

Career

Alex Spilling began wrestling for the NWA Hammerlock promotion in 1995 under the tutelage of Hammerlock owner Andre Baker. After several years with the promotion, Spilling along with others fell out with Baker and left the to work for a new TV company UWA. During his time in UWA, Spilling formed a tag team with Guy Thunder and developed much of his in-ring ability and mic skills as well as creating his heel persona, Alex Shane. [Capital City Pro Wrestling results (July 5th 2000) Chris Ryan imitates the original UWA Alex Shane gimmick. From [http://www.geocities.com/faster6/alexshane/results.htm Geocities.com] . Retrieved 24/11/06.]

In 1999 he was taken under the wing of Dino Scarlo along with new UK up and comer Jody Fleisch. During this time, Shane was first approached by the newly revived Frontier Wrestling Alliance promotion. He and Guy Thunder worked the companies second show and Shane quicly found major success in the promotion as its top wrestler and British Heavyweight Champion.

Shane's success enabled him to open his own wrestling school; Capital City Pro Wrestling. The school trained around 35 wrestlers previously or currently on the UK scene, including Hade Vansen who recently signed a development contract with WWE. CCPW became the official London home of the FWA and Shane became further involved in the company by helping to run the first-ever FWA London show at Barking, Essex in 2001. During this time, Shane also made appearances in a newly formed promotion known as Universal Championship Wrestling, it was here Shane was repackaged as LX Blade ["All In To Coventry For The Wrestling" (October 5, 2000). [http://www.cwn.org.uk/tourism/skydome/2000/10/001005-japanese-wrestler.htm Skydome Coventry News website] . Retrieved 24/11/06.] a cartoon type robot character. The character was abandoned when the promotion folded after just two shows.

While promoting his CCPW venture, Shane to appeared as a guest on the talkSPORT radio show hosted by Tommy Boyd. Shane would soon become a regular co-host and helped the show become the UK's first fully fledged national wrestling radio show. During his time on the radio show in 2001, Shane returned to the FWA under his most successful persona "The Showstealer." Shane also worked alongside Boyd to help FWA produce one of its largest early shows, "FWA Revival" in 2002, which was broadcast on national TV. Alex Shane and Tommy Boyd fell out soon afterwards. However Tommy Boyd was replaced on talkSPORT by Alex Shane and his brand new show "Wrestle-Talk", which had a reported 400,000 listeners at its highest point. It wasn't long before Shane leveraged this new position to become the majority share holder of FWA. Despite its apparent success, talkSPORT cancelled the show in December 2002 as it felt wrestling was not part of the image they wished to promote.

Despite this setback, FWA was able to run several widely-attended shows at prestigious venues such as the York Hall, London and the Coventry Skydome with Alex Shane being widely credited for the controversial decision to increase ringside ticket pricing to levels more in line with those being charged by WWE, Boxing and MMA. This income was partly used to bring in a wider array of international talent, which would include A.J. Styles, Mikey Whipwreck and CM Punk.

Along with the success outside the ring, Shane teamed with former rival Ulf Herman to defeat the UK Pitbulls and win the FWA Tag Team Titles upon his return on October 25, 2002. However at British Uprising II in 2003 Shane turned on Herman, dropping his baby face image to become one of the top heels in the UK.

One of Shane's most notable in-ring FWA moments was with boxer Danny Williams, during an angle which started when Alex Shane, in a worked-shoot, informed the crowd that Danny's agent had, ironically, banned him from taking part in any sort of wrestling angle in the company, Alex Shane then claimed he was going to grab as much publicity as he can and began to insult Danny Williams and his entourage, Williams genuinely appeared to lose his cool when, as he walked away, Shane called him a homosexual and spat at his teenage brother-in-law, inciting a pull-apart brawl. The worked fracas, that nearly ended up in disaster at the FWA show made it to the Daily Mirror newspaper and UK national news programmes.

Shane also feuded with Steve Corino and Doug Williams, defeating him to become FWA British Heavyweight Champion at "British Uprising 3". However, Alex Shane sold his shares in FWA in 2004 as he wished to pursue interests outside of wrestling.

Alex Shane would, however, continue his career in wrestling promoting and presented the event International Showdown at the Coventry Skydome which was attended by over 3,000 people and branded "as good as it gets" by UK wrestling magazine Powerslam. It's sequel, Universal Uproar was not as successful but was notable for appearances by Kenta Kobashi and for Alex Shane gaining a pinfall over 3 time WWE champion and 'Hardcore Legend' Mick Foley in an elimination tag-match.

Hade Vansen won the FWA British Heavyweight Championship from Alex Shane in February 2006, however he did so by pinning Joe Legend and not Alex Shane, who retired from active wrestling soon afterwards. In 2007, his return to in-ring competition was announced as he was due to face Martin Stone but was forced to withdraw from the contest due to having emergency surgery on a tumor which was affecting blood flow to his brain. He has since stated that he thinks that the active wrestling part of his life is over.

In March 2006, Shane was announced as the new head of European Marketing and promotion for top American promotion Ring of Honor. In August of that year he promoted the groups first overseas tour and shocked pundits by drawing a bigger crowd for the companies debut in England than their figures back in their home of the US. It was also the companies biggest grossing weekend with tickets at $150 dollars front row compared to their usual $25 in the States. The company returned in March 2007 with the final ROH appearances of company legend Samoa Joe topping the last tour numbers and drawing around 2200 to the same building over two days. Yet again another ROH record setting weekend.

In April of the same year, Shane promoted a 16 man tournament called "King of Europe Cup". With 4 shows in 2 days (two matinee and two evening events) the weekend did a report 2100 plus ticket sales although due to the ROH shows in the same building so close to the event, the sales were lower than originally hoped for. However the original and never before used concept for the show was a critical success and firmly placed the event, won my UK star Nigel McGuiness, as a regular fixture on the European Calendar.

Alex has stated in interviews that he is writing a self-help book (working title "The Unholy Babble") using many of the lessons he has learned from his 14 plus years of wrestling himself, promotion, media appearances and teaching. He continues to run specialist training seminars around the UK and writes monthly articles for Fighting Spirit magazine for young wrestlers about getting the most out of your wrestling career by utilizing a variety of self-help and spiritual modalities. This lead to a 14 date national seminar tour which saw Alex visit a record number of wrestling schools in just 30 days.

Shane is credited with being the main person responsible for the boom in the British wrestling industry since the turn of the decade. Along with his mentor Dino Scarlo, Mark Sloan and Ralph Cardal amongst many others he managed to raise the price of UK wrestling tickets from £10 front row to £85 allowing promoters to up their production values and talent budgets. He helped train, mentor and inspire a massive number of today's wrestlers and promoters be it directly or indirectly and used his public speaking talents and promotion skills to get the once uninterested UK wrestling press to finally cover the domestic scene.

In wrestling

*Finishing and signature moves:*"One Night Stand" (Fireman's carry driver):*"Check-Up from the Neck Up" (Facebreaker followed into a cutter):*"Shanesation Kick" (Running big boot):*Choke driver

*Nicknames:*"The Showstealer" Alex Shane

Championships and accomplishments

*Frontier Wrestling Alliance :*FWA British Heavyweight Championship (2 times) [cite web|url=http://www.onlineworldofwrestling.com/results/other/2004-11.html | title=Independent Wrestling Results - November 2004 | accessdate=2008-07-05|publisher=onlineworldofwrestling.com] cite web|url=http://www.titlehistories.com/X_Wrestling_Alliance.htm | title=X Wrestling Alliance Title Histories | accessdate=2008-07-11|publisher=titlehistories.com] :*FWA Tag Team Championship (2 times) - with Ulf Herman (1) [cite web|url=http://www.onlineworldofwrestling.com/results/other/2002-10.html | title=Independent Wrestling Results - October 2002 | accessdate=2008-07-06|publisher=onlineworldofwrestling.com] , and Stevie Knight (1)

*The Wrestling Alliance:*TWA British Heavyweight Championship (1 time)

*World Association of Wrestling :*WAW British Heavyweight Championship (1 times)

*British Championship Wrestling :*BCW Heavyweight Championship (1 time)

*Original Pro Wrestling Organisation:*OPWO Heavyweight Championship (1 time) [ [http://www.cagematch.de/?id=1&nr=7765 OPWO Breakdown event report] www.cagematch.de (in German)]

*Capital City Pro Wrestling:*CCPW Championship (1 time)

*Other Titles :*GPW British Championship (1 time) :*RAMWA Southern Area Championship (1 time):*IWP North East Heavyweight Champion (1 time)

References