One lucky ticket...

[TH]

Before you can begin to realize how someone can get an idea so outrageous and ambitious as starting up a team wrestling league, you have to think about what's involved to get such a project going. You need money, you need money, and you need more money. After that, everything else, the wrestlers, the TV deals, arena rentals, the hype machine... that follows.

But where did a Northeast Philadelphia man, someone who never made more than $75K a year working at the front offices in Minneapolis, someone who never made a ton of money running a wrestling promotion out of a booth in a fast food place on Frankford Avenue, and someone who really hasn't had anything more lucrative than a date here and a date there consulting the next local indie fed on how they can kill their own wrestlers for the benefit of getting a cheap pop out of a high school gymnasium... well, where did he get enough money to start something this big?

To find the answer to this question, we must go back to December 8th, 2004, into the second floor apartment of a man who will either revolutionize the business of wrestling or bankrupt himself trying.
--

It's eleven PM on a Wednesday night. Second floor apartment, right above a convenience store on the corner of Frankford Avenue and Benner Street. A space heater works overtime in the corner trying to keep a scruffy guy in a white, stained wife beater and gray sweatpants, sitting in a beaten down recliner, eating a bowl of Cookie Crisp, holding his spoon in his right hand and a Powerball ticket in his left, warm in the cold Philadelphia December night.

"I'm Rob Jennings and coming up on Action News..."

The news didn't concern Jess at all. To him, the commercial was the last hurdle between him and perhaps being a millionaire.

Well, maybe not a millionaire. Jess Chapel never played the lottery to win big. He always had just hoped he'd win a couple thousand dollars, pay off his debts and then find a job doing what he liked somewhere in the city, living in relative anonymity, except for a few wrestling fans who might recognize him from his days running shows out of the Storage Facility. But that wouldn't bother him.

Just four out of the five numbers, and maybe the Powerball too. A pipe dream, but one Jess could hang on to. He never even came as close as winning the five bucks that you get from just matching the Powerball.

But it was as close to enthralling TV as he could get, well at least ever since MBE closed its doors. Finally, it came on. Jess watched at the end of his seat, eyes glued to the screen.

"35"

Jess looked on his ticket. "35... that's one!"

"17"

He looked on his ticket again... unbelievable, another number on Jess' ticket as hsi eyes lit up with his mouth full of cereal.

"50"

This was a dream. It had to be. Three for three so far. He's got money, a little bit. Jess dropped his spoon and pinched himself.

"13"

No way. Four for four.

"45"

Jess just stared at the screen. He won a 100 grand. That's all he needed. Jess was home free for the rest of his life. All he wanted, just no debts, a nest egg, freedom to do what he wanted without having to worry about loan sharks...

"and the Power Ball... 2"

Jess looked at his ticket, at what his Power Ball was. He did a double take. He spit the milk out of his mouth.

The Power Ball on his ticket... was two.

He flung the bowl of cereal in the air, spilling what was left of it all over his shirt. Jumping out of his chair, he galloped around his apartment like the Phillies did all over the turf at the Vet after winning the Series in 80. One man pandemonium. But it didn't matter.

Jess Chapel was rich. Filthy, stinking rich.

And he had not an idea of what to do with the money.
--

The next day, he strolled into Greenman's Deli with the winning ticket. Dave, the deli's owner, looked at it, and his jaw dropped.

"Oh my God," said Dave. "You... you... you won? You won the $171 million?"

"Yep, I did."

Dave was frantic, he didnt' know what to do for a moment. He picked up the phone.

An hour later, Action News was there.

"So Jess, what are you going to do with the money?" said the reporter.

"Well Anita... I'm gonna do what anyone with this much money would do. I'm gonna play the stock market."

To be continued.

 

[TH]

Playing stocks and bonds

Now, the first thing that Jess Chapel would tell you is that he doesn't know a damn thing about the stock market. The S&P 500 could very well be 500 P&S ravioli that his grandmother used to get every Sunday morning down on Bartram Avenue in southern outskirts of the city. NASDAQ? He thought it was a racing outfit for rednecks.

But there he was, about $80 million in the bank (after taxes) and nothing he really could think of spending it on, other than the usual stuff. House in Bucks County, a sturdy Toyota that could get him to and from work, a nice steak dinner for his mother and father at Outback, and of course, every WWE, NWA, ECW, MBE, CSWA, UWA, fWo, Puroresu, Lucha Libre and ROH DVD they had available.

He had always envisioned, dreamed actually would be a more appropriate word actually, of living comfortably. But to him, comfortably would be being able to live paycheck to paycheck and spend all that paycheck on stuff he wanted. Bank accounts? Who needs a bank account!

Well, you need a bank account when you've got more money than you could possibly spend.

And something clicked in Jess' head. Instead of the spendthrift, work a day, spend all your money and who gives a damn where it goes to free soul he had been for the first 32 years of his life, in the instant when he realized that he was rich beyond his imagination, it wasn't enough. He had to make more money. He had something in the back of his mind, probably relating to the one thing he loved more than anything else, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it.

But he knew that wrestling was not a money making venture at this point. So he called up some brokers at T. Rowe Price, TD Waterhouse, Smith-Barney... all the big firms. THey offered him a bunch of portfolios, but he wasn't hearing it... until one day...

"Hm, what's that company?" he asked.

The broker looked perplexed. "Well, ahem, it's... I really can't explain what it is."

"Oh, well, they've got a cool name. I'll buy all the stocks I can in that."

"What? You... you're not serious."

"Yeah, I am. I want everything I can get for that."

"You're... you're going to buy stocks based on a company just because it has a cool name?"

"Yeah man, it's my money."

"Fine, throw it away." The broker picked up the phone.

Moments later, Jess Chapel owned about a million shares of stock in some company called Silli-tech out in Modesto. Paid $10 a share for them.

A few weeks later, there was a huge story in the business section of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Silli-tech broke huge with a new development in defense systems. Stock prices soared, $50 a share. Jess' broker called him.

"Sell! Sell!"

Jess said, "nope."

Two days later, $78.25 a share. Still no inclination to sell.

The price kept rising and rising and rising until one day, it went to $168 a share. Jess finally decided that he didn't want to sit on his stocks anymore. So he sold them.

All 1.23 million of them.

At the end of the day, Jess Chapel was worth over a quarter of a billion dollars.

The next day, the stock started to drop in price. A steady decline until it finally stopped at around $23 a month later. There's still an ongoing SEC investigation as to whether Jess had inside information, but he has stuck to his story so far, that he just felt like selling them on that day at that time. Between you and me, Jess got greedy, but he'd never do something that immoral.

But there he was, sitting on over $260 million dollars. He was going to go out and buy more stocks with some of that money, but then he finally came to his senses. If he couldn't spend $80 million exhaustfully, what makes him think he could spend $260 million exhaustfully? And why risk the stock market again? He didn't want to lose all his money.

So he went back to the way he was. Living bare bones (well, as bare bones as you can in a 90,000 sq ft. house), just spending money on what interested him.

Until one day, he popped in a DVD from 1997. The King of the Ring. Steve Austin vs. Shawn Michaels... the Tag Team freakin' Champions at the time, going at each other tooth and nail in a bitter feud. How could bitter enemies like that be teammates?

He paused the DVD and picked up the sports page to somethign he was reading earlier. Jeff Kent ripping Barry Bonds. He remembered the Shaq and Kobe feud in the back of his mind.

Everything started to come together in his head.

He popped out the KOTR DVD and popped in the NFW Best of Season 1. There was a reason why NFW was his favorite promotion outside of the ones he had worked for in the past, and it wasn't the Seven Deadly Sins, exploding cages, Melton in a wheelchair or the freakshow that was the East. It was...

He turned around and looked on the wall in his den. 1980 Philadelphia Phillies World Championship pennant. Eagles team photograph poster. A game poster from the 1950 World Series, Philadelphia Phillies vs. New York Yankees.

He sat back on his couch, staring into the features menu for the NFW DVD, and going through his mind... what if Michael Manson and Shane Southern teamed up? What if they had no choice?

What if you could assemble the ultimate stable...

...the ultimate team.

A lightbulb went off in his head. He had a fantastic idea... and more importantly...

...a quarter billion dollars to burn.

He rushed to his feet and grabbed the cordless phone from off the top of the TV. He dialed a number furiously.

"Hello, Tom? Yeah, it's Jess. Say, I had a question... you have experience running a national wrestling promotion... how would I go about doing that?"

 

[TH]

Indeed, Tom Holzerman, Jr. had had success running a national promotion. Everybody's Wrestling Association, or just the EWA, made people use the term "Big Three" long before ECW thought of crawling out of the bingo hall and changing their E from Eastern to Extreme. The history of the EWA wasn't long in terms of say, the WWF or NWA, but for fifteen years, it stood as an alternative for those who enjoyed a heavier dose of sport and a lighter serving of entertainment.

New Year's Day 1990 was the first show. February of just this year was the last one. Holzerman was a victim of his own family as much as he was a victim of declining interest in wrestling. Some say the nail in the coffin was when Tom Holzerman III threw the EWA World's Heavyweight Championship in the garbage can and walked out of the promotion late 2004. Nearly one-third of the roster followed him out. Maybe if that hadn't happened, the EWA could have survived as an ROH-style fed, even if the cancellation of TV was as inevitable as the walkouts said it was.

The walkouts didn't hurt Holzerman as much as the fact that his own son was the one leading them. But then again, this was to be expected from a man who both in and out of character was known as the "Biggest Ego in the Business." He lived his character. Some say his character was inextricably and irreversibly melted into his real life persona.

And add that to the fact that Holzerman the older was always closer to guys who were EWA lifers than he was to his oldest son could have had something to do with the friction there. It was so bad that on an interview with Meltzer, Holzerman said that L.J. Cool, Chris Haas and Maggot were more sons to him than his own son was. It was one of those stretches where the younger Holzerman, who actually attempted litigation against Priest for character infringement in late 2003, wanted the title but his father wouldn't give it to him. Lovely relationship they had.

But it couldn't be denied that at one point, Holzerman had one of the most enviable rosters and put on some of the best shows on any circuit.

And it was for that exact reason that less than five months after he closed the doors on his own baby that he got a call from Jess Chapel to help with his.

"Yeah, I know a thing or two about running a national promotion. What, you thinkin' about buying out one of the big nationals with all that newfound cash?"

"A new promotion? C'mon Jess, you can't be serious. The EWA, my company went belly up. The WWE's only starting to come back. NFW had to send half its operations overseas, and don't even get me started on A1E or CSDub..."

That was one of Holzerman's character flaws. Once you got him talking, it was hard to shut him up. But when you did, he was pretty good at listening.

On the other end, Chapel spouted off his idea. Holzerman nodded, his face grew stern, his brow furrowed. It was genius.

"Team wrestling, eh? I'm interested and wish to subscribe to your newsletter."
--

If anything, Tom Holzerman was always willing to try a new idea. And with a sizable fortune he had amassed first through his plastics engineering firm and then through the EWA, combined with Chapel, this new promotion would at least have the money to burn to at least make things interesting.

 

[TH]

If anything else, money wasn't a problem for this new partnership. Jess Chapel's net worth, $261.36 million dollars. Tom Holzerman's, around $780 million, give or take a couple hundred thousand. That was over a billion right there. Plus add in Steve Murray, Holzerman's cousin and EWA business partner and his money, plus a few other guys whom Jess told about the idea and wanted in. One of those offered to buy and donate a snazzy trophy for the league champion. Jess almost turned him down, but Holzerman talked him out of it. Thomas Paul Holzerman, Jr. is not one to turn down charity.

Even Chad Merritt found out about the operation, but they didn't need two guys with ongoing federal investigations on the same ship. However, when the Godfather of the CSWA comes to you and says he likes your operation, you don't turn him away completely. Jess told him he'd definitely go to him for administrative help, and definitely would name one of his various ideas for trophies after him, but that his money was no good here.

Everything was set up in a hurry. The name of the fed, which Holzerman suggested should be World Team Wrestling. Merritt liked TEAM.

"What does it stand for?" asked Jess?

"Umm... I don't know... nothing?" replied Merritt.

"Hrm... I like it!"

Classic Jess Chapel.

Now everything was set up. They had a trophy. A name. A concept.

Now all they needed to do was announce it to the world.

And hopefully, the wrestlers, the fans, the TV companies... they'd all line up to participate.