Power Slam
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Power Slam is an independent monthly non-kayfabe wrestling magazine published in the United Kingdom by SW Publishing. It began life as Superstars of Wrestling before altering to its current name after 30 issues in 1994. The magazine's UK-wide release occurs on the last Thursday of every month. In December of 2006 Power Slam achieved its 150 issue mark.
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[edit] Columnists
- Findlay "Fin" Martin, current editor.
- Mohammed Chatra, also known for presenting Pro Wrestling NOAH on the UK's satellite sports channel TWC Fight! (formerly The Wrestling Channel).
- Greg Lambert, a respected British journalist, wrestling manager and promoter for the FWA.
- Patty Therre, former editor of WCW Magazine, editor of Wrestling On The Fringe [1] and contributing editor to GardenandHearth [2].
- Stately Wayne Manor [3], the only featured columnist to maintain [kayfabe], living up to his image as an ultra-conceited heel manager. Manor joined the staff halfway through the "Superstars of Wrestling" period.
- Oliver Hurley
- Phil Jones
- Anthony Evans, also assistant editor for boxing news and results website SecondsOut[4] as well as having written for The Sun.
[edit] Magazine Content
The magazine is geared more to pro-wrestling than sports entertainment, covering promotions from all over the world (particularly Japanese puroresu), and has also on occasion covered MMA events. This has often partly been to do with involvement of professional wrestling personalities, for example Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipović has appeared in the pages of Power Slam numerous times due to Japanese promoters (especially K-1) pitting him against wrestlers in legitimate shoot fights.
Power Slam takes an impartial view on the wrestling world being non affiliated with any wrestling promotion or organisation, and is not afraid to criticise the promotions it covers. Contributor Greg Lambert has been an on-screen talent and behind-the-scenes promoter/booker for Britain's Frontier Wrestling Alliance but the magazine has never crossed the grounds of journalistic integrity by inviting/allowing him to promote his real-life business.
[edit] Regular Features
- The magazine frequently presents shoot interviews with wrestling personalities. Most recently Jim Cornette was featured in a 2-part interview (issues 150 and 151) in which he heavily criticised WWE for a number of reasons. Other notable previous interviewees have included Bret Hart, Mick Foley, Mitsuharu Misawa, Samoa Joe and Jerry Lynn.
- Summary of recent results, occurrences of note and injuries from the American, Japanese and British scenes.
- Readers questions answered.
- "I'm Just Being Honest With You..." (formerly "If I Can Be Serious"), a section of the most ironic or bizarre quotations from wrestling television the previous month.
- Reader Feedback.
This is in addition to articles penned every month which can range from full show reviews (TNA and RoH shows are now in almost every issue); critiques of a wrestler, promotion or existing storyline; articles looking at the history of a promotion or wrestling personality and obituaries.
[edit] PS 50
Every year the magazine presents the PS 50 (akin to the PWI 500) listing the 50 wrestlers whom the writers believe to have had the most successful year, in terms of workrate and performance. Edge came top in the most recent PS 50, followed by Bryan Danielson and KENTA.
There is also an annual reader's poll for various awards ('match of the year', etc) similar to that carried out by RSPW. Many of their polls listed, for their time, surprising and unsurprising results (at least two polls once labeled popular wrestling stars like The Undertaker and John Cena as the "Most Abysmal Wrestlers" of their respective years, Undertaker in 2001, John Cena in 2005.
Despite their criticisms, their readers polls used always to crown WWE as the top promotion of the year (due to many British readers not having access to other promotions or resources at the time) until 2005, where TNA overtook the company for the first time. TNA would follow up that victory with another in the 2006 reader awards. This could be attributed to the availability of a far wider range of wrestling available in the UK on TWC Fight!.
[edit] Criticisms
The magazine has faced criticisms from some quarters due to a perceived lack of coverage of the UK & Mexico wrestling scene's in comparison to the space dedicated to the major promotions of the United States and Japan. [5].
[edit] Trivia
Columnist Stately Wayne Manor recently put his autograph up for sale on Yahoo auctions with a starting price of $9,000,000 [6]. It failed to sell.
Power Slam recently gained some competition with the launch of Fighting Spirit magazine on April 13, 2006. This new publication includes regular contributions from well known wrestling pundits such as Bill Apter, Bryan Alvarez and Lance Storm.
In popular UK soap drama Eastenders, some past issues of Power Slam have been seen in the background during scenes set in the shows newsagents.
