Bill Maher had a great quote in the recent book charting the rise and success of ESPN entitled Those Guys Have All The Fun. Actually, Maher has more than a few quotes, but the one that stuck out in particular was his opinion of the ESPYs, the high profile awards show ESPN hosts every year.
Maher called the ESPYs the dumbest awards show there is because creating an award for "best team" is ridiculous when the teams decide who the best team is by the respective sport they play.
Now, one could argue the necessity of an awards show for professional wrestling based on the dreaded "f" word used to describe it by wrestling pessimists. Then again, it is honestly no different than how the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences or the Hollywood Foreign Press vote for the best films every year. After all, professional wrestling at its core is theatre with the overall purpose of entertaining. Thus, there is some merit to what Tim Dixon created in 2006.
Dixon, an independent wrestling enthusiast, created the website CarolinaIndependentWrestling.com as a central forum to showcase the talent and promotions of the North and South Carolina region. Besides creating a source of advertisement for all of the promotions, Dixon also spawned the Carolina Independent Wrestling awards (the CIWs) as a way for the fans to vote on which wrestlers and promotions they liked the best.
What might have started as merely an offhand idea to Dixon created a rabid response from the fans but more so from the wrestlers themselves, lending the CIWs to be become as high of a pedistle as any other achievement during the calendar year.
Dixon, unfortunately, had to close the website in 2010 due to his own increasing schedule demands, but Wayne Rush (who is clearly the Matthew Brady of independent wrestling with the amazing photography he brings) picked up the reigns from Dixon and revived the website through his own message board http://cwaprowrestling.yuku.com/ where the CIWs found life again.
Nearing the end of 2011, though, the amount of chatter around the awards is sadly dismal. Rush's forum is flooded with a deluge of posts from the OSCW and CWA enthusiasts, but where is everyone else at? Has there been a surrender by the promotions of the upstate?
On the surface, a CIW award can be viewed as merely ego stroke for the individual wrestler, but for YOUR wrestling promotion, the one you never miss and sacrifice gas money to see every
month, it represents the ultimate "feather in the cap" so when they advertise, they can bill themselves as "CIW Award Winner."
This is not the time of fractious, feudal territories that were defended at knightly games centuries ago, but Carolina independent wrestling needs a polarizing injection from it's fan base. Rush's forum should explode with outlandish commentary from starved jackals in support of who the best wrestler is and where he bears his flag from.
This year the CIW awards will begin it's nomination process on November 25th through the website http://cwaprowrestling.yuku.com/forums/163/Coming-soon. Rush has a strict "one IP address per day, per nomination" stipulation to eliminate repeat flood voting. The top five nominations in each category will be announced December 4th and from there the voting will be opened for the top five through December 23rd. On Christmas Day, the winners will be announced.
And the categories are...
Wrestler of the Year, Promotion of the Year, Rookie of the Year, Comeback of the Year, Feud of the Year, Tag-Team of the Year, Cruiserweight of the Year, Best New Promotion, Most Improved, Best Female Wrestler (includes valets and managers), Best Manager, Best Announcer and Best Referee.
On November 25th, do your civic wrestling duty. Nominate. Vote. Be heard. Everyone loves to be clever and smart when passively criticizing wrestling through the social media. Why not go all the way for the CIW Awards?
Be that starved jackal.
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