* CAW/FSW BEGINNINGS *

STORYLINE:

Carey Attitude Wrestling launched in December 1998 as a one-night-only Northeast independent wrestling supershow, with some of the top independent talents from the area competing on a well-received card in Franklin Square, NY. A few other scattered shows were produced under the CAW banner during this time frame, before simply disappearing. These shows were booked by longtime Northeast independent booker Jerry Georgatos, and featured such future CAW stalwarts as Mike Scarchilli, Jason Carnevale, and Bryan Conroy. Matt Daddino was crowned the first CAW Champion, but the title was only defended for several weeks until CAW ceased running shows.

Roughly six months later, on August 3, 1999, another CAW supershow was booked, this time featuring 30 independent talents. The success of this particular show was the springboard to CAW opening its doors as a promotion less than two months later. With Georgatos' financial backing and behind-the-scenes booking acumen, CAW crowned its first official heavyweight champion in Giuseppe DiFiore, and was off and running. CAW continued to grow in popularity, taking the Long Island wrestling scene by storm. By the time the company hit its one-year anniversary in the summer of 2000, Mike Tortorici, Mike Scarchilli, Jason Carnevale, Bryan Conroy, and Anthony Failla had established themselves as the dominant stars of the company, with honorable mentions by Rudy Montenora, Kyle McKeown, and Frank Zago.

Around that time, legendary world-traveled grappler Kerry Cox debuted in CAW, fresh off long stints working in Japan and Mexico. Cox entered the company in the role of commissioner, as Georgatos stepped back from his duties as owner and president of the company to involve himself in storylines. Eventually, Cox was able to wrest full control of the company from Georgatos, something that would be sort of a recurring theme for those two men as the years rolled on.

While ownership shifted back and forth between them, Conroy found himself in the commissioner role, something he'd maintain for quite some time. When the dust settled, Georgatos reclaimed his company, and held onto it for much of the duration of CAW.

By 2001, CAW had grown exponentially, becoming an independent conglomerate, operating two small satellite Long Island-based promotions under its umbrella. The company had grown large - too large for its own good. Facing potential bankruptcy, Georgatos made the call to pull the plug on CAW, first closing down the satellites, and then holding a grand finale on August 3, 2001, two years to the day after CAW was launched in earnest. On that show, Mike Tortorici emerged CAW Champion for a record sixth time, defeating longtime rival Mike Scarchilli.

Two months later, Bryan Conroy launched Franklin Square Wrestling, attempting to capitalize on the rich Nassau County, Long Island fan-base that CAW had spent the last several years nurturing. Built around young CAW stars such as Mike Pantozzi, Greg Tarascio, and Mike Troha, new as-yet undiscovered talent, and supported by CAW stalwarts such as Scarchilli, FSW ably filled the void left by CAW's absence. Until, that is, Jerry Georgatos' jealousy pushed him back into the game. Pooling together nearly all his personal wealth, Georgatos began holding monthly CAW shows, plucking away various FSW talents to do so. Once CAW held a successful supershow that November, there were rumblings that CAW was indeed gearing up for a full-time return. Shortly thereafter, it was announced that, in addition to holding monthly specials, CAW would launch a new television series during the first week of 2002, called CAW Redefined.

As CAW and FSW waged war for both attendance and ratings, tensions and hostilities between the companies grew rampantly. Georgatos, in fact, went broke, leading to him selling the company to CAW star Jason Carnevale, who kept Georgatos on as commissioner. Conroy's FSW, however, carried on stronger than ever.

Once the spring of 2002 rolled around, the war between CAW and FSW had begun to spiral out of control. FSW star Mike Pantozzi invaded CAW and won their heavyweight championship, and Mike Scarchilli - who immediately vacated FSW to return to CAW once the company was renewed - traveled back to FSW and won their title. It was obvious something needed to be done, as both companies couldn't continue to exist like this. So, it was decided that, in June of 2002, CAW and FSW would run a joint supershow, where every match would pit CAW stars against FSW talent. The catch was whichever company won more matches on the card would obtain the right to absorb the losing company for an agreed-upon price.

Tensions ran high as we arrived at June 15, 2002, and the fate of both companies hung in the balance. When the dust settled, CAW and FSW had split all the previous matches on the show, leading into the main event, where FSW star and CAW Champ Pantozzi did battle with CAW star and FSW Champ Scarchilli in a title unification Iron Man bout. The match went into sudden death overtime, where Pantozzi was able to defeat Scarchilli with Scarchilli's own Crimson Sunset finisher to not only unify the two titles, but to lead FSW to its ultimate triumph over CAW.

However, just three days after this victory, FSW owner Bryan Conroy announced that, while he had acquired and closed down CAW, he would also be shutting down FSW. Instead, he said, a new national wrestling promotion would be created in the wake of this, with the best of CAW and FSW merging to form the core of a Progressive Wrestling Alliance.

REALITY:

I guess you can trace the earliest roots of Carey Attitude Wrestling to the release of the WWF War Zone game for Sony Playstation back in the summer of 1998. It wasn't a great game, but it was the first that featured an option to create your own wrestler. There were only eight create-a-wrestler spots, I believe, and for some reason, during winter break from 10th grade that year, I got the idea to create myself and seven of my friends, and do a series of simulated matches. I taped the matches onto a VHS and shared the tape with some of my friends once I got back to school. This was a pretty contained thing, and after the initial series of matches, that was pretty much it.

Until, that is, the WWF Attitude video game was released the following year. This game featured 30 create-a-wrestler slots per memory card, lending a lot more flexibility. In the summer of 1999, I created 30 of my classmates from Carey High School in Franklin Square, New York, and videotaped a special simulated event entitled Carey Attitude Wrestling, using the letters "CAW" as a play on the abbreviation for create-a-wrestler.

When I returned to school to begin 11th grade in September, I brought the tape with me and, to my surprise, it generated interest beyond my small circle, and people I hardly knew where asking me two questions: when I was doing more shows, and how they could get involved. So, on September 20, 1999, I began producing weekly episodes of CAW. Every Friday afternoon after school, I would simulate a series of matches and record them, and then distribute the tape over that next week. Eventually, people started coming over to see the taping live. And, in time, I launched both an AOL Homepage and a newsletter to make the results more readily available.

The buzz continued into the new year but, like all things in high school, the popularity was only temporary. By February of 2000, as interest had more or less waned, I started to tire of the random nature of the results. Additionally, a new videogame was out - WWF Smackdown - that featured more realistic gameplay, and got me thinking that I could script a match, and then play out the results pretty closely to what I wanted.

So, that month, CAW ceased operating in a completely simulated environment, and became a scripted show. Also, at this time, I ceased weekly tapings of the shows, and geared everything towards monthly "pay-per-view" events, which were pre-taped and were presented on a certain day. The weekly episodes were now entirely scripted by hand. Week by week, the shows evolved, as more intricate storylines, promos, and scripted matches started to appear. It took time to find our footing, but by the time senior year of high school began in September, the audience was back. More people were involved in the shows than ever - at its height, the roster consisted of 150 people, split up over three rosters, along with a separate division for teachers at our high school.

By the time I graduated from high school in June 2001, the evolution of CAW had been remarkable, but it felt like the time had come to wrap things up. On August 3, 2001, the final CAW show was held, and a host of people showed up for the unveiling of the pre-taped show, to send it off proper.

While I went off to NYU, Mike Pantozzi, one of the most loyal followers of CAW, opted to carry on the tradition in his senior year of high school. Rather than continue Carey Attitude Wrestling, Pantozzi launched Franklin Square Wrestling, which consisted of a smaller, more intimate roster, and focused on a new circle of characters, predominantly from his grade. There was some crossover with CAW characters, and FSW acknowledged the existence of the CAW universe, but this was largely an independent creation.

However, just a month into FSW's run, I got the itch to write again. Once I realized I could balance writing a weekly show with my college course-load, I grew antsy, realizing that I ended CAW just as we were really scratching the surface of what we could become. In November, Pantozzi and I began planning for a joint project, where we would cease running promotions centered around high school kids using real names, and we would create a fully-scripted wrestling show consisting of characters both created by us and by people from around the world who submitted character applications. While in the planning stages for what would become PWA, I brought CAW back from the dead for a one-off show in November, before bringing it back on an every-week basis that December.

The new CAW was faster-paced, more detailed, and more storyline-driven than ever before. Soon, once CAW was re-established, we started running crossover storylines between CAW and FSW. At one point, a CAW wrestler was the FSW Champion, and an FSW wrestler held the CAW title. The "growing tension" between the two companies culminated in June 2002, when CAW and FSW waged war in a final battle that resulted in FSW overtaking CAW, and the two companies merging into one. In reality, the CAW-FSW merger was what Pantozzi and I had planned from the previous year to create a storyline explanation for the creation of the Progressive Wrestling Alliance, which would acknowledge the existence of the CAW and FSW universe, but would otherwise be as close to a restart as possible.

While it was less than four years from when the first wrestler was created on WWF War Zone until the day CAW and FSW merged, there has been no period of time since its inception where this project has gone through more changes and more evolutions. What CAW was the night it merged with FSW was a 100% different product from what was originally presented to high school classmates in the late '90s, but each step along the way was completely necessary in getting to the next one.

~ Mike Scarchilli, co-creator and head writer, PWA ~