GCW Owner and promoter Brett Luaderdale recently spoke with DAZN to hype up this Sunday’s “The Wrld On GCW” pay-per-view from the legendary Hammerstein Ballroom, and discuss a wide range of topics, including GCW selling out historic venue and how he came to be in charge of the promotion. Highlights from the interview are below.
Whether he ever imagined GCW selling out Hammerstein Ballroom:
“I have a two-part answer for that. The realist in me says, ‘I don’t know. Probably not. It seems pretty far-fetched’. There’s no other way to put it than that. This is a big deal this weekend. But also, the other part of me says, ‘Yes, I did think this was possible. I’ve always been confident and who GCW is and what we stand for, (the) kind of the vision, the spirit, and the attitude of GCW. I’ve always thought this was possible. But it doesn’t make it any less significant or make us any less nervous or excited as this weekend approaches.”
Discusses how he came to be in charge of GCW:
“The simplest answer to this is, I’ve been good friends with Nick Gage for 15 years now. When Nick was locked in prison, I maintained our relationship. I used to visit him on a weekly or monthly basis. We always talked about wrestling and the things that he wanted to do when he got out of prison. And one of the things that we had always talked about for years when I would visit him was (that) we should do our own deathmatch tournament when you come out. The Nick Gage Invitational, that was our idea that we came up with while sitting in the visitation rooms in Trenton State Prison. So when the time finally came that he got out, I was like, ‘So we’re going to do this? All right, who can help us? Who can help us do this?’ Because at the time, I didn’t have a company, and Nick had nothing. We just looked into the Rolodex of some people we know that have a wrestling ring or an infrastructure already in place. That was the people who at the time were involved with Game Changer Wrestling and JCW (Jersey Championship Wrestling). We just borrowed their name for a day, and borrowing their name for a day turned into what it is now.”