In the mid-late 90's America experienced a surge of popularity in a deranged art form only understood by those that held an appreciation for choreographed violence and entertainment. Young wannabe superstars staged their own shows with friends, and websites popped up all over the web in response to this. This amateur sport got lots of flack from the media, but these kids didn't care. They were Backyard Wrestlers. They were invincible.

I feel obligated to tell the fans of the Ultimate Wrestling Challenge the truth about our fed, a step away from the storylines. In June of 2000, I, Benjamin Wilcock (Cracker) was at an other wrestler's house named Dustin Bernier (The Punk). I had been watching wrestling regiliously for almost a year and I wanted to try it out on The Punk. The Punk and I went into his backyard which is basically a junkyard and began practicing moves on eachother. Eventually, a crowd of about ten kids from the neighborhood had come to watch us perform suplexes on eachother and hit eachother with bats. Some girls showed up with a video camera and taped the match and this evidently turned out to be the very first UWC matchup. It was was quoted to be "legendary" by Jim Bosley (Dare Devil) and "brutal" by Micah Johnson (Killer Sk8er). We used bats, tin garbage cans, car hoods, and hard bumps. Backyard wrestling was awsome to me at this time. The reaction we got from those neighborhood kids only inspired me more to start my own fed.

So the next day I called Chris Montgomery (Meatman) and Brandon Gallmeier (Loverboy) about starting a backyard fed. Suprisingly they wanted to do it. Our fed got to a rocky start, but by the time school had started things started to take off. Meatman, Loverboy, Matt Giskaas (Cadwalider), and I were taking a video productions class and we had been using the school video cameras to tape matches and backstage scenes. We had a lot of fun doing this. We had developed really good storylines and the wrestling was ok. We had recruited a lot of people for the fed, but things never to seemed to get where we wanted them to go. Other obligations such as jobs and school kept people from going to events. The Sexiest Man Alive Tournament took nearly eight months to just have the first round. Everything was going down hill at this point.

In the past few months backyard wrestling has seen the downfall of many giants. For example, Alternative Championship Wrestling, an incredible fed out of Ventura, CA has shut their doors possibly ending one of the best Backyard Wrestling feds ever. With that, I am sorry to say that the Ultimate Wrestling Challenge will be doing the same. We has a lot of fun with the whole process in the development of the federation and now it is time to say good bye. It was fun as it lasted, but it is time to move on. But who knows... their might be a reunion event someday.

Thanks to all the fans....

Benjamin Wilcock