When Shadow Fire Promotions formed in 1998, we were only selling vintage commercial releases from WCW and the WWF, with an occasional ECW "white box" when we could find them. Once ECW secured a video distribution deal with Pioneer Home Video, we began to carry them, as well.
During these early years, it didn't seem important to keep a written record of the company's history or issue press releases, despite the fact that we were already unveiling services that would distinguish our company from others, such as our search service, where we track down that hard to find wrestling collectible for you for a fee.
In 2001, we signed on to distribute for our first independent federation, the now defunct Midwest Championship Wrestling run by Brian Zenner. At the same time, we also signed on our very first independent wrestlers, XXXplicit Content, XXXplicit Bailey Mannix & "Delicious" Danny Scott.
From there, several independent wrestlers and wrestling federations noticed us at events and saw the advantage we could provide in terms of additional exposure for themself or their federation, and we gained more clients and established our mailing list.
As sometimes happens in wrestling, independent federations closed and independent wrestlers retired. As our travel schedule lightened a bit in 2003, it enabled us to launch our Official website, and re-design our merchandise catalogue.
As our influence grew, we acquired clients from outside the midwest region. Wrestlers whom we were affiliated with travelled and told others about us, and we would be contacted by promotions across the U.S. to distribute their merchandise in the midwest region.
Toward the end of 2005, we would create an account on MySpace, far and away the most popular of the social networking sites online, to create another avenue of publicity for both us and the wrestlers and wrestling federations we worked with. It also enabled us to network both locally and Internationally with wrestlers and wrestling federations whom may not be aware of us. Prior to creating an account on MySpace, we would announce important happenings on our message board, located at http://www.sfpincchicago.com/boards (a practise we still do). However, now we had another place to announce important signings.
With this whole new world of both fans of wrestling interested in the media we carry, as well as promotions and wrestlers interested in working with us, plus our own internal expansion and inquiries about our history, we decided to start "making a little more noise" about the internal happenings of Shadow Fire Promotions, aside from our message board and Yahoo group. As it turns out, our first week after making the decision would be quite a busy week! Below are our Official Press Releases, in both Microsoft Word and Adobe PDF format. Simply click on the link for a prompt to open or save. Feel free to save these to your own computer and pass them along to other fans, friends, or anyone you feel may be interested! It is your support that enables us to grow!
