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ITV, a major broadcast network in Great Britain, will present their World of Sport Wrestling special today at 5 PM GMT (11 AM EST), a two hour broadcast featuring commentary from Jim Ross and Alex Shane.
World of Sport was a sports anthology series that ran for 20 years on ITV and regularly featured pro wrestling personalities and matches from Europe. When the decision was made in 1985 to cancel the series, it crippled homegrown pro wrestling in that region for many years, setting the stage for the then-WWF's already growing popularity in the region to flourish just a few years later.
The interesting back story here is that WWE has, over the last several years, opened communications with ITV with the idea of purchasing the pro wrestling-related material from old ITV World of Sport library for their own use, without success. In 2013, John Chapman licensed and filmed a World of Sport TV pilot that ITV opted not to pick up. The online attention to that pilot led to WWE reaching out to ITV in 2014 to open communications about purchasing the library. The acquisition never went down, but those two events may have started the process of ITV opting to launch their own pilot taping earlier this year.
Scheduled for the special:
*Grado vs. Dave Mastiff for the World of Sports Wrestling championship.
*Battle Royal to crown top contender for the WOSW championship.
*Ladder Match: Match 1: Danny Hope vs. Kenny Williams vs. Sam Bailey vs. CJ Banks.
*Mark and Joe Coffey vs. Rampage and Ashton Smith
*Viper Kimbery Benson vs. Alexis Rose
*El Ligero vs. Zack Gibson.
*Special appearances and interviews with Mark "Rollerball" Rocco, Klondyke Kate and other former stars of the British wrestling scene.
The two hour special, taped in November, is designed as a pilot for a potential World of Sport series revival. The special and the potential series revival has led to a lot of mainstream media attention in Great Britain:
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