Alex Shane

Alexander Daniel Spilling
Ring name(s)	Alex Shane LX Blade "The Showstealer" "The Kamikaze Kid" "The Ascension"
Billed height	6 feet 5 inches (1.96 m)
Billed weight	280 pounds (127 kg)
Born	November 15, 1979 (1979-11-15) London, England
Trained by	Andre Baker, Dino Scarlo
Debut	1995

Alexander Daniel Spilling is a British professional wrestler who is best known by his ring name "The Showstealer" Alex Shane. Spilling also works as a promoter and wrestling teacher.

Professional wrestling career

Early career

Alex Spilling began wrestling for the NWA UK Hammerlock promotion in 1995 under the tutelage owner Andre Baker. After several years with the promotion, Spilling became an assistant trainer under Justin Richards and Doug Williams where he trained many of the Hammerlock roster such as Mad Dog McPhie, Jonny Storm and Jody Fleisch along with others, Spilling later fell out with Baker and left to work for a new TV company UWA. During his time in UWA, Spilling formed a tag team with fellow ex hammerlock wrestler Guy Thunder and developed much of his in-ring ability and mic skills as well as creating his heel persona, Alex Shane.

Frontier Wrestling Alliance

In 1999, he was taken under the wing of Dino Scarlo along with Jody Fleisch. During this time, Shane was first approached by the newly revived Frontier Wrestling Alliance promotion. He and Guy Thunder worked the companies second show and later became the British Heavyweight Champion.

Shane then opened his own wrestling school, Capital City Pro Wrestling. CCPW became the official London home of the FWA, and Shane became further involved in the company by helping to run the first-ever FWA London show at Barking, Essex in 2001. During this time, Shane also made appearances in a newly formed promotion known as Universal Championship Wrestling, it was here Shane was repackaged as LX Blade, a cartoon type robot character. The character was abandoned when the promotion folded after just two shows.

While promoting his CCPW venture, Shane to appeared as a guest on the talkSPORT radio show hosted by Tommy Boyd. Shane soon became a regular co-host and helped the show become the UK's first fully fledged national wrestling radio show. During his time on the radio show in 2001, Shane returned to the FWA under his most successful persona "The Showstealer." Shane also worked alongside Boyd to produce Supreme Wrestling Alliance Tour: Revival in 2002, which was broadcast on national TV. Alex Shane and Tommy Boyd fell out soon afterwards, and Boyd was replaced on talkSPORT by Alex Shane and his brand new show Wrestle-Talk, which had a reported 400,000 listeners at its highest point. It was not long before Shane leveraged this new position to take full control of FWA. TalkSPORT canceled the show in December 2002 as it felt wrestling was not part of the image they wished to promote.

Shane then teamed with former rival Ulf Herman to defeat the UK Pitbulls and win the FWA Tag Team Championship upon his return on October 25, 2002. At British Uprising II, however, in 2003 Shane turned on Herman, dropping his baby face image to become one of the top heels in the UK. While in the FWA, Shane had a storyline with boxer Danny Williams, which started when Alex Shane, in a worked-shoot, informed the crowd that Danny's agent had, ironically, banned him from taking part in any sort of wrestling angle in the company. Shane then claimed he was going to grab as much publicity as he could and began to insult Williams and his entourage. Williams genuinely appeared to lose his cool when, as he walked away, Shane called him a homosexual and spat at his teenage brother-in-law, inciting a pull-apart brawl. Shane also feuded with Steve Corino and Doug Williams, defeating him to become FWA British Heavyweight Champion at British Uprising 3. Shane, however, then stepped down from running the FWA in 2004 as he wished to pursue interests outside of wrestling.

New Generation Wrestling and feud with Nathan Cruz

Alex Shane spent time training and coaching up-and-coming talent for NGW in Hull, debuting on the 'Summer Smash Brawl 2' show on August 7, 2009 where he and his partner, Dave Rayne defeated Paul Malen and Jack Toxic. On February 27, 2010, at the show entitled "When World's Collide II", Shane was the special referee for the match between Dave Rayne and Jack Toxic, but because of interference from Nathan Cruz, Shane abandoned his role as referee and brawled alongside Matt Myers against Cruz and Dave Breaks. On the March 20th show titled "Anarchy", Alex Shane and Matt Myers defeated "Prima Donna" Nathan Cruz & "Textbook" Dave Breaks in a tag team match, later on in the night, Shane was called out by Alex Cyanide, but before he could do anything, he was blindsided with a low blow from Cruz and was slammed into a chair head first as 'Cruz Enterprises' looked on. Cruz made Shane sign a contract to face him at the April 17 show for the title of the "Showstealer" moniker, a name that Shane has made famous. However, due to conflict, NGW management never acknowledged it as a legit contract signing so on the April 17 show, Cruz faced and defeated Dave Rayne, later in the night, Nathan Cruz instructed his Enterprise members Richie West and Kev Cash to take a girl from the audience and set her up for the same fate that Alex Shane had suffered the previous show. The ring was beraded by all the faces, begging Cruz to stop; Dave Rayne came out and called Alex Shane via phone, thus confirming that on the June 6th "NGW 2nd Anniversary Show" Nathan Cruz will in fact face Alex Shane for the rights of the name "Showstealer", just after the call, Colossus Kennedy took out Dave Rayne and Nathan Cruz hit Rayne with the same move that took Alex Shane out in March. Alex Shane faced Nathan Cruz at the 2nd Anniversary show in a "Last Showstealer Standing" match where the rules are that of a typical Last Man Standing match only when the fallen competitor gets back to his feet before the 10 count, he has to do the pose of the Showstealer and if anybody would interfere in the match on the behalf of a competitor, they would automatically be disqualified. This was called one of the most brutal matches in British Wrestling history. Shane's blood was shed, he was fastened onto the ropes and repeatedly whipped by Cruz telling him to give up, with which Alex Shane prominently responded "You are an arsehole!", infuriating Cruz and leading to more vicious belt shots. This brought out much of the NGW locker room which included new NGW champion Sam Bailey who came into the ring to aid Shane. Cruz went for another shot with the belt only to be stopped by Bailey, who snatched the belt of Cruz and hurled it to the floor facing off with Cruz. Cruz then screamed to Bailey "Hit me Sam, Go on hit me, make me the Showstealer, make me the f***ing Showstealer, Sam!" Bailey refused to hit Cruz at the risk of costing Shane the match. The referee almost counted to 10 when Shane got to his feet, just as it looked like Shane had somehow got a second wind, he turned around into a heinous chairshot courtesy of Cruz. The referee started counting but Shane could not answer the 10 count leading to Shane dropping the nickname he had carried for years to the new "Showstealer" Nathan Cruz. The full match can be seen on YouTube.

Promoting

Alex Shane would, however, continue his career in wrestling promoting and presented the event International Showdown at the Coventry Skydome which was attended by over 3,000 people with huge promotional help from The Wrestling Channel and branded "as good as it gets" by UK wrestling magazine Powerslam. In its sequel, Universal Uproar, Shane gained a pinfall over three-time WWE champion and 'Hardcore Legend' Mick Foley in an elimination tag-match before 1,300 fans.

Hade Vansen won the FWA British Heavyweight Championship from Alex Shane in February 2006, however he did so by pinning Joe Legend and not Alex Shane, who retired from active wrestling soon afterwards. In 2007, his return to in-ring competition was announced as he was due to face Martin Stone but was forced to withdraw from the contest due to having emergency surgery on a tumor which was affecting blood flow to his brain.

In March 2006, Shane was announced as the new head of European Marketing and promotion for top American promotion Ring of Honor. In August, he promoted the group's first overseas tour, and it was also the companies biggest grossing weekend. The company returned in March 2007 with the final ROH appearances of Samoa Joe topping the last tour numbers and drawing almost 2,000 fans to the same building over two days. In April of the same year, Shane promoted a 16 man tournament called "King of Europe Cup". With 4 shows in 2 days (two matinée and two evening events) the weekend did a report 2100 plus ticket sales although due to the ROH shows in the same building so close to the event, the sales were lower than originally hoped for.

After this Alex promoted a four day sell out UK tour for TNA in June 2008. He then returned to the ring in a surprise one shot deal for the IPW:UK promotion in South England to face Martin Stone. Billed as his last match before moving to India, Shane lost to Stone after almost 30 minutes in a plodding contest which left Shane showing serious signs of ring rust. Alex then travlled to India at the end of 2008 where he reportedly signed Indian Bodybuilding and TV star Varinder Singh to a contract to bring him to the UK and train to wrestle. Shane has said in interviews that he plans to use Singh as a spring board to bring wrestling to India.

Shane travelled back to the UK in early 2009 and made a shocking return to IPW:UK winning the annual "Extreme Measures" tournament. He then won the IPW:UK title from Lestyn Rees on April 18, although claiming to still be retired. In April 2009 Shane released his first book "Alex Shane's Guide to Pro Wrestling - Volume One". The book is a collection of his monthly articles in Fighting Spirit Magazine.

Personal life

After retiring from active wrestling, Shane began a career as a life coach, seeking to incorporate self-help thinking into wrestling training, primarily in the form of seminar tours. Alex has stated in interviews that he is writing a self-help book (working title "The Unholy Babble") using many of the lessons he has learned from his 14 plus years of wrestling himself, self-promotion, media appearances and teaching. He continues to run specialist training seminars around the UK and writes monthly articles for Fighting Spirit Magazine for young wrestlers about getting the most out of your wrestling career by utilizing a variety of self-help and spiritual modalities. Alex was in a relationship with Katarina Waters.

In wrestling

• Finishing moves
  • Check–Up From the Neck Up (Facebreaker followed into a cutter)
  • One Night Stand (Sitout Death Valley driver)

• Signature moves
  • Chokebomb
  • Shanesation Kick (Running big boot)

• Nicknames
  • "The Showstealer"
  • "The Ascension"

Championships and accomplishments

• International Pro Wrestling: United Kingdom

• IPW:UK Championship (1 time)

• British Championship Wrestling

• BCW Heavyweight Championship (1 time)

• Capital City Pro Wrestling

• CCPW Championship (1 time)

• Frontier Wrestling Alliance

• FWA British Heavyweight Championship (2 times)
• FWA Tag Team Championship (2 times) – with Ulf Herman (1) and Stevie Knight (1)

• Original Pro Wrestling Organisation

• OPWO Heavyweight Championship (1 time)

• The Wrestling Alliance

• TWA British Heavyweight Championship (1 time)

• World Association of Wrestling

• WAW British Heavyweight Championship (1 time)

• Other titles

• GPW British Championship (1 time)
• RAMWA Southern Area Championship (1 time)
• IWP North East Heavyweight Championship (1 time)
• BPW Title (27 Times)