Alex Shane

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

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 "The Anarchist" where he trained many of the Hammerlock roster like "Mad Dog McPhie, "The Wonderkid" and "The Phoenix" 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 was not as successful as other from Hammerlock had been like Jodie Fleisch, Jonny Storm, Mad Dog McPhie or The Anarchist and 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 help FWA produce one of its largest early shows, FWA 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 become the majority share holder 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 Danny 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. The worked fracas, that nearly ended up in disaster at the FWA show made it to the Daily Mirror newspaper and UK national news programmes. Shane also feuded with Steve Corino and Doug Williams, defeating him to become FWA British Heavyweight Champion at British Uprising 3. Shane, however, then sold his shares in FWA in 2004 as he wished to pursue interests outside of wrestling.

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 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.

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 with tickets at $150 dollars front row compared to their usual $25 in the States. The company returned in March 2007 with the final ROH appearances of Samoa Joe topping the last tour numbers and drawing around 2200 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 an epic contest which left Shane showing no 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 fly home 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 Iestyn Rees on April 18. Claiming to still be retired, Shane is not expected to wrestle much more after this match although has said never to rule out the odd cameo. 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 dated current WWE Diva Katie Lea and also Georgina Bailey who famously made British headlines after her fling with Russell Brand. Shane appeared in tabloids defending Bailey and challenging Brand to a wrestling match he Shane later revealed that some one close to him had suggested that it would make a good story for Comic Relief and there was no real intent behind it.

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"

Championships and accomplishments

 * International Pro Wrestling: United Kingdom
 * IPW:UK Championship (1 time, current)


 * 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)


 * 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)