NEW YORK (AP Newswire) – The downturn in the American economy has struck many businesses hard. But combine it with some more bad luck, and it might have knocked out the North American Foundation of Wrestling. The wrestling promotion began in the North Atlantic region of the United States beginning in early 2000 under the banner of the North Atlantic Foundation of Wrestling, and quickly boomed into a national promotion overnight. It enjoyed success around the world until it fell on hard times in early 2006 when its board of directors dissolved the promotion for various reasons after a fierce battle for control of the company had ended. Texas business tycoon Hector Gonzales, who rose to prominence in the NAFW and had owned it in the past, was quick to acquire all of the rights to the company, and re-launched the promotion at the end of the summer of 2006, just in time for the new fall television season.

Unfortunately, the company has ceased production of wrestling events once again. Its last event was OBLIVION, which aired live on Pay Per View from the STAPLES Center in Los Angeles, California on August 31, 2008. One week later, the announcement to cease operations was made known within the company. All championship titles were relinquished and returned to management on September 8, 2008. However, none of this information had been made public until the end of this year. All wrestlers and other employees have remained under contract to the NAFW, receiving salary based on the downside guarantees in their contracts, and were placed under a strict gag order not to speak about the current state of the company, or its future plans. Today the company informed their non-administrative employees that their contracts will officially be terminated on December 31, 2008, though none of the wrestlers have ever been under strict “no compete” clauses.

Fans of the company have been left out in the cold on the status of their favorite promotion as well, checking www.TheNAFW.com for updates to no avail. But this is not the first time the fans have been out of the loop with the company bordering on despair. The company suffered a hiccup in late 2006 when then-Foundation Heavyweight Champion Diamond Del Carver nearly quit over a rumored hire without consulting management first. The rumored hire was just a rumor and was not hired, and Del Carver departed the company on a low note after turning his back on the fans by not wanting to be a faithful representative of the company. But the damage had been done as this disruption caused a delay in the production of events. Then the company experienced a severe delay in late 2007 and early 2008 thanks to the Writers Guild of America strike. Portions of the NAFW broadcast require script writing, and the script writers employed were members of the Writer Guild. Because of this, the NAFW had to cease shows and delay the airing of a Pay Per View until a deal could be reached. This delay also cost the NAFW its complicated television deal on the TNT network, but even network executives admitted they were not solidly behind wrestling returning to their network from the start.

The Versus network was quick to pick up airing Annihilation, as well as the rights to air reruns of NAFW programming from the past. This initially provided more stability for the NAFW, that is, until the economy began to slowly tank. Though ratings, live attendance, Pay Per View buy rates, and merchandise sales were down before the media was making a crisis situation out of the economic recession, things were looking up for the company with wrestler-actor Mike Lane’s summer blockbuster “The Defense” on the horizon. But not only was it’s debut on Versus ruined by wrestler Mike Stryker, co-star Dane Cook was attacked by Stryker too. This resulted in numerous lawsuits against Versus, the NAFW, and Stryker as well. Tack onto this the fact that Hector Gonzales was being investigated for improper political contributions to the criminal ex-Senator Owens (though ultimately cleared of any wrong doing), and you had a very unstable administrative and financial backbone for the company. It was a heavy enough burden to bear that Hector Gonzales made the executive decision to cease operations of the NAFW for a second time.

Despite no longer running new shows, Hector Gonzales is still very much in control of his company, particularly its tape archive spanning almost a decade, with a gap in tape history because of a fire in the facility that housed the digital archives of the NAFW. Versus will still maintain the rights to air this tape library on their network, despite the fact that no new Annihilations will be produced any time soon. And as for a future continuance of live NAFW programming? As they say in the biz, “never say never.” But for the immediate future, both the fans and the superstars of the North American Foundation of Wrestling will be sitting on the sidelines.