The Backdrop
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In June of 1987, professional wrestling in North America was still almost entirely regionalized. There was a loose organization called the International Wrestling Alliance which consisted of the largest, most established territories, and they shared a World Heavyweight Champion that would travel the country. Most talent travelled from territory to territory over their careers, rejuvenating themselves in a new place whenever they stagnated in an old place. Most wrestling fans only knew the heroes of their own regional promotion, only consiered as ‘legendary’ the legends of their own area, and only knew about other promotions if they purchased wrestling magazines. The big promoters occasionally discussed a change in the business model, occasionally debated consolidation and nationalization, but the talks never became serious. There were too many egos and too much traditionalism to attempt such a move.
But the idea had two major proponents in the IWA council. One of them, Jim Somers, is covered in the IWA and SCW entries. The other was Michael Zellar, a lieutenant for Landon O’Neil in New York. With O’Neil becoming more and more withdrawn as time went on following the passing of Michael Darling, he had divided resposibilities between Zellar and William McCoy. McCoy handled the booking, while Zellar would represent the territory in IWA meetings and scout talent. Unlike Somers, Zellar never spoke very strongly in favor of nationalization, as he had his own plans in mind.
It was at this time that O’Neil finally and suddenly sold the NEWC. Zellar had quietly amassed an investment team and raised the capital to make the purchase under the noses of everyone, particularly McCoy. By August, Bill McCoy had moved to Calgary, and the NEWC had shut down operations for the remainder of the summer.
Observers were stunned, to say the very least. Several IWA council members tried to block the sale, despite having no geniune authority to do so. Unfortunately for them, if Zellar ever knew how to do anything, he knew how to network; he had a powerful New York law firm on retainer, and nobody wanted to make any serious challenges to the move. He tried to assuage the council by stating that he was taking the time to rebrand the promotion and move it in a new, profitable direction. Unfortunately, words like “rebrand” and “new” were frightening to old-school promoters, and the New York office seat on the IWA council was suspended, ostensiably for going on hiatus without permission.
During this time, Zellar quietly amassed two things: new talent and syndicated television deals. It was time, he believed, to use a new business model to monetize the pro wrestling business. When November rolled around, the rebranding was complete, the hype train had been given time to work, and a Thanksgiving show in Madison Square Garden would be the birthplace of something new: the Wrestling Association of North America. The show was given something highly unusual for a wrestling show: a name. “WANA Rebirth” was the event that would set the tone for the next couple of years in the territory… it was broadcast on the Madison Square Garden network, as every WANA show held in MSG would be from then on.
You WANA do what?!
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The roster that competed that Thanksgiving was quite impressive, as Zellar had talked his way into getting appearances from several major promotional stars for his tournament to challenge the incumbent Pete Shefner for the newly renamed North American Championship. Needless to say, this whole presentation of representing all of North America didn’t exactly sit well with the rest of North America. Some of the deals had been done before the details of the rebranding came out, and some of the savvier promoters realized that Zellar was planning to subtly put his promotion over theirs.
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BEHIND THE SCENES: One of the most famous stories that came out of Rebirth involved the irascable Hamilton Graham, who was at the time working
his way back from an injury and waiting to make an impactful reappearance in CSW, and thus available for the show. He was putting over eventual
tournament winner Richard Dread in the second round, and was very leery that the office might want Dread to get an overly dominant victory over
the biggest name in the sport at the time, as Dread was being built as a vicious wrecking machine and squashing good opponents. Graham made a
big show of cleaning his personal handgun as he went over the match with Dread during one of the other tournament matches, and saying simply:
“Richard, let me ask you a question. Have you ever seen a shoot?” It was very clear by the emphasis of the question and the way Graham was
paying more attention to his gun than anything what he was talking about. When Dread answered in the negative, Graham stated “Make damn sure
that never changes.” Needless to say, Graham looked very impressive in defeat that night, and Dread would later find plenty of work in St.
Louis when his time in New York ended.
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Indeed, the brand new New York talent went over in most matches that night, including the muscular Richard Dread, who was built up as a monster. He would go on to defeat Shefner to become the first North American champion in December. The transition was well underway… most of O’Neil’s talent either left of their own volition, were forced out, or were used to put over the newer, “better” athletes. Three exceptions to this were Shefner, Ivan Kostovich, and the long-running draw Jose Liriano. Shefner was a career military man who took orders and thus was seen as an ideal hand, Kostovich was a pretty shrewd political player in his own right and had adjusted his sails when the winds changed, and Liriano loved the area too much to leave while being too valuable to bury and too professional to be upset about change.
And what did the new talent in the WANA look like? Dread was a six-foot-six, two hundred eighty pound ex-bodybuilder who had jumped to wrestling just four years prior in Minnesota. He had the gift of gab to be sure, and some impressive power moves, but was not someone you’d ever accuse of being a classic technician. Likewise, much of the men that Zellar stocked the territory with were not seasoned veterans, but were younger wrestlers with unique looks or ring styles. He was the first major promoter to emphasize marketability in his talent roster, because the financial backers who had helped him buy the territory were merchandisers. People with shares in toy companies, apparel companies, you name it. And that was going to be WANA’s pathway to fiscal success… they produced merchandise like the wrestling world had never seen before. The talent, of course, got very little of that merchandising money, because most of them were not savvy enough to understand the terms of their contract. Every wrestler cut their own individual deal with the promotion, so the cut they got was directly proportional to their own personal business skill… which was another reason why Zellar wanted young talent.
The upshot of all this was that the quality of the in-ring product suffered greatly. Not many skilled veteran workers remained to anchor the promotion, and between 1988 and early 1990, the houses dipped sharply from the glory days of the NEWC. Nonetheless, a core cadre of young talent forged on, learning by trial and slowly working to bring the territory’s descent to a halt. All of this had been predicted by Zellar; once the numbers stabilized, he pointed out the new key demographic of the territory: youth. While the old-school wrestling fans who had cheered the bloody brawls between Bruno Moretti and Kai Alani had grown disenfranchised, their kids were entranced. And once his young talent had gelled, it was time for phase two.
The Maple Leaf Influx
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In March of 1990, Zellar finalized a deal to purchase the Toronto territory from the longtime area promoter Paul Reed. This shocking move combined the entire northeast save for Quebec and easternmost canada under a single umbrella, and gave WANA an enviable touring cycle with some of the biggest markets in the country. The rest of the wrestling world still hadn’t figured out where Zellar’s money was coming from, as the gates alone didn’t seem to justify his prosperity.
Nonetheless, the Toronto work crew was much more experienced and polished, and were integrated into the more “character”-driven young New York talent to shore up the in-ring product. Zellar picked and chose the talent that stayed on and that did not, and when 1991 rolled around, the product had gotten better, the merchandising arm was poised and ready for bigger distribution, and his television contacts had spread the word about this programming which was pulling in kids on Saturday morning.
Since the rebranding, Dread had been challenged by Shefner and Liriano to get him established, and then traded the belt in a nice angle with Lyndon Strider, a young technician that had gained some good popularity as one of the more ringworthy new talent. Dread’s reign was ended eventually by Randy “The Fist” Algernon, a bruising brawler with good charsima, but who didn’t have the look that you’d want in your champion. After Algernon failed to gain traction as champion, he dropped the title to the crazed masked Mexican madman Doctor Guerra, who was quite over as a fearsome heel. Still, Zellar needed a face to anchor a promotion based on merchandising and television. He had some good heels in his roster, but nobody who could truly capture the imagination of the public. When Toronto merged in, he put the belt on longtime Toronto territory main eventer “Iron” Mike Cady, who was a fairly popular veteran face, to set the table.
Only one more piece was needed to go national, and Zellar soon found it.
Whiplash Sets In
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And then he found his golden ticket: a seven-foot tall athletic marvel by the name of Tom Henniman. He had been trained in Florida, and had spent time on the West Coast as a brutal heel under the ring name Heavy Metal Henniman. Because of his size and youth, he was laregely used as an attraction-style act; Zellar brought him in and gave him the keys to the kingdom. To do so, he utilized his old trusty standby Kostovich. Redubbing himself as simply “The Russian Bear”, Kostovich was portrayed as having gone off the deep end due to the destruction of the Soviet Union and the apparent victory of the Western World in the Cold War. Kostovich renounced his own name, saying simply that ‘that man is dead, and I am his vengeful spirit come for the death of this nation’. The Russian Bear destroyed a number of American athletes, and defeated Cady in a knockdown, dragout fight in Madison Square Garden on February 23, 1991 to take the North American Title.
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BEHIND THE SCENES: Kostovich, now just “The Russian Bear” as a sign of his identity crisis, had been booked
strong for the entirety of the WANA’s run specifically for this; Zellar knew that he was going to need to
‘make’ a face in the near future, and Kostovich knew that being on retainer for this was an excellent way
to stay relevant and make money. His match with Mike Cady was considered the first true ‘classic’ of the WANA
era, as Cady himself was a hugely respected veteran from his time in Chicago and Toronto.
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The slight change in gimmick worked, as Kostovich was just as hated as ever despite the Soviet Union being long gone. A few defenses established
the Russian Bear as being the most fearsome enemy possible, bent on the annihilation of the USA. And then came May 31, 1991. The Memorial Day show was scheduled to be a matchup between the Russian Bear and Pete Shefner, where if Shefner did not win the title, the Bear would burn both the belt and the American flag in the middle of the ring to symbolize the destruction of the USA. And just seven days beforehand, in the Boston Garden, he assaulted Shefner violently, smashing his ribcage into the parkay floor and necessitating a stretcher job.
In the Garden, a rare Friday show as the MSG events were traditionally on Saturday, the WANA was ready to award the Bear the forfiet victory in front of a packed crowd (as the holiday shows always drew a full house, and the threat that the Bear made plus the unusual day had many people believeing that something had to happen). Triumphantly, the Bear packed a flag in a trash can, set the belt on top, pulled out a can of lighter fluid… and just as the building was about to riot, the loud sound of a Harley-Davidson motorcycle interrupted the proceedings. The seven-foot tall man who had debuted that very evening, a Hell’s Angels biker now known only as Whiplash, stormed the ring, took the match, and summarily defeated the undefeatable Russian bear in six minutes to the biggest reaction the Garden had seen in a long, long time. Whiplash took the flag out of the trash can, put it on a pole, hung it on the back of his Harley, and rolled out of the ring and into history.
Business skyrocketed, as this larger-than-life persona of an American rebel badass resonanted with almost everyone. He had the Harley-Davidson eagle motif that the country liked, the leather-jacket badass persona that the city liked, and he was like a living superhero for the kids. He could cut fantastic promos, and his ringwork was very solid as he had been trained well and brought in correctly. In short, Whiplash was the Next Big Thing, and the next big thing was now.
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BEHIND THE SCENES: Who didn’t care for Whiplash? The old-school wrestling establishment, and almost none of
it had to do with the man himself. Tom Henneman had become a character. “Whiplash” wasn’t a man’s name, it
was a character’s name, and the way he was billed and promoted only added to that. Henneman had to deal with
some serious heat as the years went on, especially because of what his success meant for the industry as a whole.
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The WANA now sold out everywhere they went. Toys and merch flew off the shelves as fast as they could make it. The boom period had arrived, and the only think left to do as far as Michael Zellar was concerned was to take it national. And to do that, he needed the one thing that was anathema to the wrestling world: the mainstream media.
Selling Out In Style
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Michael Zellar’s plan was to hold one perfect wrestling show, sell it to all of North America, and get everyone in the US and Canada associating the WANA with wrestling so that he could tour anywhere, territories be damned. Of course, he hadn’t said any of this aloud. But the sharpest of the IWA promoters saw it coming, and took proactive steps to stop it. But unlike years past, the attempts to rein in what was now officially branded an “outlaw” promotion not only failed, but outright backfired. Nothing booked in WANA’s territory as a “legitimate” IWA opponent could get any foothold; WANA was too hot. Attempts to undercut by holding free shows or such near them were hit with frivolous lawsuits, as Zellar had access to powerful new York law firms. Attempts to forbid talent from working New York fell on increasingly deaf ears as not only was the money good, but the wrestlers themselves were suscepible to a “the promoters vs the boys” argument; the worker base was more educated and less likely to fall for the threats of ‘blackballing’ as the other promoters couldn’t afford to blackball that many people and loved to take advanatge of getting in a guy who had made a name somewhere else.
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BEHIND THE SCENES: Stories vary about whether any wrestler was ever truly ‘blackballed’ for jumping to New
York. While certain individual promoters were much less likely to book someone who had worked there, others
were extremely pragmatic and were always going to take in a talent if they had something to offer. Many
wrestlers of the period used a claim of blackballing as a convenient excuse for not drawing the interest or
paychecks they felt that they deserved. The only known case of a ‘blackballing’ order was Henneman himself,
who was officially cited in a 1993 IWA meeting as someone who would never work in the IWA again. This was
long forgotten by 1997, the year when Henneman finally left New York. Needless to say, he had no shortage
of work, though he never did join with a globally-reaching territory.
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The syndication meetings in 1992 were the next move, as WANA dramatically increased their syndication exposure to stations all over the country. They signed a deal to provide the USA Network with programming, gaining a national cable presence. IWA outrage was countered by the fact that the Carolinas, Georgia, Minnesota, and Texas all had shows available nationally through cable by this point… albeit not in such a prime time slot. And lastly, Henneman appeared in Lethal Weapon 3. With all of this lined up, all that was needed was a foil to sell the show.
The Clan McDougal
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Zellar had brought in Scottish wrestler Sean McDougal in mid 1990, and immediately the brash Scotsman had cemented himself as an exremely hateable heel. A fairly youthful veteran, McDougal was known for his wild persona and explosively confrontational mic skills. This was the man that Zellar opted to position as the territory’s top heel, and his persona of a drunken violent anti-American hooligan was instantly understandable and endlessly infuriating.
McDougal was part of a contingent of WANA wrestlers who attended a televised charity event lauding several groups for working to combat leukemia. At the event, presenter Arsenio Hall made an innocuous joke about McDougal’s kilt. The faux-affable Scotsman gave a big fake laugh, accepted the plaque for the WANA (who did contribute heavily to charity for PR), and smashed it over Hall’s head, taking the comedian down and beating him before security rushed in. One of the immediate responders was former boxing Heavyweight Champion George Foreman. Unafraid, McDougal spat in the face of Foreman, and tried to get at him as police intervened.
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BEHIND THE SCENES: How did this work in getting media coverage? Hall was a longtime wrestling fan who truly
took one for the team. The plaque was gimmicked, but McDougal’s punches were not. Hall bled hardway and
sported a swollen eye for a week. Nobody knows how much he was paid for that, but it must have been
significant. When the media saw the damage, it was impossible to conclude that this was a work.
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The whole scene played all over national media. Everyone was talking about it. McDougal spent the night in New York City jail, and came out the next day with a cadre of news reporters to rant at, cutting a famous and impressive promo on Foreman, Hall, leukemia, Whiplash, and the United States. He was instantly made. Arsenio Hall showed up three nights later in Madison Square Garden to ask Whiplash to take down McDougal. And it was on.
The May 1992 MSG show featured Whiplash vs McDougal, standing room only. The two men battled for several minutes before McDougal assaulted the referee with a rabbit punch after the referee tried to break up a wild brawl. McDougal then teamed up with fellow hated villains Richard Dread and Tetsui Fushinoshi to lay out Whiplash in the middle of the ring, and the place came unglued. Whiplash had never taken a beating like that before, and it went on until George Foreman stood up from his ringside seat and got up on the ring apron. Dread and Fushinoshi backed off, but the wild-eyed McDougal waved him on. The police again put an end to any physicality before it could start, and the end result was a near-riot.
There was nothing for it but Pay Per View.
The Night That Changed The World
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The event was called “Wrestlefest”, and without hyperbole, it was easily the most talked about event in the history of the sport to that time. Whiplash vs McDougal, with George Foreman as the guest referee. That was all that was needed to seel the show, or so it was hoped, as the event was available nationally in the US and Canada on pay per view, for the first time in the history of the industry.
The IWA was on high alert. If Wrestlefest succeeded, the WANA could do whatever it wanted, wherever it wanted. They had booked Los Angeles already, and the event sold out almost immediately. Something needed to be done. Those promoters with contacts in the cable industry lobbied hard to keep Wrestlefest from being offered, and there were rumors of bribery and intimidation. There was a rumor about some promoters offering McDougal, who was a carney wrestler in his youth, a huge financial incentive to hook Whiplash and take the title to the IWA, but that was refused.
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BEHIND THE SCENES: McDougal claims that the rumor is true, but will not name names as he had given his word
not to tell who had spoken to him.
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The day of the event came, and it will stand as a cautionary tale for wrestling promoters forever.
WrestleFest was not a bad wrestling show. On the contrary, it was a very good show that inspired a number of the young men and women who would go on to be wrestlers in the future. Whiplash defeated McDougal to a deafening roar in what was an iconic moment for the company.
At the end of it all, after all the payouts had been made, Michael Zellar looked back and assessed the profit from what was supposed to be the dawn of a new age, the show that would catapult his company into national prominence. He had profited exactly five dollars.
Why did Wrestlefest fail? It is a topic of discussion even today, but the truth is that a number of smaller factors added up to sink the show. The IWA’s tampering with pay per view providers cost some major markets. The show had few recognizable names to non-WANA territories outside of the main event; outside of Mike Cady and Kostovich, the vast majority of the workers on the show had only had major roles in New York or Toronto. And each territory aggressively-counter prgrammed, putting marquee matches in their biggest markets (that were carrying the PPV) that night. Whiplash himself, while a huge name to wrestling fans, didn’t carry as much mainstream weight as Zellar had thought. And McDougal, while an outstanding heel, was almost a foot shorter and eighty pounds lighter than Whiplash; mainstream fans didn’t believe that he had a chance and thus there was no impetus to return after they saw him beaten.
The Land Of The Giants
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Zellar attempted to regroup and follow up. He would simply learn from these mistakes, and set up for another try in 1993. He shifted gears to a new strategy… he would bring in other big men, people who presented an obvious physical threat to his big badass champion. Four hundred pounders, musclemen, weightlifters. The territory became colloquially known as “the land of the giants”; if you were a big man wrestler, you could make money in New York.
The problem with this strategy was that the number of wrestlers that size who were any good was extremely small. Many of the challengers brought in were unconvincing. Whiplash was very good, but he could only carry bad wrestlers so far. While the formula did continue to sell out houses in the territory and do good ‘traditional’ business, it didn’t expand the market any, and going national was the acrrot that Zellar had sold his initial investor team on. The investors were growing antsy, and they wanted their return sooner than later.
Wrestlefest 2 featured the best big man match that could be put together, as Whiplash faced “Darkside” Dominic Davis. Davis was very close to Whiplash in stature, and probably the only other man in the seven-foot range at that time who was considered to be a good worker, though unlike Whiplash he had little charisma or mic skill to speak of. The top manager in the territory at the time was Tex James, who did his best to sell the match. And if you went strictly on the usual metrics, Wrestlefest 2 would have been a success: a sold-out house, a good card (many would say better than the original, quality-wise), an all time classic on the undercard, and a hot main event.
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BEHIND THE SCENES: One oft-forgotten sidebar to Wrestlefest 2 was the match between Scotty Winchester
and Sylvester Landeau for the promotion’s secondary title, the Atlantic Championship. It was a
fast-paced twenty-three minute ring classic which, to many, demonstrated the issue with New York’s
big-man-centric booking. Both Landeau and Winchester were in the mid 230’s, of slightly below average
wrestling size. Yet, of all the talent on the WANA roster, they were probably the two best pure
performers. So long as Zellar were in charge, neither of them would be able to move any further up
the card than this in New York, and so the two (along with a couple other select talents) were
highly sought after by the territories.
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But those weren’t the metrics that mattered. Michael Zellar had broken the bank promoting the event nationally, getting pay per view providers back on board, and trying to get this ship in the air. The original Wrestlefest had become the butt of industry jokes, particularly the five dollar profit. He was absolutely determined to not have it happen again.
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BEHIND THE SCENES: To this day, industry ‘code’ for an event, federation, or even a wrestler that was
critically acclaimed but unprofitable: “I hear Abe Lincoln liked it.”
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Unable to get mainstream notice, the national pay per view numbers didn’t cover the expenses. Wrestlefest 2 made only a marginal profit, this time because of the expenses being so high in combination with the loss of mainstream attention. The IWA promotions, of course, again heavily and aggressively counter-programmed the event. It was now clear that the drive to go national had stalled out, and Zellar’s backers wanted their money. He held out until January 1994 before selling, but in the end, he had no choice.
The Innovation Of Violence
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The purchase group was, to the chagrin of most of the territory promoters, an outsider group that was only ever tangentially associated with the business. Zellar was integrated into the group as a consultant, as the deal allowed his sons to retain their minority stake. Zellar was now over 60, and his sons had been trying to push their own ideas on how to handle a national initiative. The outsider group was led by Global Properties, Inc. GPI was interested in growth potential, and the creation and utilization of intellectual property.
The transition was slower. 1994 saw the Whiplash formula continue, as the man and character were still hot, but beginning to show signs of cooling off as there were not many viable big men left to send his way. What was changing, though, was the frequency of gimmick matches. Disqualifications were gradually growing less common, and wild out-of-the-ring brawls were appearing more and more. It was the nineties, and the in-ring product was morphing to meet the tastes of the desired fanbase… GPI wanted the male 16-28 demographic. The senior Zellar believed in starting with the young kids and growing a fanbase organically, but GPI felt that there was no need for this if you gave people what they wanted now.
[[TO BE CONTINUED]]
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WANA NORTH AMERICAN CHAMPIONS
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1. Richard Dread: Won the title against the last NEWC Champion, Pete Shefner, in Madison Square Garden on December 26, 1987.
2. Lyndon Strider: Defeated Dread in the Philadelphia Spectrum on August 13, 1988.
3. Richard Dread: Defeated Strider in the Boston Garden on October 30, 1988.
4. Randy Algernon: Defeated Dread in the Meadowlands on June 2, 1989.
5. Doctor Guerra: Defeated Algernon in Madison Square Garden on September 2, 1989.
6. Mike Cady: Defeated Guerra in the Toronto Maple Leaf Gardens on April 14, 1990.
7. Ivan Kostovich: Defeated Cady in Madison Square Garden on February 23, 1991.
8. Whiplash: Defeated Kostovich in Madison Square Garden on May 31, 1991.
[[TO BE CONTINUED]]