by Carrie Dunn
Although she still goes to wrestling regularly, she says it’s simply for her young grandson’s benefit. “I wouldn’t go if it wasn’t for him,” she says, citing ticket prices as one reason she’s not happy with the current scene. Adult prices at this show are £12 – and if you’re taking two or more children with you, it starts to get expensive – perhaps cheap compared to most sports, but still a significant amount of money.
She is also disappointed with the lack of banter with the wrestlers. “Jackie Pallo, now, he used to come out and bounce up and down on women’s laps,” she reminisces. “We were all part of it. Now, it’s like them and us.”
One of the wrestlers in the ring suddenly turns round and shouts at a heckler: “Shut your mouth!”
“You see?” says the lady. “That’s all we get now. ‘Shut your mouth!’ That’s not banter.”
As the show goes on, it’s obvious that she began her wrestling fandom in the old era. That is not a criticism – but the way she watches the matches is clearly reminiscent of the way the shows used to run. She’s not a fan of IPW’s bad guy champion Sha Samuels, and gets to her feet to berate him: “You’re a cheat!”
It might seem ridiculous to accuse a participant in a scripted sport of cheating, but before the curtain fell, revealing all the secrets of staging a wrestling match, this kind of investment in the action was ever-present. Samuels, to his credit, revels in it, shouting back at her, defending his reputation.
“You’re the worst cheat that ever lived!”
“I’m the best champion that ever lived!”
I ask her which other audience members I should talk to. She points out several, telling me: “They go everywhere.”
And this might be a problem running parallel to the issue of the limited talent pool in the UK – similarly and equally, there’s a small, albeit dedicated, fan base for professional wrestling. The same people make up a significant proportion of the audience at all the shows, and that’s why ticket prices are such an issue to the committed wrestling fans.
However, promotions seem to be waking up to that, and they are beginning to differentiate their products now – and market it accordingly. It may never be as mainstream as it was in the old days, when British wrestling was aired on terrestrial television every week – audiences are too knowledgeable and cynical now they know so many of the secrets of the wrestling world, particularly thanks to the spread of rumours and news snippets thanks to the internet – but the viewers are there if the product appeals to them.
Of course, they need to know about the product first before they can develop an allegiance – and it’s tough for UK companies (usually run by one or two individuals as a hobby or as one of a plethora of business interests) to market their shows as thoroughly as they would like.
“The thing is, a lot of people don’t know there is a scene nowadays,” says wrestler Ashe, who began his career in the late 1990s. “They absolutely believe that when World of Sport ended, that was it.”
Yet how would they know about the companies promoting wrestling around Britain now? When wrestling stretched its tentacles over the Saturday afternoon television schedule – in an era when people had at the most four terrestrial channels to choose from – their stars were legitimate celebrities. Big names like Mick McManus even made guest appearances on prime-time entertainment shows such as The Generation Game. Their faces on posters were instantly recognisable and would sell tickets. Now, though, there’s no mainstream media coverage of British wrestling, and even the biggest names on the UK scene mean nothing to the ordinary television viewer.
So without any British wrestling on television, it’s no wonder that WWE remains the primary way in which people develop and maintain an interest; they have secured what constitutes almost a media monopoly over the past 20 years. Now featured on Sky Sports, it was aired on the terrestrial Channel 4 for some years around the turn of the millennium. That’s how many wrestling fans in the UK have begun and since maintained their interest in what WWE call ‘sports entertainment’.
“I got into wrestling by pure fluke when I was seven or eight, thanks to my dad, who at the time was flicking channels for me while I was ill and practically stuck to the sofa,” recalls fan Sean Walford. “He was about to drop my brothers off at football practice, but I was complaining there was nothing on the telly and that I wanted to go and play as well. He flicked the channels through and he said: ‘Why not this?’
“There was nothing else on, so I said I’d give it a shot. The episode was the WWE debut of Rey Mysterio, and is now nothing more than a mere blurred image floating in my head. It featured Mysterio running down during the main event, which had already turned into chaos with a huge brawl taking place: he climbed the steel cage and took a huge leap off the top, and came crashing down on top of two men.
“That’s when I was hooked. There seemed no limits to this – it all seemed very real. I mean, how can jumping off a cage and landing on someone not hurt? There was nothing else like it.”
“Being depressingly old, I first started watching World of Sport alongside my two maiden aunts as a child – I swear this isn’t the plot of some Dickensian novel – before getting bored with the predictability of Big Daddy squashes,” says Andrew Southern. “Wrestling went out of favour when I was a kid so I never got back into it until 2000 when I gained access to Sky and caught a replay of the [Royal] Rumble that year. Seeing Jeff Hardy dive off a balcony through a table intrigued me almost as much as Lita’s thong.”
Ah, the Attitude Era. Millions of viewers at the turn of the millennium were hooked on WWE’s risque plotlines, pushing the boundaries of acceptable televised violence, and more than hinting at sex throughout with their rather explicit stories. Who can forget Southern’s crush object Lita and her real-life boyfriend Edge planning a ‘live sex celebration’ in the middle of the ring? Many UK fans who had stopped watching wrestling as children after World of Sport disappeared were drawn back in as adults with this line of programming.
“Getting into wrestling is difficult to pinpoint,” says Rob Poulloin. “I remember watching WWF in the early 90s in which I remember Hogan and a few others, but I was only around seven then. I’m very much a child of the Attitude Era – it was late 1999 when the Attitude game came out and started to interest me and some friends. Channel 4 played right to us by showing Sunday Night Heat, with the Royal Rumble 2000 getting me completely hooked, especially as I regard that PPV as one of, if not THE best, I’ve ever witnessed. From then on I’ve been a fan.”
Poulloin’s exposure to the UK wrestling scene, however, came via a rather less obvious route.
“My interest in the UK scene came about in slightly odd fashion: in the build-up to the TNA tour at the start of 2012, I was watching the ITV Saturday night show Take Me Out, which featured wrestler Marty Scurll as a contestant. I didn’t realise that the UK scene was still strong: from what I remember being advertised last time I looked and also being from a small town was ‘American Wrestling’ with lookalikes of WWF stars! After going to the TNA show in Nottingham I caught the live bug and wanted to check out more.”
Twenty-one-year-old Luke Wykes had his interest triggered through family connections, and maintained through television. “I’ve been watching wrestling since I was three, largely thanks to my late father who wrestled under various masks and names during the 1960s and early 1970s. I grew up watching WWF, NWA, WCW, any ECW VHS tapes I could lay my hands on, and some Puroresu once I’d finally got blessed internet access.
“During these years I also tried to get to as many British shows as I could, despite being a kid, and distinctly remember painfully trying to talk my parents into going to yet another holiday camp so I could see some wrestling as entertainment, where I sat amazed by guys like the Zebra Kid, while people like Ricky Knight seemed like people that had a genuine love of the business, rather than, as I saw it through ten-year-old eyes, being in it for the money. I think it’s largely a truth that if you’re a fan of wrestling
in your youth, part of it will never leave you.”
However, not everyone in the UK is a big WWE fan. Graham Beadle loved British wrestling as a child, watching the then-WWF alongside it, and then fell out of the habit. “I just got fed up with it, the whole storyline malarkey,” he says.
It was two rather less high-profile US-based promotions that lured him back in and got him back to UK shows: “One of my regulars in the shop introduced me to ROH [Ring of Honor], and I liked it for a while. But then Chikara [a family-friendly, comic-inspired promotion] came along, and that was it – back in love. It just went from there. Now, we go everywhere. If it’s anywhere in the south of England, I’m there.”
Yet British wrestling is incredibly diverse and skilful now. While old-school veterans like to wheel out their lyrical memories of the ‘traditional British style’, the number of overseas imports working in the UK – and the number of UK wrestlers working for overseas promotions – has changed the in-ring style significantly from how it appeared when it was last on national television.
“British culture has always been an amalgamation of different influences and I think this is reflected in wrestling,” muses Chris Pilkington, who writes for the wrestling website Collar and Elbow. “Whilst the strength of traditional British wrestling tropes seems somewhat diminished, the influence from North American, Japanese, Mexican and European wrestling has led to a great diversity of talent and promotions. We’re still some way behind in terms of exposure but I feel in terms of skill we can compete with anyone.”
It is a common theme among UK wrestling fans, who are, naturally, slightly biased – they argue that the talent is there, but just doesn’t get the exposure and audiences it deserves. “I would describe the current British wrestling scene as a great place for up and coming talent with many great people and characters being left undiscovered,” says fan Craig Wilkins, who enjoys taking his young son along to family-friendly shows in the south-east.
Rob Poulloin agrees that the talent levels are high, but there’s a huge problem with the same wrestlers being seen at every major UK promotion. “The British wrestling scene seems to be thriving at the minute but without a direction, so many promotions with wrestlers appearing in many of them, I feel without exclusivity there is no way the scene can progress into something bigger.”
However, rather than sitting around complaining, or venting frustrations via internet fora or social media, Wilkins thinks that British wrestling fans need to take some responsibility for developing their own local scene: “The typical British wrestling fan is typically one sadly clouded or blinkered, focusing only on WWE or TNA – everyone comes out to see them but they more than likely wouldn’t go if the ‘big names’ were not there, which is a shame as we have in most cases arguably greater talent right on our doorstep!”
Interestingly, though, Wilkins puts the blame partly on people involved in the scene, describing an “us-and-them culture – rather than joining for the greater cause, you have people trying to sabotage, which is holding British wrestling back from becoming great!”
It sounds all very cloak and dagger. Can this really be true? Well, in a word, yes. Behind the scenes of the British wrestling industry, there are tales of mutiny, disgruntlement and blazing rivalries. Yet more optimistically, there are also many more positive stories – of friendship, collaboration, and plans for the potential mainstream resurgence of the business.
However, there would be no business at all without people willing to take the risk to step into the ring – and to learn one of the most extraordinary trades in the world.
Chapter 2:
The training
ONE of the biggest fallacies about professional wrestling is that ‘it’s all fake’. Try telling that to wrestlers, and you’ll be laughed at. The acute injuries and the general wear and tear on their bodies caused by this ‘fake’ sport-and-entertainment hybrid prove otherwise.
A better way of thinking of it might be to conceptualise what you see in a ring as a dramatised fight to a pre-determined outcome.
The moves that wrestlers perform in the ring require a lot of practice to execute, and they also need to ensure that they can ‘take’ their opponent’s move and make it look convincing – all the time ensuring that neither of them get injured. That means that they first need to perfect the art of ‘bumping’ – taking a hit and falling properly – which is something that training schools drill into their novice students by rote.
“Before I took the bump I was just plain excited that I was in a ring, then I was focused on making sure I bumped correctly,” recalls young wrestler-in-training Joey Fitzpatrick. “Then afterwards I was just chuffed that I could say I’d bumped in a wrestling ring!”
He trains at New Generation Wrestling in Hull once a week, and the preparation they had done prior to him stepping in a ring for the first time meant he was completely ready for impact. Well, kind of.
“At the time I was fine,” he says, “then I think a few seconds after I’d bumped it hit me just how much of an impact I’d made on the canvas.”
The shock of hitting the canvas for the first time can either be terrifying or addictive. In Joey’s case, it gave him the drive and motivation to continue with his training. “Once I’d taken my first bump, I just wanted to keep bumping to improve everything, if that makes sense,” he says.
Mike ‘Wild Boar’ Hitchman had a rather less positive experience when in 2005 he took his first bump in front of an audience as part of an NWA-UK show in Newport, South Wales. It wasn’t a salubrious situation from the start.
“Basically the whole thing was a bit nerve-wracking – it was the first time I’d been in that environment or been backstage,” he recalls. “They put us in a small room [backstage], and it was pitch black. All we could hear was a really loud crowd and the ring bumping around – it was horrendous at the time.”
So Hitchman and his opponent waited for their slot on the card, and when it was their turn to head out, the room was boiling hot and packed to capacity. “We did some stuff, wrestled about, and then about three minutes in, I stopped – and threw up.”
He puts it all down to nerves, but adds that a lot of the audience thought his vomiting trick was simply part of the show. “After that, I was embarrassed and decided to give [wrestling] a break, then decided I need to get back into it in 2008 and never looked back since. Now I laugh about it, basically. Shame, as prior to throwing up, the match was going pretty well for both our first matches.”
The training schools
A vibrant wrestling scene needs decent training schools. Historically, the UK scene has had a very mixed reputation for the quality of its training, ranging from the very best in the business down to schools with desperately and dangerously low standards.
Mark Sloan, who founded the Frontier Wrestling Academy in the south-east of England, doesn’t believe that in reality it’s any worse than any other sport. “There is a lot of bad stuff out there,” he says. “But people will just try it anyway.”
Top UK wrestlers agree.
“I was a fan all my life,” says Nathan Cruz, otherwise known as ‘The Showstealer’. “Then at ten years old I decided that this is what I wanted to do with my life. I began training when I was 15 at a less than reputable promotion. I never knew at that time but it didn’t give me the best start in wrestling.
“But the UK training in general is awful. Very few places are good wrestling schools.”
“I could name and shame about ten schools which are shoddy,” agrees Kris Travis. “It’s funny how these guys are usually the ones with the egos as well!”
‘The Vigilante’ Johnny Moss concurs, commenting scathingly: “The majority are run by people who haven’t even had proper training themselves. Unfortunately what happens is someone who is an awful wrestler that struggles to get booked anywhere ends up setting up his own promotion, so then they are guaranteed a booking, then opens a training school as it’s a good little earner! All I will say to anyone who wants
to learn how to wrestle is research the school you are thinking of going to, who are the trainers? What have they done? Where have they wrestled? Who have they trained?”
Harvey Dale, a manager and ring announcer, is heavily involved with ‘The House of Pain’, one of the most reputable training schools in the UK, headed by veteran Stixx. Talking to him, he is obviously angry about the bad schools – not necessarily from a business point of view, but because of the danger caused by inadequately-trained wrestlers performing on shows.
“I haven’t been to the actual schools themselves,” he admits, “but have a vast experience of shows – good and bad – all the way over the country. I generally find myself attending a minimum of three shows per week so get to see pretty much everything that goes on up and down the country, and therefore I have a very good knowledge of the ‘trainers’ themselves and then getting the chance to see their ‘trainees’ in action.”
He reels off a string of names of training schools. “There is a whole host of ‘self-taught workers’ and ‘backyarders’ appearing on ‘shows’ at the moment,” he says, using those quote marks with heavy irony. “These guys – usually guys in their very early 20s or late teens – then think that they know it all and are safe to teach others how to work safely. This is where the danger comes into it.”
He continues: “Students go on to ‘perform’ [on shows] long before they are ready to be anywhere near shows. They are used by the ‘promoters’ because they come for free, the excuse being that ‘they need to gain show experience’.
“But they don’t. They need to train in a safe environment with a competent trainer and school for a sufficient amount of time long before they ever need to gain experience in front of a live crowd.
