Category: The Training Ground

What are the most important skills and qualities for a ring announcer? It’s confidence and knowing what your role is and what you’re there to do and understanding like the flow of a wrestling show. You need to know what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and be able to relate to your audience. I’ve…

Tell us a little about your performing background and how that tied into wrestling?   So originally I had no interest in doing theatre or anything whatsoever. When I saw a theatre course in sixth form, I wanted to do it purely because I thought it would help my wrestling promos one day and I…

What are the most important qualities for being a wrestling trainer? It’s very important that when you’re training people there’s a collaborative approach, so though the coach is an authority figure, the coach is more a part of a team and you’re kind of working together with your talent and you’re building trust with your…

Where did the idea for the original Pastor William Eaver character come from? It was more based on my look, my long hair: everywhere I go people would look at me and they wouldn’t say it directly to me, but it was just like “oh look, there’s Jesus.” I looked like loads of people: anyone…

You were trained by male wrestlers in exactly the same way as other male trainees. What effect do you think that had on your career? When I started to train in 1977, there was basically no such thing as wrestling school and there were absolutely no girls to train with apart from one girl who…

How do you keep a character like Martina fresh, particularly when returning to venues? When I was starting as Martina, I was only in Ireland. Nowhere else had really heard of me so I had to focus on breaking out in the first place and I think the fact that I was a female doing…

Although your recent match at Riptide (with Session Moth Martina against the Anti Fun Police) made the headlines, you actually wrestled many times when working on the holiday camps back in the 1980s. What stands out about that experience? It was at Camber Sands where I primarily got to meet these wrestlers like Mel Stuart,…

What are the three biggest things you look for when considering a new venue? Location is one, to make sure that it’s accessible for travelling fans to get to: is there car parking and facilities near by? Number two, which is something which I used to never consider back in the day is the look…

You’re a former wrestler while your two co-promoters are still active wrestlers. What are the main advantages and disadvantages that brings to your role as promoters? The benefit I guess is mostly experience in working for good and bad promoters. So having some experience of when we felt valued as a talent and when we…

While you wrestle around the world, at various stages you’ve been based in the UK and the US. What are the comparative pros and cons of each? It varies as to what kind of region you’re wrestling in. Recently I’ve been doing a lot of European stuff so flying from London to Madrid or Cologne…