For those who don’t know, can you recap the injuries that put you out for most of last year?
I injured myself in the qualifying match against Zack Sabre Jr for the Cruiserweight Classic down in Progress in April. I took a kick to the leg and it fractured my ankle. I actually got two fractures and the doctors think that the second fracture was a stress fracture caused when I did a plancha on the broken ankle. Then I took a Tiger suplex which dislodged my shoulder and when I went for a running shooting star press I landed on my shoulder and dislocated it and tore my labrum off the bone.
How were you able to start thinking positively about what had happened?
I’ve always been lucky in having a good network of friends within the business. The Attack boys especially — Mark Andrews, Wild Boar, Pete Dunne, Eddie Dennis — we’ve all kind of been positive with each other, pushing each other and making sure everyone is going in the right direction and keeps themselves out of any negative business. The moment I got hurt they were all positive telling me “You’ve got to keep busy, it could be worse.” I did take solace that this did happen with the eyes of the world on me and it was better that than it happening in a social club in front of 50 people. I knew that in the last year or two I had been able to make a name for myself and I wasn’t going to have to start from scratch: I had a back catalogue behind me.
What was the best advice you received?
The one that really sticks out is Marty Scurll, who dropped me a message and said “Hey man, I know it’s tough, I know exactly what you’re going through. I hurt myself when I was in one of the best positions I’d been in just coming off the back of British Bootcamp. Although it feels like this is going to be the worst year of your life, you need to use this year to really motivate yourself and think hard about what you’re going to do when you come back.” He said that when he was injured he thought it was the worst thing, but he was able to change himself from ‘Party Marty’ to the ‘Villain’ and that’s been the most over thing and the most accomplished thing he’s ever done. So he said “Use this time off wisely because there’s going to be no other time in your career that you’re going to be able to sit and look at what’s happening in wrestling, and look impartially at what you did and what other people are doing, and realise what works and what doesn’t work, and then think about how you’re going to reinvent yourself and come back stronger and better.
What steps did you take to take advantage of your time out?
I’ve always been proactive when it comes to branding: making sure my promo had a distinctive look about it that fit in with the Mod character. I’ve always been proactive in making sure my look was aesthetically pleasing and you could tell what the brand was from the moment you saw it. My podcast [Morgan Webster’s Wrestling Friends] was something I was trying to do a couple of months before I got hurt and I’d shelved it with the thought of never coming back to it. I just thought “I’m out injured, it’s an ideal time [to revive it]” and it was also a way for me, while not being at shows, to keep in contact with fans and engage them and connect with them. On the day I got hurt, I had 3,007 fans on Twitter and I said to myself that when I came back I wanted to have broken the 5,000 follower mark, which I’ve now done. I always set myself goals in wrestling and having this year out was no different: I still set myself goals which involved wrestling but were more about social media and branding.
It must have been painful to go to shows when you couldn’t wrestle. How did you overcome this?
My first month or two I couldn’t go to shows. It was too difficult to watch it and know that I couldn’t be a part of it. I think what kind of made me have to go is that to do the podcast I needed to be around my friends and other wrestlers. I made a conscious decision to go to these shows just to get the podcast and keep working, but while I was at the shows the byproduct was being able to be there and watch it as an impartial viewer. I really have loved watching some of these shows not as a wrestler but as a fan: I think it really has given me a new insight on what I’ll be doing when I come back.
What surprised you most about having a long-term injury?
How quickly muscle can go and how long that takes to come back. Cardio levels as well: I thought I had decent cardio before I went. Unfortunately with an ankle and a shoulder injury, I was unable to walk or do any sort of lifting so I was on the shelf completely. When I was finally able to get into physio and start doing stuff, it was so surprising how quick your cardio levels drop when you’re not being active.
I wasn’t that frustrated when I was unable to go to the gym: I’d made peace with it and I was more focused on trying to get the shoulder and ankle moving again. But I’ve been back in the gym for about a month and now it is frustrating: it’s not just to do with the size not being there, but the strength isn’t there either. To go from being able to do a 160kg deadlift to now only being able to get up 110, 120 can be disheartening and you know that until you’re able to do those lifts again, the muscle probably isn’t going to come back.
I think I was unfortunate that unlike, say, Finn Balor who was injured and into surgery the next day, meaning there was only three months between him being injured and getting back in the gym, I was waiting round for almost four months before getting surgery and then the moment the sling came off I was going under the knife, which meant I was out from the gym for almost eight months. But I think that frustration is good, especially when you’re in the gym, because it does make you hungry and want to work harder.
Were you tempted to let your nutrition discipline slip?
100%. My diet was probably the best it’s ever been going into that match against Zack Sabre Junior and I was probably in the best shape of my life. The day after I was injured I just went on a complete binge. It wasn’t just because I knew I could, but being in a sling and a cast meant that cooking was really difficult, especially only having one hand, so it was easy just to put in your oven pizzas and oven chips, just literally put it in, let it cook and be able to eat it with one hand. At first it started off with that necessity but as time went on, I fell into that lapse of thinking “I’m not going to be in the ring for another three months” and kept going. The turning point was that I very rarely get ill, but about two months in to this junk food binge I got really ill and I remember thinking it was because my immune system was struggling from a lack of vegetables and fruit. That was my body’s way of telling me to get back on the horse.
Were there any physical benefits from being out of the ring?
One big benefit was that once the sling and the cast were off, I wasn’t fully able to lift weights right away but I was told I was able to do cardio. So for the first two months or so I was just concentrating on cardio. That’s something I’ll hold my hands up and say I had decent cardio before but I absolutely despised the training. I’m not a big fan of it now but because it was the only thing I could do in the gym, I’ve got a new respect for it because of being able to focus on it.
[That said,] I was down in the Dragon Pro academy this weekend just doing a bit of rolling around. One of my cardio circuits I can do now is 80 burpees and 80 box jumps in 15 minutes, but I was in the ring rolling around for maybe four minutes and I was completely and utterly gassing. It’s 100% true that you can have all the cardio in the world but it’s different to being in the ring. That is something I’m going to have to be on before my comeback: I’m going to have to be in the ring two or three times week the before that match. All the cardio in the world helps but it does not translate into being in the ring wrestling.
People think of injury layoffs as a physical issue, but were there any mental challenges?
One of the biggest ones is that you are afraid people are going to forget about you. When you’re in the ring and you’re wrestling maybe three or four times a week, you are having constant admiration off the fans, whether you hear them cheer you or boo you. There’s also your social media as well: you can come home from an event and have 20, 30 tweets every night and to have that cut off completely can really hurt your self-esteem. Everyone who gets involved in wrestling is quite egotistical, so to go from having constant praise to having none at all can be quite hard mentally and almost make you feel like you’re not quite wanted or people aren’t missing you.
You’ve stayed involved as a performer in Pro Wrestling Chaos through promos and angles. How has that helped?
Being in the ring and knowing that you can’t do anything but speak and being able to conjure up reactions or listen to the crowd and be able to move a promo how you need to to get reactions off that crowd and to get that energy and that feel… it’s something I thought I could do before, but now I understand it so much more. I’ve looked at my wrestling now and thought “How can I add this character work into the wrestling? How can I get the character work and those reactions without having to fly through the air or land on your head or hit twice as hard?” If I can get a reaction from speaking, there should be a way of translating that into the wrestling that means I can get bigger reactions from doing less stuff. That’s not to say I’m going to be lazier but it’s about finding a way to connect. That’s what I was lacking before: I wasn’t connecting. This time away has allowed me to realise how you do that.
What advice would you give any wrestlers to deal with the possibility of getting injured?
Get yourself insurance. I was unfortunate enough that my insurance had run out by 15 days and that’s because I was in the haze of excitement about this big match that I was going to be in. But I’ve spoke to other people and it’s surprising how many people here don’t have medical insurance when it comes to wrestling. I think that’s because they take the NHS a little bit for granted. But I was lucky in a sense that I was able to get my MRI and get my surgery done in four months. I’ve known people who’ve hurt themselves playing rugby or football and they’ve been unable to get the surgery for almost a year. If you’ve got medical insurance you can literally get it done two or three days after the incident. It can be so cheap to get insurance: it can be as little as £12 a month. Anyone out there who’s wrestling without insurance needs to get that: even if you’re a trainee looking to come in to the business, get that medical insurance. Look around, find which one’s right for you and which you can afford.
I was full-time wrestling when I got hurt and that medical insurance would have covered me for loss of earnings. Without it I was struggling financially. Don’t get it just for peace of mind for your body, but peace of mind for your bank balance, for your family, your partner, your kids. It’s really hard when you’re not only unable to wrestle but you can’t work and provide for your family.
What advice would you give to the Morgan Webster who was heading to the ring for the match with Zack?
Avoid the kick and counter the Tiger suplex! And don’t do the shooting star press. Without those things I wouldn’t have got hurt.
But looking at it, what I should have done is when my ankle got hurt I should have just rolled out the ring and called it a day. I stubbornly tried to carry on and that’s what caused the shoulder injury which was the big injury that’s been keeping me out for near on 10 months now. The ankle would have healed in six weeks. We take so much pride in our art form and we don’t want to let the fans down and we want to make sure the match is possible, but looking back on it now, this has been 10 months of my career that I’ve lost and will never get back.
Yes, I have been able to learn a lot from it and will have grown from it when I get back in the ring, but it’s not worth it, it really isn’t. That’s 10 months of my life where I have struggled, 10 months of my life that’s been hard on my partner. Sometime you’ve got to weigh things up and think “Is this 15 minutes of glory worth losing a year of my life or even ending my career.” A lot of people will say yes, it is worth it, and I probably would have myself before the injury, but you’ve got to pick your hill to die on, you’ve got to pick your battles.
