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 went into it and through that fell in love with theatre. I’m always watched wrestling, continued watching it, but never pursued it, never found any kind of avenue into it, so I got involved in theatre. I performed an original show that I wrote, directed and a theatre in Bath through my sixth form and when I was on stage, I knew in that moment “this is it. This is the thing that I have looking for or wanted to do.”
Then after that I continued pursuing theatre until when I graduated I came back to Bristol and I saw a couple of indie shows. I inquired what avenues werre available and for me it was always to be a manager. I never wanted it to be a wrestler. Even as a kid growing up, I was playing with my action figures and building a storyline between these two people. So eventually I found the Dragon Pro Academy and because of the experience I had in theatre, it really helped me straight off the bat with wrestling because I had that experience and exposure in front of people. I had the experience of writing something myself in order to perform and entertain people.
I wonder if people who get into wrestling may not or may not become wrestlers if they knew there was a way to entertain people without destroying their body in the sense that if you know you’re able to get a reaction out of people through emotion and storytelling or performance dialogue, do you necessarily have to go so full out in your matches or things like that? You listen to someone like Mick Foley or Rob Van Dam talk about their one man shows that they do and they say they got the same kind of experience of entertaining a crowd doing that just they did when they were wrestling.
How have your theatre and comedy backgrounds interacted with your wrestling work and development?
I guess the intoxicating feeling of being in front of an audience is there in both. But it took me a bit longer with wrestling. So with theatre, for whatever reason it clicked, but with stand up and wrestling it didn’t immediately. The first show I did, I just didn’t feel right. It felt awkward. It felt so wrong compared to what I thought it could feel like, but from the moment afterwards I tried to piece together what it is that makes it work in the wrestling context as opposed to a theatre context where you have a nice middle class audience being really respectful, really quiet, being there for the show and then there sort of rowdy interactive crowd in wrestling that you sometimes need to then pay attention to and being more spontaneous and be there in the moment.
And ironically enough when I focused on doing wrestling as opposed to other performing stuff, when I came back to doing stand-up and theatre, especially doing a one man show, all the experience I had in wrestling then helped me with that in terms of being confident and managing the crowd on my own with nothing else with no support. Being confident to do that, being able to be a bit more spontaneous and things like that. So it’s a very weird circle of experiences that seems to keep feeding into each other. So even now I want to do more theatre and stand up, but in my mind it’s to get more exposure and to get a profile so that, that will then help me get more stuff in wrestling
What are some of the differences with dealing with audiences in the various artforms?
It’s a hard one because it’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation: an audience will completely shit on you or completely give you stick almost in a sense from the get-go until you prove yourself. And so you almost need to spend that time with them in order to gain their trust in order to then be in a position where you’re the one in control. And so it’s your confidence because you’ve been through all those situations. And so no matter what happens, you will be able to handle it and they been respect that and admire that and give you your time to talk. And it’s an interesting one to get your head around in terms of the different performance, the different art forms.
It’s a really interesting relationship between a performer and an audience and almost what they expect and what they allow. So I guess in a sense a theatre crowd could be a bit more forgiving or there’s an element that requires some thinking in a way. Whereas in wrestling it’s almost, it’s so cut throat in a way of you survive or you don’t, you swim or you drown and that has its own excitement and believe me it has its frustration. You get incredibly annoyed sometimes, but that’s also the beauty of it.
So for me, some of the most amazing moments I’ve had in wrestling were completely spontaneous moments. There was one match when I was managing Jekyll for Pro Wrestling Chaos and he was facing Tiomassa Ciampa and Ciampa had suplexed him onto a guardrail. So if you imagine outside the ring it’s Ciampa at one ring post, a bit further a bit down is Jekyll, and then further down at the other ring post is me. Ciampa is about to run at him and then he just points his finger at me and I’m like “Oh shit, what’s about to happen right now?” None of us spoke about this, but instantaneously for whatever reason I knew exactly what to do: let him chase me around the ring, do an entire lap so that when he laps back, he smacks Jekyll with the knee. I didn’t know that I was doing that, but he kind of forced the situation on me and that made that moment.
On the flip side to that, I enjoyed the precision and the subtlety of theatre. The thing is wrestling can always do that. It just requires either more time, more skill or really good camera angles in terms of your facial expressions of the stories being told. There’s immersive theatre too in terms of the spontaneous things that can come out of that and some of those moments are incredible, but usually you have to get through a lot of crap, a lot of really weird artistic theatre stuff to get this moment of glory. Whereas in wrestling, the idea is that you’re always engaged, you’re always able to interact. And then on top of that you have these moments that just happen organically.
You have a very distinct style of promos, almost spoken word poetry. Where did that stem from?
It was something I always wanted to do but never thought I could. I was always a big fan of Lanny Poffo and ‘Thuganomics’-era John Cena and I’d always watch these guys like it was just amazing what they’re able to do but I just didn’t think it’s possible I could do it. And then you go to open mic nights and stuff that’s completely kind of away from wrestling and you see the most awful, awful spoken word poetry and just, oh my God, it’s painful. It hurts me to think about it. But I was thinking, wouldn’t it be good for me at least if I try to do spoken word better than the people doing spoken word just as proof that it could be done better.
And I was also feeling like I didn’t have a lot of direction with what me and Jekyll were meant to be doing at Chaos. At one point it was just “Jekyll’s going to go out, he’s going to have matches, you’re going to be his manager.” I was like, “okay, but is that it? Anything else? No.” And so I have to find a way of trying to make the promos interesting for myself to challenge myself to do it and see what would work.
It set me apart from everyone else. It gave me something unique and different that stood out. It gave me license because as a manager I have almost a responsibility to maybe like intellectualise or theorise or be a bit more literal and lyrical and wordy.
How has wrestling helped with the specific challenges of the other artforms?
Wrestling has helped my theatre, but I guess it’s more just the presence, the movement, the precision, the no wasted energy. The thing that I think is great and terrifying about theatre is that there’s such a thin line that you have to constantly be on. You can distract the audience and take them out of the moment because of just one little misstep, one little thing like accidentally thumping a table or accidentally walking into something or even taking three steps instead of two. And that’s the reason a lot of theatre can fail because it’s all about an audience in that space at that time. You could have been building the last 40 minutes and one little thing completely ruins everything.
What effect do the differing timescales of a theatre and wrestling performances have?
I had to learn that in theatre I could just talk for an hour and that’s what people paid for. That’s what they wanted. That’s what they enjoyed. In wrestling, I could cut two minute promo, I could cut a one minute promo, I could cut a 30 second promo, but it’s all based on how everyone is feeling at that moment. Maybe I’ve written a promo that goes on for like four minutes in order to get over a bunch of stuff, but actually the audience is already there. They’re already antagonized. If I keep talking for too long, that’s not what they’re wanting.
There’s a lot of talk about whether a wrestling audience really knows what they want, but even if they’re not able to articulate what it is, you can sense that feeling in that arena when you know, oh, okay, I’ve lost them. I just talked for an extra 30 seconds too long.
Compared with a one-man show, the problem [in wrestling] was how do I tell people who I am, what I bring, and not making that go on forever. One thing that I’ve always been a big proponent of is subtlety. I think subtlety goes a long way. You can tell people something through doing something else then you’re getting two things across, not just the one dimensional element. Say you’ve got a character that is crazy and you’re saying “I’m crazy.” The second I hear you say you’re crazy, you’re not. You’re clearly a stable person trying to portray something else.
What ways can I go about that? So in a sense I don’t need to tell people I’m really intelligent and well-spoken because although that could be cheap heat, I can get that across instead by delivering a promo that is really well spoken, really literary or articulate. I don’t need to add that tag on top. What I say and the way I deliver it could then add that on top of that “Not only is he a smarmy git, but he’s also a smarmy git who knows he’s intelligent” and that’s much more of a guttural reaction you can get from people rather than with “Oh, town A sucks because I’m clever and you’re not.”
How is performing different in wrestling where, on the UK scene at least, virtually every match and show is a truly one-off performance?
I think that’s the most terrifying thing about wrestling is there are so many things that you cannot control. So the two guys putting their match together have not toured around and developed and built up this match to be this thing that they’ve worked on night in and night out. It’s just half an hour in the back, let’s talk and then let’s do it. That’s it. I still don’t know how they do. It terrifies me to this day that anyone is able to do that. I’m just listening to them go over it and I’m thinking, “But how? How? How can you get into this mindset and do it? So I’m glad I’m not a wrestler in that sense because it’s such a frightening responsibility.
That’s a weird thing because I love the craft of, say, in stand-up, building a joke and testing it and trying it again and finding out which bits work and which bits you can add in, which bits you can change around to get different reactions, different reactions in different cities, different local references that you can add in.
And so with the show I’m doing now [An Indian Abroad], I try and do that to each city I’m going to. I try and put in little details here and there that are specific to that show. Not only because it makes the show better, but it makes me more interested. It challenges me, it stimulates me more than doing the exact same words the exact same way, the exact same time. And so in that sense, I guess wrestling has always spoiled me because it’s given me an art form where I can do something that’s so completely out there that it’s just one and done and that’s it. You’ve got one chance to nail it. And the guys who are out there constantly doing it, nail it on a very regular basis and I feel like I do that too for the words I need to do in my promo. There is that rush that you get from it, which I think is irreplaceable in many ways.
What’s the biggest way your wrestling work has improved your other performances?
I think it’s just the [crowd] time. I felt uncomfortable in front of the wrestling audience the first time because it was the first time. But the more and more I did it, the more and more comfortable I got. And I think wrestling is probably the most uncomfortable situation you can be in because of how antagonistic a crowd can be, because of how many uncontrollable factors there are. And so being able to do that gave me such confidence, being able to do stand up or theatre that it’s much more fluid, it’s much more natural, it feels smoother and more professional because I’ve been tried and tested in the wrestling environment.
Is there any scope to bring the different art forms together?
So I was part of a program about three years ago with BBC Three when they chose the top 50 creative young people in the UK. And I tried to pitch a wrestling show then as well. My mentor from that program wants to produce a play of mine that is about wrestling. And every time I go somewhere people are saying, “Oh, you’ve got to do a standup set about wrestling.” So I think the hunger and the appetite is there, and the means and the experience. I think it just needs either the right person or the liaison or the right person to sell professional wrestling to non-wrestling people in finance. I definitely think there’s that scope.
