What’s the biggest difference between Jodie Fleisch in 2017 and the guy who made his name at shows like Revival and British Uprising?
Age. Loads of age. A ton of age and… you know what, if I’m optimistic that might be the only thing. Older, maybe wiser but that might not be true, but there’s not much else really.
When did you first feel like a veteran?
That would be just lately, probably a couple of months ago. If you get talked about or referred to in that way long enough, after a while it hits home and you realise that’s the truth. To be honest, I was at a show the other day and I looked around the dressing room and you’re used to being the youngest one there, but I was the oldest one there! So that would be the definitive moment as to when I realised how long I’d been in it.
You’ve always been known for a fast-paced, athletic style. How have you kept that up as you’ve got older?
I’ve never really had any problems with it. I was one of these kids growing up who went to like two to four hours of after school sports clubs, so I’m sure that helped. As an adult I work as a personal trainer now and I guess partly because of that I spend half my life in a gym. I don’t just lift weights: I do a lot of other functional mobility-based movement stuff that I feel has always kept me nimble, athletic, strong, quick on my feet, agile. That’s definitely helped a lot and continues too. In a nutshell it would be training and past experience.
What benefits does your fitness training bring to your wrestling?
My feelings are that lifting weights for mainly aesthetics is good and makes you look a certain way but it would be more important to focus on your movement, mobility, agility, joint stability to protect you against injuries, make you feel safer when you’re moving around in the gym or the ring.
Me and nine out of ten of my clients do circuits to time. My last workout yesterday was circuits of five power clean lifts with a 40kg barbell, five burpies, five reverse burpies (from standing, sit down, lay back, sit up powerfully into a full squat position and stand up again) and then five bodyhold pushups where you push up onto and off of a 24-inch box. I did that whole circuit 10 times, which took me 16:24, so the next time I’m in the gym tomorrow I’ll aim to do it in anything quicker.
The next time after that it’ll be another circuit with a whole bunch of different movements and then the goal the time after that will be to do the same thing in the same time or quicker. It’s a bit like cross-fit but you’re taking out a lot of the Olympic lifts and putting in a lot of agility stuff like burpees, reverse burpees, headsprings, kip-ups. Me and some other clients of mine are even doing backtucks, back somersaults, front somersaults, so it’s very varied, very versatile, so they never get boring. And they’re really quick workouts, so they’re a great alternative to spending 45 minutes or an hour and a half on a boring cross-trainer or treadmill where you’re going at 50 to 80 percent of your maximum heartrate while wishing you weren’t doing that!
I guess that type of circuit matches well with pro wrestling matches where you’re switching back and forth between running quickly or using strength or jumping?
Spot on. Plus these circuits last anything between 10 and 20 minutes, which coincidentally happens to be the same amount of time any given match usually lasts, so for me they’ve been a real big part of keeping me mobile and fit and healthy to do what I do.
What did you take most from your own days training?
Learning wrestling is such a broad subject, there are so many things that go into it. Obviously, anyone getting into the business should be encouraged to listen to people and work with a wide variety of people so they can learn on the job. Another thing would be to learn everything no matter what your (preferred) style is. Wrestling’s a really diverse thing with loads of different types of workers out there from luchadores to strong style workers to technical style workers to brawlers. And there’s loads of other types of styles like people who use their gimmick more to get over, you’ve got your comedy wrestlers, your monster heels, your monster faces. One of the main things would be to become as accomplished at working as wide a variety of styles as you possibly can. I learned firstly in Hammerlock and then shortly after that I was doing three- to six-week Japanese tours for the next 2-3 years and I think I did most of my learning on the job there. And that’s not to say that I stopped learning there, in fact I’m still learning now, as are most. Wrestling’s such a broad subject that there are tons and tons of different elements to learn and to be taught. But they’re all fun, fun to do when you get to pull them off on shows, whether that’s moves or ways of thinking.
What’s surprised you most as your career has developed?
One of the main things for me has been actually convincing people of what wrestling is. I feel that there’s a lot of people that might have been working for 10 years that still might not have clicked or grasped an understanding as to what it actually is. I’ll lock up with someone for the first time and I can pretty much immediately tell where they are with all that stuff. If I go to lock up with them and they are rigid, that’s usually a sign that this isn’t going to be a five star classic and that would be my cue to work around that sort of stuff.
If I lock up with someone and it feels like locking up with a tree and it’s going to be tough for me to move them around, then something in my head tells me this is going to be a long night. If I lock up with someone and it might look to the live crowd like there’s a lot of resistance, like for example I go to take a headlock and it looks to the live crowd that there’s a lot of resistance but there isn’t really and in fact the person might kind of put himself in the headlock for me, I’m like “Right, this isn’t going to be such a long night, this is going to be a better match.”
What’s the plan when you get that rigid lock-up?
There’d be a lot of simplification going on. I’d try to make sure the match was done in as simple a way as possible. There won’t be as many complex sequences and it won’t be a technical masterpiece. It will be, for example “posting: stay; posting: move”. It’ll be a more simple match so it looks better.
How have you adjusted to wrestling in an era where you’re no longer necessarily the most spectacular high flyer on the show?
If it was just down to flying around then you’d get somebody from the Moscow State Circus to come in and do a match and then you’d be good to go. That’s a small part of it and that’s not even an essential part of it. I feel like the moves that you do are more the icing on the cake, the decoration of the match. I feel like the actual fundamentals of the match — I hate to sound like an old timer! – but the fundamentals are in the way the story is told, or what story you’re telling. Deep down the basis of that match is kind of decided before you’ve added in the flips and the flops and the fancy spots.
I don’t want to be one of these people who says “Leave your egos at the door” but I was working with some people the other day: they hadn’t really learned properly the basics. They were great at the high flying, the big spots, but there’s still some people who haven’t learned how to put those spots and moves together and to develop an understanding of the story of a match. I spent some time away from wrestling and I’m doing a lot more lately and I kind of thought that it would generally have moved on a lot from that point and I was right in thinking that because I’m sure it has, but that doesn’t mean that everybody is clued up to that extent. The wrestling business in this country has come on leaps and bounds as we all know, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone in it has, so I guess it’s the same craft as it was 15 years ago for me and there still are people who aren’t really up to speed with that craft in the way that a lot of us are.
How have you dealt with being asked for advice by younger wrestlers who see you as the veteran?
A lot of times I’ll finish a match and someone will say to me “Thanks for the match”, I’ll say “Thanks” too, and they’ll say “Do you have any critiques, anything I could learn from?” and I have not been the guy to say “Yes, you could have done this then, you could have done this better, think about that.” In general, I’ve shied away from that because, like I said, I’ve always felt like the youngest guy in the dressing room.
Lately I’ve made a bit of an effort as I’ve realised they are asking me for their own sake and I’d be helping them if I gave that advice, especially if there are things in my head. And to be honest, usually when people ask me that, lots of things shoot through my mind to tell them, but I haven’t for whatever reason. But I’m trying a bit more now. A lot of the time I’ll still struggle to offer the advice even if that advice is in my head and the person has asked for it.
I’m trying to be a bit more hands on in the way I work out the matches as well. I’ve been guilty over the years of, for example, turning up at a show and saying “Hi, nice to meet you, what do you want to do?” to somebody who hasn’t really been doing in that long and I’ve got no idea of their abilities. Lately I’ve been a bit more like “Hi, nice to meet you, what do you do, so that we” — and sometimes that’s primarily me – “can go about putting this match together with what you do in mind.” It took me ages to get to this point and I’m not fully there yet, but I have a lot more input for my wrestling these days than I did just a couple of years ago.
Was there a moment when you suddenly “got” wrestling or was it a more gradual process?
From the start there were several different lightbulb flashing on moments, but I’m still learning. Most people no matter how long they’ve been in are still learning, so each time that lightbulb went on, a while later another one will flash up and I’ll be like “OK, this is it.” Give yourself loads and loads of them and you realise “Well, that lightbulb’s going to flash on the next time I work as well”. Wrestling takes a long, long time to learn. It’s easier or it helps if you’re an open person and leave your ego at the door. The moment you think you’ve got it all, it’s probably not good for your continued learning process because then you’re going to be a bit more closed off to learning new things. Everything about wrestling is changing constantly anyway, though saying that is a bit of a conundrum because it’s true and it’s not true at the same time. The crowds are changing, the styles of the way people work are changing, but there’s a lot of the fundamentals that still hold true. It’s a weird one professional wrestling because it never really stays still and there’s always something new to learn.
There was a lot of controversy when you were first making your name about whether British wrestlers should pay for their own flights to work on shows abroad. What are your views on that today?
It’s a bit like “Don’t hate the player, hate the game.” I know a lot of lads who’ve made advances in the wrestling world by, for example, paying for the own flights, going abroad. A lot of people have flown themselves out to Japan to become dojo boys. But where it is a business, there’s the old story of somebody says “Hi promoter, can I be on your show, I’ll work for £10 and I’ll bring my four mates in a car who’ll also work for £10” so obviously then the promoter’s got five lads for £50 and some petrol, but the standard of work won’t be so good. That’s obvious to anyone, and you’ve then got real workers, real pros, people who are more savvy to it, they’ll miss out on that work because of those five guys in a car. I do understand the five guys in the car want to get into the job and build themselves up, but I think it’s just down to the individual on that one.
On the positive side, I feel that now there are loads of ways that you can get ahead in the wrestling business without flying yourself abroad or working for absolute peanuts. But I would never blame or judge one individual for it: I’m not going to hate on people who do that sort of thing.
If you were breaking into the business in today’s scene, would you do anything differently?
In the mid to late 90s I really didn’t have much choice in the matter. What I did personally came after playing a whole load of different sports that asked a whole lot of different parts of me physically. Because there was only one [pro wrestling] school around and it took us a couple of years to find it, me and my mates found an Olympic freestyle wrestling club and did that for about a year before being referred to Hammerlock. That was kind of my only choice at the time.
My advice to somebody of that sort of age now who was looking to get into professional wrestling is to make sure they’ve done their most to become mobile with explosive power and strength and agility and footwork before that, or at least during the time they were getting into the business. It’s a show and there’s all sorts of wrestlers out there, but it’s going to come to the point where you’re asked to work physically. You’re going to have to be able to move around without hurting yourself or others. It’s going to be better for you if you’re going to make that moving around look good and crisp. Whether your thing is lifting weights or football or ballet, if you’re mobile and fit, that’s going to be a big help.
There’s loads of people I teach at seminars and I have to fight back the frustration when I see students who are really passionate and really want to do all they can to get into the business and then it’s clear when they move that they haven’t really got any regular exercise. I always feel for those people and try to encourage them to… move basically! If you want to be in an athletic job, it makes sense to be an athletic person or become one.
