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 talent to create the best outcome for your talent. Also to find out how you get the best out of the individual and to create a space where they believe in themselves. Keep it highly structured and focused and I guess outcome focused. My style as a coach, I’m driven and outcome focused and would be very hands on. But I’m kind of relaxed and focus on the positives with be a lot of positive reinforcement there. Mistakes do happen, but that’s not the end of the world.
How much do you change the structure and syllabus of training for different students?
So that’s where I guess it’s how you structure and focus. I guess for me if I was to prepare somebody to go and wrestle in Japan or preparing somebody for a WWE try-out, maybe my style of coaching and things I will do it will be a little bit different. So I guess that’s my responsibility as a coach to look into what’s going to need or what’s expected in those two different professional wrestling systems to prepare the talent as best I can to be successful in those environments.
What would be the qualities you look for in a good trainee who will learn well?
The guy or girl that’s willing to listen and learn and do the best for them. Just the person that’s the person that’s willing to try things. The person with a good attitude, a person that’s humble A person who’s just open to learning, a person that’s fun. Generally in professional wrestling there are a lot of good kids like that around nowadays.
Have you noticed any changes in the attitude or the expectations that wrestlers have, particularly over the last five years or so when the UK and Ireland scene has really boomed and there’s a route people can see to being successful.
It’s an amazing time to be breaking into the opportunities that are there now with the WWE UK scene especially. It’s kind of so reachable now for young people to actually be successful and get contracts. Over here in Ireland, there’s definitely a lot of of kids that do have all those traits and are hungry and are willing to learn. There are kids who are 17, 18, 19 years of age that have shows every weekend now and started getting a little bit of money out of it.
These days some trainees see training as an end in itself: it’s a fitness activity, it’s a drama performance activity, and people might not be going to training with a goal of making a career. Is that something you’ve ever experienced and how do you approach that as a trainer?
I think for some people grow up watching television, their goal is to just try wrestling. I guess when I started, I was probably one of those people. But as you progress in the business, if you’re really driven, your goals change. For me, my first goal was to get on a training camp. I loved that, so after that, my goal after that was to get on a show, after that my goal is to get on a tour. Then I want to wrestle in America, I want to wrestle in Japan. So I think if you have that drive and you can see beyond the initial thing of just popping into a ring and hit the ropes or take a couple of bumps. I think if that leads you on to bigger and better things, I think you will dream bigger. I think your goals will change
How do you deal with trainees who turn up and you know they want to be doing a high flying move they’ve seen on TV straight away before they even learn to lock up.
I think when I started in Hammerlock in Kent, that’s kind of what you were expecting at the start. It was 2000 when I started and then whoever was around, The Rock and Steve Austin and all these guys are in your head. You thought that you are going to be doing all these signature moves. And it was made clear very quickly by the trainers that wasn’t what it was about. We were taught the basics and I think when myself and Fergal Devitt first opened a training school here that was one of the things that we kind of passed on to our guys. You’re here to learn how to wrestle and you aren’t here to play wrestling, you’re here to wrestle. We had times where we had people put the ring up and it took two or three months where every week have to put the ring up and they’d train on the mats and then take the ring down and put it away. So it’s just learning discipline and respect for the business and learn that what you see on television at grass roots level really isn’t what happens: all the lights and the stage and the thousands of the people doesn’t really happen on the grassroots and the independent level at the very bottom. So you really need to start low and learn how to wrestle and you have to work your way up.
How do you balance the benefits of knowing amateur and shoot wrestling and the drawbacks of developing instincts like avoiding being on your back that don’t help in pro wrestling?
We would have a very strong shoot wrestling submission background and I still teach that today. I’m still very big on having a basic ability to defend yourself in professional wrestling and that combined with chain wrestling will be the initial thing that we would teach. So for me, having come through the Hammerlock style, I still always try and portray professional wrestling as a fight. I do understand that point of view where people can be overly focused on our amateur credentials that are submission credentials and the like but at the same time, I don’t think it’s a bad thing having those credentials and having the ability to mix them into your repertoire and your matches. It sets them apart having that kind of old British/amateur/submission wrestling style.
How do you know and decide when a trainee is ready to have a match in public?
I haven’t been involved in that kind of thing for a while as at the moment I’m more involved in coaching with the elite style people over here. People like Jordan Devlin, people like that who I’ve worked with for a long time, Sean Guinness. I guess if I was in that position that you’re able to spot people’s movement in the ring, their footwork, the way they hit the ropes, the way they sell, their position in the ring and the connection with the crowd. It’s very hard working on all those things and they don’t have to be perfect, but you want to see progression. Those kinds of things, for some people that can take two months. And for some people that can take two years. For some people it can take 10 years. A good trainer will be able to see that say, okay, yeah, I’m happy to give this kid a go.
Have you had to be in a position where you had to tell a trainee “It’s not clicking, I’m not sure if this is for you.”
For a training school that has to make money and pay bills, I guess it would be very hard to do that and it’s pretty hard to turn to turn a person away who’s a paying customer for your business. At the same time, I do get where you’re coming from. You may have guys there who slow the class down or just, in your opinion, don’t have the skills that are ever required to make this onto shows. I have seen that happen in the past and some people, trainers or coaches, have said “Listen, I don’t think you’re ever going to make it as a wrestler. Would you be into trying to be a referee or to be a manager or trying to be an MC or something like that.” So sometimes if that happens you kind of try and keep them into business somehow, but without them actually being a professional wrestler
What’s the ideal student-teacher ratio for your training?
At the moment I don’t really work with beginners and the intermediate classes but in those situations I can work with ten or even up to 20. When it comes to the elite classes, people I think are going to have opportunities to get the WWE try-outs or wrestle in Japan or the USA or wherever, I generally have no more than eight. I have worked with just one student, but you’re better off with at least two: it’s very hard to coach and take part in the session the same time. So at least two and probably up to eight: as long as there’s even numbers it’s easier. As long as everybody’s got a partner and everybody’s at a fairly strong level.
Once you’ve had your first match and get to the point of working regularly, how would you advise trainees to transition over time to the point where they are wrestling so much that all their learning is “on the job”.
When you break into the ring and you have these matches, I think it’s very important that you keep developing yourself on the training ground as it were. So as well as training and having matches, you should be thinking about your character, thinking about your moves, having your matches taped, make sure you watch your matches back, ask for people’s opinions and just always trying to improve yourself to make yourself better. I always say to people, whether you’re in the first match or the last match, try and make the audience remember you by doing something different. That doesn’t mean stand out by doing every move under the sun and having 25 false finishes in the opening match, it just means doing your job, doing it right, but doing something a little bit different that makes the audience remember you when they’re leaving the show
What would be kind of examples of things that you’re able to teach when you’re doing elite classes with people who are already established names?
Making sure the footwork is on point, that your position in the ring is good, that your facials are good as well. I mean your face is your money-maker at the end of the day. How you connect with people. We obviously work on cardio. We work on promos.
We try and keep everything functional as well in the sense that, with no disrespect to other ways of coaching and there’s no right or no wrong, but when I see coaching in Japan, seeing guys doing 500 squats in a row, that for me isn’t functional for professional wrestling. So we always try and keep it functional.
I want to keep a fun element to it as well. I’m always trying to make sure people enjoy training with me: I push them to the limit but they don’t dread coming to training, they enjoy coming to train and they’re always getting something out of it.
The submissions as well os something that we always work on, incorporating some new submissions in there. And I think re-enforcement and building self-belief is a big thing: it’s a big job for a coach to make people believe in themselves and make people believe that they can be successful. And I think in this day and age with the UK on the doorstep, all that stuff is very attainable
