Tales From The Undercard: Prowrestling Proving Grounds

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With the experience of the Knoxville Tavern show and my prowrestling debut battle royal in the back burner it was now time to start focusing on my first real match of my career. As it would turn out, I wouldn’t have to wait long to get to that point.

It was decided that I would get into the ring as a singles match against another trainee who started at the same mini-camp as me, Blake Kannon. Blake was much younger than me, and while he wasn’t the most athletic guy, he was certainly passionate about wrestling (which is probably why he’s still going to this day as well) and was really picking up the movements in the ring.

As we found out this was going to be the probable match, we had ample time to prepare and put together our matches at the training school. Each practice we would go through the match, and try to nail down exactly how it would go, step-by-step.

I’m sure some of the old vets would have thrown up at this fact, but in my opinion, it helped both of us feel more comfortable and confident heading into the ring for the first time. As I would find out in the near future though, this wasn’t always the goal for every wrestler…

It was at this point in training where I was introduced to many of the other trainers at the school, Kato, Irishman, and Justin Hammer (now known as wrath) all of which had a different approach to how they ran classes.

Typically, Massive would start things off getting us to do some rolls, bumps, and basic movements to nail them down. After that we would break off into our own matches, or go over some of the fundamentals as people would use the ring to go through their spots. As class would go on and Massive would leave, Kato (a fellow wrestler in MPW) would take over the class.

I’ll go more in-depth with stories from Kato training sessions in future blogs, as they were some of the most fun times I had in training.

As the show day came closer and closer, and Blake and I had more and more of the match figured out, one thing that wasn’t decided – was who was going to win.

I bug a lot of people who ask me “how do you know who’s going to win”, by simply stating that the better person wins. Simple as that. However, this time around the winner was going to be decided by who sold more tickets. As this was the basis of our pay, most guys would advertise the crap out of themselves to try to get all their friends, family, and co-workers to come attend. The more people bought from you, the more you got paid out.

However, I was in a point transition in my life at the time.

I was stressed out mentally and emotionally.

At work, I had a major exodus of trainers who I had felt were foundational to our success, leaving us to have to pick up the pieces of what was already a very fragile business at the time.

To make matters much, much worse, I had gone through a pretty devastating breakup with the girl I had been dating for the past 5 years, and lived with at the time.

I’ll spare the details, but needless to say, I wasn’t in a good place. I would retrospectively say I wasn’t in a good mental space to start with, but this really could have sent me spiraling into a dark place.

While everything else felt like it was falling apart around me, I still had wrestling as the one thing I could really look forward to. Because of that fact, I didn’t let a lot of people know that I had even started wrestling.

Apart of me was self-conscious, as I had tried to keep my love for wrestling in the dark since I was a kid, in fear of being made fun of, but a big part of my decision not to tell people was the fact I was doing this for me, and it was a place I could escape from the stress of the world.

So, needless to say, I wasn’t in line to exactly sell many tickets.

However, the stars aligned prior to my first match. In a span of about 3 weeks at 3 different events I met Bret Hart, Chris Jericho, and Mick Foley. While I was too nervous to ask for advice from Bret or Mick, I was able to briefly ask Jericho if he had any advice, and he simply said “just get in there and do it man”.

Easy enough, hey?

But finally, the day came. May 5^th, 2018 at the Alberta Ave Community Centre, I made my official debut in a prowrestling singles match. This is the match I consider to be my first.

I’ll be completely honest though – I had never been to a local independent wrestling show (outside of a one off show that came to Whitehorse at one point years prior) – so I had no idea what to expect.

What I did expect, was to be a nervous wreck, and boy did that become a reality.

I don’t remember most of the day leading up to the event, or doing the ring, or even interacting with many of the other guys. I do remember once again sitting in my truck wondering, what the fuck was I doing here…

But I pushed aside that feeling, and focused on remembering that it wasn’t me going out to the ring, it was Rich King. By separating the two parts I found my nerves started to drop… until I was told we were up in 5 minutes.

Fortunately for me, one of the guys on the show named Meniac pulled Blake and I to the side, and gave a great speech worthy of Any Given Sunday. Do I remember exactly what he said? No. Do I remember it putting me at ease and feeling more excited than nervous? Damn right, and I can’t retroactively thank him enough for that. He truly got me out those curtains.

Nothing can really prepare you for standing in front of the curtains for your first match. It’s a weird sensation of intense excitement mixed with horrifying anxiety. When you can hear the people past the curtain, and the announcers starting to amp people up, the amount of adrenaline that courses through your veins so much it feels like your heart is going to become a chest burster.

We had an interesting set up for our match, as it was the first (and only) ever Proving Grounds match at MPW – a concept basically like a dark match but with the rookies. The idea was to have these showcase matches and have guys be introduced before being promoted up to the main roster. Unfortunately, the idea started and ended with our match, but I thought it was a cool concept that could have had some legs to it… oh well.

With this set up, we didn’t have the fancy production the rest of the show did, which basically just meant we wrestled with all the main lights on.

I gotta admit, it’s quite awkward to walk out for your first match and be able to see every single face in the audience, each thinking to themselves, in an Irish accent, “Who the fuck is dis guy?”.

I won’t go too far into the details of the match as you can see it below: