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After cruising around the province and my last adventure down to PPW in Lethbridge – it was pretty nice to get almost a month off from doing shows. It felt like a fast and furious 2 months of wrestling, doing a whopping 2 shows a month on top of wrestling practice 2-3x per week.
The time cost of everything was starting to wear me down a bit.
A rough estimate of a day for me at that time would be getting to work between 8-10am, work until ~7-8pm, go to wrestling practice from 8-10ish, then go to the gym from 10:30-midnight. I’d eat dinner after that, then go to bed around 2am. I’d do that about 2-3x per week, play basketball 1x per week (and go out for beers after until about 11-Midnight), then spend the weekend at the bars drinking and trying to find my groove as a single man.
Writing it all down like that, I’m not surprised I was burnt out and in a brain fog most days – but I was really a way to distract myself from my own personal life.
The week before my next match, I travelled out of town once again, this time to celebrate one of my best friends weddings. This was the second friend getting married, and while I was ecstatic for them, I was also slightly jealous that they had been able to settle down while I felt like I was starting fresh. In hindsight, I wasn’t ready for it, had a lot of growing up to do.
But speaking of growing…
I was able to show off a new found talent I had been practicing through wrestling – public speaking. I was the MC of the wedding and can honestly say that I had never felt so comfortable speaking in front of a crowd of strangers, and even telling a joke that bombed to 95% of the audience (but the groom laughed and that’s all that matters).
I guess going out in front of a crowd in tight spandex was really paying off.
I left the wedding with a temporary sense of confidence – it felt like a step in the right direction in my life.
It didn’t hurt that I had gotten a girls number that night too…
As I came back it was time to get ready for the match – this month it was going to be a triple threat match, it would be me going up against my trainer, The Ripper Champion Kato, and the Cheetahbear Jude Dawkins.
To the outside perspective, Jude Dawkins is a pretty intimidating looking guy. A former powerlifter, the dude was built like a tank, and covered head to toes in tattoos. With the sides of his head shaved, and the long hair on top, he looked like he could probably swallow you whole if he wanted to.
But surprisingly, Jude was quite friendly. Backstage he was always nice, approachable and willing to help out. With a fun character for the crowd to get behind and chant “WHO” as he pounded his chest, it was going to be fun to get in the ring with him.
It was nice that the match was a triple threat however – so i’d have the familiarity of Kato there to help along putting the match together. During practice we would mimic different spots he had recently watched. I don’t think we ended up using any of them, but it helped the in-ring timing and just how comfortable I was in these situations.
The match itself was fairly fun – basically starting like Kato was trying to win me over as a partner to take out his nemesis at the time, Jude, but me saying no everytime.
Some highlights from the match include doing a well-timed RKO while Jude gave Kato a wheelbarrow facebuster, which I was stoked about because I love the RKO move. A less fun move was when Kato powerbombed his manager Psycho Sawyer onto me, which hurt like hell. Sawyer wasn’t that big, but it’s still a human being dropped on your sternum.
While I may have walked away without the Ripper Title as the loser of the match, it was another new experience for me along my wrestling journey.
The Ripper Title was an interesting one – as it always had to be defended in a stipulation match (Arguably the best being a Moustache Twirling Match, can’t make this up…) – it would eventually become a version of the 24/7 title for MPW. When it comes to online content, I think the stuff guys like Blake Kannon, TY Jackson, and Rick Jules were doing was a bit ahead of its time. I remember one where (I believe) Blake stole TY’s car with the title in it, and technically won it. It was dumb, but dumb was fun, which wrestling needs more of these days.
I wish I could find those videos…
Despite everything seemingly going right for me at the time, something still felt off…
And it got me really questioning, did I really want to keep doing this?
Rich, Online Fitness Coach & Edmonton Personal Trainer
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