19/9/16. The day that I first stepped foot in a professional wrestling school.
I headed to the NGW school in Birtley straight from work on Monday night not knowing what to expect. If I had been aware of how many first timers would be attending this session I would have been nowhere near as nervous.
So after getting the times wrong for the session I ended up waiting in the car for an hour (better to be early than late I suppose.) When it finally hit 7.30 I headed into the gym and shook hands with one of the biggest names in British wrestling: Rampage Brown. After making introductions with everyone we began the warm up. Everyone was in such high spirits especially considering it was a Monday night! I then stepped into a ring for the first time in my life. Everybody performed the three rolls a few times to get their bodies ready for the drills, I'd previously never even attempted any of the rolls but as the night went on I became more confident.
We then split into two groups. Our group was led by another huge name in British wrestling, AJ Anderson. AJ has a straight to the point style of teaching and it works perfectly. They really do have the best set of trainers down at NGW. We started to practise giving and receiving snapmares in a vocal exercise in which one person would stand in the centre of the ring with the rest of the group surrounding them. The person in the centre had to be on guard listening for anyone shouting their name, whenever they heard someone shout their name they would deliver a snapmare to them.
My wrist still tingles slightly from hitting it off the matt during one of the attempts (my own fault.) We then proceeded to do the same exercise but with a variation of the arm drag. This required a roll onto the left shoulder. This is something I plan on practising before the next session because my natural reflex is to roll onto the right. It was about this time that HT Drake showed up. After seeing Drake at countless shows it was a pretty awesome feeling to share a ring with him. Locking up with one of British wrestling's true hidden gems in my very first session was quite surreal.
We finished up the session with a similar exercise but it was for locking up. This was a lot of fun, there's so much more skill involved than I first thought. The atmosphere at the school is very calm and everyone is supportive. I'd recommend it to anyone in the local area, or anybody that can get to Birtley every week!
After shaking hands with everyone again I went home full of a new found layer of respect for the business. This wasn't a one time fun thing to do, I'll be back next week and I'll have another post up then!
(Shout out to Jed Masters. Jed should be one of the first names on every bookers list in the Newcastle area.) Find him on Twitter @JMastersW.
@lewiskelly316
No comments:
Post a Comment