Keeping Up With The Indies is an on-going series that explores the reality, challenges and triumphs of independent wrestling through in-depth interviews.
As his pet budgie chirped away in the background, Ace Matthews shed some light on his life as a British independent wrestler.
“It’s very challenging, but very rewarding. I wouldn’t want to not do it.” Ace Matthews told me, “It’s brilliant for me, but you have to be a special type of crazy to do it.”
Ace, based in England’s port-city of Hull, wrestles across the independent wrestling scene in the north. It’s a life of fun, but also one of sacrifice. “As much as I enjoy it, it means weekends and school holidays I’m gone for the entire time. I’ve missed some weddings and birthdays, that sort of thing.”
He added: “It’s very, very tiring, but equally if that’s what you want to do, it’s worth it.”
Matthews says he is fortunate, as being a teacher allows him time on the weekends and school-holidays to train and to wrestle. “Luckily, teaching does marry up alongside wrestlers because you have the time in the holidays. But, it can be a lot, especially with the workload you have as a teacher.”
Ace Matthews is a name growing in notoriety in the British scene, thanks to holding Tidal Championship Wrestling’s Heavyweight Championship for much of 2023.
“It’s nice that they’re putting the trust in me to be top of the bill and be the main story. It’s been really good for me because I think it’s brought more attention to who I am as a wrestler and I get to work with some really good wrestlers and tell some fun stories.”
However, he wants to progress and make pro-wrestling more of a full-time job: “I’m in the middle level where I’m not new, but I’m not a top guy. So, for me at the moment it’s more about continuing to build my name and get to a lot more places to try and take that next step in terms of career progression.”
British Wrestling is far from having a territory system, but Ace points out a potent north-south divide. “There’s a weird sort of north/south divide where there’s a different set of wrestlers, but there’s a bit of crossover with guys like Robbie X and Leon Slater.”
Much like class, the north-south divide is something that dominates English culture and politics. Matthews wants to bridge the wrestling gap and “expand” into southern-based promotions, though.
One such promotion is PROGRESS Wrestling, one of the biggest names in BritWres. Ace is keen to wrestle under the PROGRESS banner: “For me, somewhere like PROGRESS is the next big step. 1PW would’ve been that if it hadn’t imploded.”
I spoke to Ace during the school half-term break, a week away from the classroom for teachers across the country. It’s at these times that Ace Matthews can be seen on holiday camp shows.
These tours of Butlins or Haven holiday camps are wrestling for crowds that are there for entertainment, many who perhaps aren’t even wrestling fans, rather than putting on a five star classic. For crowds that are full of families and children rather than a mass of wrestling fans.
It’s a known part of the British wrestling fabric in which many world renowned wrestlers gained incomparable experience, but not something that is often talked about or explored.
“Doing runs of camp shows are ridiculously fun, in that you’re wrestling every single day and you’re spending all day and all night with your mates and the wrestlers you’re travelling with.” Ace told us, a huge lover of the camp-show style. “It’s a massive part of learning and improving as a wrestler. Sometimes you’ll have two or three shows in a day and you might be wrestling the same person, so you can do something in the first show and improve on it.”
“It’s not for wrestling fans, it’s some entertainment for the people there. So, it’s about hooking people in with the character and the stories and really playing on the crowd interaction. The actual style is very different, it’s so much more fun because you can do the smallest things and get a much bigger reaction.”
Matthews points out the differences between camp wrestling and more conventional shows, boiling it down to the camp-style relying more on characters and stories than your everyday wrestling show. “It’s about working on the fly, listening to the crowd and reacting to what they do.”
Ace was trained at New Generation Wrestling, in Hull, by the well-known Nathan Cruz, who has wrestled far and wide in the BritWres scene.
He described Nathan as having an “incredible wrestling mind” while telling the story of how Cruz helped him find his character. “I was working babyface to start off with, but because I have a relatively posh-voice in promos I came across so insincere.”
Matthews added that Nathan Cruz pointed him towards the character he still portrays today by doing the same promos, but presenting it as an ‘annoying’ heel.
The British wrestling environment, like wrestling as a whole, is an ever-changing one. The flyers and posters of old have been replaced by tweets and social media posts.
Twitter (or X – thanks for that, Elon) has a vibrant and lively wrestling community; sharing matches, opinions and stories, creating discourse and causing a good few arguments.
Ace uses Twitter to his advantage: “Everything there is in character, it’s not real and people know it’s not real. It’s a platform where you can engage with other wrestlers, with promotions and with fans.”
On how useful it actually is for independent wrestlers, he said: “I think it’s very important in promoting yourself, but it’s not the be-all-and-end-all. Turning up at shows and developing relationships with people in person is the most important thing, but it helps to have that social media presence.”
As his budgie continued to chirp away, I asked Ace to sum-up what independent wrestling was to him: “It’s the most unique and challenging, yet rewarding, experience you can go into.”
Unique, challenging, and rewarding.
You can follow Ace Matthews on Twitter @LetsBeAce.
Wrestle Inn 