Southern Pro Wrestling

On July 22nd 2017 I was lucky enough to make my debut at SPW in Invercargill, NZ, against Bea Priestley. 

Flying down to Queenstown I was a bundle of nerves. Some wild weather had hit NZ the previous night, which meant flights were cancelled to nearly everywhere in the South Island, and main highways were closed due to flooding and snow. I wasn’t sure I’d even make it to the show.

Luckily my flight touched down only 15 minutes late and my BF and I rode with Dahlia Black and TK Cooper of the SPPC for the 2 hour ride from Queenstown to Invercargill. It was awesome to see them again, they’ve done so well in the UK and they have so much knowledge to impart (fun fact: TK & Dahlia picked me up for my first ever wrestling training).

We arrived at Invercargill Working Men’s Club around 1pm on Saturday, Amber and her BF Jake were already there(ended up staying in their motel that night, somehow I never end up in the bed I’ve paid for). A very important part of etiquette in wrestling is shaking everyone’s hand and introducing yourself when you arrive, so after doing my rounds I chatted with Bea about ideas for our match until we had our pre show meeting to run through the card and proceedings for the nights show.

Nerves kicked in again as I got into my wrestling gear and the crowd poured into the venue, I was really worried about wrestling in front of so many people – there were over 600! – and of wrestling Bea who is super popular in the UK, but we did it and it was my best match to date!

Another cool part of the show was that it was opened by Will Ospreay and Shane Sinclair, they did a fantastic job – Will is one of the most charismatic people I’ve ever met and he was kind enough to post about the show on his Social Media which you can read here.

The following day was SPW’s fan access, where fans could meet wrestlers in person and chat, get signatures etc. I was surprised at the amount of people who actually wanted to take photos with me and sign things for them as that had never really happened before.

At midday Shane and I left to meet Jordan from Invercargill Vegan Society for an interview on being a vegan wrestler, we headed down to Burger Fuel who just so happened to be sponsors of both SPW and INVSOC, and while we were there a fan who had watched the show the previous night recognised us. It’s only the second time I’ve been recognised in public so the novelty has not worn off for me yet.

If you want to try a vegan burger I highly recommend Burger Fuel’s V-Dub Vege without aioli and cheese.

It was a fantastic weekend, and I’m extremely grateful to both Marc and Troy for allowing me the opportunity to work for SPW and I can’t wait to come back again!

- Ash.