WARNING - Long bit of text coming up with me rambling a lot.
So, call me crazy but I'm considering taking up professional wrestling training in the next few months or sometime early in the new year. Now there's two top wrestling schools relatively close to me, but there is a two hour minimum drive to either of them.
Of course, this is all a nonentity if I'm not in shape to compete or keep up. Most of you should know I've just had surgery because I bitch and complain about it all the time. So, I've had to interrupt the workout schedule I was already on to make way for recovery. I'm easing myself back to it though and managed to get through 15 minutes power walking on the treadmill today to get some confidence about exercise back. I was doing 30 minute runs with 15 minutes boxing and then weights and then 30 minutes yoga before the surgery but I feel like it'll be slow building to get back to that.
To be honest, I've always wanted to be a professional wrestler and I've been sitting here today asking myself why I couldn't do it right at this very moment. The main issues I came up with were my physical fitness (which is something I'm working on anyway), distance to the schools and my confidence (I suffer from pretty intense anxiety attacks from talking to checkout chicks in the shops, so going to a gym by myself with twenty people all throwing each other around isn't my idea of a fun time). But, then I sat down and thought to myself that I'm already working my physical fitness to the point that it should be at, I have my own car and will have a steady job to pay for fuel and lessons and fuck my confidence. If I don't try to do shit I want to do now then I'm never going to do it and I'll think that I'm a right tit a few years from now.
I mean, I have size on my side as far as pro wrestling goes, I'm 6'5 and pretty naturally broad in the shoulders, it's just a matter of working to get to the point where that size isn't wasted because it's being used by someone with the upper body strength of a malnourished chipmunk.
So, back to the wrestling schools, there are two relatively close to me. The one I'd really love to get into would be the Pro Wrestling Zero-One dojo they have here but that's in Adelaide and is much easier to enter with training already under your belt. So I'm left with the choice of training with the AWF and PWA once my goals are achieved in all the other aspects.
The AWF is run by TNT who is a bit of a world traveller and has been to Japan and Mexico both a ton of times as well as America, England and the rest of Europe. They're considered the top promotion in Australia and always bring in guys from America like Colt Cabana, Chris Masters, Al Snow, Tajiri, Steve Corino, Raven, Sonjay Dutt and a bunch of other guys. They also have a pretty intense training program that runs once a week for $400 broken up into segments that you have to master before you can start the next program. AWF has got links to Zero-One in Japan but that's the same for about every Australian promotion since Zero-One is the only promotion outside Australia who's taken an interest in us.
The PWA is run by Ryan and Madison Eagles who are both fairly well known on the indys in America. Ryan Eagles has spent time with CZW, ROH and Chikara and a bunch of other east coast promotions while Madison Eagles still actively works for SHIMMER. PWA has pretty close links to shows in America and Pro Wrestling Zero-One and also the NWA over here. Their training program is a lot more relaxed and is just like $10 a session and they run three sessions a week. I think in the PWA training they put everyone together and they just work with you on whatever it is you need, so it's a lot less focused.
Now, I shouldn't even be putting the cart before the horse and thinking about the schools, but hey, who wouldn't?
The point is that I have some sets of goals I need to achieve before I really consider this but I needed to lay it all out to decide whether it's something I'd like to try and looking back and reading it really is something I want to give a go but I have a long way to go before I even come close to going to these training centres.
So, yeah, I just wanted to write it all out and thought it might make for an interesting post for someone to read.
Oh! If anyone has had experience going through training please say so and give me a rough idea where I need to be physically, pleeeease? I have a very blurry idea of the sorts of things I need to be able to do to start with but I don't really have much to go on other than "YOU'RE GONNA PUKE THE FIRST TIME YOU TRY IT RAWRRRRRRR"