As anyone who remembers Diamond Dallas Page’s WWE character will know, life looks very different when change your perspective. There’s certainly an argument that Doug Williams was the victim of unfortunate timing with the bulk of his career falling between British wrestling’s post-World of Sport slump and its more recent revival. But viewed as a positive, there’s a credible argument that he was one of the key figures in not just keeping the business alive but laying the ground work for its recovery.
Williams came into wrestling from a judo background, a sport he’s previously told FSM was an ideal experience: not only does it prepare the body for taking back bumps and give a performer experience at getting into credible submission holds, but it avoids the problem that amateur wrestlers face in overcoming the instinct to avoid being on your back at all times.
He began his wrestling training at the Hammerlock school in Kent, one of the first training facilities that was open to the public rather than a ‘closed shop’ designed to protect the business. Despite this opportunity it was a far cry from today’s facilities. “It was more getting in the ring and practicing wrestling around with people and it wasn’t structured such that we would repeat specific moves or practice running the ropes. Training nowadays is very much more regimented: you learn how to bump, and then you learn basic moves and then [they] try and teach you putting matches together and creating a story.”
After debuting in 1993 and wrestling around the Hammerlock ‘territory’, Williams first attracted wider attention two years later when he arguably stole the show with three matches as part of a tournament at a Walthamstow event. Headlined by Sabu, it was the first wrestling show directly aimed at traveling hardcore fans and likely the first of its era with an “import” flown in for a single match rather than a lengthy tour.
Despite its legacy in the hardcore community – think the Sex Pistols at Free Trade Hall – the show only attracted around 150 fans and Williams is quick to point out it wasn’t really significant to his own career. “I was very, very early on: there were no contacts that came out of that, no opportunities that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.”
Instead Williams continued to gain experience working as part of a four-man Hammerlock crew on the holiday camp circuit before making the decision to break away from the promotion, which didn’t approve of wrestlers working elsewhere. “I was getting offers for town [non-camp] shows for other promotions and had to make a choice. I’d been in Hammerlock for three or four years and it was time to start working with wrestlers that people are more familiar with and get out of my comfort zone.”
While this meant sharing a dressing room with more experienced wrestlers from the television era, Williams says he found most of his new peers supportive. “They were very, very helpful to me, particularly Robbie Brookside and Tony St Clair. I had my [judo] background anyway and people had obviously seen me on the camps and then they’d go off and tell others about me. Obviously you’re a little on tenterhooks at first, but most people were friendly.
“The best piece of advice I got was slowing down and just making sure that you tell the story. At the time I would probably say I didn’t do that, but looking back I can see how that was the best thing I was ever told. One thing I did pick up on when told it, probably because of my judo, was the importance of staying flexible and stretching so that you minimize your injuries.”
Williams’ Hammerlock run had been highlighted by moonsaults and even a “frying pan ladder match”, but now working with more experienced colleagues he started to find himself in the ring. “It was probably about five years into me being a wrestler that I was comfortable with getting into the ring and doing what I needed to do. But even after that you try different movesets, different styles and try to find one that fits. There was definitely a lightbulb moment a couple of years after that where I knew exactly what style I shouldn’t be doing and what’s working for me and how I should expand on that.”
As the new millennium arrived, Williams was not just established in the ring, but was at the centre of several attempts to re-establish British wrestling for a new generation as something other than a WWF knock-off. This included joining the likes of Jodie Fleisch and Jonny Storm in the Frontier Wrestling Alliance, which used several of the promotional approaches familiar today such as using import stars from the US independent scene rather than WWF names, and charging controversially high prices for ringside seats to major shows.
Williams was also a key player on 2002’s Revival, a show promoted by Talk Radio (now talkSPORT) host Tommy Boyd, who had turned his Saturday evening broadcast into a wrestling-themed call-in after discovering the sport’s cult appeal. Attracting a reported 1,800 to the Crystal Palace Sports Arena, the show was broadcast live through audio commentary on Talk Radio and then shown later on satellite channel Bravo. Williams was again on tournament duty, wrestling Flash Barker, Eddie Guerrero and Fleisch.
In this era Williams also began expanding his international horizons, taking part in the 2001 edition of the All Pro Wrestling King of the Indies tournament in California. The event featured a host of wrestlers who were little known at the time but would become national names, including Samoa Joe, Frankie Kazarian, Brian Danielson, Brian Kendrick, Christopher Daniels, AJ Styles and Low Ki.
The tournament was also the direct inspiration for the creation of Ring of Honor as the home of a new generation of independent talent. Williams, Fleisch and Storm were all invited to a tournament to crown the first ROH champion, with Williams making it to the final match, a four-way affair with Daniels, Kendrick and Low Ki. It led to several years of return visits, including Williams being the second holder of the promotion’s ‘Pure’ title, conducted in matches with no closed fists to the face and limited rope breaks.
Over the years, Williams would compete across North America, Europe and Japan. “Some of the stranger places I wrestled were Moscow and Newfoundland in Canada, which was somewhat isolated. I’ve never done anything in the southern hemisphere: it came close a couple of times but has always fallen through, which is a shame. A lot of it was in smaller European countries like Switzerland or Belgium where they were just doing a rough approximation of American wrestling because they don’t have their own style or their own wrestling culture.”
In 2003 Williams had his first tour for NOAH in Japan, something which soon became a semi-regular gig. He found the schedule the most surprising part of the new experience. “You never do singles matches on the house shows: there’s one or two starting the show with young boys, but everyone else does tag matches unless it’s the big show or for television. So you end up doing a one-month tour and do 25 shows but only do a singles match once or twice.”
“Stylistically it was slightly different: you had to learn not to sell so much else you’ll look weak. You get treated well too: they pick you up, take care of you, you take the tour bus. That was a pleasant, pleasant experience.”
Williams also found his UK experience made it easier to adjust to the differing tolls of the Japanese tour schedule where doing tag matches had to be weighed up against working almost every night. “The bad effects on my body were not significant: when you’re in England working four or five nights a week doing singles matches, although the style is not so heavy, the toll you’re taking is probably greater because you’re working in less safe rings and traveling a lot more. I know the Americans would be a lot more vocal about their aches and pains [in NOAH].
“The only thing was I got tired when I got home. Part of that is jetlag, but it’s also having been on the go constantly for three weeks and then stopping. It’s like riding a bike: when you stop and get off you feel tired, even though you could have kept riding. Six or seven years there might have had a cumulative effect, but I can point to specific instances elsewhere that caused the breakdown in my body as opposed to it being working that style over that long period in Japan.”
The foreign travel also meant Williams could begin making the move into wrestling full-time. His day job was as a quantity surveyor, an expert in assessing the costs of materials on major construction projects. “When I started in Japan, I went freelance and opened up my own limited company. I’d work in Japan over the winter months, come back in the summer and pick up whatever opportunities I have in my job and then do independent [shows] as well. I could have been full-time wrestling in Japan and been OK financially, but I wanted to have something as a safety net.”
The switch to wrestling as his sole source of income came in 2008 when, after several appearances for TNA, he became a full-time roster member based in the US. Teaming with FSM’s own Nick Aldis (then dubbed Brutus Magnus) and Rob Terry, both in the early years of their careers, it marked the first time he felt like a veteran.
“My role was to be the working guy in the tag team to make sure the other guys did the right thing to help the team work properly. That was probably the first time I was really giving advice. I wasn’t talking about specific moves but more about fire, or how they sell, or when they come back, listening to the crowd, how to make them react a certain way or get your character over.
Williams picked up several championships during his TNA run, though it was often the stories behind the scenes that were more intriguing. He describes his TV title win over AJ Styles at Final Resolution 2010 as the match he’d most like to relive. “That was a great experience. It was a fantastic match with one of my best mates at the time and it worked out perfectly. It was a lot of fun.”
The same year saw Williams’ X Division title reign come to an unplanned end through the strangest of circumstances. Having returned to the UK between TNA dates, he was unable to fly out to Orlando for a pay-per-view title defence after ash from the eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland grounded flights across Europe.
Despite his NOAH legacy, Williams even held the IWGP tag titles for three months, albeit with some controversy. Team 3D (the former Dudley Boys) were in what New Japan had expected to be a year-long reign bookended by Wrestle Kingdom appearances. When Williams and Aldis won the titles at a TNA taping, New Japan initially put out a statement saying it did not recognise the change, a position it reversed a couple of weeks later.
“We had assumed that they’d already told New Japan they were doing that, so we were quite shocked when we found out that they hadn’t. I think it caused more heat for the Dudleys than it did us. We didn’t really hear much about it other than what you’d read online. We figured New Japan would just ignore it really, but I’ve spoken to guys in the New Japan office who said it was not really significant to them as long as the Dudleys were champs when they had their next booking.”
Perhaps the highlight of Williams’ TNA stint came in a match with Ric Flair at Wembley Arena in 2011, an experience that was as much intriguing as it was exciting. “I’m always interested in what guys are like in the ring. Sometimes people who are perceived as great wrestlers are not the greatest workers in the world or they have a tendency to be led to great matches. That was not the case with Ric Flair: he’s a great wrestler, a great worker, so it was really interesting to me to see how he structured matches and put them together and what he did in and out of the ring.”
“To me it’s always been something that’s a collaborative experience from the word go. I’m not necessarily of the mindset that if you’re a heel, you should lead the match or if you’re the veteran, you should lead the match.
Williams cites Frankie Kazarian and James Mason as his most underrated opponents, noting also a lack of recognition for “guys who are good, solid workhorses. They’ll never let you down. But for some reason people always attribute a lot of it to the other person. I can understand from a fan’s point of view that they watch a match want to be entertained and they’re not looking at the mechanics of how the match is working. So I understand why some people don’t get the recognition they deserve.”
He had a chance to explore those mechanics after being assigned to Ohio Valley Wrestling to help prepare TNA contracted wrestlers for main roster action. “Kentucky was… less glamorous than Florida. It taught me quite a lot about how to put together shows and write television and what have you.
As for the training: “I used to go and see Nick Dinsmore’s classes and I appreciated the patience he had more than anything! From a personal point of view, your training is limited: there’s a lot you can’t do in training that you can [only] do on shows.”
In 2014 Williams departed OVW and returned home to find a far healthier UK scene. “Everything had changed from the structure of how people are promoting, to the people promoting shows, to the audiences. There were a lot more guys who were more rounded: they weren’t just technically proficient but they had good gimmicks and had their characters down.”
Like any veteran, not every change was to his taste. “It’s more theatrical and spectacle orientated as opposed to telling stories and getting real emotions out. That’s changed in the last five years. I’ve got my preference, but who am I to say what the fans do or don’t like, you know, that’s up to them.”
While he remained exceptionally busy, working for at least 34 promotions in 2014 alone, Williams was beginning to feel the strain. “When I started thinking about retirement, it was probably 2015, 2016. I was really, really hurting and in a pretty bad way to be honest with you. I was really seriously thinking ‘Oh, I’m gonna have to quit soon. I just can’t do it at the level I used to do.’ For whatever reason and by whatever means, I managed to rehab myself. Some of the injuries levelled out or I managed to alleviate some of the issues.
“And then through 2016 I was thinking more about the fact that I’ve done what want to. I’m not going to progress in my career and I’ve got no real ambitions anymore. I’m older now, I’m not really pushing for anything. I’m just doing the shows because they’re coming to me.”
Ironically, knowing the end was approaching led to what Williams calls his happiest time in wrestling. “The last year or two there was no pressure on my career. I wasn’t having to go out to do this and that, or impress this person, or try to keep my job or further my career. I’m out there having fun wrestling guys that are generally very good in front of good crowds.”
Earlier this year Williams began winding down his career with a storyline that he would retire once he lost the PROGRESS Atlas championship, a loss that came to Trent Seven before nearly 5,000 at Wembley Arena. Other than a few overseas commitments, that was indeed it for a 25-year career.
The circumstances of his retirement meant Williams is stepping somewhat into the unknown with little opportunity to get advice from his former peers about making the adjustment. “I’ve not really talked to even guys I was close with because for most of them retirement was forced upon them when they got injured or something happened and they had to quit. I think for someone who actually chose to do it such as myself, I’ll probably have an easier time moving on with my life.
“Obviously I’m going to miss performing in front of people who appreciate what I do, but it’ll be nice to relax and not have to hurt myself on a nightly basis. I’ll miss just being around it, the weird variety and cast of characters that existed in wrestling, which is an experience you wouldn’t get anywhere else in life really.”
