James Mason is a 22-year veteran of British wrestling, widely respected for his work ethic and experience. That’s not bad going given he’s only 36.
Mason — born James Atkins and renamed after the movie actor — was once billed as Britain’s youngest wrestler, starting out in 1993 when he was just 14. He was an avid fan as a child, attending several shows a week with his father, and got into the business by helping out with odd jobs before a show and occasionally messing about in the ring where eventually other wrestlers taught him a few of the basics. But there was no formal training and he learned on the job, an approach he tells FSM made him the wrestler he is today.
“When I started there weren’t any training schools at all but there was enough work to do five, six shows a week, so that was your training. I don’t believe you learn to work and be a good wrestler by a training school. You can learn all the moves but it’s not about the moves to me, it’s all about how you do in the ring, how you entertain and how you perform, so the only way to really learn is actually being in there, working five, six nights a week, wrestling great wrestlers who teach you on the job.
“If I had to get in the job now and go to training schools I would be a completely different type of wrestler. I see lads now and they’ve got the ability – the lads now, ability wise, are better than what the lads were 20, 30, 40 years ago – but there isn’t that rapport with the crowd.”
While some of his early matches were against larger opponents, including the frightening experience of taking an elbow from Giant Haystacks while only 15, Mason soon began working with some of the premier lighter wrestlers from the TV era.
“In my first week I was in with people like Danny Collins, I was thrown in at the deep end. I was there purely to get thrown about, to learn how to sell, to learn the job but not have any prominent role.
“My first year I seemed to wrestle Steve Grey more than anyone else and it was what a learning curve that was to wrestle someone like him. I credit him for everything that I do now. He was the ultimate. Everyone talks bout Johnny Saint and Johnny Kidd, and they’re fantastic, I can’t take a thing away from them. But Grey was just as smooth but with this little edge: he snarls, he’s got a little niggle with what he does, and to me he makes it look real. Every match I’ve ever seen Steve Grey in, he was real.”
Early opponents Grey, Collins and Mal Sanders had all started as teenagers themselves — and Collins has previously spoken to FSM of his brutal introduction to the business — but Mason says he was well treated as a youngster in both the ring and the locker room.
“Being 14 I just kept quiet, I said nothing to anyone and after a year, two years these people started giving me a bit of time, they’d sort of welcome me in. I think I was very lucky as well that I wasn’t bullied, I wasn’t picked on — you hear stories about what happened, but nothing happened to me, I was treated OK. Danny knew how what it was like to be the young boy on the show, so he looked out for me and thought he could take me under his wing a bit.”
That’s not to say Mason didn’t have his hairy moments. While working for Orig Williams and wrestling on S4C’s Reslo as “Jesse James”, he had a memorable night on a tour of Ireland when he woke up with a major hangover and a shaven eyebrow.
“We did a TV show for the Reslo on the Saturday and on the tape you can see that there’s half an eyebrow and then I had to go back to school on the Monday, so it was a bit of a weird weekend! At the time I wasn’t very happy but I look back now and find it very funny. I was completely drunk that night, I was out drinking with Tony St Clair, Johnny South, Drew McDonald, big well-established wrestlers who can drink and drink and drink. I was a 15-year old kid that had a few pints when I shouldn’t even be drinking, so I suppose that was a little lesson I learned that night.”
While it’s a popular prank with inebriated wrestlers, Mason explains there’s a strange and subtle etiquette with eyebrow shaving. ” Sometimes you see things like this happen, little jokes, and I think the person who’s doing that wind-up is not in a position to do it. I would certainly never shave anyone’s eyebrow but at the time I was a kid, I was drunk and I was out with lads that were well-established. I’m not saying they had the right to shave my eyebrow, but I found it a bit of an honour really. I see things happen now and they’re not really done in the classy way that there was years ago. I don’t know if that makes any sense, I don’t know if there’s really a classy way to shave someone’s eyebrow! But I think certain people can [play pranks] in a way that’s accepted and other people do it in a way that shouldn’t really be done.”
Intoxication aside, it only took a couple of years before Mason started to come into his own in the ring. “It was about when I was 16 there was a moment I realised I could maybe do the job a bit: I understood the job, I understood what gets the reaction. I was on a prominent place on the show, I wasn’t just in the second match just to do a straight 20 minute wrestling bout, I was in matches that had a bit of meaning and a bit of presence to them. I was starting to move up the bill a bit and all of a sudden I was the person that my name was on the poster, I was doing the angles at the shows, I was doing the gees, I was winning the rumbles.”
That’s not to say Mason had been unhappy in his initial position on the show. Indeed, several promoters who speak highly of Mason today point to his understanding of how a match fits into a night’s entertainment and that going all out to steal the show isn’t always appropriate. “I went to so many shows with my dad, three or four shows a week, and I remember the whole show being a package. I remember how the shows were planned out. I liked how the whole show went: I don’t remember leaving thinking ‘Well, that match wasn’t good, that one was better, wow, that match was good.’ I just liked the whole thing of it and I believe every match has a place in the show. I know if you’re in this particular match then you’re there for that particular thing. Because I was a punter for such a long time, I can appreciate an actual show as opposed to just one match.”
Speaking in Simon Garfield’s 1996 book The Wrestling, Mason recalled having wrestled in front of just eight people at a caravan park. Thankfully that remains a record low in his career, but he remembers such events being a particular challenge.
“It happened regularly that we’d do holiday camps in the afternoon and there may be 10, maybe 20 people there.. Even those matches were still a learning curve because I believe that if there’s eight people or 8,000 people they’re still expecting to see the show so they deserve to see whatever you can give them.
“They can actually be harder than doing matches in front of 500 people. In your head, when you see 500 people, you know what side of the crowd are going to be louder, you know what you can do, you know as a rule nine out of ten things you normally do are going to work. A [tiny crowd] is a blank canvas and you let the crowd dictate where you want to go. Sometimes they sit there quietly and they’re more embarrassed than you are. Sometimes one person there will be having a great time and you can just work off one person and everyone else will react because of that one person. It’s just pot luck and you hope for the best really.”
While today’s crowds are usually considerably larger, the holiday camp circuit remains a key part of Mason’s schedule. “For me every holiday camp can be different. We do the Butlins which are a lot more of a big show with pyrotechnics and they make a real big production of it, and then you have the Haven camps which are a bit smaller. You can have some that have just a hundred people in. No two shows are the same. You might have the same type of match and be on with the same person, but how that show goes can be different from time to time.”
And while a tiny crowd can make for an awkward performance, Mason doesn’t believe that bigger is always better. “I still like doing little community centres in front of 100 people. Some of the shows I do for Welsh Wrestling, the crowds are so grateful that you’ve gone to their town to wrestle: they don’t see things like this and they really appreciate what you do. It’s a lovely feeling to do those sort of shows. You can have the big thousand-seater halls, they’re great, but there’s something nice and intimate about a 100, 200-seater venue where these people are really grateful you’re there.”
The downside of such shows is the lack of mainstream recognition. “There is a wrestler called ‘Mean’ Tommy Dean, who I wrestle with very often from Wales. A superb villain, looks like a villain and works purely to his role. On with the right person, I believe he is one of the best villains in the country and he doesn’t get the recognition he deserves.”
At the other end of the spectrum, arguably Mason’s highest-profile matches of his career on an international basis — appearing as part of the TNA America’s Cup tournament in 2004 — was not a particular milestone to him at the time.
“The weird thing about the TNA trip was that we didn’t realise TNA was a big thing: it was just a company we got asked to work for. We didn’t get asked until the Saturday and we left on the Monday, so it was a real rush job
“We weren’t prepared for anything and then when we got there, we were on with Mexicans that we hadn’t really wrestled before, but I think they just wanted us to be British. I don’t they wanted the typical Mexican-style match, they wanted a bit of a clash of styles and seeing if it worked, and looking back at the matches I think it did work a bit.
“I think it was only ever a one-off trip ,which we knew and were happy with, and we got treated well there. It was our first real taste of getting treated right: we got picked up nicely, we got treated well with money, we got allowances, so I think for us it was a nice thing. But myself and Frankie [Sloan], we sort of ruined it really because we treated it as a working holiday. We went out and had a few too many drinks most nights when we should have been training and getting in early to speak to this person or that person about the night’s show. We were just idiots really, but we had a great time and I think we knew it was going to be a one-off trip, so we believed we should make the most of it and we had a real great time.”
Indeed, Mason openly admits that on several overseas trips, including working on the Wrestling Reality series in Canada, he was more interested in enjoyment than career advancement. “It was like a little reward for working so hard in this country that now and again you get a little trip abroad where you can have a bit of a blowout and really enjoy yourself.”
That isn’t to say Mason has any regrets about the path his career has taken. “Everyone tells me I could have done this, I’m underrated, I could have travelled here. I’m still not good with computers and the Internet, so to try to market myself is not something I’ve ever been good at: I probably should have learned a little bit of that. I think there was a time when I probably could have pushed myself but then I realised there was still plenty of work in this country and I get three or four days a week off where I can spend time with my family and then at the weekends I go to work. So it’s a good life for me. I could have travelled more, there’s more I could have done, but would I have been happier? I’m not sure: I may have had a few more pounds in the bank, but I know at the moment I’m in a very good place and I’ve still got regular work.”
That security increased around 10 years ago when Mason bought his own ring, meaning that as well as promoting his own shows, he can hire the ring to other promoters. “It was never really bought as an [investment], it was bought just because having run a couple of shows I thought it would be something good to have. I knew I needed to make more money out of the job but I didn’t know it would take off.
“I think with the ring it’s all about being reliable and I’ve proved that I’m reliable. It’s taken 10 years to establish, I didn’t establish it overnight. A few years in I realised I’ve made the connections now and I was making four, five times what I was making before. So it was a good move for me. I’m 36 now and still making a nice enough weekly wage. I’ve got my house, I’ve got my wife, kids… I’m in a real good position.”
Said reliability and respect is also key to Mason’s promoting success. “Good promoters are [often] people that have been in the job: they have wrestled, they have a level of understanding, they don’t ask you to do certain things they wouldn’t do themselves. I believe the people that come and work for me know I’m not doing it for a quick fix, I’m doing it because I’m obviously passionate about. It’s very hard to promote, I’m not a big Internet person which is a shame, so I’m still doing all the groundwork with posters and flyers through doors, still putting newspaper ads in, so I don’t know if I’m going the right way to promote for this day and age, but I think people know that I put the time in.”
Mason also makes several guest appearances at training schools and seminars, though admits its not his preferred setting for passing on knowledge. “I don’t do many moves: I like to think I’m very good in the ring, I get a good reaction and I know how to work the crowd, but actually move wise I’m a simple person. I’ve got a set few moves that I do, and I believe I do them well. So when I’m doing a training thing a lot of the moves that I can teach, people can already do them. They can do a lot more moves than me. But where I think I can teach is where I watch them wrestle in the evening, I can talk them through why they should have done this, should have done that.
“I still watch shows, I always have done, I think I’m still a bit of a punter. The wrestlers see that I’m watching the shows and always seem to ask for advice and I think I give them a different sort of perspective on it: I don’t say “Well this move was good, that move was good”, I give them the “Well the crowd took to this…” I’m more than happy to talk to anyone, especially if they’re new in the job.”
That isn’t to say Mason doesn’t find it odd to be in the veteran position. “In my mind I’m still 18, I haven’t aged at all, I’m still a kid. I still believe in my dream, I’m still around certain wrestlers that I’m in awe of. But all of a sudden you turn up at a show and you realise you’re in your thirties and everyone else is barely 21, so you realise that you’re the oldest on the team by maybe 10 years.”
That experience isn’t just in years but, thanks to Mason’s schedule, in matches as well. “When I started we were having 15 shows a week, that was a regular thing, and on a couple of shows you would be working twice, so it would be easy to do 20 matches a week. This summer, on average I was doing 12 shows a week — that was tough, but it was doable. You get in a routine, you just plough through it. Sometimes it can be easier to do 10 shows a week than doing two shows a week if you have a good team around you. I like money you see, so the more shows I do, the more money I get and I can just get my head down and keep going.”
Perhaps counter-intuitively, Mason finds a busy schedule is easier on his body. “The only time I have been hurt and aching through wrestling is when I have taken time off. There was one Christmas maybe 10-12 years ago that I took six weeks off… Ugh, I felt awful. I just couldn’t get back into it. The more I do the better.
“On the camps this summer some people were doing 12 shows a week and still trying to wrestle like they were doing one show a week, trying to go crazy, and by the fifth or sixth show they’re not the person they started as. You’ve got to pace yourself, you’ve got to work differently. I’m not saying give any less to the people but there’s certain moves and certain things you just can’t do every day, you have to save that.
“I injure myself less the more I do. I do a different type of match to what other people do. Injury wise I’m always thinking about the next show, so I’m going to be as careful as I can and still having good matches, but I need to wrestle tomorrow so I don’t want to hurt myself tonight.”
Mason also believes that wrestlers who try to do to much in a match can miss out. “They’re so fixated in the match, the moves, what they’ve arranged. Their heads are so cabbaged and so wound up with everything they’re thinking and everything that they’re trying to do, they forget to enjoy it. The best lesson I ever learned was to enjoy it because this is an amazing job, you get to see the world, you get to meet people, you’ll never be doing the same thing twice. It’s a fantastic job.”
It’s a lesson Mason learned himself early on. “There was a match I had at Weston Super Mare on with Fit Finlay. It should have been Robby Brookside on with him but he injured himself the night before and I was just thrown in at the deep end in a hardcore match. I’m not big on hardcore matches, Finlay’s this big wrestling legend, and I went on with him absolutely terrified and that was one of the matches where I forgot to enjoy myself because I was so worried. I think that was the day I realised that you don’t need to worry about wrestling anyone: the better the wrestler, the less you worry because that match is going to be fantastic.”
While many wrestlers with more than two decades in the job might consider hanging up their boots, Mason has no intention of going anywhere soon.” I can’t even think about stopping, I’m 36 now and people say when you’re 40, that’s probably time to call it a day, but I can keep going for a while yet. The matches that I do, I can keep going, I don’t think they’re too dated yet, I don’t think people are looking at them thinking that I’m an old man.
“A lot of older wrestlers say that you know when it’s time because the crowd tell you it’s time, you don’t get the reaction any more. I don’t want to be a wrestler that has to go on with this person or that person just to get a good match from me. But right now I think I can still go on with anyone and the matches are as good as they ever were.
“I believe I’ve got another 20 or 30 years, I really do.”
