How important is it for trainees and new wrestlers to help put up the ring?
It’s not something I expect people to do, it’s their own discretion to do it. But say if you become a trainee mechanic, you want to learn everything you can about the tools that you’re dealing with. To me, wrestlers are replaceable: the ring is the only thing guaranteed to be on every show you see. No two rings are the same so you should understand how a ring goes together, where there are points that are softer than other parts, why things do what they do on a ring.
What ways can learning about different rings help?
How you pace yourself changes with different sized rings. How you show out, how you position yourself. If you train in a 20 foot ring and then the first show you’re on you’re in a 12 foot ring and you’re so used to doing suplexes where you don’t have to step forward to make sure the person lands safely. You start risking more injuries by not knowing your tools. Ropes are never the same height, the top rope is not a standard height, so if you’re not used to running ropes at a particular height it can throw you off and you risk falling through the ropes or over the ropes and damaging yourself.
How important is grabbing the top rope when you are running the ropes?
You should always grab the top rope: for one thing, it gives you a guide as to where you are when you’re turning. Pac is somebody I watched once and the top rope snapped and because he was grabbing the rope, he landed on his feet and just stood there and went “Fucking hell, that could have been dangerous!” That’s the only time I’ve seen it happen, but it made it very important for me to always hold on to the rope.
There’s been a trend, particularly in Ring of Honor, towards bumping on the ring apron. Does this carry an extra risks compared with normal bumping?
In my ring, I find bumping on the apron is the softest part of it. The padding hardly ever gets used on the apron, so it’s like new. Because mine hasn’t got support beams in the middle, you’ve got more flex on the apron — landing on the side apron is exactly the same (impact) as if you land in the middle of the ring directly on the spring. But it varies: the House of Pain ring, which is 20 foot, has individual drop legs at seven foot intervals on each side, so the aprons on that are rock hard and you’d notice a massive difference. With James Mason’s ring, his padding doesn’t go all the way to the edge of the ring because it’s not needed: if you took an apron bump in an All-Star ring you’d probably be fired because that’s not wrestling from Brian Dixon’s eyes. And if you were to bump on the apron in James’ ring, you’d probably be lying there crying afterwards!
What’s the biggest myth about owning a ring?
People always assume that the people who hire the ring get paid a wage to put it up. The trouble with hiring a ring is that because people in British wrestling will undercut everybody, you can’t really charge a great deal for ring hire. By the time you take into consideration how much it costs to own a second vehicle (a van), second lot of insurance, second lot of tax, how much more it costs to run a van, maintenance of the ring, how much you have to pay for tape for the ropes, how much padding costs you each year, how much canvas costs you each year, etc… Then there’s the hours that you do on each show because you have to be there three hours before and normally at least two hours after everyone else has left. Your hourly income that you get from being a ring person is next to nothing and you don’t actually get a wage for putting the ring up, unlike say hiring a bouncy castle where you can charge an extra £50 to blow it up. So when a wrestler asks “Why should I help put the ring up: that’s what they’re being paid for?” they are wrong.
