Ultimo Tiger Interview (August 2014)




Ultimo Tiger (find his Facebook page here) is a wrestler who is now working the upper card and regular main event matches around the South West of England. He graciously granted me my very first face to face interview when I attended a show for Pro Wrestling Pride (PWP Official website) where he was teaming with Raven in the ECW/WWE/WCW/TNA legend's last ever UK appearance. (Unfortunately I did get very nervous in this interview, as it was my first one face to face, but the information and responses he gave were great for what I was able to ask, and he also did his best to put me at ease. I wish I had been more experienced and prepared for such a great interviewee, but just as starting out in the business itself is a difficult and long learning curve, so I have found is the reporting and interviewing side.)

 What originally got you into wrestling as a fan?
That would have been my dad, back when I was really small. He is a massive, avid wrestling fan, always has been since the beginning of World Of Sport, straght through to WWF. Jake 'The Snake' Roberts was his favourite wrestler, so as I grew up Bret Hart, Jake 'The Snake', Ultimate Warrior were the things he showed to me and I developed a massive love for wrestling through that. As I grew older, I saw stuff with Ultimo Dragon, Tiger Mask etc, and I had a massive love for Japanese wrestling, but I still loved the World of Sport stuff as well as WWE (WWF back then), with New Japan and anything I could find mixed in and I thought 'I really want to do that'. I knew when I was about three, watching Jake 'The Snake' come out with the big python, that this was what I want to do.


Who do you think were the backbone of British wrestling in the world of sport days?
There are a lot of them. I think that individually, every member from World of Sport had their own part to play in it. Obviously it's before my time to recall the very start, but going all the way back to the introduction of Mountevans rules, which were started of course by [Admiral Edward Evans, 1st Baron] Mountevans himself. He was a core part of that beause he made up a system that everyone used and made British wrestling what it is. People should respect it, and then moving forward everyone pitched their own ideas and made World Of Sport what it was. Without any one of them we may have had something completely different. It would be too hard to pinpoint one person and say 'He did it'. They all just collectively decided what they wanted to do and they made the best effort they could.

 Are there any differences now between British and American wrestling or have the two amalgamated into one similar style?
They have amalgamated, because back in the days of World Of Sport, and even back before WWE, in the territory days, it was very Americanised over there. How they did stuff like a simple lockup or wristlock was different, and if you went to Mexico it was different, but nowadays, globally, they have so many little details that they have pulled together and taken from each other. British wrestling was a very strong style, very catch as catch can kind of style,  and now in America they actually teach that because they like the British and European influence and they use it, and the same with Japanese influences now. The whole world brings our style into it, but the main difference between America and us is that America funds it properly but we just don't. In Britain, we have a lot of independent guys who say that wrestling is what they want to do because people love it, but no-one is saying that we can do anything to get them back on TV, whereas in the states they will go to companies and say 'you need to do this, this and this' and actually give them the opportunity to show it.

 How easy is it these days for potential students to find training schools and how can they differentiate between good training schools and the ones that would be a waste of money?
It's a hard thing to say, because there are a lot of people who will get crapped on because of who they know, but in the UK there are a lot of good training schools. You will see a lot of our wrestlers out in Japan and America who were brought into the business through British wrestling schools, but equally there are a lot of guys who watch TV and think 'I can do that', then they get in a ring for six months, and then open their own wrestling school in a small town, then you get 25 guys come out of there telling people that they are wrestlers and that kind of kills the business. It's good that we have so many, and so many of them are really good to learn from, but it can also be bad because we have the terrible ones that come through the woodwork and the business becomes diluted. Just take your time to find out what the training schools are like, who the trainers are and get a feel for it, and then you can find the better wrestling schools around.



If British wrestling disappeared completely from the wrestling landscape, what legacy do you think it would leave to the rest of the wrestling world?
Number one, it would suck. That's the best way of saying it. From our point of view (as British independent wrestlers) we would never want to see British wrestling stop, either independently or if it did ever come back to a World Of Sport equivalent. I think that would be the best thing that could happen in the world. As much as Americans may think 'we don't care, we don't need this', they would be forgetting Britain and Europe giving them all this great talent. Nationally in the states and even in WWE, some of the talent out there is quite dreadful, whereas over here we are quite respectful in what we want to do, so generally over here we actually want to be a 'wrestler' and not just some indy guy in jean-shorts. So I think if they lost that influence they might at first think it was nothing, but pretty soon they would miss it, and they would realise that Britain actually produced some of the best wrestlers that they're ever going to get. That started with World Of Sport too, as that's what first got started, the focal point of what got people looking at it and interested, and built upon that into what it is now.

 Do you think Britain could ever run as a successful territory in it's own right again, like Japan and Mexico, returning to the World Of Sport days?
I think we could get an equivalent of it, but there are too many things standing in people's way.  Of the promotions that run around the country, there are tons that look like they should be on TV, and some that definitely couldn't and shouldn't be on TV. It's a problem to pitch it to a company and persuade them that people would want to watch us, but I think people would. If you ask any fans around the country, if you ask any fans after a Pro Wrestling Pride show if they would want to watch us again, they would say yes, or a lot of shows around the country they would say they would. It's taking it from that and turning into a country-wide thing. The next problem is getting someone to run it. Back in the old days, you only had about about three or four guys running promotions, so they could do that, but now you have three or four guys running promotions per county, per city. There's s much to choose from, and so it's hard to differentiate as to who could take it forward, but I hope it happens regardless. It would be really, really good.



Have you worked with any other big American names, and how do you feel about working with Raven this evening?
I'm really excited to work with Raven this evening. I remember having the wrestling figure of Raven which I used to use to shove people in dustbins and stuff, and now I get to do that in real life, so I'll be getting in there this evening and getting him to beat up some people I don't like and use bins and weapons just like I used to enact with the toys, so that will be really cool.
On the independent scene I've worked with Josef Von Schmidt, who's one of the biggest indy wrestlers in America that you could hope to meet, he should be in WWE. He deserves to be in everything, but they just won't do it for some reason. I don't know if it's because he has built up his own independent circuit out there which he runs massively. I'm working with Jay Lethal at the end of the month, which is another really exciting thing to do, and I've met and worked with Doug Williams, one of the biggest and best British wrestlers in the world, and he's a really good guy, everything about him is just really cool. Working with big names can really help you to get some confidence in your own wrestling ability, and if you get that nod of respect and are told that what you're doing is good and that you're doing it right, it helps the guys in the back, makes everyone feel good and that they're doing the right thing.

 

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