Having been in the pro wrestling industry all across the globe for a good quarter-century, I thought to write a handbook or guide of sorts for young wrestlers and newer talents in – or just coming into – the wrestling business, based on what I’ve seen and experienced over my career.
I do this partially out of necessity, as I’ve seen the younger stock damn near kill the ”business” side of the industry for the other workers out there, and in part as a public service to give back to the industry where it stands today.
When I say this guide was born out of necessity, I say so mainly out of the fact that the ”professional” side of our industry is suffering tremendously, even though there are more shows taking place now than at any time in recent memory. Yet, the pay scale is one of the facets being demolished and many a newer talent is to blame for this, be they promoters or workers. I’ve also seen the near-death of actual etiquette in terms of how to carry one’s self in the business, which should be addressed for the welfare of the industry at large. With this in mind, now is the time to listen up, so let us commence with this free, but invaluable, 101 in How To Handle Yourself In Pro Wrestling!
Lesson #1: Act Like a Pro
Now kids, boys and girls alike, working for free just to get bookings and paying to play is not the way to go if you want a future in any trade. Earning your stripes and paying your dues while working for nil to free is one or two year period, at most. Back in the day when this business was still a real trade that supported a workers’ family, if any said talent undersold themselves intentionally just to get booked, or if they sabotaged a comrade in the territory by underselling themselves just to get booked, they risked getting the living shit beat out of them by the locker room.
It’s called PRO Wresting for a reason. The Pro word is there to let you understand that you should have the intent of making as much coin at it as you can over the course of your career. You must learn to make yourself valuable. Your work must be worth something. If not, why should anyone pay to see you?
Get real wresting gear, invest in yourself. Get a good looking pair of tights, singlet or trunks made. Buy a quality pair of real wrestling boots. Look the part. Do not wrestle in sneakers and shorts, to say nothing of a t-shirt. If you look like a punter, you deserve to be treated like a punter. If you don’t have enough sun around your climes to get a natural tan, then either hit the solarium or get a spraytan for any and all wrestling shows that you might be booked on. I cannot stress this enough: look the part. Look professional.
Now, I understand the way the world is going. I understand that all across the board, in live music, in the postal service, in the construction sector, etc. the jobs are increasingly going to those who will work harder and longer for less pay. This, however, is pure sabotage and is destined to end badly for everyone. You can always negotiate down, but it’s freaking hard to negotiate up. There’s always someone who will do the job for less, as you all know. Make yourself and your personal piece of business so valuable that promoters and fans are going to be willing to pay for your talents, but also, know what the pay scale is. Know your place on the pay scale, based on your experience, number of matches worked, past accolades, current profile and overall value on any said, given card. It’s not grand on the indies these days, by any stretch. Like former WCW wrestler PN News, aka Cannonball Grizzly, so aptly stated back in 2013 in a locker room in Germany: ”I might be a whore, because I sell my body for money. At least I’m not a slut who gives it away for free.”
There have been several gaijins (foreigners) over the last few years who can be held accountable for killing the once extremely profitable wrestling promised land of Japan. These newer faces went in, paying their own three-month visa, paying their own flights, sleeping on dojo floors and making next to nothing in pay just to play superstar and say they’ve wrestled in Japan. Talk about being a mark! It makes me sick to my gut. By the same token, the promoters who took them up on their offers are just as guilty. They collectively killed Japan for the rest of us, for the veterans included, who deserve to make a reasonable living at this game after sacrificing their bodies for so many years. Japan used to be a place, along with Mexico, where a good hand could make a decent chunk of change and maybe even put some of it away in savings. Sayonara now to that notion.
Moral of the story: you must act like a pro to be considered a pro. Period.
Lesson #2: Make Yourself Valuable
AJ Styles is a classic case of a guy whose work ethic and skills made him valuable, so that he was able to reach the pinnacle of his profession.
Get your look in order. Invest in a gym membership and an experienced, knowledgeable personal trainer if you don’t have the know-how to build your body up to be muscular and strong. You will need that strength in the ring, I assure you, and the look is your aesthetic sales pitch. It’s the mirage of the product before delivery to your audience, after which it’s up to you to you produce — looking like the Big Mac on the menu board, or like the sorry, flattened burger that very well might get handed to you. People do not want to see jabronies that look just like them. If the guy changing your oil at Jiffy Lube could just as easily be a member of Motley Crue, then you have a perception problem because the star aura is sorely missing. Pro wrestling is meant to be bigger than life. Always has, always will be. That said, this is the exact same epidemic that has flattened out and deflated the aura, mysticism and grandeur of rock music at large, in addition to spoiling beauty pageants where the girls actually have to be a cut above the status quo to qualify, to allowing professional politicians into public office who fail to represent the interests of the public at large in any way and just capitalize on personal gain at your expense.
My old coach, Lance Storm, once so appropriately stated that a wrestler need three things to even have a fighting chance at making it in the pro wrestling business: 1) the look, meaning body and image, 2) the actual ring skills and 3) charisma to make people either love or hate you, but no middle ”they’re okay, I guess” ground.
If you lack in any of the three attributes aforementioned, get busy filling in the blanks, because while you’re daydreaming, someone else is hustling and doing what has to be done. And as they say, the early bird gets the worm (read: bookings).
Lesson #3: Don’t be a Mark
Pro wrestling is a bullshitters’ business. Don’t be fooled, everyone is ”working” the next guy, because no one wants to risk losing their spot or moving a peg down. Everyone is looking out for number one. Many would sell their mother down a river to get a foothold over you. Al Snow once aptly said, as we were touring Egypt back in 2009: ”There are no brothers in this business, only business associates”.
Don’t be too gullible for your own good. Take everything with a grain of salt. Believe it only when you have your plane tickets in hand or when you are actually at the said show. Everything up to that point is just talk, and talk is cheap. Truth be told, only after you’ve actually been paid your agreed on wage can you really believe it.
Also, don’t be a mark for yourself. Just because you know how to play the game doesn’t make you King Midas. Don’t think that you are God’s gift to wrestling just because you might look like a million dollars or you can do a reverse 450 Firebird Splash. Don’t think you are indispensable. Don’t think that just because you’ve bought 10 pairs of tights and four pairs of boots that you are somehow better for it than the guy that just has one pair of each. Never take anything for granted. Stay humble. Be a good sport. Don’t be an egomaniac. Have a strong ego that drives you, but don’t let your ego control you.
Lesson #4: Pro Wrestling is still Territorial
El Ligero of England
You’ve probably heard a million times that the territories died back at the end of the ’80s. Still, the way the wrestling business and promoters operate today is highly territorial. For example, if you live in a place like Finland, at the ass end of the world like myself, and a promoter can get four guys crammed into a car out of Germany to go wrestle in Italy, who do you think they will choose? Hmm. A guy like me, here in the worst possible demographic area on the map, will have to have his shit together and all his sales arguments in line, be relevant and credible and bringing something of salable use to the table, if he hopes to score gigs in the face of this aforementioned, stark reality.
When I say wrestling is still territorial, I’ll break it down for you: a promoter is looking to make as much money as possible and in doing so they look to cut their costs. The promoter will try to take the cheapest route possible, acquire talent from nearby, just like the four-to-a-car model I mentioned, and they will sometimes even try to skimp on offering accommodations if they are able to do so, having you drive back home in the middle of the night. Yes, there are places where the talent gets treated like circus animals, even to this day. Therefore, if a promoter can keep their costs down by taking in talent from right next door, then for you to be considered from several countries away… well, you had better have something that the promoter and their show really needs. You visage on a poster better sell an adequate amount of tickets to cover your costs or you had better have the kinds of skills that make other people (read: local wrestlers of said promotion you wish to work for) look good. Or then you had better be politically important. Or then, you had better have a name in the wrestling business. Unless you are a younger talent with a name like Will Ospreay (read: a well-known internet darling) you can forget the last line I just wrote.
Lesson #5: Pro Wrestling is Ruled by Cliques
If you don’t know the impact of this group, then get busy on Google.
If you don’t belong to a clique, part of somebody’s group of inside faves, your chances of getting booked are slim and rare. I didn’t say slim to none, I said slim to rare. It’s the truth, even if it is a sorry state of affairs. There are shitloads of great guitarists out there who are just as good as Steve Vai or Alexi Laiho who never get anywhere or reach greater acclaim. They simply don’t belong to the right social circle and they aren’t the darlings of a certain clique, so they are shut out of the larger window of opportunity. It’s often not what you know, as valuable as that is, it’s who you know. Age-old wisdom that is, as Yoda would say.
I don’t say this as an exhortation of any sort, that you should start kissing ass and buttering up the nearest influencer, as most of these people can smell you coming a mile away. I would advise you to simply be diligent, hustle, be humble, listen, constantly improve your game and ask for the advice of those ahead of you in the game, carry the veteran’s bags and even get them coffee, and keep putting in the best effort you possibly can each and every time you go out there and step into a ring. It’s called the law of sowing and reaping. It’s the path that I took and I can tell you that it sure as shit ain’t the fast track. It took me a lot longer to get my due and get noticed, because I never kissed asses and never played locker room politics. I invested in making myself the best wrestler I could be. I got the whole package together and honed it down to a proverbial ”T”. I built up my resumé and got my personal piece of business down so solid that it became valuable. Remember: value comes to value, always. My work and ultimately my reputation stood as my calling card. Then, certain circles began letting me in, simply based on the quality of my work and my working ethic, plus the fact that I wasn’t a trouble-maker and I was dependable. I know, the path less taken doesn’t sound very sexy and it doesn’t offer instant gratification.
Still, you can try the asskissing route if you want to try short-cutting your way to the top. No guarantees that it’ll work, however. And I won’t even get into the bookers and promoters who might try implying that you trade sexual favors for bookings. Be forwarned, they are out there. Have the dignity to say NO, even if it comes at the cost of getting booked.
Lesson #6: Every Match is a CV Match
Never ”take the night off”. Never ”just wing it”. Invest yourself in making each and every match as good as you possibly can. Think of what elements you and your opponent bring to the table and tell the best story that you can with those elements in mind.
Remember: you never know who will see your bout. I say this again, because it is pivotally important: think of what elements you will need to apply to best tell the intended story of your altercation. Don’t think that you need to showcase every single move you know, nor ”get all your shit in”. No, you need to tell the story of the match. And not every match needs to be a five-star affair. Maybe that’s not the purpose of your match in the big picture of the overall show. Maybe your position on the card requires something else from you.
Still, you need to come out of it looking like a star, but so does your opponent. Remember, you are only as good as the person that you are in the ring with. If they look like shit, you look like shit. And if you need that last one explained, you need to go back to wrestling school under a better coach.
Lesson #7: Be Adaptable and Always Keep Learning
Adam “Flex” Maxted
I’m reminded by a young man I met while on a wrestling tour of Pakistan last year. His name is Adam Maxted from the UK. Adam is very young in the business, but he already has a million dollar body. He’s invested his time in the gym. He’s hungry to learn, constantly taking part in seminars of old warhorses like Marty Jones, always looking to up his game. And voilá… in less than one year since I met him, the kid is already IPW All England champion in the UK and has an upcoming match booked against Rey Mysterio for one of the largest companies there this coming March. Believe me when I tell you: you do not get chosen to be booked against a guy the likes of Rey unless you have all of the various pieces of the puzzle together. Adam deserves all the credit in the world for being a model example of hustling his ass off, being humble, keeping his ears open and being able to learn from constructive criticism. He is on the fast track to becoming a big name in our industry, and he will have earned it by the sweat of his brow, once that inevitable day comes. And once that day does arrive, Adam will have people like Marty Jones to thank, because he has been taught the essentials of what it reads on the marquee: WRESTLING.
The same applies to you. No matter who you are booked against, know your groundwork. Know how to actually wrestle. If your match falls apart, the highspots aren’t going to save you. Garbage wrestling isn’t going to save you, either. The name of the game is still wrestling at the end of the day. Can you pull it off?
starbuck.fi 
Life Coaching 101: HUSTLE
Posted: January 3, 2019 in Life, Life coaching, Social commentaryTags: achievement, ego, hustle, life, life coaching, Michael Majalahti, psychology, self-respect, value, wellness
As I get older, I try to do the world around me some good and pass on the lessons I’ve learned in case some random souls out there have the ears to hear and a heart to understand. I believe it’s one of our obligations as human beings to give something back, to make our personal contribution count. So here goes, take the following as you wish. Hopefully there’s something in it that you can take with you and make yourself a better person with that gained knowledge.
I steadfastly believe in the adage “if the shoe fits, wear it.” (photo: Hannu Eskelinen)
HUSTLE (like your life depends on it)
The older you get, the more you both understand – and feel – life slipping away at an increasingly rapid rate. When you’re young, it feels like forever as you look ahead to your future. Waiting to hit legal age, waiting to finish college or university, waiting to find that right girl to spend your life with. It all feels so long. However, in retrospect, life goes by in a flash.
If there is one thing that I have learned here by my mid-40’s, it’s that you’ve gotta hustle. Boy, you have got to make your two cents count, for the time is frighteningly short. You have got to bust your ass and make the most out of every opportunity because most key opportunities only come by once in a lifetime. And living with regret is a bitch and half, let me assure you.
What’s Your Driver?
Nowadays, more than ever, we’ve got armchair quarterbacks galore sitting behind their computer screens living a virtual life of nil content. It’s stagnating, the sedentary prison of tech slavery that most of us have succumbed to. A friend of mine once said, ”If you look back at your life and ask yourself what have I been doing most in the past five years, and if your answer is sitting at a computer staring at a screen, you have seriously got to get yourself a life.” Truer words have seldom been spoken. And many of us need to really get busy finding that life of worth, value and meaning… especially in our age of tech gadgets, virtual reality, escapism and social media overload.
The bottom line is that the crucial thing that your self-respect and healthy ego hinges on is getting shit done. Period. You have to make your contribution count. You have to create value in order to feel valuable. You must put one foot in front of the other and make strides toward goal after goal in order to have a life of meaning. There is simply no other way. In order for this to happen, you must hustle and work toward achieving worthwhile goals of quality substance.
If you don’t have a driver in your life – that being an incessant need that pushes you to get shit done – you’ll simply stagnate, and that only leads to death. You cannot simply stagnate and just remain as is. No, stagnation will change you, and moreso, kill you. Like a limb left inside of a cast, you will atrophy mentally and spiritually, leading to another kind of death before your physical time is up. But in order to have a driver, you must first have a passion. Something you burn for. For a man without passion is a sorry individual, indeed. Just take an honest look at your own social circle and you’ll certainly see the drifters, the ones without aim, purpose or passion in their lives, and this point will become crystal clear. ‘Nuff said and point taken, I gander.
The thing that has driven me in my life is something as simple as the fear of mortality. I never asked for this life but now that I’m here, I’m damn well going to make the most of it. My motto is: before you know it, we’ll all be dead, so get busy!
Who the hell are we, anyway? Just another wayfarer on this earthly trek, another generation come and gone, returning to the dust from whence we came? Before that fateful day, I want to get a lot of meaningful things done and make this one and only life worth something, if for no one else, then for myself and the sake of my own self-worth, self-respect and sanity. If they write about me in the annals of world history, great. If not, so fucking what. What counts is that I personally will have had a life worth living, a life full of meaning, brimming with worthwhile content. Then, when one day it will be my time to give up the ghost, I can do so as a fulfilled man that went out and did all he could with the time that was given to him.
My Story
I was born to an immigrant preacher couple in Canada back in 1973. The doctors never gave my mother any hopes of having a child. Her womb was too small, they said. My father, ever the servant of the Lord and a minister to the bitter end, encouraged his wife to trust in God above. I am her only child, the son that was never to be, and so she called me Michael, after the arch angel in Scripture.
I was the outcast since childhood, shunned by other kids simply based on proxy: I was the preacher’s kid. I became the lone wolf, the one that took the path less trodden. I went out into my personal wasteland in order to die and be born again, to reach full manhood, with a clear, personal identity, in order to be something more than the status quo.
Thus, I followed what my heart burned for and became a professional wrestler – the closest thing to a real-life superhero that there is. Of all the vocations on the academic palette, pro wrestler wasn’t in there. Yet, I knew I didn’t want to be anything on the list offered. So pro wrestler it was. And more than that, I became the most accomplished professional wrestler in history to date out of Northern Europe. Yes, longevity-wise and contribution-wise, I arguably even eclipsed the late Tony ”Ludvig Borga” Halme of Finland, who worked briefly in WWE between 1993-1994. I became pro wrestling champion the world over, on several occasions, and I still grapple to this day, currently holding a version the German world heavyweight wrestling championship. I’ve coached up talent in six countries to date and I’ve headlined in many of the countries and promotions that I’ve worked in over the past 25 years of my in-ring career. So yeah, I’ve done pretty well for myself and it’s something I can be happy about.
Due to the immense passion that I’ve put into my personal piece of business, I’ve had an effective driver that has propelled me to the heights that I’ve achieved and enjoyed. The reason I can hold my head up is because I’ve done my due diligence and put the time in, and therefore through true achievement I can lay claim to healthy, strong ego and self-respect. Where others have quit, I’ve persisted and fought even harder. I don’t say this to boast, I say it to validate the point made.
Brother, I have hustled and gone the extra mile time and time again for the things that my heart has burned for. And I continue to hustle, because life still continues.
Get Busy!
Life is short, so get busy! Get off your Playstation and Pornhub and start doing something worthwhile. Don’t care what the naysayers and critics think. Don’t listen to their lack of faith and disparaging remarks as to your aspirations or your seemingly, overtly-ambitious, goals. The dogs will always bark as the caravan passes by, such is the nature of the world that we live in. Maybe your wife or girlfriend will bitch you out, thinking whatever you’ve put your heart to achieve is a waste of time. Maybe your family won’t understand if you jump out of the rat race to pursue your true ambitions. Maybe the world around you will hold you to be a fool. Don’t listen, filter it out. You have to know where you are headed. You and no one else. Don’t look for affirmation from the outside. Brother, you have got to know yourself! Get your shit – and your head – together.
You must add value on a constant, unending basis to your life in order to draw value to yourself in turn. Value always comes to value, be it on a micro or macro level, just as water always seeks its own level. If your contribution is valuable in the eyes of those around you – and I mean valuable in a way that no one can discredit or discount that value – you will be successful before long. Maybe not as fast as you’d like, but yes, you will find success. It’s the law of life, you reap what you sow. In the measure that you meet out it will be met to you, to quote the Good Book. And like Simon Sinek says: ”People don’t buy what you sell, they buy what you believe.”
A History of High Achievement
When you look back on your life, it’s not so much what you want them to say about you when you’re gone, it’s how you feel about the actual value of the life you’ve lived up till now. As long as there is breath in your body, it’s never too late to turn your ship around and start living a life of high value.
How does one live and engage in a life of high value? Simply, by pursuing high achievement.
Plain and simple, and especially as men, our self-worth, self-respect and self-value is directly hingent upon how much we feel that our contribution has been worth to those around us. This is where the self-serving, modern mindset fails in spades, as it cannot bring about value due to its selfish nature, which is all about me, me and more me. You absolutely must make it about others, about your contribution to the world around you, no matter the size of your social circle. The social mirror just works this way. It is what it is. You get what you give in the measure that you give.
Coming from a pro wrestling background myself, one of my biggest inspirations early on was a fairly famous wrestler from the 1980s named Tully Blanchard. Tully was most famous for being one of the original Four Horsemen in the mid-’80s and his name has thus gone down in grappling lore. One of Tully’s most famous promo quotes was: ”Be whatever you wanna be, just be the BEST.” That’s something that has stuck with me all these years. Just choose to be as damn good as you can be at whatever endeavor you apply yourself to. Have that amount of personal pride in your doings. Don’t settle for second best. Be a leader, be an alpha.
Motion creates emotion, it’s an old adage and wisdom at that. You cannot feel good about yourself unless you actually do something to justify feeling good. That’s why drugs and alcohol fail to achieve this end. Dopamine, noradrenaline and serotonin simply don’t just get triggered by any random thing. The reward center of the brain is geared to release ”feelgood hormones” only after the justifiable effort has first been put in. Of course, you can sabotage your dopamine levels, for example, through indulging in porn, playing the slot machines or winning at Playstation, but none of those will create fulfillment for you. True fulfillment comes through successful accomplishment, even winning smaller battles along the way, long before the war is ever even over.
The world today is handicapped and plagued by the social sedation brought on by technology and the virtual addictions that come with it. Simply reasoned, people today are less fulfilled than ever, due to the fact that they simply achieve very little outside of the immersion of virtual reality. Watching TV, Netflix, movies and YouTube won’t make you feel fulfilled. Playstation and gamer culture won’t make you feel fulfilled. Engaging with yourself while watching porn won’t make you feel fulfilled. The drought in your spirit won’t go away unless you feed it with meaningful, tangible action. So get busy.
To Sum It Up
In closing, ask yourself one, simple question: ”If I were to die tomorrow, what will have my life have been worth?” The answer should suffice to wake anyone up and start hustling.
Lastly, consider the words of Theodore Roosevelt from his ”Man in the Arena” speech:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
Word.