A peek behind the scenes of the UK’s village hall wrestling community

Village halls across the UK are more used to hosting sedate affairs like cake sales, and Women’s Institute meetings. So when Cornish-based documentary photographer, Adj Brown found out that an evening of wrestling was coming to Threemilestone Community Centre, just outside of Truro, he knew he had to go and capture everything from rehearsals, cigarette breaks, the kinship between wrestlers and the raucous main event. 

Are you a big wrestling fan, Adj? 

I’m not a wrestling fan at all but the documentary photographer side of me is always on the look out for what I call ​“interesting people doing interesting things” to photograph. I came across a post on Instagram and did a bit of research. I wasn’t fussed about shooting the event itself but the idea of ​‘peeking behind the curtain’ really appealed to me. 

Is there a big wrestling scene across the village halls of the UK? 

There is a surprisingly big wrestling scene in the UK! This particular event that I documented was put on by Cornish Pro Wrestling, but it seems that each area of the country has its own set of promotors putting on these events in varying sized halls. One of the ladies that was wrestling at the event I documented here has now moved to America to try and take her career to the next level.

How big was the crowd? What kind of folk are we talking here?
It was a sell out crowd with about 120 tickets sold and was a real mix with families, students, a kids birthday party and a couple of old timers that I imagine were hoping to relive the glory days of Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks. Bearing in mind this was held in a village hall and tickets were only £5 it certainly wasn’t a high end event.

What was the atmosphere like? 

It had a feel of part sporting event and part panto (I’m not sure I’m allowed to say that) – the atmosphere was great from the word go. As well as the compere getting the crowd going, the wrestlers are great at getting the crowd involved. Going back to the panto analogy, there are definitely goodies and baddies in the ring. The crowd booed the baddies and cheered the good guys with the wrestlers playing along to get the crowd riled up. One of the best things I saw was the young (probably only 12ish) birthday boy screaming ​“hit him in the balls” with his mum looking on with disapproval.

Is the wrestling noisy? The actual moves must make quite a racket, these aren’t small people hurling themselves around.

The ring matt is made of a sprung plywood so when they’re jumping off the ropes or the corner posts they can be somewhere between four and six feet off the ground, which makes a hell of a noise. Wrestling is obviously very physical and the bigger guys are surprisingly athletic.

Why do you think the wrestlers do it? It must be a real passion for them? 

At this level I can’t imagine that they’re in it for the money, so this is definitely a passion for them. A few of them had merchandise for sale during the interval and a big part of the event seemed to be a meet and greet at the end where fans could meet the wrestlers and take selfies.

Were they all pros on a circuit or was it a few of them an a mix of local wrestlers too?

There was one guy who was top billing so a bit of a name in the wrestling scene who had travelled down from Nottingham on the Friday, stopped to wrestle that night in Bristol and then continued down to Cornwall to wrestle on the Saturday before heading home the next day. Other than that I think the rest of the wrestlers were from Devon and Cornwall.

You got to shoot some intimate moments of them: outside smoking, warming up in the empty hall… were they happy to have you and your camera around? 

I got to the hall early and after some quick introductions pretty much started shooting straight away. I’ve been doing this for a while so I certainly don’t lack the confidence to get in there, chat to everyone and quickly blend into the proceedings. I think that if people pick up on confidence and professionalism the trust comes pretty quickly and it doesn’t take long before they forget about you. Although I was concentrating on a more behind the scenes view of the event, during one of the bouts I was right next to the ring, almost leaning under the ropes to get a really close and wide shot of a wrestler being pinned down. Afterwards, the wrestler I was capturing came up to me and said ​“I saw you right in there taking pictures so really went for it with the shouting and screaming… how did it look?”

Was there a camaraderie between the wrestlers? 

Although there’s a fairly large scene nationwide I think that when you get more regional the scene becomes quite small. Judging by the conversations in the changing rooms and the sharing of a pre-event cigarette outside, they all know and wrestle each other regularly.

Would you go on tour with them, given half a chance?

In the world of documentary photography there’s no substitute for time and access so whether it’s a wrestler, a band or an artist, having the chance to glimpse behind the curtain and capture the ​‘process’ over a period of time is the ultimate goal. This is a weirdly mainstream yet underground scene and the idea of following an individual really appeals. Given the right access I believe this could be a really interesting medium/​long term project that I’m currently researching with a view to taking on as a personal project.

A version of this story appeared in Huck 81. Get your copy here.

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