I WAS always big fan of the WWE - or WWF, as people might know it – having started watching it with the likes of Hulk Hogan, Bret Hart and The Ultimate Warrior when I was three or four.
My brother started training as a wrestler with this company, Celtic Pro Wrestling, so I asked him if I could join it as well. He said to come to the session and see what the trainer actually says. and it began from there.
For training, we start off by warming up – doing press-ups or sit-ups, or going for a short jog. Then we go into the ring and do individual moves – the DDT or something like that. We’d do that 10 or 12 times. There are about 10 people in a training session so everyone gets to practice a move 10 or twelve times on each other. Then we get to practise our striking on each other i.e. forearms and kicking.
Finally we’d plan out a match. Some people only do two or three lines and improvise the rest. I did things in a more detailed fashion – I knew exactly what was going to happen where and when. We’d discuss what was going to happen before the match, and if you forget something, you’d just have to improvise.
It’d take a normal person a while to get used to it, but since I had a stroke, I had to do things sort of differently. There aren’t many wrestlers that can only use one arm in the world (I only have the use of one arm as a result of a stroke, which I suffered when I was younger). But with the help of my trainer, I got used to it pretty quickly.
The best moment of my career was when I got my contract. When I had the stroke the trainer said I’d never be able to go on the shows and wrestle regularly. I had a match with him – if he won, I wouldn’t wrestle anymore and if I won, I got a contract. It was a long and brutal match, which he finally won, but he gave me the contract anyway because I put up such a good fight.
His doubts about me wrestling weren’t part of the storyline initially. There aren’t many wrestlers that can only use one arm or wrestlers with disabilities, so he wasn’t sure even about training me at the start. But he let me train and since I was so good at wrestling, he let me wrestle on the shows.
I wrestled in America last year in Seattle on the west coast, so that’s been my last match for a while. I’m retired at the moment, but I’m thinking of coming back into wrestling, as I miss it.
If you don’t know what you’re doing, you could kill yourself, or you could kill the person you’re wrestling with – that’s what I train for.
I started training in June 2005 and I didn’t make my debut until a year later. So it’s just about practicing, practicing, practicing and making sure you do things properly and safely.
What do I miss about it? The rush of the crowd is a big part of it. Listening to a crowd that cheers you or even boos you gives you that adrenaline rush. I also miss being like my heroes – Hulk Hogan and Stone Cold Steve Austin.
But I’ve had a pretty good career; I luckily have never been injured. But I’ve seen someone dislocate their knee right in front of me in training, so there are always injuries.
It’s a form of entertainment and isn’t a real fight, but like I said, you can kill someone if you don’t know what you’re doing and even with years of experience, if lose your concentration for a split second, your opponent could end up with a broken neck – and it has happened.
Part of the reason why I retired was that it was taking up too much of my time. Every week, we’d train on a Saturday and a Sunday from 12 until 6, and sometimes there were midweek training sessions too. We’d also have a show once a month on a Saturday, and that would take the whole day, if you include assembling the ring and moving it from the gym to the show. And the people who were wrestling had to practice their match before the show. So a lot of work goes into it, but it’s worth it.
My dream is to get back into wrestling and be in the running for the world title for our company.
There’s a condescending attitude to wrestling in the media. Most people don’t regard it as a real sport. I disagree with that opinion, because it takes a lot of hard work in the gym and athleticism to be a wrestler. It’s incredible the amount of time these people spend working on their bodies and on their moves. So it definitely doesn’t get the respect it deserves outside of the fanbase.
Ciaran Gallagher wrestled with Celtic Pro Wrestling for a seven-year period and is currently considering making a comeback. He was speaking to Paul Fennessy.