First up I am really looking forward to working with Johners to create content for this website, which I am sure is going to be a great experience. I have loved seeing, well hearing the progress and development of the Wrestling With Johners podcast over the last year or so as well as the growth of the community especially on Facebook! I have previously written reviews and articles over on The Indy Corner as well as providing some content for the podcast too covering a load of British wrestling including Progress and Kamikaze Pro. A few years back I trained for a while with Kamikaze Pro which meant getting trained by Pete Dunne – although my time there was short lived, mostly due to lack of fitness and an injury plus boring stuff like work! I was fortunate enough to meet Johners through work, it’s always good to make a friend with shared interests and we’ve been able to attend a variety of shows together including Attack!, 4FW and Progress. I have been a wrestling fan for close to 30 years now – originally through WWF where the first match I saw was a Bret vs Owen bout and was hooked instantly! I started following British Wrestling much later on and have been to many promotions around the country and been fortunate to see so many talents up close who are now on global TV on a weekly basis, and also had some amazing experiences including camel clutches from Sabu and Uhaa Nation/Apollo Crews, commentating on a Juventud Guerera match as well as a multi person elimination match featuring Joe Coffey, Kay Lee Ray, Kenny Williams, Dan Moloney, Pete Dunne, Robbie X and Tyler Bate and of course I can’t leave out harassing Eddie Dennis with an inflatable sheep for months with a little help from Uhaa Nation and Tomasso Ciampa!

I have also been fortunate enough to meet some big names over the years including Bret Hart, Scott Hall, Sunny, Ted Dibiase, DDP and even the living legend Virgil who I actually had a really good chat with! Although my personal highlight would be meeting the Hardcore Legend Mick Foley on two occasions and in particularly getting a hug from my hero! Where do I stand on the WWE/AEW battle? I have said from the start that AEW needs time, they need to do their thing but they will only be successful if they can do it over a long period of time and keep the quality high. WWE is far from perfect, although NXT is arguably the closest thing to it in the whole of wrestling at the moment. I actually think AEW is tracking better than I expected them to be at this stage – some of what they are doing so far is phenomenal especially with some of Jericho’s promo work and what they have achieved so far with their tag division. I am always keen to find the positives in wrestling, anyone who steps inside the ring is there to entertain and put their bodies on the line to do so – are some better than others? Of course, but I don’t see the point in trying to slate people. Similarly I understand everyone is entitled to their opinion and always happy to listen and discuss different views. That’s part of what makes wrestling fandom amazing I am on Twitter where I have a new profile – Matt Based Wrestling - just to focus on all things wrestling related; you can follow me at @mattbasedwres01