It's acting, it's drama,
it's gymnastics, it's acrobatics
it's strength.
Just want to see action,
athleticism,
agility, strength, stamina,
sport, just everything that
wrestling is all about.
One,
two,
three!
When you're there,
and the people are battling
right in front of you and you see
the mists of sweat,
you see the spit,
maybe you get dripped on,
you can't emulate that from home.
You feel as if there's just a
tangible electricity
in the air and you don't know
what's going to happen next.
My name is Jackson Kelly
and I'm a professional wrestler
better known as
the Beach Bum Booter.
I have a right boot,
which is severely, severely
much more powerful
than my left.
Respect the ref!
Respect the boot, idiot!
I'm not going to speak too much
on what's inside it
but I will say,
my opponents
when they feel the boot
they know that they've been hit
by the boot.
And then I'll charge
straight back at them,
give them that right boot
straight up the ass.
I'll never forget when we first got
pay TV and I was watching
this huge hulking man in,
in knee pads, elbow pads,
long hair and a beard,
and he was beating down
on this, this
overweight, non-athletic
guy in glasses and then,
as it happens in wrestling,
camera cuts to the back
and this hulking man
is charging down to the ring
to save
Jim Ross from this atrocity.
I was hooked
from that moment on and
I needed to find out
what happened next week
and I needed to find out
what happened the week
after that.
I kept having these thoughts like
wrestling's the next thing,
wrestling's the next thing.
What, wrestling? What?
Is that actually a real sport
that you actually do in
Australia?
So I saved up the money
and travelled to America
to start training.
We were worked
to the bone.
We were worked like dogs.
A lot of hitting that mat
and that mat is no joke.
If you're not trained correctly
then it will
severely injure you.
The first time I watched
Jackson in the ring,
they come actually off the ring
into the audience
and someone
threw Jackson in the air.
I went oh my god,
splat.
And that's when
I was worried, a little bit.
In a sick sort of way
I sort of enjoy the physical
punishment.
Another huge strike.
Down the guts.
You're with the rapscallion,
Mick Morretti,
pro wrestling superstar
and one of the head coaches
right here at the Pro Wrestling
Academy.
Switch!
I have apparently a reputation
for having
savage cardio.
Squat!
At the end of the day,
you've got someone else's life
in your hands.
If you're exhausted and
you don't have what it takes
to hold someone up safely
then someone's going to get hurt.
So you've got to learn,
how to do a breakfall,
how to land safely,
how to roll.
From there you move into strikes,
into bigger impact moves,
into using it all.
Then you start learning about
psychology and how to
build a match because
we want to tell a story,
we want to take people on a ride.
You can swear at them,
you can say whatever but
that's the moment where you've
had enough.
F**k you.
My mum is a strict
Filipino lady
who prays daily and my
dad is a
60-year-old-something man
who goes by the book and
make sure my little girl
doesn't get hurt.
So when I heard there was
a try-out I was just like
I can't tell my parents at all
about this.
How did they take it?
Not well.
I don't think my dad spoke to me
for a while.
My mum freaked out
and she goes 'what if you die?'
I'm like,
well I'll die.
You know, at least I'll die
being happy.
I've always tried to find myself
over the years,
I'm just like I feel like I'm missing
something and I just didn't know
what it was.
It's always been
just this platform for me to just
unleash.
Getting the opportunity to do that
is liberating,
it's freeing, it's exciting.
It is like this rush of adrenaline
that's just
so good.
In training Tara's always a bit,
'oh god, I don't know if I can
do this', but
when the bell rings
Kingsley just goes
'I'm a bad bitch
and I'm going to kill everybody'.
It's just
so empowering.
Anything else?
That's class.
I had been doing wrestling
for about a year and a half,
at one stage I
essentially ran myself
into the ground.
Yeah, we got a phone call
about two o'clock in the morning
from Jackson telling us
that he was in the ambulance.
So that was a bit scary.
I was diagnosed with
pericarditis,
it is inflammation
of the lining around the heart.
You can't exercise,
you know, you can't do
physical activity,
you can't exert yourself
more than a resting heart rate.
He was so sporty and athletic,
it was hard for him not to,
not to be able to do
the things he was used to.
So I had no timeline,
I had no idea
if I was going to get better.
So that was the hardest part,
just not knowing.
You know, in the early days of
my wrestling career,
there wasn't a lot of people
at the shows, you know,
I've had shows where I've
wrestled in front of about
five or six people.
We've had shows at
basketball courts where the ring's
been set up over here
and there's been a game of
basketball or a game of soccer
going on over here,
while we're trying to put the
show on.
As we get into 2019
and now into 2020,
some venues are seeing upwards
of, you know, getting closer to
four figures of fan attendance.
I can hear a bit of a murmur
out there and that's always
a good sign.
I really want to see my leader,
Jackson Kelly.
I'm known everywhere as that
fan member.
Everybody loves sinking piss.
I love all the flipping and the
chops, it's amazing.
It's good to bring kids along
as well.
When I walk through those doors,
I want to give them a show.
Yeah!
It probably took about six months
in total,
for me to be cleared.
Not long after that was
a home town show of mine.
I hadn't wrestled in about
six, seven months
and hadn't been in front of a
crowd, hadn't,
hadn't had an excuse
to elevate my heart rate.
So
yeah it was,
I don't want to say do or die,
maybe.
But I was behind the curtain
and just, I hope I'm good.
I hit my mark over there,
that got them going,
ran to the other side of the
crowd and got them going
and I just tried to
soak it up as much as I
possibly could.
Tackle one,
and two,
and three.
There's something infectious
about wrestling.
Different personalities
mixed with
being punched in the face.
Sometimes life isn't great,
you know, it's,
sometimes it sucks, sometimes
we go through times
where we're a bit down.
I think wrestling just provides
an alternative to that.
It says hey, forget all that
for a minute, come here,
be happy.
Sit with the people that you
enjoy the company of,
watch the people who you
enjoy to watch
and just have the best time ever.
It is the combination of
my two biggest passions,
sport
and storytelling.
And when you put them together
then that's a recipe for
magic, really.
One,
two,
three!