WWE trainers Robby Brookside and Matt Bloom sat with Vulture Hound‘s Lee Hazell & talked about WWE’s new NXT UK Performance Center. The two also talked about how their own training differed from that of today’s WWE Superstars.
Brookside reminisced about what he learned from legendary UK star Johnny Saint, “‘I remember when I was 16/17, a great thing for me is doing a TV match with Johnny Saint and to travel around with him, and he was one of the many that used to go, ‘Slow down!’ Because when you’re young you’re like, ‘Oh I’ve learnt this new move, I want to try and do it.’ Once you get older and you figure it out, you realize it’s just like pouring another pint of water into a pint of beer. You just don’t need it.” Brookside also stressed the importance of being trained the correct way, “It’s hard sometimes when you get someone from the indies who have been trained the wrong way. Their footwork and their balance and their facial expressions aren’t up to it and to try and get them to change that, at times it’s harder to teach them. We got eight Chinese Nationals who couldn’t speak any English, and it was easier in some ways to train them from scratch than getting someone from the indies who’s been working for 12 years. Well, obviously they’ve been going to the wrong places because that’s not how we do things here.”
Matt Bloom didn’t even train in a wrestling ring, “I trained in a boxing ring with one air conditioner in the wall, up four flights of stairs to get there. It was tough, man. It was a lot different than it is now. Actually, Triple H and I trained in the same facility with Killer Kowalski. The training game has evolved a lot.”
Robby Brookside opened up about an early experience has had after he was accused of labeling wrestling as ‘fixed.’ The incident led to a successful career for Brookside, “I got invited, in inverted commas, to a wrestling club on the outskirts of Liverpool – a big factory called English Electric. My mother and father hated wrestling, everyone thought I was a weirdo because I packed in football to watch wrestling. So anyway, my mate went to this amateur wrestler and said ‘That kid down there thinks it’s all fixed.’ He was only a little fella. Then my mate comes back, says we’re invited to a show on Sunday.” Brookside continued, “So, I go up and its strange because people are still working in the factory. So I get to the utility room and there’s a big, old sugar matt with all these old fellas all around. The little fella sees me and gets all excited. I’m 14, he’s 32/33. He says, ‘Right lads, this kid thinks it’s all fixed.’ He tells me to get on the matt. I get on the matt and to this day I have never felt pain like it. I remember I hit the matt as he took me down and I didn’t know where I was. I remember all the dust going in my face. That could probably get a factory closed down now. I could probably get them all charged with abusing a 14-year-old. He ripped my head off my shoulders. My ear was bleeding and it wasn’t very nice. There was just a sink to smother your face and that was it.”
Brookside remained undeterred, “I went, ‘I’m not having it. I’ll go back the next week.’ And they did it again. I went back the third time they decided I had a bit of bottle. But that’s what it was. The facilities were disgraceful. They’d be condemned now. Just being at the Performance Center now and seeing that evolve and the way it grows and grows and grows. Just the facilities that the talent have. The way WWE treats their talent is light years ahead of what we’ve gone through.”
Readers interested in Vulture Hound‘s full interview with Brookside and Bloom may find it HERE.
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