Crowley opens up about his wrestling journey, being unique, “The Main Attraction” with Adam Ralph, #StripTide, and much more.
“Fade the Kayfabe” is a wrestling interview series that aims to give other fans an outside-the-ring perspective of wrestling talent and personalities that Hannah Bee personally believes in. Open to getting interviews from across the globe, “Fade the Kayfabe” hopes that it can introduce fans to their next favorites whilst learning something new with their current ones!
It’s hard getting noticed in the world of professional wrestling nowadays.
With the world available on our fingertips 24/7, with the plethora of wrestling styles and talent capable of enticing us straight from our devices… standing out has become more important than ever in securing patronage, admiration, and attention not just from their live audience faithfuls but to their online fan base too. Every performance has the possibility of becoming an international hit, every social media post an opportunity of getting their foot in the door.
When I decided to kick my ass into gear and relaunch this site, I knew that wrestling blogs suffer this same fate – being unique was the only way to get traction.
What better way to get the ball rolling by bringing in someone who’s headstrong in separating himself from the pack…
I know someone – a carny who fancies pulling marks in like a flame to a poor moth.
(c) GOOD Wrestling/Hannah Bee
First encountering Charles Crowley in GOOD Wrestling‘s “Problems Posing as Solutions“ last November, he managed to grab my interest even when he was in a four-way with exceptional talents and that I walked in Craufurd Arms with no idea of who he was.
Admittedly, he got my notice firstly because he looked like Brendon Urie — the top hat and the guyliner gave me a major flashback from my terribly brief emo period during my teens.
But as he stepped right up that ring, as he and Payaso (totally not Gene Munny!) had their little moment… something with his charisma and persona clicked with how I like my wrestlers — one of a kind. I was sold.
He won that match, by the way, but at that point he already won the people’s attention even before he pinned King Cupid.
After that show, I decided to do my research — also known as looking into his Twitter. For match clips and promos, mind you.
And now that I got the chance to interview him via email, my initial thoughts about him got solidified.
He’s charismatic, pleasant… engaging.
A pure spectacle.
Hannah Bee: As someone just wrestling for two years, you have made leaps and bounds in your career in such a short amount of time! Can you give me an insight on the journey to where you are today? Did you expect for you to reach such heights in this span of time?
Charles Crowley: So I come from an acting background. That is what I do, I’m an actor. I work day in and day out to hone that craft and I want to be one of the best actors in the entire world. It sounds like a kid’s dream doesn’t it? And yet here I am, still striving for that goal. I’ve been acting for 5 years professionally, sometimes managing to make a small living from it, most of the time not.
Along the way I found wrestling. I didn’t come into wrestling as a huge fan as such. Obviously, I was to some extent (I certainly am now!) but I didn’t have the knowledge most wrestlers had. I didn’t watch the Attitude Era, for a year of wrestling the only Ric Flair match I had seen was him vs. HBK. That was actually my first PPV, Wrestlemania… 24? Edge vs. Undertaker. I LOOOVED it, that hooked me.
Edge is, without a doubt, my favourite. His charisma, his facial expressions, his character. I wanted to be him, so I watched more and more and thought you know what… I reckon I could do this.
I kept watching them and thought, I may not be able to flip and all that but I can certainly act better than some of these guys, you know? Looks like just acting to me. So I went to train at UBW (Ultimate British Wrestling) alongside Knucklelocks (the final ProJo Beginner’s class). I quickly learnt that it is not just acting and lawd oh lawd does it hurt.
That being said, I don’t do anything half arsed so I went HAM man, like I went all in. I attacked the mat, I rolled, I jumped. Luckily because of gym I was good at box jobs and handstands, etc. so this helped.
Anyway I got the bug and it became a new goal. I have to be one of the best at this because I feel like I CAN be. Just like acting, I know I have the ability but it’s going to take everything.
…to be honest, Crowley is my way of getting my humour and my personality across.
First, these first two years I pushed so hard to get better. I could tell my crowd work was carrying me and I didn’t want to be the guy who couldn’t keep up with the incredible technical wrestlers.
So that became my goal, to not be out of my depth and to this very day I still feel out of my depth, haha, that’s the thing man! There’s so many amazing wrestlers in British Wrestling!
One day I will be one of them but until then, all I can do is train and improve and I guess due to that mindset, it’s helped me achieve a good level of success so far! Knowing how to sell myself and my brand does help a lot, that’s the acting world and it’s so hard to stand out, in wrestling there’s way more freedom and less people being quirky and to be honest, Crowley is my way of getting my humour and my personality across. I just get to do it tenfold and I bloody love it! I know so many people will be like ‘well he’s not like that’, oh but you’re wrong…
I’ve gone off track. NEXT QUESTION!
Bee: Now that your fanbase is now significantly grown, mostly because of your call to action with #StripTide, what would you like new audiences to learn about you?
I think what I’d like people to know is StripTide isn’t about just getting naked.
CC: STRIPTIIIIIIIDE. Yeah, I mean wow. I was just gonna put out some tasteful nudes because I thought why not, doesn’t bother me and it’s a bit of fun and BOOM, the now StripTide faithful have arrived and honestly I love it. I think what I’d like people to know is StripTide isn’t about just getting naked. It’s one very seedy, sexual, dirty side to the carnival and THAT is what Charles Crowley is. He personifies the entire carnival. From the spectacle and pure extravaganza to the dirty, gritty, naughty carny ways. StripTide embraces the fun naughty side of what Charles Crowley is all about.
Bee: The uniqueness of your character is one of the things that draw people onto you. What do you think sets you apart from the pool of talent in British Wrestling?
CC: When you see a promo or a match of mine, you’ve got to know I’m massively enjoying it. I think that’s really important. Like… you see these dumb ass videos of me in that ring giving it everything I’ve got in my own spectacular way, but I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t love it and I do my very best to get that across when I perform. I really hope it’s a little bit contagious because this is so fun for me and I want people to join me on this ride because as cheesy as it sounds, seeing people enjoy what I’m putting out there; that’s everything.
…as cheesy as it sounds, seeing people enjoy what I’m putting out there; that’s everything.
Bee: How many balloons do you usually use up in say, a month? Do you buy them in bulk or is more of a last minute purchase hours before showtime?
CC: Oh mate… so many. I spend money I make from wrestling on helium and balloons and petrol, haha! Darn kids let go of my balloons seconds after I give them one hahaha! But it’s OK because it’s bants. I get through… let’s say 2-3 a show. Sometimes I’m on a mission and there’s no time for balloons you know? But if I’m low on coin, you’ll be able to see that I am because I’ll only come out with one!
Bee: You have been seen tagging recently with Adam Ralph, giving crowds the ol’ razzle dazzle as the Main Attraction. Can you tell us how this spectacle of a tag team started? Did you bond with the love of beards?
CC: Adam Ralph has been wrestling for a while, longer than me. He is exceptionally talented. He is trained by Jonny Bailey at HUSTLE and also comes from an acting background.
I met him at HUSTLE training and we got on but didn’t think much of it but then we both had been kinda thinking, without telling each other, that we should tag. Simple things like… we’re both actors, both have flamboyant out there character traits, we love to entertain, similar heights, both have them sweet sexy bods, beards, fringes. We are both really easy going in a sense as well so we just click in that sense.
Anyway, I was helping out at PROGRESS as a PROGRESS minion under the HUSTLE banner and it was an AWESOME show. Adam Ralph made his PROGRESS Pre-Show debut and my word… my heart was like in my throat. His music hit and I was living vicariously through him. It was AMAZING… I can’t express that enough. I had like, stars in my eyes for this guy.
Afterwards, we chatted and we agreed we had a mutual admiration for each other. It was SETTLED, WE WERE GOING TO ENTERTAIN THE WORLD TOGETHER. It’s also super nice because solo travel gets lonely and I can be a bit of a loner but it’ll be so nice to share these experiences moving forwards. Genuinely believe we will be something special. Hopefully I can sneak onto a PROGRESS pre-show and then we can debut on PROGRESS as a tag team. Would be beautiful and an honour to do so alongside such a talented and genuinely awesome guy.
It was SETTLED, WE WERE GOING TO ENTERTAIN THE WORLD TOGETHER.
Bee: What are your future plans? Where would you want to set camp and introduce the show?
CC: Japan. I REALLY want to wrestle in Japan. I’m learning Japanese the best I can so I’m ready for when someone over there wants me. Places like DDT I think would suit me perfectly and not only that… I would add to them. I really do feel like I would be someone they’re interested in if only they knew of me. However, their talent pool is intense – very skilled wrestlers. I need to continue to prepare so when I do get a chance to go over, I’ll smash it.
I can’t just swim with the big fish all the time, I want to be one of them. A BIG SPECTACULAR FISH!
Japan is my goal and once I have traveled Japan, lived that life for a while then who knows, eh? One thing is for sure though, WWE is always an option. I think many people will be lying to your face if they say WWE isn’t the goal. We all want to main event WrestleMania so it’s just a matter of the journey we individually take to get there and in an ideal world, my journey takes me through Japan.
Now that everyone is caught up, I would like to welcome everyone to the show – fun for all ages, but if it’s going to be held in Riptide… it’s best to leave the kids.
Comments and reactions? I can’t wait to hear them over at @BeeHeynah or at @HBRambles! Consider supporting ya girl and buy her a coffee (only if you want to!). Hope you enjoyed reading it!
A huge thank you to Charles, who said yes in a heartbeat when I asked for people that I could pester with an interview!
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If there are any issues with my photo crediting, please contact me and I’d correct it as soon as I could!
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