Paul London discusses the importance of amateur wrestling.
Like many wrestlers, Paul London got his start during his high school days by training in amateur wrestling. The practice isn't as popular today as it used to be, but many former amaetur wrestlers like Nic Nemeth, Shelton Benjamin, and Cody Rhodes are all prevalent in today's world of wrestling.
While speaking to Fightful for a new interview, London talked about how amateur wrestling is the perfect foundation to start with if you want to become a professional wrestler.
"Easily, yes. It's that perfect a foundation for anyone that wants to be a professional wrestler. As great as a foundation as you can have doing this and/or martial arts and having that level of physicality is part of your daily diet, your physical diet is so healthy. Not just for sport and career but in life because if you happen to end up in a fight, most fights end up on the ground and if you know how to handle yourself on the ground, you have a better chance of surviving that situation or at least getting away from it with minimal damage. You can also mess somebody up pretty good too. I didn't have, there was no amateur program at my high school. I went to Austin Westlake High School and it's a pretty storied high school in terms of sports. Drew Brees went to my high school. He was two years ahead of me and we won state title through Drew Brees for football. Lakers legend, Chris Mihm. Chris was a great dude. Chris was cool. This is very cool. Great tennis player actually for a seven footer. But we had some great talent. Houston Street baseball player. Just a ton of great athletes came through there, right? But we'd never had a
wrestling program. My high school was like a mix between Beverly Hills High and the high school in Varsity Blues. It was like that. Football would dominate my high school. So me and a few guys, we needed like X amount of people onboard who wanted to do the wrestling program then we had to find a teacher who is qualified. That turned out to be the geology teacher, who was like the biggest nerd in the whole school, right? Coach Fly and he would make these terrible like dad jokes and stuff. Anyways, we trained at the elementary school down the street. I mean, the whole program was brand new. So I was the first letterman. I was the first varsity captain. I was blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This was towards the end of my high school run though, so I didn't really have much time to build anything and I wrestled up a weight class. I weighed 174 or 175 pounds, but I wrestled at the 184 weight class because we didn't have anybody in that division. It was great, just great to tie up all these football guys who would come in right off of football season and then just time up, and they’re throwing up and they're like, ‘I think I want to try something else,’ and just watching them drop. You know what I mean? It was great."
London went on to state that he believes amateur wrestling is wrestling in its purest form.
"I love wrestling. I love wrestling in its purest form. I love catch wrestling. I love that contest of, of mano a mano. It's really a lion's fight and it's a chess game. It's a mental chess game, a physical chess game. All these things are things that anybody who knows wrestling obviously already knows. But there's such a physical barrier that you're overcoming, win or lose, that you're always just ultimately testing yourself. That's just what I love about it. It's the ultimate test of self, right? I did a little bit of club wrestling in college, but ultimately I knew this isn't where I want to be."
London then went on to explain why he thinks selling came to him like second nature.
"Completely. The falls came second nature. I think that's why I love bumping so much and why selling came so second nature to me as well, because I came up from a martial arts foundation and very similar to how you're saying the break falls, like slap the hand down and this and this. So that was just kind of second nature. I walk with what's called a Caesar neck in theater where your neck is bent forward and that's just from [reaching in]. So like all wrestlers kind of have that, but it can kind of limit your breathing."
London started to talk about his school, the Kayfabe Academy, and how he doesn't want to let just anybody join the school.
"But I love physical sports and when I'm interviewing wrestlers or potential wrestlers for the Academy, ‘cause I interview everyone who applies to the Academy. I interviewed them usually through a Zoom similar to this. Because I'm not trying to bring in know-it-alls. I'm not trying to bring in anybody who I feel is gonna create friction or just I don't need to train pieces of shit. There's enough Mcschool and McFactory's and McDojo's out there for those people to go out there and cause headaches. Like I don't need their money. I don't need their business. I try to show respect to every human being until they give you a reason to change directions. Until they give you a beat change, I try to give everyone the same respect, but there are people who they don't deserve that time anymore. They don't deserve further because they haven’t been earned it. They haven't proven that they are capable of it. I've had a few knuckleheads come through the program that wash themselves out because they're not willing to do the work or show the commitment towards the work. That's really what it's about for me was how can I start slowly helping at least contribute on my end, steering the ship as whatever way I can, where guys will start valuing their bodies more, saving themselves more, not throwing away so much crowd. Because on one program, it's very evident this is a traditional wrestling program. On another program, it's like, ‘What is this,’ right?."
Elsewhere in the interview, London discussed his return to pro wrestling. Check out his full comments on the matter by clicking here.
Fans can check out Fightful's full interview with Paul London in the video linked at the top of this article.
London is set to face KENTA at MLW's upcoming TV tapings in Chicago on Saturday, November 9. Find tickets for the event here.
