Liam Slater is a Keighley native who once was a trainee wrestler himself. Now after a 13-year career in the ring, he trains young people who want to follow his path. Slater now runs his own wrestling training school, Pursuit Pro Wrestling (PPW), in Sheffield, training the future generation of UK wrestlers.
I was fortunate enough to sit down with Slater to ask him about his introduction to the wrestling business, why he wanted to become a wrestler, why he then became a wrestling trainer, and the future for him and his training school.
The 31-year-old has been wrestling since 2012 and made a name for himself across the UK with the likes of Newcastle-based North Wrestling, RISE Underground (Leeds) and what was at that time What Culture Pro Wrestling (WCPW).
Early interests and getting into wrestling
For kids growing up in the 90s, wrestling was a very big thing. World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and its major competitor World Championship Wrestling (WCW) were growing a major following in the UK as well as the USA. Slater had loved wrestling since he was a kid, and fondly remembers being at Butlins with family as an 11-year-old, seeing information about a wrestling school on the back of a programme he found.
Slater says he was always an arty person, although not skilled in drawing or singing, he could appreciate good art, and always saw wrestling as a combination of both sport and art.
He said: “90 minutes of football is like a long time and might not catch everyone’s attention, but a 10-minute wrestling match with vibrant characters and cool entrances where they’re being the most famous person in the world, can really catch someone’s eye.
“I remember being 17 years old, and in the back of a Fighting Spirit mag [an old British Wrestling news magazine], there was an advertisement for a show happening in Wakefield and at the bottom it said they had an academy.”
That was the start of his training and his way into wrestling.
A childhood ambition pursued
Slater only realised, after talking to an old friend, just how much wrestling was a part of his life.
“An old friend had said to me how I was the only person he knew who followed through on a childhood goal… I was always going to be around wrestling, I picked my GCSEs to be around wrestling, I did broadcast journalism at university because, if being in the ring didn’t work out, I could operate a camera and work for the WWE. I just wanted to be in the industry.”
Yet, while trying to build a career, Slater had tried to balance pro wrestling and working as a personal trainer, which gave him teaching skills that would come in useful later on.
But he was feeling unfulfilled and lacked proper mentorship – so he left wrestling before Covid, feeling burned out.
Although he’d known what he wanted to do in the industry, he didn’t have the willingness to put himself in those positions. Now he can look back and see where he went wrong.
“It became a self-fulfilling prophecy that I was getting burned out with wrestling, because I wasn’t doing the things that would get me to the levels that I wanted to achieve, nor was I surrounded by the people who could have been helping me get to those levels.”
Finding his coaching style
Nowadays, Slater coaches professional wrestling as his full-time job where his past experiences help fuel his coaching style.
“I’ve always loved coaching, I like seeing people develop and I get to think about wrestling 24/7… not only being creative for me, but creative for other people.
“I get a huge amount of joy seeing the ideas that I’ve pitched and put together, happening in front of an audience. I enjoy creating that more than my own matches… I enjoy seeing people grow and helping them achieve things they never thought they’d be able to do, both physically and in a progression sense, just being part of people’s journeys is fulfilling to me.”
Now, he tries to get his trainees to embrace who they are, instead of wanting to be someone else.
Fond memories and future goals
When thinking about his fondest memories, Slater talked about his days at WCPW.
“We were in Newcastle for the third taping, I was walking to the back after setting up the ring, they had a balcony which was like our changing room. Alex Gracie, Gabe Kidd and Lucas Archer [other UK wrestlers] were stood up there with big smiles on their faces, and it’s just what makes me think of pro wrestling.”
Slater also mentioned how wrestling the likes of Cody Rhodes and Drew McIntyre (both currently signed to and former world champions in the WWE) are fond memories because although they were being paid more than him, they were still just wrestlers who wanted to wrestle.
For the future, Slater says that he wrestles now only to stay fresh and keep himself involved, but he has goals for PPW itself. He wants to grow the company as much as possible, putting on more shows for people to come and watch, as well as building the names and reputations of his talent and helping them to go further in their careers.
