Soundsphere sat down with Andrew Bowers, the owner of NORTH Wrestling, to learn all about the promotion’s ethos, how it contributes to the UK / European scene, and to learn all about their upcoming tenth anniversary show – Party Til You Puke!
Image credit: North Wrestling
Soundsphere: What would you say is the ethos of NORTH Wrestling?
Andrew Bowers: We’ve always wanted to bridge the gap between what people expect pro wrestling to be and what it can be. Now we’re not professing to be doing something massively different. We’re just trying to present it in the creative light that we see it as, as a form of storytelling, as an art form. But in its performance, it is an alternative form of entertainment that a lot of people have preconceptions about, and those preconceptions can be completely blown out of the water by what we can provide. So we try and provide a show that basically entertains people, but shows that the emotion that you can find in pro wrestling is akin to the emotion that you can find in sports, the emotion that you can find in drama, TV, and done in a really bombastic way that can shock you, leave you in awe, leave you inspired. Yeah, I think it’s many things.
Soundsphere: I think it’s true what they say: you can watch wrestling on TV with preconceptions, but it’s hard to attend a live show and not come out a fan or with a new appreciation. Is that something you’ve found in all your time as a booker?
Andrew Bowers: Yeah, definitely. I think we really pride ourselves on a couple of things in terms of how we’ve built our audience, especially since COVID. We have a high female percentage, higher than it used to be, and we have a high percentage of our audience who don’t necessarily watch any other wrestling or haven’t watched wrestling. I do think it’s quite true that you have to have some sort of a passing interest in it, or at least when you’re a kid. But I think there is nothing more satisfying than when someone comes out of it, whether they’re a hardened wrestling fan who knows the ins and outs of all the lingo and knows what’s actually happening or somebody who’s it’s their first show, first wrestling show. There’s nothing better than seeing people appreciate what we’re doing and just be entertained, really, and just feel like they’ve had that moment of escapism.
Image credit: North Wrestling
Soundsphere: NORTH has helped many wrestlers reach superstardom, Leon Slater, Mason Rook, Joe Hendry, and others. What do you think NORTH gave these talented performers to help them succeed in international promotions like TNA and WWE?
Andrew Bowers: Yeah, I’ll preface it with we can’t take full credit for it because there is a scene there, and it’s nice to be one of those promotions that were there. Mason Rook (Will Kroos) is a prime example of somebody that we use regularly. We really invested in his career, and we worked with him quite heavily. I think the quality of wrestling that we have in independent wrestling in the British Isles and Ireland and mainland Europe is unbelievable. We work really closely with coaches like Rampage Brown up here in the Northeast and PPW with Liam Slater and Nathan Black’s train school in Sheffield. So there is this great pool, and there is a really good bunch of people who are in there trying to make it better.
But if we were to look at ourselves, for Leon, Will, and Joe Hendry, I think we’re a bunch of creative people. We’ve all got this real-world experience outside of wrestling that we bring into the creative sphere that is North, and we’re really focused on not just the building of a character, not just how well you do in a match, and not just the booking and the storylines. We are really focused on how you then connect with an audience, how you actually get an audience to care about you, and how you get an audience to care about the whole story. We put hours into making sure our shows make sense. We put hours into making sure that we’re considering ourselves from the point of view of a person sitting in the crowd or watching on Patreon.
So I generally think that attitude to stuff and really caring about that detail rubs off on the wrestlers that we’re using. My attitude to the creative process is very much I give them a brief, and I give them an idea of where I’d like things to go, and that idea is collaborated on between the team and the wrestlers that we work with. But then there’s an utmost trust in them to go and do it because it is their body on the line. There’s an utmost trust in them to then go and produce that and work with us. And I think that’s quite true of a lot of other promotions in Britain. But I think they’re doing it at a really high level. I just think that then equips them to grow as a performer and to understand how an audience works
Image credit: North Wrestling
Soundsphere: The UK and wider European scene has seen ups and downs in recent years. As a booker, what’s your take on the current state of the scene?
Andrew Bowers: It’s not where it was before. I don’t think that’s necessarily wrestling’s problem as such. I think there’s an industry-wide, entertainment-wide cost-of-living crisis issue that, you know, ticket prices go up because costs go up, but people have less money in their pocket to go. There were a bunch of wrestlers that were all picked off by NXT UK. They were the drawing wrestlers. They would now be the veterans that would help the scene. So I think there’s been several cracks in the industry. From a wider perspective, it’s not at the boom as it was in, say, 2015, 16, 17. We’re in a wrestlers’ economy. It’s great that these wrestlers are going off and getting these bigger chances elsewhere. I think it’s fantastic. The problem is everything is then centered around the wrestler getting the contract at WWE and AEW/TNA.
This is just the natural order of it. So you see the wrestlers moving through. But my concern is: have we spent enough time actually building our infrastructure here? There’s not really a place for a worker to go and get a contract here and actually stay here and help that scene grow. But I’m not being too down on it because I think the appetite is there, and I think that it’s a natural peak and trough. I think it’ll come back up, and I think we’re in a really good position when we do get to that point. I would just like to see more stars be able to make a bit longer of their time in Britain and bring the actual promotions up because unless the promotions are there, the next guy’s coming through won’t have an audience.
Soundsphere: You mentioned the boom period around WWE’s resurgence; from a promoter’s perspective, did that rising tide lift independent promotions?
Andrew Bowers: I don’t think it comes back down to us. You get a Netflix WWE fan, and they get most of their fix just from that and from a production and content level. WWE swamps you with content, and if you’re just into that, then you’re not really going to go and have a look at the indie promotion that has less of a budget, or maybe things are a bit rougher around the edges. My music tastes are not big arena rock stuff. It’s always the more grassroots stuff because I feel like you can find the soul a bit more in that. It’s less glossy.
And I think that’s what you get with WWE. So probably there isn’t really a rise in independent wrestling compared to WWE wrestling. They’re two different things now. They’re so different. It’s like comparing Whitley Bay Football Club to Newcastle United in the Premier League. I don’t think it has an impact at all.
So I think it’s similar, but that’s the job of the independents then to go all right, well, if you are interested, and you do have a passing interest in more grassroots stuff, and you want to find something with a bit more grit and something that’s on your doorstep and something that’s a bit more real and more accessible to you, then we’ve got to get ourselves out there and go the door’s open. Why don’t you give it a try?
Image credit: North Wrestling
Soundsphere: I’ve always been fascinated by the name NORTH, especially coming from the north myself. How important is it to you to represent the northern part of the country?
Andrew Bowers: Yeah, it’s so important to me. Born and raised in the northeast of England, from Newcastle, and I think there’s always just in you as a northerner is there’s a pride, but there’s also you are swimming against the tide a lot of the time, and especially in the northeast, fewer of us up here, and we’re kind of disconnected from the rest of the country.
I think it’s so important for us up in the north to have somewhere where we can be really proud of and go; this is a northern-based wrestling promotion that utilises mainly northern wrestlers, almost all northern crew, and shows that we can do it on the level of everyone else. It’s so staunchly northern that it imbues a work ethic as well. It imbues a motivation for people. And that was one thing that I didn’t think would take off as much: how many people assigning themselves to NORTH because when you’re from the North, you’re proud of that.
Soundsphere: Your 10th anniversary show is coming up, a celebration of the promotion and its identity – could you tell us what you’ve got planned?
Andrew Bowers: Yeah, so we’ve got just a good old NORTH show. Main event with Rhio and Gene Munny. Rio’s been pushing for the title for a long time now. She’s had chances against Leon Slater in the past. She’s been a tag team champion with Emersyn Jayne. They split up, and now she’s moving forward for that. Gene’s got a real task ahead of him in regards to keeping hold of that belt. I think he would be the first to say that he’s held it for probably longer than he anticipated, but he’s grown into it. In a way, I think this is why you put opportunities to win championships in front of people, because it’s great to see what happens when they’re in there and when they have that responsibility on their shoulders.
And Gene’s been one of the best champions we’ve had, and we’ve had some good ones. We’ve also got some tag team action happening. We’ve got Molly Spartan and Natalie Sykes versus Angel Hayze and Daisy Jenkins. We’ve got a massive match between two guys that I’m big on, Ricky Sosa and Daz Black. That’s going to be the match. If you haven’t been to a North show before, you’re not sure who those guys are. It’s those types of matches where I want to show a WWE fan. Watch this because those two are destined for stardom. We’ve got a clash of the champions match with Trent Seven and Clint Margera – real-life brothers, which I took great pleasure in NORTH being the ones to properly reveal that to everyone.
We’ve got other stuff coming up that we haven’t quite announced yet. It’s going to be a really good night, and I think we just want to celebrate the fact we’ve been around for 10 years because that’s quite insane. And anarchy as well for most of it. That’s where I work now, and it’ll just be nice to look back at it all a bit because within the rest of the world you just plow forward continuously. So to take just a moment to retrospectively look at what we’ve done and what we’ve achieved, and not just us as a team, but us as an audience, and anyone who’s ever come to our shows, of which we’ve got some who have been to more shows than I’ve been. So yeah, I think it’ll be a good night, and I’m sure there’ll be some surprises in there too.
NORTH Wrestling’s “Party Til You Puke.: 10 Years Of NORTH Wrestling” will take place on July 25th at Anarchy Brew Co. in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne.