Everybody wants to be an anti-hero (in the Year 3000)

There’s been a huge misunderstanding. I’ve arrived at Belle Isle Working Men’s Club with photographer Lee Brown for the Professional Wrestling Academy’s latest promotion, The Battle of Belle Isle. Two employees from the club are working the door. They ask me and Lee if we’re here for the wrestling, then tell us to walk up some stairs and through two sets of double doors, to where I presume The Battle is taking place. Instead, we follow our directions until we are standing in the changing room. The people on the door must have thought we were wrestlers. I have never been mistaken for a wrestler before. I am confused, and secretly flattered.

Inside are men of all shapes and sizes. Some are sitting in chairs quietly relaxing. Others are carefully putting on costumes and warming up. A short, slight lad wearing a hoodie and a Mexican wrestling mask is working through some moves with his scheduled opponent. I later learn this is La Flama. He is apparently Europe’s smallest wrestler. His opponent, it is claimed, is fourteen years old. It is also claimed he is a world-record weightlifter for his age. If he is fourteen then so is my dad.

There is an elderly man sitting in the corner of the room closest to where we are standing at the door. He is stocky, built like a man who could be donning a costume with the others, but these days he is wearing a black t-shirt and tracksuit bottoms, and has propped a walking stick against the table. He has glasses and a gruff Lancashire accent. This is Marty Jones, a regular alongside the likes of Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks when domestic wrestling was broadcast on British TV. He wrestled around the globe and is a former World Mid-Heavyweight Champion, once fighting Hulk Hogan in Japan. These days he’s a coaching Yoda, based at a gym in Oldham. Marty is “old school”, I’ve been warned, and without telling us directly he makes it clear me and Lee aren’t welcome in the inner sanctum. Like everyone else in the room, what Marty says, we do.

We eventually find our way to the club’s main bar, a large room with a ring erected in front of a stage. The original British Bulldog is sitting to one side of the stage, his fingers and wrists covered in bling, next to a woman who is later introduced as the commissioner of the show. They watch over the ring and audience like the heads of a Mafia family. When Lee starts taking photos of the prize belts hanging on the ropes of each of the four sides of the ring, he hears them chunter, “What is he doing?”

It’s a family-friendly show, starting at 1pm. As each match passes, the kids get more hyped on fizzy drinks and their parents get drunker on pints. When kids are booing the villains (or heels, as they are known in the industry), the dads are cheering for the bad guys. After a wrestler from Manchester loses the first match and theatrically protests with referee Spud Zlannigan, the most ‘dad’ dad shouts, “Get off, you sausage!” It feels like a cross between the Jack Black film Nacho Libre and an episode of Phoenix Nights.

There are a smattering of Leeds United shirts being worn in the audience. By the fourth match, the crowd finally has a hero to unite them, young or old, sugar-rushed or half-cut. Walking out to some heavy industrial music is “the big lad himself”, Joshua Kemper. His black trenchcoat, buttoned to the top, matches his black boots and hair. He looks like the definition of a heel. He enthusiastically tries to gee up the crowd. The reaction is mixed, slightly muted — he’s got to be the villain, after all. But then he unbuttons his jacket, revealing a gleaming white Leeds 2022/23 home shirt. The crowd are no longer uncertain.

‘LEEDS! LEEDS!! LEEDS!!!’

This isn’t the Josh I remember from high school. For a start, I knew him as Josh Coulthard, not Kemper. We were in the same form, and because our surnames were so close together in the alphabet, often in the same classes. We hung out a lot, because we were stereotypical inbetweeners, and shared an impenetrable language of Mighty Boosh in-jokes and Football Manager nerdiness, attending the occasional Leeds game in League One together as teenagers. We fell out of touch after leaving high school, but I remember Josh as the funniest person I went to school with, even if he was naturally shy and quiet. He was always a big guy — his size 16 feet were an urban legend among our year group — but he seemed like something of a gentle giant.

That’s what made it all the more surprising when he appeared on my Instagram feed in a leotard, chokeslamming someone in front of a startled audience in a village hall. It seemed like a good excuse to get in touch and catch up over a beer in York, where he now lives and works in IT, and ask, ‘What the hell?’

“I love wrestling,” he says. “I always have. There was a period in secondary school when it wasn’t cool to watch wrestling, so I didn’t tell anyone I watched it. It’s not very cool to like wrestling when you’re fourteen and all your mates are into football.

“I originally started around 2014. There was a place in Leeds I was training that has shut down now sadly because of Covid. I was loving it, it was going great, but then I got quite a bad trap injury [trapezius muscle, in the neck and back]. I just fell awkwardly, it was no one’s fault but my own. But it was really bad. I couldn’t do any sort of exercise for six months. I couldn’t really jog, I couldn’t lift anything at the gym. Everything hurt. I was alright if I was just sat still, but I couldn’t do anything active. I was a bit like, ‘Oh, maybe I’ll just leave it.’ I didn’t really come back to it. And then it was 2019 and I thought, ‘You know what, I really enjoyed that, and it’s something I feel like I actually could really be good at. I’m going to actually do this.’”

During that five-year gap between trying wrestling for the first time and taking it more seriously, Josh began enjoying getting fitter and stronger in the gym. Like many of us, he’d been going to gyms on and off without ever really having an informed plan or regime. “I didn’t really get any benefit from it,” he says. While living and working in Manchester, he picked the brains of a colleague who is now a professional bodybuilder. His friend invited Josh to a gym, so he could learn how to train more productively alongside him.

“He came sixth in England in his category, so he’s pretty good,” Josh laughs. “I was like, ‘You probably know what you’re on about.’ I lost quite a lot of weight, five stone.”

Returning to wrestling, Josh knew he would benefit from being in better shape after the intense experience — both physical and mental — of his first attempt at training.

“I’m incredibly anxious as a person, just generally, and the first time I was still quite young. I walked in and the gym was an absolute shithole. The building was really rundown, dripping water in the corner. I’m not even exaggerating. It was really poor, and had this really old ring — a six-sided ring like if you’ve ever seen TNA. The problem with six-sided rings is they’re really solid compared to the four-sided ones. You take a fall and it fucking hurts. I was just nervous beyond belief.

“The sessions are really cardio gruelling. The first session I walk in and I’m already incredibly anxious. I don’t want to look stupid. I want to be able to do this and nobody think I’m shit — but obviously I’m shit, because I’ve not done it before. It was right into this really intense cardio and I’m like, ‘I’m going to throw up. I’m not built for this.’ The sessions are about three hours. After about an hour and a half, I was like, ‘I can’t do it anymore, I’m going to be ill.’ I ended up just leaving that one, it was too much and I was too stressed with anxiety.”

It would have been easy for Josh to write wrestling off as a daft idea that he at least gave a try, but he kept forcing himself to go back. He was still nervous, but with every session he became more confident.

“Eventually you get to know people and it’s less daunting. It was intense to start with. The reason I ended up coming back was because somebody I worked with, who’s a couple of years older than me, was also a wrestling fan. He asked, ‘Do you want me to come with you?’ He’s super confident. I got on immediately well with him, he’s just a great guy. I was like, ‘That would actually be brilliant. I really appreciate that.’

“He used to play football and stuff, so he was used to some level of physical activity. He came in and was doing the session with us and he looked white as a ghost. He was really struggling. I was like, ‘Yeah, it’s shit innit!’ But that got me through the door. He only came to one. He was like, ‘I can’t do that again. It’s horrendous.’ But it was enough to get me in there and think, ‘Right, okay, I can get through a session.’

“We do lots of things that get me where you’re basically doing a burpee into another exercise. I’m 6’4”. Most people are not 6’4”. I’m heavier than everyone else. So when everyone else is going up and down super fast, I’m trying to keep pace with these little 5’10” people. I’m like, ‘You need to slow down guys.’

“I’m probably the strongest person there, but I’m also the heaviest person there. If we’re doing something where we’re throwing people around — great! If we’re doing something where we’re running around — shit!”

Josh trains under Marty Jones at a gym in Oldham. Luke Menzies, a former professional rugby league player with Hull KR and Salford, trained at the same gym and is now wrestling for WWE’s SmackDown, fighting under the name Ridge Holland.

Before a wrestler can dream of competing on such shows, they must learn the basics. First you’re taught how to take a ‘bump’, landing flat on your back with your arms out, legs up, and head tucked, spreading the force of your fall. Then there’s a shoulder roll, “which is kind of like a forward roll. It sounds stupid, but it’s quite difficult to do in a straight line if you’ve never done it before. Even sometimes to this day, for someone of my build I find it a bit clunky.” The third technique that will always be tested at a WWE trial is a wrestler’s ability to run between the ropes without breaking momentum. The key is taking big strides — “newbies will do little strides, but that really limits you.”

Marty’s training is so challenging in terms of cardio that Josh takes peace of mind in knowing he can visit any other gym and, while he might not be able to match their wrestlers technically, they won’t be able to outwork him physically, “because I’m so used to being drilled into the ground.” But how much does the actual wrestling hurt?

“Do you remember the Hardy Boys? Matt Hardy once said that being in a wrestling match is like being in a minor car accident. You come out of it and your body aches, you’re a bit shaken, but you’re alright basically. But there’s so much scope for things to go wrong, and that’s where you get proper injured.

“If somebody picks me up and slams me down, they might take the wind out of me, but I’m not absolutely battered. I’m fine, I could get up and walk off if I wanted to. If you see something that looks really dangerous, it probably is.

“You will not see me climbing up on the top ropes. You will not see me hitting people with chairs. It really does hurt. There’s a time and a place for it, but if you watch someone like The Rock, who is the biggest star going in Hollywood, never mind wrestling, he’s famous because he was quite a good wrestler in the ring and he’s ridiculously charismatic. He never did anything dangerous. Not once. That’s what I want to be like, I want to be the guy who just gets by on other things and not have to really batter myself.”

The persona aspect of wrestling is what I’m most interested in talking to Josh about. Where did his ring name Kemper come from, to start with?

“Errrr, it’s the surname of a serial killer,” he nervously laughs. “One for the families!”

Oh, right! A fan of metal music with tattoo sleeves on both arms and a work in progress on his back, Josh wanted a name to match the dark imagery of his tattoos. He didn’t want anything too cheesy or obvious, and was counting out the syllables of any potential moniker to make sure it would be easy for crowds to chant.

“I pretty much exhausted everything I could find for demons and that kind of vibe.” He starts laughing again: “Then I thought, ‘What about serial killers, they’re pretty dark.’”

Eventually he landed on Kemper, taken from Edmund Kemper, an American who was dubbed the Co-Ed Killer. He was used as the inspiration for the character Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs. There is also a song by the metal band Macabre titled ‘Edmund Kemper Had A Horrible Temper’. His Wikipedia page is an extremely grim read, but to give Josh his dues, it is a good name to chant: Kem-per, Kem-per, Kem-per.

But there is another reason Josh was always going to base his wrestling persona on a darker character.

“Have you ever seen the film The Joker, the Joaquin Phoenix one? As a frame of reference, that’s exactly the sort of vibe I’m going for. I always feel really weird talking about this, but it’s based on my own experiences, and everyone says to create the best characters in wrestling: be yourself, but times ten. So if you used to work in a meat factory, you’re the butcher now. That’s a ridiculous example admittedly.

“I went through a pretty rough patch around the end of secondary school until around 2012. Mentally I wasn’t great, and a string of bad things happened and I ended up quite depressed. My grandad passed away and my mum was really struggling with that, which hit me hard, so I ended up going through quite a dark patch. But I ended up coming out of it and starting wrestling training. I didn’t really have any sort of ideas before that and thought, ‘Why don’t I use this thing that I have experience of and kind of mould into something that’s actually positive in the world and not just keep it in myself?’

“I can say something and it might not be true today, but it was when I was 21. I know what it’s like to think that way. I’m a lot more mellow these days. I’m still very anxious, but I’m far from depressed. I still remember what that felt like though. I don’t think I’ll ever forget what that was like, so I can draw on it, which I think is a good base. Like I said, be yourself but over the top.

“Heavy metal and wrestling fans are kind of a similar crowd — a lot of wrestling fans and metal fans are outcasts, so they probably can relate to it in some way. While it’s a bad guy character, there is scope for it to be the good guy, because it could be relatable to some people.

“Everybody wants to be the anti-hero. Everybody wants to be Stone Cold Steve Austin, which is problematic for wrestling. But I think there is some scope where I could be, if not a good guy… this is exactly what I thought when I watched The Joker: he’s clearly wrong, the stuff he’s doing is wrong, you can’t excuse it, but I can understand why he’s done it. I can understand what led him to this. Maybe I could get some of that empathy if I wanted to be a good guy, which I don’t — it’s far more fun to be the bad guy.”

As much as Josh enjoys wrestling, he is taking it seriously. Some people he trains with are happy to wrestle at shows on a weekend as a hobby, but he aims to do it professionally. “Naive as that may be, I believe that I can do it,” he says. “I think you have to have that, if you really want to get anywhere with anything, you have to have that belief that you can do it.”

I still find it difficult to comprehend how the quiet lad I knew at school relishes performing in front of crowds in what, for all its athletic demands, is such a theatrical pursuit.

“I love it. It’s really weird. Whenever I talk to people, they’re like, ‘You’re all quiet and shy, how the hell are you going out and wrestling in front of people?’

“Practice by doing is the best way to be honest. Sometimes in classes we’ll do things like everyone sits and watches while one person will get in the ring and just chat shit about whatever they want or a specific person. Maybe someone will come and then rebuttal that. That can be a lot of fun. It can also be dangerous. The problem with a wrestler is that you’re playing a version of yourself, so if someone says something that’s really offensive about you, you might actually get upset about it. It’s like, ‘Hang on a second!’

“I’ve got to the point now where if I’m doing one of the shows with people I know, I’m not particularly nervous. I’m nervous about remembering what we’re going to do in the match sometimes. In wrestling you can either just call it on the fly if you’re confident enough, or you can plan the whole thing, or you can just plan what you’ll do at the beginning and end then fill in the blanks. Usually at my level, it’s the middle ground. I want to know how we’re starting and finishing and we can fill in the rest. If we’re in training, we’ll have matches where we don’t plan anything, but I wouldn’t want to do that in front of a crowd. I’m not there yet.

“I remember my first show. I was obviously shitting bricks. I was like, ‘I’ve never done this before, I’m in a fucking leotard, I look ridiculous.’ But so does everyone else. Everyone’s got their own songs that they pick out and they give to whoever’s doing the music to walk out to. I was waiting and waiting and waiting, and my music wasn’t coming on. I was thinking, ‘What is going on? My match is next. I know it is.’ And then all of a sudden I hear Busted — Year 3000 start playing and I’m like, ‘What the fuck?’ I’m stood there for like ten seconds. I’m going to have to go out because they’re expecting somebody to walk out. So my first ever match I came out to Busted. I was so nervous, but then that happened and I was like, ‘It can’t get worse than this. I don’t care anymore. I’m alright!’ My nerves just disappeared.”

Josh has wrestled in Leeds a few times now. He might prefer playing the heel, but even his alter-ego Kemper can’t resist the occasional allure of being the hometown hero. After all, Leeds is a place where we prefer our idols to have a streak of villainy.

“We did this show in Belle Isle Working Men’s Club. It’s quite a good venue for wrestling. The first time I wrestled there it was a tag team match, and they mentioned I was from Leeds in passing but it kind of got brushed over. The next time I was there I was like, ‘There’s only me wrestling another guy, I’m making a big deal of this.’

“If you type ‘biggest wrestling boos’ in YouTube, probably about seven out of ten will be someone coming out and saying, ‘Your sports team is shit.’ It’s such an easy thing, but it always works. I was thinking, ‘I’m going to do the opposite, I’m going to come out in my Leeds shirt underneath my coat.’

“I got in the ring and was introduced, ‘Here’s Joshua Kemper, fighting out of our academy.’ I unbuttoned my jacket, ripped it off, and the place fucking errupted. I’ve never been more popular in my life. I was like, ‘This is the best feeling ever.’ It was a really dicey time, because we were still possibly going down last season, so I was thinking this could go badly if everyone is a bit dour about us getting relegated, but luckily everyone was into it, even the adults with their kids. The guy I was wrestling said, ‘I should wear my Manchester United shirt.’ I was like, ‘I probably wouldn’t do that around here. I don’t think it’s a good idea.’ He might not have got out alive.”

A couple of days after we meet in York, Josh sends me a voice message on Instagram. He’s been thinking about our conversation, and has a clearer explanation of why he’s drawn to wrestling. Alongside the message, he also sends me a video of a woman watching the Liverpudlian wrestler Zack Gibson in the crowd at a WWE event in the Royal Albert Hall. She’s in the posh seats, with a glass of wine in one hand and a stiletto in the other, joining in with a variation of a chant we’ve heard about Manchester United at Elland Road: ‘Shoes off, if you hate Gibson!’

“My two favourite things in life generally are football and wrestling,” Josh says. “I think my absolute favourite thing overall is being in a crowd, when the crowd just loses their shit. The fact that you can go to a football game and it can end 0-0, you don’t really know what you’re going to get. But with wrestling you can sort of facilitate these experiences.

“It’s still organic, and it’s still exciting to the crowd. You can get that from sport, entertainment, music, but with wrestling you’ve got all those things together. The crowd are equally as passionate. If you go to an adult wrestling event there’s a lot of football-style chants going on. There are a lot of parallels, and that one in particular about the crowd losing it I think really brings it all together.”

Joshua Kemper is back in south Leeds for The Battle of Belle Isle. He’s waiting in the ring, enjoying the adulation of the Leeds United fans in the crowd. But there’s a hitch. He’s wrestling in what Marty Jones has announced as an “international match”. His opponent, however, is another local favourite. Out walks The Ugandan Warrior, wearing the yellow football shirt of his national team. He was born in Kampala, and grew up in East Africa before moving to Leeds, where he is now a regular on the wrestling circuit. It is evidently safer to wear a Uganda shirt than a Scum kit. The Leeds chants subside, replaced by a chorus of, ‘Uganda! Uganda! Uganda!’

It is the fastest, slickest start to any of the matches so far. During the previous fights, there were occasions when the wrestlers were thrown to the floor, only to hit the ring canvas with a damp flump. Whenever Kemper or The Ugandan Warrior are slammed, there is a thundering crash. The ring posts in all four corners visibly shake. Kemper traps his opponent by the ropes and rubs his forearm across his face. Someone from the crowd shouts, “Same old Leeds, always cheating.”

When Kemper gets hit, his floppy fringe flies back. In moments when he seems in trouble, kids in the crowd start chanting for Leeds again. Kemper gets thrown over the ropes, where the ringside seats are only a few feet away. He punches The Ugandan Warrior into the lap of a child. His opponent responds by ramming Kemper’s head against a ring post, turning to the crowd and shouting Leeds back at them tauntingly.

They’re back in the ring, and Kemper starts gaining the ascendency. A child in an England shirt walks past me growling “Leeds, Leeds, Leeds” like they’re in the South Stand at Elland Road. Eventually, Kemper manages to land his finishing move, inspired by WWE wrestler Brock Lesnar’s F5, but with a literal twist. Kemper gets his opponent on his shoulders, spins him in the air, and sends him crashing to the canvas. The ring reverberates for one final time, threatening to collapse. The Ugandan Warrior is starfished. Kemper pins him as Spud Zlannigan completes the three count. Kemper is victorious, but he’s resting against a post in the corner, exhausted.

A frail old woman slowly shuffles past my table. “I’ve been shouting that much I’m nearly losing my voice,” she tells me. The crowd haven’t lost theirs, and one final chant begins in salute of their local anti-hero. ‘Suuuuuper, Suuuuuper Leeds!’ ⬢