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Mounties is a small community club in Mount Pritchard in the western suburbs of Sydney, they had an auditorium that would seat about 1,000. This is where I learned to wrestle.
Wrestling at Mounties - Australian Giant vs. Big Red
This was the club that continued to have wrestling every month long after the supposed popularity of wrestling had died...
This was the last bastion of Australian wrestling in Sydney when I started, every month -
once a month - we would head out to Mounties at Mount Pritchard to wrestle. Where wrestling had lost popularity and faded away in all other areas, this was the last place to feature wrestling. This was 1995.
Mounties was packed everytime, full of people, yet nowhere else was regularly running wrestling matches. Something wasn't right.
Within the next year some more younger guys joined the rookie wrestler ranks, including
a few who had flown overseas to learn wrestling. This gave a greater
pool to work with and wrestling started to pick up steam.
Another Federation (IWA) picked up a monthly show then a few odd shows here
and there, and I was approached to work with them too. Over the next two years these new young promoters Tyrone Townsend and Marc Mercedes built up the local wrestling circuit until we were wrestling every weekend.
At the height of popularity for us we we do 3 shows a week (not including tours when we would wrestle every night).
I was even at one stage given a contract and weekly pay
That provided enough money to survive (food, transport and shelter).
Then WWF came to do an Australian tour, this decimated the local
shows, attendance was down - people were staying home watching the TV, as
the TV stations now realised that wrestling was popular and put it back
on - in prime time, our numbers dropped off as did the number of shows.
Strangely except for Mounties at Mount Pritchard where wrestling was as popular as ever.
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