Interviews with Indie Wrestlers

There’s a certain kind of wrestler who feels manufactured, that is, polished, media-trained, predictable. And then there’s Alexis “Friggin’” Lee. Unfiltered, chaotic, brutally honest, and somehow still relentlessly driven, Alexis represents something far more interesting: a self-made wrestler from Southeast Asia who carved her place in a global industry that wasn’t built for her. When we sat down to talk, the goal wasn’t to rehash favourite matches or dream opponents. It was simpler than that and harder.Why wrestling? Her answer wasn’t glamorous. It was real.

Nish debuted and created a tagline he blurted out by accident, and no idea what it meant. Through a series of feuds, a room full of people chanting him home, and a mother in the crowd reaching for the ropes on his behalf, he figured it out. Show up. Rise up. Nish up.

Alex Stevens grew up in a regional Queensland town two hours southwest of Brisbane, put his wrestling dream in the same box as kids who want to be astronauts, and then watched a movie about Paige one evening and quietly lost his mind. He debuted in August 2020, has never changed his gimmick, was yeeting before Jey Uso and will tell you so directly, and defines making it by a twenty-dollar envelope he received from a Wide Bay promoter that made him cry in public.

Jackson Shepard is a wrestler, gamer, merch hustler, reluctant social media brand, Mass Effect tragic, and self-described smartarse who insists he is not a veteran despite having been around wrestling for the better part of nine years.

Nate Hunter is a Western Suburbs Melbourne boy who decided in a year eleven legal studies class that he wanted to be a wrestler. Two and a half years and over one-hundred matches later, he is the villain in most rooms he walks into, a student of the territory era, and a man with very clear goals and zero intention of lowering his voice about any of them.

He was a hyperactive kid who learned to shrink himself to survive high school. He spent years telling everyone he was going to be a wrestler without actually doing anything about it. It took a fight with his brother using words, not fists to finally light a fire under him. Now MJ Russo is the kind of heel who makes kids cry and grown men want to climb the barricade. He wouldn't have it any other way.

Doomslayer is forty-one years old, started training at thirty-six, has wrestled for fourteen different companies across Australia, taken a superkick from James Storm, and is currently exiled from the only wrestling company in Tasmania by his own choice.

Part horror character, part metal musician, part swamp-dwelling smartarse; Frankie Grime is one of Victoria's most distinctive indie wrestlers. We sat down to find out what's really under the paint.

Ben Barnett started wrestling at 26, late by anyone's measure, after years of saying maybe one day. Two years in, he's running two characters, main eventing his home promotion, and still carrying a black armband in his bag for the coach who believed in him before he believed in himself. This is the story of the Gambler, the bet he made on himself, and why the dice always get rolled again.

Pete Morgan has been wrestling for five years. The most significant portion of which has been spent doing death match for DMDU while also training the next wave at Malice Wrestling Federation. He is made of kintsugi philosophy, MMA retirement, light tubes, rugby league instincts, and a degree of self-awareness that has recently led him somewhere important: toward help.