TJ Wylde

What he wants people to say when it’s all over isn’t about titles or bookings or fees. He thinks about George Julio, a figure who’s become something of a folk legend in Australian wrestling circle whose name conjures stories wherever it’s spoken, whose presence in a room makes the stories stop being adequate.

That’s the template.

Not a dickhead. A good bloke. Good to be around. Made everyone feel comfortable. And then he’d get out in the ring and he’d kill you. But it was fun. Everything he did was fun.

Beyond that, what he’d most want is to pass something on. To train wrestlers, wherever that might happen to be. He finds the teaching side of the craft more genuinely engaging than the performance side, which makes a certain sense for someone who came to wrestling as a student and has never really stopped thinking like one.

A kid from Albury-Wodonga who pressed play on a cousin’s wrestling DVD at six years old.

Who quietly cross-referenced university locations against wrestling schools.

Who signed up for training the fourth time an ad found him.

Who drives two hours to Melbourne for fifty bucks and puts it straight back in the petrol tank.

That’ll do.