54 MEN’S HEALTH
PHOTOGRAPHY: TOM WATKINSinto the ring and improvise new characters
in front of their fellow wrestlers. Burridge
is Metallico, King of the Scrapheap, while
Cameron portrays the sleek Spider-Man-
esque demigod El Rey Anansi. The school
boasts a toothsome El Piranha, a fierce
Crimson Bear and a gravity-defying
Lechuza (it’s Spanish for “owl”). I ask
Burridge if having a character is entirely
necessary. He cuts me no slack.
“If you go out there as yourself, you’re
fucked,” he says. “No one wants to see their
next-door neighbour wrestle, unless their
next-door neighbour is Hulk Hogan.”
Come Monday night, I’m gearing up
for my third and final bout in the Lucha
Britannia ring. The students have been
asked to don their costumes, and I gawk at
the normal people I met the previous week,
who have all transformed into glittering
superheroes, ferocious animals and, in one
case, an adult baby in unicorn slippers.
In the ring and under the spotlight, I’m
conspicuously costume-less. I’ve never
felt more exposed. This could be because
my first opponent is El Rey Anansi. Since I
was last here, Cameron has won the Lucha
Britannia championship title. He did so
after breaking out of a brainwashing spellbecause if I land badly, I could break both
of my elbows. Bounce against the ropes at
the wrong angle, I’m told, and I might snap
my neck. The students at the school talk
about concussions as if they were medals
they’re collecting, and everyone wears
knee pads except me – an oversight that
my swollen shins make me regret by the
end of the night. The piledriver, banned
by the WWE, is perfectly acceptable
here. Burridge even tells me with pride
that someone at the school was once
body-slammed so hard that they shat
themselves. All of which suggests to me
that wrestling is, in fact, real.HEROES IN TRAINING
While Burridge hops into the ring to train
with the big boys, a man called Cameron
takes the lead in my training. He’s one
of the school’s breakout stars: a lithe,
dreadlocked warrior who doesn’t exactly
fit the bullish wrestler stereotype. After
showing me how to fall, he instructs me on
how to do a wrist lock. He teaches me how
to execute the forward roll, the backward
roll, even the tiger roll – not, it turns out,
a type of sushi. As my learning progresses,
everything happening in the ring starts
to click into place. Wrestling is more like
dancing than fighting, a series of acrobatic
movements and countermovements that
flow together to create the illusion of a no-
holds-barred battle. “You have to imagine
that each move is an individual Lego
brick,” Burridge explains, “and you’re
trying to build a pretty solid wall.”
My wall currently resembles three or
four mismatching bits of Duplo. That’s
why I enlist Burridge for a one-on-one
training session the following day. He
teaches me how to bounce off the ropes,
how to “push” and “turn”, how to make
a ring that is only three strides wide feel
a hell of a lot wider, and how to master a
series of pin combinations (useful for more
than ATMs). In a particularly terrifying
ordeal, I’m ordered to jump from the
bottom rope, to the middle, then to the top,
where I teeter above the corner of the ring.
It’s basically a squat jump onto a tightrope,
and I’ve never been happier than when
Burridge allows me to get down.
By the end of my second session, I
already feel as though I’ve had a folding
chair broken across my back. Burridge is
used to this; he tells me it’s a well-known
trope that wrestlers have spines like
crocodiles. I, on the other hand, have
the spine of a tree frog, and I’m no closer
to settling upon my fearsome luchador
persona. At the school, students are
encouraged to “cut promos”: that is, stepEL REY ANANSI
TRAPS OUR MAN
ON THE CANVASTHE ADVENTURIST
PRACTISES A THROW
ON BURRIDGE