We offer each of our trainees a summer bursary of up to £1,000 every summer of their degree to spend on journalism work experience or a journalism project, giving them the unique opportunity to travel and explore the areas of journalism they are passionate about.
Here, School of Journalism trainees Thomas Brace and Joe Muhaney share how they spent their summer bursary covering several professional wrestling events.
The School of Journalism summer bursary scheme allowed us to cover several professional wrestling events, interview wrestling talent, and start a British wrestling-themed social media project.
These events included the massive AEW Wembley Stadium PPV All In – but it also included a tiny show at a social club, a brand new independent company, and an 18+ hardcore show.
@britwrescent Mick Foley praises @Simon Cassidy #wrestling #fyp #scottish #inspiration #wwetiktok #mickfoley #praise #ring #announcing ♬ original sound – BritWresCentral
The variety in wrestling events allowed us to cover a number of different angles.
Professional wrestling in Britain is a fascinating concept due to its long history, the ups and downs, and its die-hard, loyal following of fans invoke strong sense of passion and community.
A big motivation behind our drive to cover these events was to discover and tell the human stories behind the wrestling – alongside the fact we are both massive pro-wrestling fans ourselves.
The School of Journalism summer bursary scheme allowed us to have an opportunity which would not have been possible otherwise.
We attended seven shows, produced nine articles articles across four websites, and conducted interviews for our newly-launched British wrestling YouTube and TikTok accounts.
These shows took place across England with events in Newcastle, Liverpool, Manchester, Wolverhampton, and London.
The interviews were with a wide variety of people – from big UK indie stars like Luke Jacobs to newly-trained wrestlers like Ben Rodgers, as well as referees, ring announcers, bookers (writers), and promoters.
This hopefully helped to build a holistic vision of pro-wrestling.
A particular highlight from the interviews was our 40-minute conversation with Insane Championship Wrestling (ICW) legend Jack Jester.
He was incredibly generous with his time and he was able to cover stories about wrestling legend Sabu, training the next generation of wrestlers, and the highs of ICWs glory days.
Furthermore, our conversation with Ciaran McConnell from Infinite Promotions was very intriguing due to his deep knowledge of British wrestling history.
We would love to do follow-up, long-form interviews for some of these wrestling figures as we feel we had only just scratched the surface of what we could have delved into.
In the articles, we attempted to blend wrestling-specific knowledge and terminology with accessible writing that would appeal beyond the confines of wrestling fans.
A particular challenge in these articles was giving each match and wrestler their due respect and time, without writing an article the length of War and Peace.
That being said, it was a pleasure to highlight the incredible work of all the promotions we visited.
@britwrescent Why did Kenny Williams decide to become a wrestler? #wrestling #fyp #inspiration #scottish #wwetiktok #nxt #ukwrestling ♬ original sound – BritWresCentral
This project showed that you don’t have to wait for WWE or AEW to come to Britain, when there is a thriving scene right on your doorstep.
We tried to vary our strategy for each promotion to make sure that we do them justice.
For example, at the debut Burning Heart Pro Wrestling events in Liverpool and Wolverhampton we produced three articles.
These were the usual show review, match report, and feature which reviewed the positives and negatives from the inaugural weekend.
On the other hand, for AEW All In we felt a review and preview were apt for readers of North West Londoner who may be unfamiliar with the company.
Simon Cassidy is the long-running ring announcer for Insane Championship Wrestling, and also hosts the @OneFallSessions talk-show series.
We spoke to @Simon_Cassidy1 about his career in the business, getting his start, and ICW’s new era.https://t.co/2cs6p4Ntgm
— BritWres Central (@britwrescent) October 15, 2024
The same applied for NORTH Wrestling’s Thunderstruck, where we wrote a review for the Write Hooked combat sports blog, going into specifics about the wrestlers, and the matches due to both the target audience of the blog and the excellent quality of the show.
Hopefully the variety in article styles helps compliment the respective show and website and give us different types of work to display in our portfolios.
This was all possible due to the support of the bursary scheme for which we thank The School of Journalism.
Take a look at a few more of Joe and Tom’s interviews below!
https://youtube.com/@britwrescent?si=B-EtcCvkfwk_R7mj
You can read more summer bursary blogs here.
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