Life as a Filipino wrestler

MANILA, Philippines - Netflix’s new original series about ladies’ pro wrestling, Glow, makes a big deal of its characters’ foray into sports entertainment being a result of hard times. While that might have been true back in the day, when the sport was comprised of blue-collar tough guys and brawlers who didn’t have many other prospects, real life now is different. If Alison Brie’s Ruth Wilder and Betty Gilpin’s Debbie Eagan and their friends didn’t have much of a choice in the way of opportunities in ’80s LA, in 2017 the opposite is true: Modern pro wrestling is made up of ambitious young men and women who want to be wrestlers — all for the lifelong love of this brutal sport.

If not for passion, how else would you get willing participants to beat themselves up and live a life of constant pain, all for a crowd’s entertainment and little pay? There are dreams of fame and fortune, but if they don’t already know this when they first step inside a gym, it’s beaten into their minds by those who have gone before: You are risking everything to become a pro wrestler. You’re giving up years of your life, time with your loved ones, and if you choose to live the gypsy life, financial stability, all for a shot at the moon. It’s possible, even realistic, for most of them to never achieve the success those you see every week on TV have.

There’s a lot of talent and luck involved in getting there, so for many people, the idea of doing and being what you’ve always watched growing up is enough of a lure for fans to try it out, like myself. I’ve always wanted to be a professional wrestler for as long as I can remember, and for the longest time, I thought the way to get into the business I’d always dreamed of was to go abroad and train elsewhere, because there was literally nothing here. But necessity is the mother of invention — and inspiration. In 2014, a group of eager fans started the Philippine Wrestling Revolution, a homegrown company that was determined to learn how to wrestle and put on their own shows, no matter what.

I would join PWR later that year, after they held their first show. I’d always promised myself that I would only join a local promotion if they had some legitimate training, based on advice from industry veterans freely available on the magical Internet, and in that first show of theirs, I saw that they knew what they were doing. I finally signed up and entered a world I’d always wanted to be in.

Because I’ve followed pro wrestling for so long and studied the sport before I even really had to, I knew what I was getting into. I knew that there wouldn’t be any instant fame, and I didn’t kid myself that I would be making a decent living from being a wrestler. As I mentioned, only a relative few get to break through to a level where they can live comfortably on wrestling alone. It didn’t make me sad that I wouldn’t be make money from it just yet.

What did depress me about this life, though, was how my day job paled in comparison to the thrill of being a pro wrestler. I would eventually graduate from my training after a few months, but whether I was learning to wrestle in front of my peers in a small boxing gym with a rundown ring or entertaining hundreds of fans in the hot Makati Cinema Square — fans who, by the way, also had dreams of having our own local wrestling scene in the flesh — I would always return to the doldrums of sitting behind my desk the Monday after a weekend of wrestling. This was the job I needed to live, I felt, but damn it if I don’t feel caged in the “real world.”

Work never really got in the way of wrestling, for myself and most of us. Some of my peers had call center jobs that required them to come in on weekends, the only time we could hone our craft. There were some shows that fell on a weekday, but they were so few and far between that I was willing to let them slide; and at this level, wrestling was understanding enough to let me prioritize my day job and make the money I needed to support myself. I feel like I missed out on some things, but not too much. What work did get in the way of was the non-wrestling training I did have to do, in how my office hours — which could get pretty demanding — got in the way of being fit. It’s hard to eat clean when you don’t make enough to consistently buy healthy food, either. (That’s not really an excuse, though. You just make do with what you have.)

And make do we did, because that’s what you’ve got to do to survive. So much like how the campy all-female wrestling depicted in Glow led to an eventual mainstream renaissance of women’s wrestling, once we survive the challenges that come from juggling two different lives, we thrive, and pro wrestling in the Philippines is better than ever after a rocky, uncertain start. I’d say both fans and aspiring wrestlers are lucky: From the seminal PWR being the only choice for a couple of years, there are now three groups to support; and the path to being a wrestler has gotten better — but not any easier — since the day I first climbed into a ring.

If there are any challenges to this hard-earned progress left, though, it’s ourselves. We’ve figured out everything we needed to do in order for this scene to thrive and now, like with just about anything, egos and hubris still threaten to be our downfall. If there’s anything we need to remember, it’s that we’re all just wide-eyed souls working hard and trying to live a dream, and no matter what it looks like, we’re not truly competing against each other here. In the end, it’s all a show — it’s the fantasy of everyone who loves wrestling that’s now become a hard-earned reality. Keeping that alive is the real fight here.