New Zealand born, Margate-based wrestler TK Cooper, explains to me his “probably most spectacular move” - something called the Shooting Star Press.
“I’m on the top rope and I jump forward facing my opponent but do a backflip at the same time,” he explains. “And then I’ll land torso to torso with them,” he continues, describing a motion that’s difficult to fathom.
From the amped up characters to theatrical manoeuvres and clobbering opponents with chairs or hay bails, there’s nothing not dramatic about wrestling. It's kind of like a genre-led improvised melodrama.
TK Cooper, along with fellow wrestler Jordon Breaks, set up wrestling promotion outfit Pro Wrestling Colossus, just months after moving to the seaside.
Created as an opportunity for local “trainee” wrestlers to gain more experience and to elevate their game, Pro Wrestling Colossus has steadily grown in popularity since it launched in August 2024.
It brings together wrestlers part of the Thanet Pro Wrestling school and some of the big names in the UK and European independent wrestling scene, drawing on both TK Cooper and Jordon Breaks' extensive networks.
Ahead of Pro Wrestling Colossus' biggest show to date, Rumble by the Sea, TK Cooper unpacks wrestling’s unique style of theatre, the niche but popular wrestling scene Margate has incubated, and how Pro Wrestling Colossus is modernising wrestling's image along the East Kent coast.
Strange Tourist: As a relatively recent arrival to Margate, Pro Wrestling Colossus must be a fairly recent thing?
TK Cooper: Jordon [Breaks], who also started PWC, is from here. I met him in London at a wrestling school. He moved back to Margate in 2023 and by coincidence, I moved here in 2024.
There was already a wrestling school - Thanet Pro Wrestling. Jordon got involved, and gave it a bit more structure. A year later, I moved down and started mucking in as well.
Until that time, [TPW] had been doing their own thing, wrestling amongst themselves. And that’s the reason why Colossus became a thing. I went to watch a show and thought, there's so much potential here but if they just wrestle themselves, they're not going to get any better.
Jordon and I have been wrestling for so long, we’ve got loads of really successful friends; loads of people we can lean on to be like, hey, wouldn’t it be cool if you came out to Margate and wrestled a couple of our trainees so they can learn what it's like to wrestle a “real wrestler”? That way, they can learn by osmosis and by rubbing shoulders with bigger names in the industry, because you're only as good as the people you are training or practising or performing with.
How many wrestlers are part of PWC?
You're probably looking at about 16 wrestlers on a show, give or take.
But I'm assuming it’s not the same wrestlers each show?
No, there's definitely a carousel of people coming and going. But there are the staples of the roster. As much as wrestling is a predetermined fight, we have got to get our melodrama and storylines in. So people have to be a part of three to four shows on the balance to establish a story and then pay it off down the line.
How much of a wrestling show is pre-planned and how much of it is improvised?
I would say probably about 40% in-the-moment stuff. It’s so interactive, sort of like a pantomime. It is pre-planned, but you also have a live audience, so you can’t be too militant with what you have planned. If the crowd doesn't react, then you have to pivot or if they react then maybe you stay on that one thing a little longer.
So do you consider wrestling a performance or a sport?
It's honestly tough. We’re too aggressive and too sporty for drama people to really accept us, but then we're also too dramatic for any sport to respect us. So we’re in this purgatory where we're both, but we're also neither.
What's your wrestling character like and how do other wrestlers approach their on stage persona?
My character is my actual personality, just a bit more performative and ramped up a little bit. I'm not like an undertaker or an undead zombie man or a chef or anything kind of elaborate. I'm just a guy from New Zealand. Maybe that’s me being too reductive, but that’s how I see myself.
I would say about 90% of independent level wrestlers are mostly just people… well, I say that but there are characters. In the trainees, The Rockstar - Pulley Adams - is in a band for real, and Big Country - Ben McDonald - is a farmer. So a lot of it is about what parts of your life can influence how you create your character.
Rumble by the Sea is your biggest show yet, is there a different format to past shows?
This one is going to be headlined by a 30 person Royal Rumble match. For the uninitiated, that is a match that starts with two people and then every 90 seconds, a new person will enter the match and the only way to get eliminated is to get biffed over the top rope to the floor. And it’s guys and girls, with about a 20/10 split.
That sounds like pure chaos. How do you go about staging something like that?
With any wrestling promotion there are bookers who plan the show, book the show, and write down all the ideas to present to the wrestlers.
For the most part, a wrestling match is generally left open to the wrestlers to create whatever they want to do within the time frame they get. The only other bits that might be added in are extra dramatic moments, [where the booker might say] we want we want this guy to win, but we need him to win by cheating or this other guy is going to run down to the ring to be a distraction.
When it comes to a 30-person match, it’s a little less structured, except for maybe key moments that we want to spotlight. For the most part, it's quite fast and loose where [wrestlers are told something like], you're coming in at number five, but we need you to get eliminated by number 12. So you have all these little bits to plug in, but you also let people have their creative freedom.
Once you get in the hang of it, it's awesome. For a lot of people, the first couple of fights - maybe even years - the nerves take over. It's the same with drama. People freeze up, get stage fright, get stressed. But rather than forget their lines, wrestlers forget what moves or what sequence to do.
What wrestlers will take part in Sink or Swim?
The big superstar, the Cookie Man will be appearing. We’ve got Sha Samuels, another big name from London. Bo Bells is from East London and she is always popular at our shows. We also have Ronnie Knocks, another London girl.
And if Sink or Swim is one section of Rumble by the Sea, what are the others?
There will be a three versus three match. Our new bad guy faction that formed at the last show, they're called Next Level. The team is David Francisco, Kris Oak and their latest member, Alex Aces. They will face the tag team called Sunshine Machine, which is me and my tag team partner, Chuck Mambo, and our partner is Buck Garcia.
There will be a no-disqualification barnyard brawl match. That's when the wrestlers get the weapons out and whack each other with chairs and hay bails and rakes and other farm-related paraphernalia.
To close the half, we have former WWE wrestling star Mark Andrews coming down to wrestle Jordon Breaks. Mark is from Wales, and he was the first ever Welsh WWE champion. He won the tag team titles, and wrestled for All Elite Wrestling, which is the other big wrestling American wrestling promotion. He was also signed to TNA Wrestling. So that should be a very cool match for Margate.
How has the wrestling scene in Margate developed over the last couple of years?
When we ran our first show, we pre-sold 79 tickets. It was supposed to just be a one and done, but [after] the response we got from the public, we felt obligated to run another one.
By Christmas, literally two shows later, we'd sold pre-sold 120 tickets. Then the first show the following year, we pre-sold 150 tickets. It's been demonstrated in the footfall, it is a cultural thing that people are really starting to pick up.
Would you say that PWC has been able to harness the interest in Margate’s wrestling community and give it a platform?
I think we've modernised the perception of what wrestling is. Back in the day, they had wrestling at the Winter Gardens, where they had the Bushwhackers [former WWE tag team]. UK’s Big Daddy and Giant Haystack [professional wrestlers who had their heyday in the 70s and 80s] wrestled at the Oval bandstand. So Margate is steeped in wrestling history but we have tried to bring it into 2026.
Looking at the future, what do you hope PWC becomes?
I hope it becomes a bit like a ‘can't miss’; everybody is clamouring for a ticket to hang out at the show. That all of the wrestlers, whether they're trying to pursue it full-time or just as a hobby, are getting recognised. [And that the fans] come on the journey of the trainee who has grown into the main event wrestler, and feel a personal attachment to that.
Rumble By The Sea is on Saturday, July 4 at 4pm at the Drill Shed, Cliftonville. Tickets £16.75.
