People from all walks of life find their way to Invercargill for various reasons, but its pro wrestling community likely is not one that springs to mind for most.
Professional wrestler Hayden Jackson, known in the ring as Cool Guy Sky has been interested in the sport from a young age - but in his hometown of Dunedin there were no outlets for pursuing the sport.
After coming across a documentary featuring Invercargill’s Southern Pro Wrestling (SPW) club, he looked up their next tryout day and seized the opportunity.
‘‘Me and one of my friends thought ‘stuff it, why not?’, so we asked my mum to go for a drive down to Invercargill, which I’d never been there before ... now here we are five years later.’’
‘‘You’ve got to be quite physical, so outside of wrestling training all the boys are in the gym and that sort of stuff.’’
A typical training session involved learning to fall properly - ‘‘that's a big one in really protecting your neck’’ - a lot in fitness, practising striking and technical wrestling.
‘‘You're not just keeping yourself safe, but also the person inside the ring with you, you're keeping them safe as well.’’
He said a lot of the wrestlers also trained in jujitsu, which helped keep the performance as authentic as possible.
‘‘When people are watching it, they're not taken away but they're sort of drawn into it.
‘‘And they go, ‘Oh, well, that was a legit takedown’.
‘‘We’re just trying to crisp it up as a sort of art form.’’
What drew him to the sport was not just the physical side but the larger-than-life personalities involved, he said.
‘‘It's sort of a way of people expressing themselves, I guess a lot of it through characters and stuff. It's different to a competitive sport, in that you're sort of making something together.’’
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, Jackson was planning to head overseas to see what he could do in the wrestling world, but when international travel was halted, he looked into how he could evolve his passion here.
‘‘I've always enjoyed the training and coaching side of this ... That was sort of what drew me towards teaching as well, so I've found a nice balance where I can stay down here and fulfil both passions.’’
Jackson is a student at the University of Otago, and is now in his final year of teachers’ college at its Invercargill campus.
‘‘[Wrestling] has probably defined my life and where I am now ... I wouldn't have ended up down here, I probably wouldn't have ended up teaching ... It keeps me fit, keeps me healthy, keeps me eating good.’’
SPW will host its main event of the year, Southern Rumble, at the Invercargill Workingmen’s Club this weekend.
