I've recently been doing lots of work with the All Party Parliamentary Group for Wrestling, including an event on concussion protocols that we hosted at Loughborough and contributing to a parliamentary debate on licensing. All the details of these innovations can be found at ​https://wrestling-research.lboro.ac.uk/ 

Image from the Concussion in Wrestling event at Loughborough University in June 2023.

We recently published the first article from the Health and Wellbeing in Professional Wrestling project. It thinks about the problem of concussion in professional wrestling and indicates ways we might make progress. The lead writer on this article was the newly-minted Professor Dominic Malcolm of the School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences here at Loughborough. We are proud to share the findings of this part of the British Academy project and sincerely hope it will make a difference to the wrestling community. It can be read open access here.

In November 2022 I received funding from Loughborough University to co-host the first wrestling symposium at the Houses of Parliament in conjunction with Playfight Wrestling School and the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Professional Wrestling. It was the first time that change-makers from across the wrestling industry (over 60 people attended) have come together to try and make positive change in British professional wrestling. I presented about the British Academy project data alongside my colleague Dr Dominic Malcolm. Other speakers included the Right Honorable Michelle Donelan MP (the Minister Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport); the co-chairs of the APPG Alex Davies-Jones MP and Mark Fletcher MP; Tom Dawkins and Claire Heafford from innovative wrestling school Playfight; Steve Duncan-RIce from the Equity Union; the Ann Craft Trust; and Rhia O'Reilly who gave an impassioned intervention on #SpeakingOut. It was a really successful day and, we hope, will lead to better relationships across the wrestling community.

Over the past few months, Sam and I have had some wonderful conversations with wrestlers, academics and creatives as part of the Grappling Arts podcast. We have discussed such a wide range of topics: wrestling and physical culture, how we can reimagine wrestling as a form of feminist resistance, local and global cultures of wrestling, and much, much more. Do check out the new episodes if this interests you. Coming soon will be a recording of our roundtable on Collaborative Touch (with Tom Dawkins, Claire Heafford, Dominic Malcolm, Gareth McNarry and me) which we presented as part of the LU Arts Interface Festival this month, and an episode with wonderful performance maker Heather Bandenburg.

Today we launched the Health and Wellbeing in Professional Wrestling project website. We are delighted with the look of it and hope to be regularly updating this website to document our findings, next steps and making the outputs available to the general public. This project, funded by the British Academy, aims to conduct a supportive healthcheck of British professional wrestling. We have now completed the interview phase and are working through all the mounds of data we have gathered over the past four months. We are really excited to share the outcomes of this project. Do keep an eye on the website if you want to know more:  wrestling-research.lboro.ac.uk/

With all the busyness of the start of term, I missed a significant announcement: episode 3 of The Grappling Arts podcast is now available! We had a tremendous time talking to Jetta and Erin Angel, two fantastic veterans of the British wrestling scene. Do check it out if you fancy learning more about women's wrestling, comedy and wrestling, or the difference between coming up via the camps and learning your craft at a wrestling school. These two amazing athlete-artists were so generous in their conversation. Sam and I are delighted to share it with you. Here is a link.

And, while I am here, if you want to know a little more about our new Health and Wellbeing in Professional Wrestling project then Loughborough University put out a press release (thanks to our PR guru Pete for putting this together for us!).

Last November a group of twelve medics/academics/wrestlers met for lunch at the Elite Athlete Centre at Loughborough University. The aim was to have a day-long conversation about some of the main challenges and opportunities for wrestler health and wellbeing. We discussed a range of topics, from the strains placed on mental health to concussion protocol (or lack thereof). It was a fascinating conversation and we left feeling that a larger project that really dug into these issues would be not just interesting but vital. Since then we have committed to applying for external grants to fund this work. And, this week, I can make the happy announcement that the team (that is me, Prof Mark King, Dr Anthony Papathomas, Dr Dominic Malcolm and Sam West) has secured a British Academy Small Grant. We are, as you might imagine, delighted with this outcome, especially in such a competitive funding landscape. For the British Academy to be forward-thinking enough to see this project as worthy of its money is a big deal. So, watch this space (and, in the long run, hopefully, actual physical spaces) for more as 2020 moves into 2021.

A few weeks ago (actually before the revelations of the #SpeakingOut movement) I had the pleasure of chatting to Dr Andy Kesson, the host of the 'A Bit Lit' YouTube channel about all sorts of interesting things. I am still thinking about our conversation, particularly, the way that my work combines thinking and doing, and the way wrestling compels us to think in a different way about touch (a vital inquiry in our COVID-19 world when we literally cannot touch). I talk a bit about how we can move from snarky, standoffish wrestling research to something more holistic, engaged and risky. We touch on the relationship between the live and the mediated, and arguments about class, taste and violence. And we, of course, talk about Trump and the way we can read his rise to power through the excessive theatricality of wrestling.

It was joyful to speak to Andy. This film is part of a week of wrestling-related scholarship and practice on 'A Bit Lit'. These films (and indeed all the films this project has produced during lockdown) are really awesome and I would thoroughly recommend them. 

If you enjoyed part one of my interview with Steelchair Magazine then here is part two in which I talk about Ironwomen, Summerslam and silence (and Humza briefly connects my name with JR's: career highlight there!). If there is anything in either part of this interview which takes your fancy or you would like to discuss, then I am always glad to hear from folks. Thanks again to Humza and Steelchair for having me, and taking the time to listen to all the stuff I have in my head! Here is the link.

I’ve experienced standing ovations before, and some worthy standing ovations, but I’ve never experienced, ever, where everyone just stood up as one body to celebrate this moment that they had been a part of. It was just beautiful ​(on Kanji v Charli Evans Ironwoman Match).