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  • 7 weeks ago
Alex Gilbert and Jack Fenton of UK Pro Wrestling weigh in on John Cena hanging up his wrestling belt, and his influence on young wrestlers across the county.
Transcript
00:00Is this a picture of you and John Cena? So where and when was this?
00:03Yes, it is. It is a photo of me and the GOAT, John Cena.
00:08This was taken in Berlin, of all places.
00:11I was working, non-wrestling related, and essentially I was just walking around and there was a movie premiere.
00:18I went, oh, what's this film? And it was the film Bumblebee.
00:21And my brain went, I think you should stick around, something cool might happen.
00:25Anyway, I stuck around, big long queue, loads of kids holding, like, WWE wrestling figures.
00:29I think John Cena's in this film. Stuck around and he took photos with hundreds of people.
00:36He was holding everyone up and it was an incredible experience to get to chat and have this photo.
00:41So fun.
00:42Brilliant. And obviously it's the end of, you know, one of the, some might say, one of the best WWE wrestlers of all time.
00:48What was both your reactions to that there?
00:51Go for it, Jack.
00:52Well, considering, like, I, we grew up in different eras.
00:55So Alex grew up in the era with, like, Hulk Hogan and the, like, Stone Cold Steve Austin The Rock.
01:00All those kind of people.
01:01The main star for me was John Cena.
01:03All the time I watched wrestling.
01:04So admittedly, when I watched his last match, it was, I teared up a little bit.
01:09It's because someone that's been there, someone that actually got me into wrestling,
01:13somebody that encouraged me to start the wrestling company that we run, is now gone.
01:18And, yeah, something's gone from my heart.
01:20End of an era.
01:21Yeah, exactly.
01:22Yeah, absolutely.
01:23Alex, what was your reaction there?
01:24I mean, all good things come to an end, right?
01:27And seeing it live, I did stay up and watched it live, and you knew what was going to happen.
01:34You sort of just knew it in your heart.
01:36But I retired myself earlier this year, and obviously not on the same scale of John Cena, of course.
01:42But, yeah, it was a big deal.
01:44All those memories, 23 years in the ring, I think, in total.
01:48Incredible man.
01:49You've got to say he's one of the greatest of all time.
01:52Absolutely.
01:53And that was all the way in the States.
01:54So back here in Kent, a while away, but clearly the impact has touched everyone around the world.
01:59What might be on the cards for Kent Pro Wrestling in 2026?
02:03What isn't on the cards?
02:04There's so much going on.
02:05Well, thank you, KMTV, for letting us have your platform.
02:09It's incredible to bring Kent Pro Wrestling filmed in Kent across all the county.
02:14We've got some big title matches coming up, tag championships.
02:18It's a big division with lots of young aspiring wrestlers.
02:21The UKPW Championship, I don't want to give too many spoilers,
02:26but there's some big, big movements happening.
02:30Jack?
02:31Yeah, so I think we've branched out a lot over the years into more venues.
02:35Like, the audiences get bigger, the production values get better.
02:38So you're definitely going to see that improvement both jump in the stories that we're telling,
02:42the quality of the wrestling, but also the production, the amount of people,
02:46and just the general aura.
02:48Of course, yeah.
02:49And you mentioned kind of the length of John Cena's career.
02:53He's a big influence on many wrestlers across different generations and age groups.
02:57So have any of the young people you work with really been touched and influenced by John Cena's career?
03:04Genuinely, yes.
03:05We've got lots of our wrestlers, especially now, who were introduced to wrestling,
03:09much like Jack mentioned, through John Cena as the face of wrestling.
03:13If you're on top for 23 years, I mean, he has been a main event,
03:18pretty much the headline of WrestleManias for so many years.
03:22So our wrestlers aspire to be like him, and actually a few of them recently had a fantastic experience
03:28being trained by John Cena.
03:30John Cena loves to give back to the professional wrestling world.
03:32So a few of our wrestlers had the experience of learning from the greatest of all time.
03:37I ended up having a chat with a lot of the wrestlers at a similar kind of age to me,
03:41and again, they give the same story of John Cena's the reason why they got into it.
03:45They're the reason why they're trying to perceive it as a full-time career.
03:48So you might end up seeing somebody, the next John Cena, just in Kent.
03:52It can be great.
03:53Absolutely.
03:54Jack, Alex, it's been a pleasure.
03:56Thank you so much for joining us.
03:57Thank you very much.
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