Simon Gotch has spent 25 years getting slammed, beaten up and dropped on his head—but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t thought about walking away from the wrestling business.
During his appearance on Jasmine St. Claire’s Krazy Train Podcast, Gotch was asked whether there had ever been a point when he wanted to completely quit wrestling and give up on the dream. His answer came without hesitation.
“All the time. All the time. Forever, since I started.”
Gotch said those doubts began almost immediately after he started training. Breaking into the business required him to drive 86 miles in each direction several nights a week, just so he could get yelled at and beaten up by people who were supposed to be teaching him.
“When I was very young, when I first started out, I had an 86-mile drive each way to train. So, 86 miles to training and 86 miles home. I did that anywhere from two to four nights a week for about two years.”
Gotch admitted that he was not naturally athletic when he began training. He described himself as a former fat kid who struggled badly with cardio and survived mostly because he was willing to take punishment.
“Early on, because I was a fat kid, I was not athletic. I think my first day of training I weighed 154 pounds. Obviously, the cardio and stuff were really hard for me. All I really had was that I was willing to get beat up.”
The first few months were especially brutal. Gotch said wrestling training at the time was less about helping students improve and more about seeing how much abuse they could handle without leaving.
“Those first three months were just miserable every night. This was back when wrestling training wasn’t even really helpful. It was just people yelling at you and hurting you as much as they legally could.”
The experience left him driving home in tears and questioning why he was putting himself through it. Still, he kept coming back.
“Those first three months, you’d drive home, sometimes in tears, just like, ‘What the hell am I doing with my life? Why am I doing this?’ Then I’d show up the next day and go right back to training like nothing happened.”
More than two decades later, Gotch still has days when he wants to tell the wrestling business to go to hell. The problem is that he has no idea what else he would do.
“At this point, I’m 43 years old. I’ve been doing this for 25 years, and I’m not really good at anything else.”
“As much as I’ll sometimes get grumpy and be like, ‘Fuck all this. I’m just going to go get a real job,’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, try applying for a real job where all my experience is, well, if you need somebody to be dropped on their head believably and not die, let me tell you, I’m the man for it.’”
Gotch joked that his wrestling résumé probably would not impress many corporate hiring managers.
“You’re not going to see me working for BNY Mellon or Comcast or somebody like that. You’re not going to see me employed in a corporate environment. Wrestling is really the only skill I have, so I stick with it.”
Gotch may think about quitting all the time, but thinking about it and actually walking away are two very different things. Every miserable drive, painful training session and frustrating weekend has still led him back to wrestling.
Do you think Simon Gotch will ever truly leave professional wrestling, or is he in the business for life? Drop your thoughts in the comments.
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