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CHRIS HERO DISCUSSES TONIGHT'S RETURN TO THE RING, LESSONS LEARNED FROM TRACY SMOTHERS AND GOALS FOR THE NEXT YEAR

Earlier this week, I sat down with Chris Hero in advance of his return to the ring as an active professional wrestling tonight in San Francisco, CA against Timothy Thatcher for West Coast Pro Wrestling, which will stream live for free on their YouTube channel.  Some highlights from the conversation:

Lessons learned from Tracy Smothers and imparting them on others:

"Another lesson that I learned from Tracy was that, he tried to help a lot of people and a lot of people burned him over the years, whether it was financially or if it was disrespectfully, like there were just.

He just always would hop in a car with people and just, try his best to give them and, those situations didn't always end up on good terms, but that never made him jaded. It never stopped him from trying to help people. It never dissuaded him from giving someone some advice.

It's  just really   you don't see that much, sometimes you get burned once or twice and then you close up and it's really hard to get anything out of you. But I have just found that by trying to be thoughtful and kind and helpful not everybody's going to appreciate it, right?

It's just not going to be the same with every single person. But the ones that do appreciate it and the ones that you are able to impact in a positive way. It just I don't know. It just compounds. And then when you help someone and then you see that other person helping other people, I don't know.

It just feels really good, man. It feels really good to to do things for people and just to see like a positive influence, right? Because there are,  there's just this belief,  uh, and some people, Amplify it where,  the old wrestlers are crotchety and, hate new wrestling and the new wrestlers don't give a shit about the older generations and they only want to do what they want to do.

And, it's just this old versus new thing that I'm sure has been happening since the beginning of time with the gold dust trio. But  it's, I find when you work with people one on one. There are some people that kind of follow those trends, and there's some people that, don't ask for advice, and there's some people that don't give advice, right?

But I feel like when you get people one on one, you get to find out who they really are, what their motivations are, and you can get through to pretty much anybody. And  they're,  sometimes, sometimes when it comes to younger wrestlers just doing a bunch of crazy shit in their matches, right? Because, everybody wants to do cool stuff and get recognized and get...

Praised for it and get money for it and become a star and get flown places like that's what everybody wants, right? But   sometimes doing the flashy thing, the crazy thing is at the expense of the match or the expense of your opponents, right? It's just, or just the expense of the story that you're trying to tell in the match.

 And when there's peer pressure, that's oh yeah say you have a tag match and you're trying to make sure that the people are legal for the finish because, we have legal tags not that it matters, but it matters. Sometimes the peer pressure is...  It's fine.

It's whatever. And they just don't want to spend any more mental bandwidth on trying to figure out a way to get people legal for the finish. They just want to do their thing. But sometimes you can get through to someone to be like, Hey, if you do it this way and you come up with a way. And you make it harder on yourself when you do the thing and you do it successfully.

It's more rewarding and it feels better and it helps you build up your own personal integrity. And it's just tough. It's easy to take the easy road, especially in wrestling. Wrestling is  so different that like you can do anything in a pro wrestling match, right? You can do anything. And honestly.

I hate to say this, but nothing matters, right? Nothing really matters. It only matters if you make it matter. Because you can do everything wrong and still get over and make a million dollars. It's just how wrestling is. Do you have a personal integrity that wants you to get over and make a million dollars, but also in the process try to have your matches make sense?

Try to not... Bust your opponent's eardrum or drop them on their head or or, you're in a match with a green guy. Are you going to eat them up or are you going to try to find a thing or two that they can do that teaches them but also allows them to get a little something from an audience, right?

These are just little things that happen along the way that make it harder for you as a professional. But if you do it and you make a habit out of it, it just makes things more rewarding. So we need people to encourage and inspire the younger generations to...  Just,  it doesn't matter, but it does matter, right?

It matters if you make it matter. So what's really going to matter to you? Are you just doing this for fun? Cause you wouldn't just want to do a cool, fun thing on the weekend and not think about it anymore. Okay. That's fine. But do you want to do something that will have an impact not only on a live audience, but on a locker room, on your peers that you share the ring with and then make a difference in people's careers.

 It's important to have those kind of influences, so I'm always,  if people want to talk to me, I'm always there to talk to something I've learned from Tracy."

Tonight's WCPW event streaming live:

"Our show will stream live for free on YouTube on the West Coast Pro YouTube channel.

Yeah, you'll be able to watch it there live when the show is done airing live. It'll come down and then it'll go up on IWTV. But that's the model that we've we've been trying for our last two shows. So just trying to do something a little bit different. It's tricky when you're on the West Coast and there's a time difference.

But we want people to have access to our shows. And then the more hardcore fans, you get an IWTV subscription or whatever it is to be able to watch things for on a repeat, watch them regularly rewatch them. But it, I really think. It's just important for eyes to get on our products,  West coast.

It is an independent wrestling company, right? It's there's not a lot of frills but I do really believe in this company and I believe in the roster. I believe in the people behind the scenes and I do feel that. They are doing something a little bit different and they are doing something a little bit special.

 It's my privilege to be a part of this company and to be working with them. And, this I think I said this earlier, this will be my ninth show that I've come in and helped helped out with West Coast Pro. And it's flown by, man. It's really flown by. But I'm excited to see where we are at the end of the year and looking back on that first show that I did and, how things how things progress into 2024 and beyond."

Kamala:

"I'll say is I was also a massive fan of Kamala when I first saw his pictures in the magazines as a kid, I didn't start watching until 89.  So I didn't get to see him until he made his comeback, right? Just a massive fan of the way he looked. his whole gimmick.  Then I had the privilege of being in a battle royal with him at one of those ballpark brawls on upstate New York. And I got eliminated from battle royal by Kamal. That was pretty fun. anD then also when he was doing his music I had gotten some pins made, that had the stars and the moon on it.  I packaged them up and I sent him a check for one of his CDs, right? He had the little electronic music maker thing and was singing over top of it. He had a myspace page with music and stuff.   Anyway, I sent him that he sent me back a picture and a personal note. And I just, just always had great appreciation for him as a person, but then also just the incredible performer and just the presence that he had. So I was pretty happy to also have my own little run in with Kamala."

 

Performers finding a balance between entertaining themselves and doing what's right for the match:

"Man, I had a match with this kid named Shun, the Kabuki kid from Kyoto, Japan, and it was in CZW's Ultraviolent Underground. It was when they were not allowed to do their hardcore matches in PA anymore, so they started filming them and then showing them on the Tron, right? So I had this Tournament of Death..The Kabuki Kid, which was basically me being anti hardcore and him trying to bust me open and we were brawling in a junkyard. That was very different than the kind of stuff that CUW was doing at the time, but it's a very... silly, funny match that I enjoyed. We had Smart Mark video filming it, and I used to gauge if they pop for something, if they're laughing for something, you know you've done a good job because these guys, have watched more wrestling than anybody else.

I and you do these kind of matches to amuse yourself, but at the same time, it's not at the detriment of the match or the detriment of the fan's enjoyment. The trick is like we don't want to be selfish performers, right? But if there's something that we want to do that we. really want to do in a match, whether it's a move or a false finish or a reversal or something.

If there's something that we really want to do, figure out a way to do it that'll be satisfying for the audience or it'll tell a story and have a payoff. Like you can do, cause a lot of people, I remember a guy wanted to give me a move that I thought was dangerous and we went back and forth about it, for a couple hours and then finally I just put my foot down and said, I didn't want to do it.

He said, but it's my favorite move.  And I just I think that a lot sometimes when someone just gets stubborn and they just want to do their favorite moves. They don't care if it gets a reaction. They don't care if it's the right thing to do. They don't want to think about it. They just want to do their favorite, right?

And wrestling is really tough. It's just hard on you physically and mentally and emotionally and sometimes you just want to do your fucking favorite move. And as long as that's not your default, as long as that's not the way that you perform every single week it's fine once in a while.  You have to like,  you have to experience everything.  Yeah, but if you are able to do your favorite move in a way that, the fans find it very enjoyable and your opponent's fine and whatever, it tells a good story, like yeah, fuck yeah, do it. But it's, that's the interesting part to me, is trying to figure out. A way to get it ends.

Guys will see a spot. There'll be a gift going around on Twitter, right? And then you'll watch the shows on the weekend and you'll see three people do it, right? And it's like they do it because they saw it and they wanted to do it.  If you see it and you want to do it, try to figure out a way to where it makes sense.  Like, how does it make sense with what your opponent's doing, and what you're doing, and whatever, and that's the creativity. Or taking the thing that you saw, and putting your own little spin on it, and doing it in a slightly different way. And that just it's like music, right? People take a melody, they take a melody, they take some lyrics, they put it to something, and then somebody hears that, and it inspires them to take that same melody and put some different lyrics over it, and next thing somebody's taking the lyrics but adding a different melody that's what pro wrestling is.  It's taking these things and making your own creation but the fun thing is how you do it, how you come up with it, and where you go from there."

Goals for himelf after Tonight's Return over the next year:

"Yeah. I think it's hard to say it's hard to speculate on how i'll feel During my match, after my match, and I think a lot of that will dictate to what the follow up is for this.

I know I want to continue working with West Coast and just trying to help. Help tighten things up, help help people progress personally, but then also as a unit with West Coast enjoying my coach's job with AEW. I want to learn more about that. I want to learn more facets of the business behind the scenes.

And just, work to. Continually do a better job, because there's some parts of the job that I feel really comfortable with and I feel like I have a knack for, but there's other parts that are, it's just a little bit trickier. So I'm trying to wrap my head around all that. I'm trying to be better than I was the week before.

So it's really just, I've been trying to You know, whipping myself into a little bit better shape, for this show,  it's just to continue to keep my head on straight, keep my body going in the right direction. I keep learning more about pro wrestling. So it's hard to say specifically what I'll do, but it's just to keep doing the things that I'm doing and carry them on in a positive in a positive fashion, but then also progress so that, when we're a year from now, yeah.

Celebrating the one year anniversary of my return to pro wrestling, right?  My one year birthday of my comeback, right? I'm just, hoping to be better and smarter and more patient, and then also have positively impacted others even more along my way."

Keeping his Positive Vibe for Professional Wrestling:

"My advice is to have a little bit of balance. You gotta have things outside of wrestling that you enjoy.

I like music I like basketball, sports in general, right? Movies, TV shows, there's a lot of entertainment that can go around and you can distract yourself from, because sometimes wrestling is just too much. Sometimes it's just too much, right? It's on every goddamn day of the week, Mike.  So you have to have a bit of a balance, right? Because if you put all your eggs the pro wrestling basket. Sometimes wrestling is just going to suck, man.

That's going to suck the life out of you. It's going to suck the fun out of it. So you got to have something else you can bounce on. If you have a support system, you have some loved ones, friends, family, whatever that you can rely on in those times. That's also very important. But as far as wrestling itself getting yourself invested in other people's journeys and careers is just another way to fill to feel fulfilled.

I could, turn on Wrestling any day of the week. And find someone I've crossed paths with and then just knowing that I'm a part of their journey. It's fulfilling. It's satisfying. 

Finding people that are young and being able to. Say something to them that excites them about pro wrestling, whether it's like Hey, you, you find a 20 year old that's in wrestling school and he's, whatever, and all he knows is the last five years of mainstream pro wrestling, and you're like, Oh man watch this match between Sean Michaels, Marty Gennady Doug Summers and Buddy Rose, right? It's  taking their brain to a completely different planet and just Hey, this exists. What do you think about it? All right. Oh, here's this guy named Manny Fernandez.  You should watch that. Or There's this crazy Japanese wrestler guy named Survival Tobita, and he ran these shows called Saitama Pro Wrestling, where they didn't even have rings, and he fought monsters, like it was a Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla kind of thing just these weird, quirky things, these old promos that you can introduce to people.  Old wrestling bloopers, like that kind of stuff just resonates with people in a different way, as opposed to  all due respect, watch this Omega Okada match that's going to take 75 minutes of your time to watch and pay attention. And that stuff is great and it's exceptional and it's, like top of the top, but sometimes you need to touch base with people on a different level.

It's just really funny.  Being able to do that and to connect with people and then also be a part of their journey, like I said that helps take things away from your own personal career, your ups, your downs, whatever it may be, the frustrations that you have that it's just a really good way to keep things fresh in your mind and not to dwell on just what's in front of you."

To purchase tickets to the event, click here or CLICK HERE for WCPW's YouTube channel, where the entire show will stream live tonight at 9:30 PM EST for free.

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