Exclusive Interview With Riptide Wrestling's Josh Bevan

2018 has been a fantastic year for Riptide Wrestling even though they’re at a relatively young age the Brighton promotion have rapidly risen to join the top five of UK Independent Wrestling promotions.

However, it has been a tough time to shortly after their three-nighter Brighton Championship Tournament the South Coast promotion announced the news there were taking a break before returning to a sellout tomorrow night for their Halloween show, Black Water.

IMAGE VIA RIPTIDE WRESTLING

Before the big show, I was likely enough to sit with creator and owner of Riptide Wrestling Josh Bevan at The Mash Tun to talk beginnings, what he wanted from wrestling, Brighthelm, issues, the online product, the Brighton Championship, the break and the future.

Oddly enough the genesis of Riptide is something a lot of south coast wrestling fans have felt and the frustration of having the closet promotion was London’s Progress.

“The genesis was sort of around myself finding out about UK Independent wrestling really. Finding out how much I liked it, all these wonderful things, all these wonderful performers and being frustrated by not being able to share that with my friends in Brighton because it wasn’t here, it was hard to get people to go elsewhere when they sort of didn’t know how much of a good time they would have” Bevan explained.

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Progress Wrestling was also some sort of catalyst, “the first Progress show I went to was a Manchester ticket and that’s exactly it I had to travel up to Manchester to see that and yeah exactly not only did you have to travel, you might not be able to get tickets to these other shows in other towns that were the ilk that I think Brighton would like, which kind of made sense.”

These frustrations gave him the emotional motivation to do something and the fact a major UK city like Brighton didn’t have a scene until now is a bit mental, but there were things he thought could be better in UK wrestling to share with his friends.

From that moment, alongside his friend Tom West, sharing wrestling with Brighton and vice versa became a reality and Riptide Wrestling was born.

It was interesting to learn what Bevan wanted to bring and fans would feel he is achieving, but originally he stated “I felt the subsidiary skills and the support skills around the in-ring work, what the wrestlers were doing a lot of the time for me I just felt they weren’t as good as they could be.”

He does go on to stress that money is a big reason for these other promotions not able to do these things and people can hone their skills, but it didn’t stop him from being annoyed “I felt like the ring work was the best it could be but it wasn’t the best it could be if everything around it was a little bit slicker.

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“Then the same work would be infinitely better to a consumer basically and yeah it’s about packaging and presenting it in the best way I can really and supporting it I felt like the in-ring work was under-supported,” said Bevan.

One of the main talking points when leaving every show there's an injection and use of humour as there are some funny moments or highlights, but we shouldn’t describe the Brighton promotion as a comedic promotion.

“I think if a show goes over half ha-ha I get every itchy if it gets up to half ha-ha I get a bit itchy, to be honest with you. Because I think not only is the seriousness maybe undercut a little bit if you have it rubbing up against too much funny stuff.”

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Yet Bevan does admit humour does play its part even in this upcoming show there were changes made to make sure fun was had using a popular match from the Brighton Championship as an example, “I certainly don’t look at us as a comedy wrestling thing but you’ll get some ha-ha from a Riptide show for sure because it’s one of the reasons wrestling is so fantastic right? Dave Benson Phillips and Session Martina versus the Anti-Fun Police.”

Meanwhile, on their social media Riptide describe themselves as “cinematic independent wrestling” and if you haven’t seen their online project, you should because it does look fantastic and the reason for this is again Bevan’s belief of things could be better.

“It was about like ‘I think this could look a lot better, I think wrestling could look a lot better’ and I felt the need for it to look a lot better and I had a suspicion that it could. So we got Dave along for the first one and some wrestling guys along for the first one and kinda worked out what was what and went okay. I think we can film it all like this and it’s going to look amazing and we had to tweak it to purpose and make sure we get the right coverage.

Bevan continues, “So I didn’t have a vision looking exactly how it looks, but I did have a vision for it looking better and I wanted to see what better looked like and then we go from there.”

However, the feeling of Bevan being a perfectionist continue to show as he believed the visuals could look better and he’s right they do, check out the match below.

This comes to show again when he found their home in the form of the Brighthelm and after some searching, it's surprising to learn to find somewhere to home wrestling was hard then you might think.

“There just isn’t many, there really isn’t many. We’re sat between two venues that I have an aspiration to run and our current venue. Do I want to run in the main room in the Dome? Absolutely. Do I want to run in the Corn Exchange when that reopens? Absolutely.”

Bevan sounded firm on what he wouldn't do describing them as “a lot of halls and shit places” and is right think that his product for both audience and talent deserved better.

This is why the Brighthelm became the ideal home as it was "the Brighthelm or nothing in so many ways.”

Why does this small, unknown (if you leave outside the city) centre the perfect place?

“The Brighthelm were always really open and they got back to us and it was appropriate. I go in there and I go like ‘shit there’s an awesome lighting rig already in here’. We’re right in the heart of BN1 in the Brighthelm and that’s important to me because you’ve got the heart of this city here.

“The Brighthelm is an awesome place and I think however long. I would like to think in whatever we do in terms of maybe booking up to a big show every year at a change of venue and then maybe that venue becomes the home. I find it very hard to see a future when it’s on our terms and not there’s to do something at the Brighthelm. Even if our main show goes to another venue, we’d still be wanting to do another show there and don’t get me wrong, I see the Brighthelm as our home for the next three, four, five, six years, as long as they have us.”

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But it’s not all rainbows and good times as Bevan reveals the hardship of running a wrestling promotion and throughout the interview, he always seems to have his business hat on in the form of the Riptide beanies.

He does serious though that these issues are his only and does come from fans first mindset.

“We’re defiantly looking at other projects for Riptide Wrestling could output at a lower price point for the fans just because £25 is the very, very, very, very, very lowest I can charge at the moment at the Brighthelm shows. It doesn’t mean it’s affordable and we tried doing that every month and we couldn’t get the numbers we needed to continue to do it.

“To do what we need to do at the Brighthelm at the moment, we need to sell it out and anything less than a sell out losses money. Now that’s my problem and I’m not getting out my little violin out, that’s MY problem I do that to do what I’ve got to do to build the brand and as I said that’s my problem” stresses Bevan.

What does this mean for the future of Riptide? Nothing major but next year it’s possible that they’ll reduce the shows to about half. Again if he could do other shows for cheaper he would and especially if it’s good value but he knows people are struggling in this current economic climate.

This was a massively highlighted during the promotions mega three day Brighton Championship during Pride weekend. It came about as a happy accident.

“When I went to the Brighthelm and wanting to book having done a three or four shows, I was like 'okay let’s get 2018 in the books and wanted to do a two/three day' and the time that was available was August 2nd – 3rd and that wasn’t necessarily done deliberately to Pride, it was sort of 'it’s Pride as well? Ok this can go one of two ways, fuck It, let’s do it.’”

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Even though he was happy with how the shows went, but does admit if the shows took place other then Pride weekend he could’ve made a profit mainly down to accommodation in the city inflated the costs meaning travelling fans couldn’t come and Bevan understand and likely shows weren’t empty and the overall vibe, energy and positivity made for a better weekend.

However, it's unlikely it’ll ever happen again for one reason that’s not about money.

“It’s my mother’s birthday on Monday and me and the men of the household still get a bit of flack for booking those shows.”

Meanwhile, after Chuck Mambo became the first ever Brighton Riptide Champion, the South Coast promotion announced that they’ll be no shows in the months of September and October and Bevan gives a full reason.

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“This is interesting because my hand was focused there as I talked about earlier with the tickets £25 in 2017 the tickets were under-priced, selling out but under-priced we brought them up to where we’d break even on a sell-out, instead of losing money on a sellout and they stopped selling out.
"I was just about to absorb the loss previously but from that 25 quid price point the shows from when we brought that in six shows only one sold out.

“So there’s a deficit and essentially those shows that got lost, September and October, I couldn’t incur more deficit. I needed to earn the money with my job to clear up the deficit that already incurs. So I was focused there.”

However, the break might’ve been the best thing to have happened to the company as it was able to give Bevan time to plan the move forward and it’ll include more promotion for the online content and exploiting the main shows better.

“I think the best thing to do was to take some time off to have a little breather and to do what’s what and I think in general that main show does need thinning out a bit month-to-month just so we can exploit it a little better and hype our online product, which is massively underexploited because we do the show because of the availability of our editor that comes out relatively close to our next show, we have to already start selling our next show before touch promoting our online show.

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“So giving us a bit more time there and in general we locked ourselves into a very-very intensive state of delivery in delivering a recorded product and live product every month and not having a little space in between those times because we knew it stunted our room for improvement. It’s nice that we come in at a high based level of quality but there are things I want to do and a little bit of time in between shows will help us do that” added Bevan.

As for the future of Riptide, despite Bevan being open to the idea of working with other promotions. It’d have to be in the best interest for both him and Riptide and no doubt the other promotion. However, I’m sure fans would love to see a big show in the future involving the likes of Progress.

Instead for Bevan, it’s stability and hopefully start making money in the near future but after a crazy 2018 brought into the limelight he’s in no rush and being consistent is the main thing.

However, he did reveal some aspirations, “I want to be booking up to a venue change at the end of next year. I want to tinker with other brands this year, I’ve got my targets for on-demand turnover, I’ve got my targets for merch turnover, I’ve got things I want to do with certain talents in turns of next year I want everyone on the roster to be more over.

“But fundamentally it’s just about making it work and just grinding and recruiting mass and experience and whilst bringing that quality up.”

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The sold-out Riptide Wrestling: Black Water has a great card which includes:

BRIGHTON CHAMPIONSHIP MATCH
CHUCK MAMBO (c) vs EDDIE DENNIS
TK COOPER vs VIPER vs MILLIE MCKENZIE vs CANDY FLOSS vs FLASH MORGAN WEBSTER vs JACK SEXSMITH
(Winner receives a Brighton Championship opportunity at the RIPTIDE Rumble 2019)
CHRIS BROOKES vs DAVID STARR
SPEEDBALL' MIKE BAILEY vs CARA NOIR
MONEY VS EVERYBODY vs THE OJMO & TEAM WHITE WOLF
LORD GIDEON GREY vs JORDON BREAKS
THE AUSSIE OPEN CHALLENGE
KRIS WOLF vs "KEYBOARD WARRIOR" KURTIS CHAPMAN

If you did miss out then make sure you check the show out and past shows here - https://riptidewrestling.pivotshare.com/