Former Impact Wrestling star Braxton Sutter, who has gone back to using the ring name Pepper Parks on the independent scene, recently spoke with ProWrestlingPost.com, and below are some interview highlights:
On his early training under Les Thatcher:
Les starts you from the ground up, and he is very big on basics and fundamentals. He teaches you how to call things in the ring and on the fly at first. Then, you advance yourself into preplanning stuff, and he really did things the right way. I still use all this stuff to this day, and I’m actually helping to even apply it to train a handful of guys in my home in Buffalo, NY. It’s all his training and principles and fundamentals that I use. I used them the other day, so it still affects me today.
On how ‘Pepper Parks’ came to be:
The original name, Pepper Parks when I was 19 years old and I had really long hair, my first gimmick was that I was a male cheerleader. (laughs) I moved to wrestling school with my best friend from Buffalo, and we debuted together. I don’t know if anyone ever watched MTV ‘True Life,’ they did a special on Les Thatcher’s wrestling school, the HWA (Heartland Wrestling Association), and they showed this on their Fox affiliate.
On Smash Wrestling’s The Northern tournament:
As far as the actual tournament, yeah, wrestling twice in a day, especially ta tournament style, is very taxing and could hurt the younger guys we talked about, Kevin Bennett and Kevin Blackwood, who wouldn’t have much experience with that. But they have shone at everything else they have done, and it wouldn’t blow my mind, they are naturals and are really good. Them doing well wouldn’t surprise me either. For guys like (Matt) Riddle, who is prone to this kind of thing and a super athlete, I don’t think it will be a problem.
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