Guest Blogger 4: Cameron Matthews (Wrestler4Hire/Hero Hunks)

Guys,

Here's the final section of guest blogger material I've received from Cameron Matthews from Wrestler4Hire and Hero Hunks.

Today, I'm sharing what I've grouped together about the matches themselves. He gives great insight into his process for creating hot matches - training, roles and characters. It seems to me like the keys are using an organic approach based on authenticity and collaboration. Sounds like a great way to operate to me.

Cameron's philosophy: do what comes naturally ...

Cameron says ...

When it comes to the matches, I prefer the guys naturally create what they do. I'll help develop the storyline, moves and maybe a little basic character/emotion of the video, but these guys have ideas and personalities of their own. I think that letting them show that is part of the appeal. Usually at the shoots, I'll have friends hanging out and with the other wrestlers, ideas just come about. Someone will say something and someone else will build on it. It's pretty collaborative.

Collaboration in action.

There is nothing like training for amateur/submission wrestling. It’s a lot of work, as is pro wrestling. I've tried to do workouts to get in wrestling shape, but I've found doing the activity is about the only way to train for an actual match. Your breathing is different when you are using explosive bursts of energy or take a shot when you weren't expecting it.

C'mon, time to get in wrestling shape.

Eliot agrees that Blake's jumping jacks
can't prepare him for wrestling.

One of the biggest challenges is trying to teach someone who has never seen wrestling what it is. My vocabulary and ability to communicate can be extremely limited. I understand how to do this naturally these days. I can't go through all the finer points of taking a perfect back bump or bodyslam or how to feel during certain points in the story or the match, so that leaves me running down the overall idea of what to do and hoping that something clicks inside the wrestler naturally.

This is even a little different from how the pro wrestlers tend to do their stuff. It's way different when there isn't a live audience or the live audience is a dozen other wrestlers.

We could spend hours and hours ... weeks and months preparing for a match, but the guys who wanna get better will get better as we go or will seek to develop on their own time. I get texts and messages from Ethan Andrews, Christian Thorn, Blake Starr, Zach Reno and Scrappy telling me what they've been working on since the last time I saw them.

I can just imagine Zach explaining how he's working on this.

Uh, Scrappy, you don't need to work on sleeping.
You've got it down pat by now.

I like matches to play out in a very natural way. Sometimes you just look at a guy and you know he's gotta get his ass kicked. With a guy like Guido Genatto, you can try to send in a wrestler (or two) to beat him but he's not gonna lose unless he wants to lose. A few times, I'll hear from a guy that he wants to try being a heel or he thinks it'd be fun to get beat up by someone.

Yeah, we can see that Guido's a natural heel.

I guess Guido wanted to lose to Chet and Alvin.
I don't blame him.

So if a match is progressing a certain way that someone has established that he is gonna be the dominant one then I think it feels better to just allow them to complete it that way.

Similar with the characters. These guys all have personalities of their own, so I like watching that come through. If I put too much into it of my own stuff you'd just be watching carbon copies. Sometimes when I wrestle at shoots, you'll get guys trying to portray themselves in a similar way to me. Imagine having 5 versions of me spouting corny jokes while getting their asses kicked. Yikes!

I think Cameron underestimates the appeal of 5 Camerons.
Sounds like a very sexy hoot and a half.

I've given a couple guys a persona. For some reason, I'm a fan of making guys into 1980s and early 1990s jobbers. Giving Johnny Jobber his moniker and costume was one of my favorite ideas. I saw this great 70s style high school warm-up jacket on eBay that I thought would be perfect. I think that's probably one of the few things I can take credit for. I guess I could also take credit for Max Quivers, Sgt. Stiff and Dr. X ... although those are mostly rip-offs of wrestling characters I've seen.

Johnny Jobber and Max Quivers, created by Cameron.

Sgt. Stiff made an impression on Alex's abs and me.

So in my experience, it all plays out best if you train what you can, let guys show what they’ve learned then let the action and characters play out naturally.

-- Cameron Matthews