I take a lot of new people to wrestling – Friends, siblings, parents, acquaintances, work associates, people I yell at on the street. I can say for near-certain that there is no one who connects with the crowd more instantaneously on a consistent basis than Eli Surge. BIRDS AREN'T REAL. The tinfoil hat (always with extras to indoctrinate the crowd). You know what this guy is about and from the moment he steps out from behind the curtain, it's entertaining as fuck. And this is before he gets into the ring with his very excellent wrestling – a hard-hitting and technical style, replete with flourishes like out-of-the-ring moonsaults. (It would be weird if a guy into aliens didn't have a moonsault in his arsenal right? Good call, Eli.)

I've only ever known Eli Surge as the Conspiracy Man – aliens, birds-as-surveillance, Bigfoot and whatnot – but, it wasn't always so, and the story of how it kinda came to be is now one of my favourite stories. “ The conspiracy gimmick started out of frustration, honestly. There was a company that formally ran in Vancouver that had a big show. Three of my friends were in a match with a fly-in talent and I was frustrated as to why I didn’t even get an opportunity on that show,” says Eli, talking to me while taking care of his laundry. “'Fuck you' to gender roles,” he says emphatically. Fuckin' eh, Eli.

“I started stewing about how the moon lined up in this configuration – that angle divided by three is actually this number and that number in the alphabet is ‘R’ and ‘R’ when you break it down it's yadda yadda yadda. I kind of just started rambling about stuff and that led to conspiracies about how I was being held back by the greater THEY. I just started getting more interaction. People were saying, 'What you’re doing is really interesting and I haven’t seen it before. Keep going with it.' And then when I latched on to the 'Birds Aren’t Real' that was a big thing that got people in. And now having my friend Bigfoot appearing occasionally with me is another thing people are grabbing on to. the big piece was just kind of allowing myself to have more of a silly goose time.” And there it is. Eli Surge fucking rules because he is clearly a silly person who absolutely whips ass in the ring. It's an incredible combination, actually one of the best in wrestling. (see: Kurt Angle, Big E, Orange Cassidy)

It seems so perfect to us on the other side of the railing, destiny in action. Really, in the right light, it could look like certain forces were conspiring against a young Eli from the beginning, in hopes of stopping him from exposing their secrets as an adult professional wrestler. “It was kind of a forbidden fruit when I was a kid. There were two things my mom said I couldn’t watch as a kid – that was The Simpsons and wrestling. I had to sneak that in. I would try to get home early on Friday when it was still Thursday night Smackdown! so I could watch the rerun in the afternoon before my parents got home.” Seeds were planted that would soon germinate given the right conditions.

“Wrestling fell out of favour in high school but I got back into it after that. What really brought me back in was CM Punk’s P-P-P-PIPEBOOOOMMBBB! (emphasis added for writer's amusement. Let the record show Mr. Surge said “pipebomb” in a normal tone of voice.) – that whole angle with John Cena, Money in the Bank (2011). That drew me back in. I spent a little bit of time looking around at schools. I looked into the Dudley school in Florida. I looked into Lance Storm’s school in Calgary and a few others, and then I brought it up to my now-wife and the line that has stuck with me since was, 'Well you should just fucking do it because you never commit to anything,'” recalls Surge of the journeys start. “Little bit out of spite, I signed up for Storm’s school and moved out to Calgary for the September 2015 class.”

Surge has been working relentlessly, connecting with audiences and leaving his mark on independent wrestling, especially here in the PNW, where he has become a much-beloved staple of the scene. Western Canadian crowds at promotions like NEW (Nation Extreme Wrestling) and 365 Pro Wrestling go insane he appears – I have had friends openly weep with joy next to me when he's shown up as a surprise combatant. He's even been welcomed into the family of DEFY, undoubtedly the indie titan of the area. “t's really hard to beat Washington Hall (Seattle) for DEFY, for cool. The Commodore Ballroom (Vancouver) is pretty up there for cool too and I’ve had a lot of memorable points there, but there’s a special feeling when you walk into Washington Hall. Even before the doors open, just being in there – there’s a vibe. And then you fill it up and from backstage you can feel the rumble and anticipation. Once you go out, even if most of the people don’t know who the fuck you are, there’ll be something and by the end of the match there will be even more. I can feel it in my skin – the electricity coming towards the ring.”

It's a never-ending quest, the pursuit of wrestling greatness. And all of us in the crowd are the beneficiaries of Surge's pursuit. “I think it’s an ever-evolving thing, and if you think you have it, you don’t. There’s pieces you can feel you have a better idea on – there’s little things along the way you pick up and put in your pocket, but you’re never going to get to the top of the hill. You hear interviews with someone like John Cena – he’s always learning, he’s always listening and always looking for what’s changing in the business. You can get better, but I don’t feel like I’ve ever fully gotten it.” I think I speak for all of us when I say: we hope you never do, Eli.

Forget chicken fingees, Eli knows that vulture fingees are truly where it’s at. Nom nom nom.

Rags Music is honoured to have got so much of Eli's time for another round of 5 Questions with Rags. We hope you enjoy it, it's a good'er. Read it and then go find Eli on the usual social media applications (Twitter is my Surge-emporium of choice.) and then GO SEE HE HIM WHEN HE'S AROUND YOUR CITY. If you've never watched wrestling, let him be the guy who gets you in the door. And if you have watched wrestling live but not seen Eli – you've never seen anyone like Eli. Expand your horizons and look into the Great Beyond. (If you already familiar with Eli Surge and that's why you're reading this, you already know what's up and please forgive my yelling.)

1. What's the first album you remember buying with your own money?
System of a Down – Hypnotize.
Do you still listen to it?
Less so, but yeah. I still have it on the Spotify playlist. I got to see them on their farewell tour. That was pretty fucking awesome. I’ll always have a soft spot for SOAD.

2. When is the last time you did something for the first time?
This weekend I went to Niagra Falls for the first time. That was interesting because as I went down there it was storming so hard the windshield wipers couldn’t keep up and there was thunder and lightning so I couldn’t really get out of the car. But I got the see the water moving and shit. That feels pretty bland for an answer. Maybe because it wasn’t super personally fulfilling. It was a neat thing. This is probably not as exciting for other people – but I spent a lot of years not fully paying attention to my nutrition and working out. In the last few months I’ve got on board with Mr. Sebastian Wolfe, as he’s my coach for a workout plan and macros and nutrition and stuff. Working towards just physically and mentally feeling better through that.

3. What is your favourite household chore?
Mowing the lawn. Absolutely. I love lawn care. I’m getting real nerdy on that right now – finding better blades for the mower and better weed whackers, looking at certain ways to path through the lawn so the blades sit down a certain way, so as you look at it, it looks nicer.
What got you into lawn maintenance?
I don’t even know how it started. I guess because I’m now living in a place – we don’t own it but it’s the closest I’ve ever had to owning a place. It feels like an actual home instead of a place that I’ve living. So it’s the first opportunity where it feels like I can do something for the place I’m living and actually feel proud about it. To put it in wrestling terms, once you come through the curtain people see the first thing you present to them – for me it’s the tinfoil, it’s the Birds Aren’t Real flag and for my house, it’s just the lawn. Also, probably because I have too much time on my hands. That’s the other reason this has happened.

4. Have you ever seen or felt a ghost or supernatural presence?
Yes. There’s certainly things where stuff has moved in unexplainable ways. My wife happens to very in touch with spirits and that kind of thing. I’m learning to be more open to that area. As far as seeing something, I haven’t seen something with my own two eyes. I’ve had experience with “shadow people” where you see something out of the corner of your eye and you turn and look and it’s not there. And I’ve definitely felt things, especially, I spent time being an outdoor summer camp guide and some of the places where we’d go there would be old, run-down buildings where there’s an eeriness to them. People can say you’re talking yourself into that but there’s certainly an energy that’s in those places. There’s one in particular – I was on a 7-day kayak trip where we left from Campbell River. There’s an island out there where there’s a trailer that’s just in the bushes off a small beach. There’s no dock, there’s no road to this trailer. We stopped there for lunch. The people I was with at the time knew of the place. They had been there before and said they weren’t willing to go back because they were so freaked out by it. In that place, you went in and you find a house that you can tell people packed up and left very quickly. There’s shotgun shells on the ground and there’s still kid toys on the lawn. It’s similar to how I would describe the electricity of being in the ring – you can feel it on your skin, but in a haunting way.

Do it! Put on the hat and join the movement!

5. What’s the last thing that made you cry, happy or sad tears?
Yesterday I…my sister-in-law graduated from UVic and the several tears of the day were upsetting to me because I was supposed to watch the livestream of her walking across the stage and I got 45 minutes into watching this livestream, people were walking, they had speakers and all this stuff, I’m welling up and starting to cry from being proud and then I realize I’m watching the day before's ceremony and my sister-in-law isn’t even there. Eventually I tuned into the right one and I got to see but yeah, that was the last thing.

6. Your guest question comes from the legend, the Wrestling Genius, Daniel Makabe – What is the most influential album in your life?
The first one that comes to mind is Nirvana Unplugged. That’s the first album where I’ve fully listened cover to cover and it was given to me by one of my older brothers who had a CD book and was like, “You should listen to this. We always put it on when we’re smoking weed in the shack.” So I put it on and I attached heavily to it. It’s still pretty heavily on my rotation. “The Man Who Sold The World” on that is something I listen to probably weekly. Eric Clapton Unplugged is another one up there for me. That one was given to me in a similar way, but from my dad. My dad would always play “Tears in Heaven” on his guitar, so I got attached to that. As far as defining my own taste, Alexisonfire Old Crows/Young Cardinals. That was the album I latched onto after hearing “This Could Be Anywhere In The World.” Basically from then they became my favourite band and since then have held highly in the Top 3 since that album came out.