You always learn new things when you interview someone. Sometimes you even learn something incredible and shocking. If you don't learn something new, you're probably not a very good interviewer. But luckily, I am great interviewer, and as such, chatting in the First Met Hall in Victoria on the night where he would later win the 365 Combat Championship, Steven Bradley gave me two truly incredible and shocking facts.“I do not get free Old Spice,” says Bradley about his turn as a real-life Old Spice model. 'I do not get free Old Spice,' these words echo in my ears like a gunshot, months after this conversation took place. Bradley is far less concerned than I about the lost possibility of free Old Spice, quickly shifting the over to the overall positivity of the experience. “It was very strange. It was a very cool little side-quest I got to do. I was just at work and I saw an Instagram thing for a casting call for guys with good hair. I had already starting doing the mullet and I had the mustache going, so I thought, 'Yeah, I think I can do that.' It was so much fun and then seeing it and having people be like, 'Dude, I saw you in a commercial!'”

And after that, Bradley immediately drops another, far more shocking, truth bomb: “I’d never watched a match until January of 2022.” What the fuck, man. How was it possible that this hoss, this guy who was a 365 fan-favourite the moment he stepped into the ring, had seen his first wrestling match only four years ago?! “Almost every single person you see on the independent scene is like, 'I watched wrestling as a little kid. My dad took me to shows. I got to see all these superstars in the early 2000s.' I started watching wrestling in 2022, three months before I started training. My friends were watching AEW and they said, “We watch AEW on Wednesdays, wanna come watch? I watched it for two weeks and thought, 'Yeah I can do this. Those guys are athletic, freak athletes for sure, but they don’t look like Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant or Brock Lesnar. They look more normal.'”

In the Age of the Internet, finding a place to train was as easy as 1-2-3 (And given the timeframe, Google wouldn't have been making it an automatic AI answer!) and Bradley found a spot right quick. “I literally just Googled 'Oregon Pro wrestling school' and that is why our head trainer made it the Oregon Pro Wrestling School,” laughs Bradley. “It’s awesome to be a part of the next generation of wrestlers out of Oregon. There are no other schools operating or running out of Oregon at all. We’re the only one and I think I’m in the first 10 or so students to graduate. It’s awesome. We’re up, on our beginners class days, we’re up to 30 students. We have a waitlist now for beginners. And we’re at the point now where we can run monthly student shows. We have students that are ready to wrestle but there’s still the same amount of spots month-to-month on the shows, so we’re finding a way to get them out in front of people.”

Ssssssh, a superstar needs quiet. At SOS Wrestling. Photo by @arealgoldmouth.

Homie thought, “Yeah I can do this” after three weeks and by gawd, he was absolutely right. The mulleted, mustachioed megastar is a joy to watch in the ring. A new-school performer with an evident understanding of the best classic wrestling tropes, and an arsenal of big, heavy-hitting, audience-pleasing moves (Ooooh baby, he's got a nice flying shoulder tackle. And that powerslam!), Bradley makes an impact on every show he's on. Whether he's a face or heel on any given night, is quick to connect with audiences. “It really just depends on what the people think of me. If they really like me…I’m not going to deny people their love for me. But if they hate me, then screw ‘em!”

Outside the ring, Bradley is a helluva talker, a conversationalist that isn't afraid to go anywhere. In this chat alone, Bradley and I touch on the musical classic Kidz Bop 4,Spongebob, grandma dreams and life-defining fear. Was a pleasure and a joy to get some time with one of the PNWs fastest-rising wrestling stars. I hope you enjoy reading this chat as much as I enjoyed having it.

What's the first album you bought with your own money?
With my own money? I don't know the one I bought with my own money but I know the first album we ever owned – We as in me and my brothers. We didn't actually get to own anything ourselves. It was for the brothers – was Kidz Bop 4.

I'm guessing you don't listen to it anymore?
No. But I did listen to Avril Lavigne's “Complicated” the other day, because it was on at Walmart, and it did bring me back to the Kidz Bop 4. So it was in my recent memory. That and then the first real album we got to own was Green Day's American Idiot.

Last great album you heard?
It's really tough, because – and I'm going to sound kind of dumb right now – I don't frequently listen to albums cover to cover. I find genres that I really like and then I will find one artist in that genre, then I'll use Spotify to go to a radio of that artist and I will listen that way. Not an album, but a genre, it's kind of dark-wave, goth kind of music. It's Eastern European. There's a band or group called Molchat Doma. They make some very good music for a dark evening in, to do some brooding to.

Molchat Doma - late-night vibe providers.

What's the last thing that made you cry, happy or sad tears?
Every now and then I'll see a really sad YouTube video and it'll tear jerk me for a second. Get a couple tears going. Specifically, there was a Netflix documentary, I forget the name of it, but it was about a neighbour in Florida in a neighbourhood of mostly Black families. Just one old lady neighbour who was awful. She keeps calling the cops on the kids, the kids are doing nothing, just playing. At the end of it, the lady fears for her life after she takes one of the kid's iPads. Single mother goes over there to get the iPad back and the lady just shoots through the door and kills her. It was all through bodycam footage. It was a lot.

When's the last time you did something for the first time?
I bought these rings. *displays fingers* I've never worn rings until about a month ago. It was my last trip up here. We went to a thrift store on the way over and I found this ring and it was really cool. So now I'm a ring guy. I only wear them when I'm going out to shows. Day to day I don't really bother. But I always wear this one, the statement one, and I have some ones that I switch out on the pinky.

Rings out, beside the ring. Photo by the gawd Darren Ho Media.

Have you ever seen a ghost or felt a spiritual presence you couldn't understand?
You know, sometimes in my dreams. Sometimes I'll have a dream – not in a sad way – I'll just be in my dream, awake in my day to day life in my dream and my grandma's there. We're just hanging out like normal and then I wake out and it's done. It's like, “Oh I had a grandma dream.” She came through to hang out and now she's gone.

Does it feel nice when you wake up after a 'grandma dream'?
Yeah, yeah. I never wake up sad or anything. It's been 17 years since she passed away, so that's ran its course in terms of grief. But I wake up like, “Aww, grammy was there! That's cool!”

If you could spend the day anyone living or dead, who would it be and what would you do?
Maybe Steven Hillenberg, the guy who invented Spongebob. I just want to thank him. I love Spongebob. Got the first movie on DVD. Some people say Spongebob was done after the movie. There's still some good ones for sure but it's kind of gone of the rails a bit, especially now that's Hillenberg passed. They've lost of the vision.

Your guest question comes from Juno-award nominated soul singer Tanika Charles – What's your biggest fear?
It used to be heights but I got over that. I think just winding up alone at the end of it all. Hopefully by the end of it all, your career and everything will be gone but if you can not be alone, that's the ideal. If you can at least have someone to talk about whatever. Probably going to be a lot of the same conversations because you're old, but that's okay.