wrestling / News

Gentleman Jervis On Drawing Inspiration From The Rock & Bret Hart, Wrestling Orange Cassidy, Potentially Joining Impact Wrestling

January 1, 2021 | Posted by Blake Lovell

In a recent interview with Spencer Love of Love Wrestling, Gentleman Jervis discussed drawing inspiration from The Rock and Bret Hart, his match with Orange Cassidy at Wrestle Circus 2019, and much more. Here are some of the highlights (via Spencer Love):

Gentleman Jervis on drawing inspiration from The Rock: “You know, the Rock – when I was, maybe I was 12 years old, my mother took me to meet the Rock. My mom didn’t really think much of it, you know, ‘oh, we’re going to go meet a wrestler.’ When we got to – it was a card shop called BC Sports Collectibles – and when we got to the front of the line, my mom, she looked at me she goes ‘there he is! Oh my gosh!’ I was like ‘mum! He’s electrifying! You’ve been electrified!’ She was like, ‘oh, my goodness.’ It was this thing, this charisma. You can’t explain it. You can’t really put a tag on it. You can’t capture it, but man you know what it is! You know what it is when you feel it. That was a special moment for me because I thought ‘he is not even doing anything. It’s just sitting in a chair, electrifying!’ Well, he was doing something, but he was making it look easy, I’ll tell you that! So that moment really stuck with me. And, of course, he was always a very entertaining performer.”

On drawing inspiration from Bret Hart: “Now, I will say that with Bret ‘the Hitman’ Hart, he always seemed to have a moral center, a strong moral center. I think that when I saw the Wrestling with Shadows documentary, it really, you know – I understood that there were weird – there was a weird situation that had happened and there was some uncomfortable stuff. I didn’t really get it at the time, I was young. But, I remember seeing that documentary and I remember there was a part where he talked about the art of professional wrestling, and I had never understood wrestling like this, but he said the magic – there was a reason that you don’t see guys with bruises on their face the next day, even though they were kicked full blast the night before. And he said, ‘that’s the art of professional wrestling is making it look like you’re hurting your opponent without actually hurting them.’ I always took that to heart, because the way I see it is I have been a fighter in my days.

“I’ve (done) jujitsu and also karate at a younger age and amateur wrestling. I’ve had competition where you’re actually trying to overpower somebody and defeat them. But professional wrestling, in my opinion is there’s more of an art form to it. Because you’re not just fighting, but you’re also communicating the story and the emotion of why you’re fighting, which often is more important than the actual fighting itself. So I would say that that that sort of thing with Bret ‘the Hitman’ Hart, he always fights in such a way that he doesn’t want to hurt his opponent. So I thought I would take that to the next level, and rather than making it look like I was hurting someone and then not actually hurting them, I thought ‘what if I don’t hurt them at all and I still defeat them?'”

On his 2019 match with Orange Cassidy at Wrestle Circus: “I was asked by the promoter at Wrestle Circus, ‘who do you want to face? Pick your battle!’ The first person that came to mind was Orange Cassidy, and not just because he was on a real true rise in professional wrestling and having, you know, a heck of a year, excuse my language. But, I chose him because he actually taught me how to wrestle. So my very first day of professional wrestling school, it was he and Chuck Taylor that were my teachers. I would say between 2012 and (2016), I probably spent at least one or two nights a week on Chuck Taylor’s floor or his couch.

“We spent a lot of time together, and to be honest with you, before I met Drew Gulak with the Gentlemen’s Club – so that’s Drew Gulak, Chuck Taylor, Swamp Monster and Orange Cassidy. So they’re an old stable from you can see them in Evolve, Chikara, (and) a couple other places, but I learned from them. So when I started learning from them and traveling with them, we started to have matches together. So Orange Cassidy and I, believe it or not, the things that we did in the match that we had at Wrestle Circus, we had done those in 2014 in Haverhill, Massachusetts. You can find the match, it’s on YouTube! It was just the two of us. I even put him to sleep and covered him up. I knew that that was a special way to get him down for the count! But, if you can see, he did that crucifix to me and rolled me up. I had never seen that before.”

On potentially joining Impact Wrestling: “Oh, I would be delighted to join them today. You know, I’m a big fan of the Rascalz. I actually have been to their tree house once and I almost fell out. I actually, I just was with Taya Valkyrie last week. She is one of my favorite wrestlers and she’s a friend of mine. You know, I’ve got a lot of mutual contacts there. And believe it or not, I bugged Jimmy Jacobs this week. You know, I called him up and I asked for advice, and I just said, ‘hey, you know, here’s where I’m at. Talked to me,’ because he spent a lot of time in my earlier days helping me out and giving me advice. I’ve probably sent at this point, probably eight or nine emails to Scott D’Amore at IMPACT, and I did get booked in an IMPACT match at the end of August 2019. David Marquez actually helped set that up, because I’m a member of the United Wrestling Network and we did like a joint show. So I had a match there, and they even gave me my music and they put the video up for me, and I got a lot of positive feedback.

“So, I thought maybe, maybe that would lead you to something more with IMPACT. And I sent some emails and some videos after the fact, but I didn’t hear anything back. So, my goal with that is I’m going to keep pushing, I’m going to keep asking and maybe I won’t be public about it, because I think that if you do that at first and it gets a positive reaction, and you get on their radar, and then they can take a real look at you that’s great. But, if they’ve already taken a look at you, and then you try to make it a public thing again, I think that seems a little desperate and at times I’ve seemed a little desperate because I’ve been desperate. For work, you know, I want to work, I want to wrestle everywhere that I can. I want to wrestle all over the world. And I want to show everybody that I’m not a joke. While I do tell jokes, and while I do make a joke of myself, sometimes, I actually have a lot of respect for professional wrestling, and I want to turn things around. I think I could do that Impact Wrestling.”