Jason Prime

   The most famous wrestler that stepped the Northumbria Pro Wrestling Society stage that night - Jason Prime, or the Primate as the fans like to call him. It was not the first time we heard his name because almost all wrestlers mentioned him as one of their biggest influences - all are big fans of his work and what he achieved to get where he is today. Jason Prime is not only a star in the UK but also known in the USA and Germany.

   His character’s name, the Primate, is related to the fact that he wanted to create a very scary persona. “My character is very violent, very animalistic and unhinged”, Prime said. One of his rituals and the one that makes him recognizable by the fans, is to take a gorilla mask off and split lots of blood to the audience. “I think someone with an evil mask spraying blood out is quite scary”, he added.

   It all started for him about 6 years ago. “I’ve always been a big fan of Wrestling, back to the old school WWE, when it was called WWF and I got the opportunity to start wrestling around the world”, he said. The Newcastle native wrestler started practicing in Carlisle, Cumbria, and had to make 60 miles every week to get to the school. At the moment, Jason Prime trains twice a week and goes to the gym twice a day.

   It is very important to have a good physical preparation because there is a high risk to get injured. It happened more than once to Prime and the most problematic experience he ever had while fighting was 15 months ago when he cracked a vertebra on his neck and almost got paralyzed. “I lost the feeling of my right arm and right leg when I was in the ring”, he told us. “I was not sure of what was going on , so I continued the fight and when the guy picked me, I kicked him with the left side of the body because the right side didn’t work”, he added. Fortunately, after the match, the feeling started to come back. ”It was temporary, thank god”, he confided to us.

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"Wrestling is a marathon, it takes a long time

to get used to your own body".

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   His mother doesn’t like to see his matches because she gets too worried about him. “She has seen me unconscious , bleeding and she gets very scared in case I die”, he joked.

   When asked if the wrestlers plan the fight before the performance to avoid those injuries, he told us they normally talk through what can happen but most of it is done at the moment. “We do it based on the feel and it depends on the crowd”, he said. What the crowd is feeling, that’s one of the things he loves the most about being a wrestler, “I love seeing the crowd enjoying themselves”, he said. On the other hand, travelling is both the best and worst part of his job. “It is great to travel around the word and performing in front of huge crowds, doing what we love but one day I can be in Scotland, the other in London”, Prime said.  “Wrestling in the ring takes only around 20 or 15 minutes but the travelling in between can take days”, he added.

   To the younger generations, starting now in the Wrestling world, Prime’s message is “don’t do it” but then he laughed. “Take your time because Wrestling is a marathon, takes a long time to get used to your own body and a match looks easy but it’s not”, he said. He advises the youngsters to be patient, get a good trainer and have fun because it gets difficult when you are a professional.