10 Best Teenage Wrestlers In The Business

4. William Regal

Darren 'William Regal' Matthews always wanted to be a wrestler - well, either a wrestler or a stand-up comedian or a clown, it was going to be one of those. As a kid, he'd seen the wrestlers at Blackpool and desperately wanted to be one. Refusing to take no for an answer, he just kept showing up at promoter Bobby Baron's booth on Blackpool Pleasure Beach: placed in his very first match at the age of fifteen, he had the crap beaten out of him, but came back the next weekend. That was 1983. Matthews continued to wrestle in Blackpool for the next few years under the name Steve Regal, getting pummelled senseless, until he was persuaded to jump ship when he was eighteen. He tagged with Big Daddy a number of times before deciding that he'd prefer actually wrestling for a living. That's when he began working in All Star Wrestling, Brian Dixon's outfit, wrestling heroes of his like 'the Superdestroyer' Pete Roberts, Terry Rudge, Marty Jones and Dave Taylor. Johnny Saint, one of the foremost legends in the whole of British wrestling and lived in the same town as Matthews, used to drive him to All Star shows to wrestle. That's also when he began tagging with the wonderful Robbie Brookside, a friendship that continues, like a comedy double act, to this day. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMb8fCz-3NY Those formative years were the making of him: when he finally went to America in 1992 at the age of twenty-four, he was a nine year veteran, and one of the most talented men on any roster. Substance abuse problems threatened to derail his career at one point, but in 2016, clean and sober for seventeen-odd years, William Regal is one of the most highly respected wrestlers in the world by fans and performers alike. I want to be just like William Regal when I grow up.