Backstage Segment Recap- Aussie Wrestling Stars Entertain In Comedy Storytelling Showcase!

By Mick Robson

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Last weekend I attended the comedy/storytelling night Backstage Segment. Hosted by comedians Andrew Hastings and Dave Woodhead, this shows brings together some of the best stars of Aussie wrestling to share behind the scenes stories in creative, hilarious ways. Here's a recap of what went down on last Sunday night at the Lord Gladstone Hotel. Sponsored by the Bangladesh Tourism Board.

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We began with Hastings' introduction aping the Will Ospreay All In London entrance, with Hastings' mum doing the voiceover, saying she doesn't understand the show and "doesn't he know wrestling's fake anyway?" But she hopes the show makes money because Andrew owes her money. 

A recurring bit through the night was who was in charge of Backstage Segment. Hastings named himself the GM, but Woodhead is Commissioner, which outranks GM (apparently). This continued with various iterations of authority figures throughout the night. 

Billy Preston is our first guest on this edition of Backstage Segment, and while he looks to take a dark turn to start, talking about the dangers of addiction (sugar addiction, that is), he is soon persuaded to share some wrestling stories.  

Billy talks about his first WrestleMania experience, WrestleMania 39. TSA didn't love him wearing a Democracy Manifest t-shirt, and the hostel experience was a bit dodgy, but eventually he made it to So-Fi Stadium. Jude London is brought out to add his perspective on a story at WrestleMania, and it's during Seth Rollins vs. Logan Paul. Billy manages to distract everyone there by having the mother of snot rockets exploding from his nose, popping all the other Aussie wrestlers and being the one prevailing memory they all have from a major WrestleMania singles match. We then move on to more travel woes as Billy has trouble getting on a flight home, and ends up needing to feign using a wheelchair in order to get back to Australia. 5 stars. 

Next up is Albie Anne Troska. She's very nervous about doing this. "I'm not a promo guy, I usually just stand in the background and bark." Albie takes us through her experiences of becoming a wrestler after not being a wrestling fan growing up. She tells us that she decided to try out after watching a match so terrible that she thought she could do better, so signed up. Thankfully, that was match #2 on the show, and match #1 was the Velocities. She didn't divulge who was in that god-awful match #2, but I REALLY want to know! 

Albie tried to bluff her way through being a wrestling fan at the tryout, but the jig was immediately up when she mispronounced Lita's name. Nevertheless, she has embarked on a successful wrestling career here in Australia, and met the love of her life, the Bogan Hogan, Dazza. She tells a story about how she was booked in a ladder match right around the time of the wedding... and Dazza absolutely crushed her with a Death Valley Driver into the ladder. Whoops. 

Our third guest is Sam Osborne, Backstage Segment's first returning guest! Sam reads a poem about his 2021 retirement which is extremely well written. It covers the Mick Moretti match at Factory Theatre- "spoiler alert- I fucking came back". He laughs about the opening match before setting his sights on the big main event, which he play-by-plays in even speedier flowing rhymes. Osborne's got bars! 

Immediately after the Moretti match- he kept a running motif of listing the time before his general thoughts of the night's events- Sam knew he wasn't done. Incredibly creative and funny, Sam's poem (or was it a rap, yo?) was the clear highlight of Backstage Segment. He also made some general hilarious observations about wrestling, like how a no holds barred match and a street fight (including all the ones named after cities), all mean the same thing. And a nice jab at how old timers see intergender wrestling as unrealistic, while we have undead zombies in Casket matches. 

"If getting heat was artistry, I'm fucking Michaelangelo"- Sam Osborne. Truth. 

After intermission, we acknowledge the 25th Anniversary of 9/11... and the WWF's Smackdown right after 9/11! We play a guessing game where they read out promos from that show and we need to guess who said the promo. There's hock shop WWE games up for grabs! 

I got two of the games- WWE 2K22 and WWE 2K16. One was for knowledge- correctly guessing Bradshaw, and then for humour- another jingoistic pro-USA promo about the Twin Towers. The joke was that it was actually a Hulk Hogan 80s promo, but I popped Woodhead and Jude London by saying, "Tajiri?" 

Kris Gale is up next. Wearing a court-ordered Regime shirt, he shares memories of being a wrestling fan watching Nikolai Volkoff and Goldberg at shows many years ago. He jokes about his name getting misspelled on the flyer, and then gets into a big story about Ricky South, and the hardships Ricky has caused in his personal life. 

Kris protects the identity of his spouse, Mary-Jane, and his daughter, Grace, by "not using their real names." One night at the Thornbury Taphouse, post-PWA/MCW Colosseum 2022, Ricky and Grace met and struck up a relationship with a little wingmanning by none other than Backman. Hey, I was there that night drinking with the PWA crew. An epic, messy night to be sure. I got back to my hotel at 5am and I was one of the "early" leavers! Kris laments the shame of Grace dating the most hated man in PWA, and having to tell her friends that she's dating "a professional wrestler". So, only for the sake of his daughter- and following pressure from PWA big wigs to say something positive about his potential future son-in-law- Kris says "Go Ricky South", as he will challenge Will Kiedis for the PWA Championship at Prize Fight in Thirroul! 

We were meant to get Harley Wonderland, but for some reason she wasn't there, so here we go with our double main event, Jude London & Paris De Silva, the Velocities! 

Jude and Paris share a story of the time that they went to LA and wrestled for a promotion ran by one of their heroes, Brian Kendrick- Wrestling Pro Wrestling, like "Lucha Fantastica on crack". It wasn't as glamorous as they might have expected American wrestling to be- the locker room was just the street, and they all wrestled under wild gimmicks, with Paris wrestling as "Leather Daddy", which he was completely naive to the meaning of, and Jude wrestling as "Slam Squash". Daddy was then requested to cause a DQ in their match by "Eiffel Towering" the referee (which he wasn't in on). The DQ was not called. Nor was the countout which was Plan B. This made Paris reevaluate his life choices, but he was reassured by a old-timer, "Hey kid, you just wrestled in Hollywood." 

Jude- sorry, Slam Squash- had to wrestle in a gorilla suit. He's told if he takes a bump, he can't get back up. Also, his opponent? She's wrestling her first ever match. Jude suggests a cross body as a finish, the old timer says that can't be it, so Jude's Plan B is a chinlock... but she really cranks it and twists the mask, Jude can't breathe, and the mask pops off. Brian Kendrick goes "Oh no! Slam Squash's head just fell off!" 

The authority figure angle paid off once the Velocities say farewell- Ty Thayer is revealed as the Higher Power! He also announces the return of Backstage Segment on January 17th- yay, during the school holidays- and the first guest is Xander Sullivan. 

Sherriff Nick Wray comes out with a gun to cause a little chaos. We put our hands in the air but it doesn't matter. He blasts away and everyone is dead. Except me, as the Sherriff yells, "I LOVE THE ARENA MEDIA!" and spares me. Also, no one actually died. It was a toy gun. Just for the sake of clarity. 

It's summed up pretty well at the end- "wrestling is fucking wild, isn't it?" This was a great experience. Particularly if you're a bit of a wrestling nerd, if you appreciate comedy, wrestling and in particular Aussie wrestling... this event is like a love letter to it all. Highly recommend coming along January 17th for a night of wrestling comedy goodness!