An Interview with Cameron (Wrestler4Hire) - Part 1

It is an honor and privilege to interview one the most prolific underground wrestlers ever (on and off screen), Cameron (Matthews).

In Part one of this series I ask Cameron about his background as a pro wrestling fan and his pro wrestling exploits.

Hi Cameron, thank you for taking the time to chat with me.

Let's start from the beginning. You've mentioned that your aunt and uncle got you into pro wrestling when you were very young. Who were the wrestlers or angles that drew you in from the early days?

I think I wasn't much different than anyone else who got hooked on wrestling. It was the mid-to-late 80s and Hulk-a-mania was running wild! These over-the-top men with huge muscles and crazy voices that were yelling and screaming. So immediately from my childhood (almost out of the womb) I was a Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage & Ultimate Warrior fan.

Hulk Hogan  whips Randy Savage into the ropes, Wrestle Mania V.

As I grew up a little bit, I didn't watch wrestling as much but caught back up with it in the mid-90s with the whole nWo, Austin 3:16, The Rock, DX scene. On top of that, I was big into WCW Saturday Night & Shotgun Saturday Night where you could see more squash matches, some really good local guys and some surprisingly good wrestling matches between mid-card guys like Brad Armstrong, Alex Wright, Eddie Guerrero, Bobby Eaton, Chris Jericho, Chris Benoit, the luchadors then with WWF you'd have Scott Taylor, Brian Christopher, Take Michonoku, Papi Chulo and similar lower card guys. Again, I was always a fan of catching an indy guy that I read about in a magazine or saw at a regional event.

I think my favorite part of watching the Monday Night Wars was catching a great cruiserweight match with someone like Billy Kidman, Juventud Guerrera, Chris Jericho, Dean Malenko, Evan Karagis, Shannon Moore, Shane Helms then switching back and forth to catch some of the more character driven stuff with The Undertaker & Mick Foley.

Were you a fan of the wrestling magazines? They were a big part of my fandom back in those days.

I wish they were still popular. I'm a bit of an old soul but I got into the whole internet forums when I was a pre-teen and teenager. Now, I wish we could go backwards with the magazines. It's neat to see stuff online and have easy almost immediate access to it, but there's little excitement and almost no anticipation. I used to collect any and ALL of the wrestling magazines that I could. There was one that gave away "real names" of wrestlers and I was a fan of that. Ya know - getting the inside scoop.

I was stoked to get into PWI (Pro Wrestling Illustrated) for the first time and seeing a live event that I promoted in the results section. It was my goal to make it on the PWI 500 and I thought it'd be cool if it coincided with me being a state champion wrestler at the same time. Almost like being Top 500 in both amateur and pro - but, unfortunately, I never was a state champ (only runner-up) and I've never slid into the 500.

I still get excited to catch a glimpse of my pro friends in the magazines though.

Wrestling magazines were a big deal back in the 80's & 90's.

To me, entrance music seemed to stand out a lot more back in the 80's and 90's, would you agree? What are your favorite wrestling theme songs?

Man, I wish people took wrestling theme songs more seriously on the indy wrestling scene. There was a reason that as soon as a few chords hit or a catch phrase came across the speakers you got excited. When I started noticing the theme songs, it was the Steve Austin glass breaking and Ric Flair's instrumental. I have a VHS to this day from Memphis Wrestling with nothing but theme songs from the Rock N Roll Express, Moondogs, Adrian Street and more. Most of those tunes are memorable. Nowadays I feel most people have forgettable entrance music.

Some of my personal favorites that I've used on the indy scene are "He's So Fine" by The Chiffons, "Hangin' Tough" by New Kids on the Block and most recently an instrumental version of "99 Luftballons." I want the audience to know within 2 seconds that I'm coming out...or wonder what the hell is this.

The whole theme song is part of the experience. I see this done well in a lot of forms of entertainment but it kind of falls flat to me on the indy scene with few exceptions.

Whenever I run a pro wrestling event, I try to get with the wrestlers to find a song that will help give the message of their character and work well with the type of crowd we have.

When the Monday Night Wars came it was a shot in the arm for all of us. Wrestling became cool again. Did you have a preference between WCW and the WWF?

WCW's cruiserweights - How many do you recognize?

I was a fan of the WCW Cruiserweights and nWo, but that got overcrowded. I actually trained with Scott Hall so that was an awesome experience for me. With WWF, I think their show was overall more what I liked - a little bit brash, a little bit violent and a little bit naughty. It fit well with my 12 year old mentality.

Around this time, you started training to become a pro. Did your family have any misgivings, given you were so young?

My mom wanted to make sure I had a back-up plan to at least attend some type of trade school or learn a skill. My grandma drove me 5 days a week, 4 weeks straight during the summer going into high school as a freshman so I could learn to wrestle. I dabbled a bit at training with a local dude when I was 12 or so, but I don't know how legit he was.

I think they saw my passion for wrestling. I was pretty consumed with it whether writing wrestling events on the computer or designing costumes or making wrestling rings in my yard out of whatever was around. I was also making elementary websites for local wrestlers and creating my own storylines with my friends.

I've met some wild characters and when they met my family you'd think they'd second guess who they were handing me off to for these wrestling trips, but for better or worse they trusted who I was with.

I understand your trainer was a local pro who entered the underground scene years later. How do you look back on your training now?

I think of it kind of comically but at the same time I'm a little upset. I'm one of 2 people that actually paid in full for training and I never received a certificate of qualification or completion from the dude. Anyone who knows Lon DuMont will know he thinks highly of himself. I'm not pooping on him. He's a smart dude.

Lon DuMont vs Austin Cooper (W4H)

I was 14 years old at the time, so I believed whatever I was told - again for better or worse. Who else was going to let me train to wrestle and be on shows. The training was interesting as I recall I was often the 2^nd or 3^rd best at the conditioning exercises (and I was the youngest trainee) often competing for the last one standing against college men including a college wrestler and 4 time state champion.

Anyway, some of the stuff I was "Taught" was slightly off, but pro wrestling doesn't really have a monitoring system and it's not one way or the other often. My early training was a decent beginning but in hindsight I would've saved some time starting elsewhere. Through the years I've been lucky to be guided by wiser and more qualified wrestlers including Kid Leopard @ BG EAST

According to online searches, your first pro name was Matt Rage. Did you come up with this persona or was it someone else's?

That was my idea. Way different than the original masked character. I was an ECW fan and had a steel chair that was painted to say "Matt Rage Rulz" but it didn't stay that way. I was goofing around at practice and being young-and-dumb I was doing a faux Mexican accent. There's a town in my home state called Mexico, so it was kind of a joke character and because I looked (and was) so young, I wore a mask. They'd announce me as a luchador type wrestler from Mexico....Maine. I was a glorified jobber and I liked getting tossed around so people didn't mind wrestling me.

Soon into your pro career, you changed your name to Cameron Mathews. Why the name change and were there any significant differences between Cameron and Matt Rage?

I was doing a boyband character for a small promotion in Massachusetts and I was the "bad boy" of the band. They came up with the name Treva Mathews. I think I was toying with the Cameron Mathews name because we were talking about me taking the mask off as I was maturing into a cutie patootie. I actually used to be fairly clever with names (I think I came up with Jonny Firestorm) and had mentioned somebody else use that name, but he didn't like that and I did so I kept it in mind.

You formed a tag team with Paul Hudson and you still tag occasionally to this day. What makes Paul such a good tag team partner?

Paul is a natural talent. I don't know if he trains often, but he can just naturally do things and he understands things pretty well. I learned a lot from him when we were young and he actually helped teach me the importance of crowd participation and doing some crazy combos move wise. We are competitive with one another so I think he brings out the best in me. He's also hilarious. If he was in every wrestling locker room with me, I'd have a blast every single wrestling show I was on.

We haven't tagged as often as we make people think. We're just often around one another so we're almost interchangeable and immediately placed in one group. If that makes sense.

One of your most famous pro matches is a tag between you and Paul vs. Kenny Omega & Danny Duggan. What are your memories of that match and are you surprised that Kenny has become such a big star?

I remember that a few minutes into that match, we were told to "take it home" or in non wrestling terms, finish the match right away. We had just started to get ready to go into the good stuff (we were still in the feeling out process of our story telling) and we all looked at one another (and without a word) agreed we aren't going to stop what we had planned out back.

The wrestling promoter had a big match that night against a TNA Wrestling Superstar but we had waited like 2 or 3 hours to get our moment that night. The referee was trying to get us to stop doing the match but the crowd was digging in.

We'd wrestled Kenny Omega and Danny Duggan a few times over the month leading up and all the matches were solid. I was the worst out of the 4 of us and I think Paul is the most underrated and appreciated in that match. He's leaps and bounds above me in that match and he keeps up with everything.

It was a weird time then, so I don't know if we thought that Kenny Omega was going to get as big as he was, especially when he left WWE Developmental to go home and wrestle for a small Japanese company. It's wild how big of a star he is.

A wrestler that is maligned by some is Scott Hall, but I've heard you had good interactions with him at a training seminar.

"You know who I am, but you don't know why I'm here..." Scott Hall starts the nWo in 1996

Paul and I trained with Scott for a while. Months. Scott used to call me Von Erich because I'd slide off my flip flops to jump into the ring and had a little Justin Bieber hair style going. He was a fountain of knowledge. He didn't come by for money, he just wanted to help the guys.

He'd come to class with old wrestling boots and trunks and elbow pads. He'd offer to sell them to people for standard wrestling prices. I think elbow pads were like $25-$30 and boots were like $100...or whatever worked for you. He was the nicest dude in wrestling.

He was booking a show once and had me beat both the tag team champions at once. They weren't happy but I can't argue with Scott.

Another polarizing person you've crossed paths with is Jim Cornette, but I understand you had a positive interaction with him, is that true?

I did an OVW/Ring of Honor seminar in September 2011 (I think), this was during the time I was in great shape and tanned. I had an okay match and did an okay interview/promo in front of him. He said "well you weren't at a loss for words and we can fix the timing issue so it was fine." After the weekend was over they invited one or two guys to get a contract or something at OVW then they grabbed a group of us (5-8 people) to invite us to the advanced class. I was ecstatic to be in that group. There were some very good wrestlers in there and some future WWE guys (if my memory is correct)

After he gave us the group talk, I went over to chat with him and Danny Davis about what I could do to improve and if they had any advice. Cornette said "Just keep doing what you're doing" which is my least favorite response, but he said "I need a good All-American babyface and if you moved down here I'd put you on OVW TV right away."

Sometimes I wonder what would've happened if I took that opportunity.

How do you look back on your pro career? Are you satisfied with what you've done and what would you consider your best work in the pro scene?

I wish I would've gotten the big contract with WWE or at least gotten a squash match on WWE TV. I've been able to do some cool stuff - Ring of Honor TV, Impact Wrestling extra work & AEW seat filling/catering eating. I know I was capable (especially during my peak years) of being a TV wrestler. Overall not bad for a kid from nowhere, but I wish I could've just done it a little better.

You shared a locker room with "the greatest Intercontinental Champion of all time", The Honky Tonk Man. I understand his advice led to a turning point in your career.

The Honky Tonk Man - WWF IC Champion June 1987 - August 1988.

Honky Tonk Man has shared a lot of wisdom with me over the years but I believe the advice you're speaking of is when he said "Hey Cam, you should do those wrestling videos like Scotty Mac does."

At the time, I had been doing some wrestling at BG East and NHB Battle, but he was speaking about Cyberfights. I met HTM when I was like 17 and we were always playful with our relationship.

HTM gets a bad reputation and probably often times deservedly, but I think he means well overall. I appreciate his kindness and stories.

He and Paul Hudson were also tag team champions together. We did a tag match together and I hit him on the apron to which he responded "I've never been hit that hard in my life - fuckkkkk" (it helps if you know HTM's accent).

This ends part 1 of our interview. There will likely be a couple more parts but they will be revealed slowly over the coming weeks. I hope you all enjoy it.