Big Damo on PROGRESS Wrestling acquisition: ‘Was not on the bingo card for us’
Former WWE stars Big Damo and Nikki Storm (fka Nikki Cross) open up about their unexpected takeover of PROGRESS Wrestling and how it all came together.
In an exclusive interview with Tom Campbell of Cultaholic Wrestling, Damo and Storm talked about their plans for PROGRESS Wrestling after acquisition. Damo exclaimed that it was the last thing they expected.
“Genuinely, this was not on the bingo card for us, either. We have talked about a million different scenarios for a long time. We have been wrestling for 22 years, Nikki has been wrestling for 18 years, so we know there is a time limit. We are going to have to start thinking about what is the future and we thought that was going to be with our little Scottish promotion in Glasgow, but no, it turns out.”
He added that the opportunity fell in their lap shortly after Storm’s WWE release.
“This opportunity came along a few weeks ago. Not long after Nikki had been released, actually. It was only a few days after. I’ll just be honest, I was in Belfast about to jump on a plane going to another show and I had to sit thinking about it on the plane like, ‘This is wild. There’s no way this could happen.’ Then I come off the plane and we start talking about it seriously. At first we were talking with James Amner, he’s been in situ at PROGRESS for a long, long time. He’s one of the hidden gems. He hates credit in every single way but he’s one of the reasons PROGRESS has been ticking over at all for maybe a decade.”
“When I broached Nikki with it, she was like, ‘What?’ So there’s been plenty of conversations and, listen, the boys made it very easy. I dealt directly with Martyn Best…and he was very patient with me and we were able to come to the best agreement for both of us. That was one of the most amazing experiences in terms of how easy he made that for me. This could have been very, very difficult and this could have been out of our reach, realistically, because we are living in the United States. That is still our home. Obviously that will change in the next few years but that is our handicap, effectively, in one regard. But now it’s putting us in a position where we’re starting to think about, ‘Okay, what do we want to do next?’ and PROGRESS Wrestling has answered a lot of those questions very quickly.”
“We can now start thinking about long term, and that’s something Nikki and I were talking about the other day. Our goal is to make this into the number one independent promotion on the planet.”
Storm added that the ambition to make the promotion the best wrestling company in the globe.
“Number one. Letter A. Don’t get me wrong, we want to give back to the industry, but PROGRESS is going to be the number one wrestling company in the world.”
The announcement of their takeover was announced in May. Storm is set to compete in her first match since the WWE release at PROGRESS Wrestling in July.
Rosanne Raphael is a wrestling writer with over three and a half years of experience covering all things related to the industry. From a kindergarten teacher to PR Associate to turning her lifelong passion for the industry into a career, Rosanne is currently writing for F4W Online where she focuses on wrestling news, analysis, and storytelling.
Rosanne previously contributed to Sportskeeda as an Assistant Content Manager.
When not consumed by wrestling, Rosanne is a musician and an aspiring artist.