It may not have lights, fireworks, big cash prizes and hordes of fans but Scottish wrestling is gaining strength

Throw some red stars into the mix, matching armbands, bare chest and a chill north-westerly breeze and – well – let's just say you need a healthy dose of positive self-image to get away with that particular fashion statement. Fortunately Mike Musso has it in spades.

Rikki Bryden has even less fabric to cover his dignity: merely a pair of shiny red pants emblazoned with black letters that spell out his alter ego – The Reaver – across the crotch. I really don’t know where to look. “You wouldn't believe how liberating it is to wear spandex," he boasts. I blush. In truth, he's a little concerned he might have a sweaty bottom. But in the list of occupational hazards, I’m guessing that’s the least of it.

Welcome to wrestling, Scottish-style. There are no lights, no dolly birds in bikinis. No baying hordes screaming for smackdown or $1,000 prizes at stake. There is only an unremarkable gym on an anonymous industrial estate in Glenrothes, where young, wannabe wrestling stars – the John Cenas or the Rocks of the future, perhaps – are put through their paces. It's loud. It's basic. And with the garage door open, it's pretty damn cold.

Not that the trainees seem to notice. Ranging in age from 16 to mid-20s, they can be qualified doctor, student ... Musso is a call centre worker by day, pro wrestler by night, combining his work as trainer, promoter and performer with the more hum-drum job of paying the bills. “It's an unusual thing for anybody to want to pursue,” he admits. The result is that many of his trainees lack the commitment or the passion and soon slope back to “normal” life.

Growing up in Dalgety Bay, Fife, Musso can barely remember a time when he didn’t want to wrestle. “When I was 13 or 14, I was going around all the British wrestling shows. I'd tag along and ask how I could get involved. The business is quite closed – you don't want it to be easy for people to get in. You don't want to invest time, for them to then turn around and leave. It's hard so you make sure they want it.”

His persistence must have paid off, though. “Eventually they said they’d start to train me. It was the old British wrestlers at the time, which was totally different to the American wrestling I'd been watching on the TV. Then I met Jake ‘The Snake’ Roberts.”

It was a meeting that was to change his life. Roberts was a huge US wrestling star in the 1980s, Himself the son of a wrestler, he luxuriated in a huge handlebar moustache and his trademark act was using live snakes in the ring. One was a python named Daniel. “He was second to Hulk Hogan,” recalls Musso. “People used to wrestle him to get ready for Hogan.

“He was over in the UK for about four years. Back then there were no training schools, you just turned up, you helped them set up the ring, and in exchange for you being their general dogsbody they'd show you the ropes. But Jake said, ‘I'm setting up a training school, it's going to be down in London, would you like to come down?’ I must have been about 15 or 16 at the time.”

A year on, he was continuing his training in Canada, but on returning to Scotland he found the industry had changed beyond recognition. “There was nothing,” he says. “British wrestling used to be on TV. It was in smokey town halls and, while there were some great British wrestlers, there were also people like Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks, who just plodded around the ring. Then people would turn the channel and they were faced with Hogan and arenas full of thousands of people and lights and music. You can't compete with that. And they didn't want to compete. The TV stations went with the American version.”

Bruised but not broken, he took it on himself to run his own shows, then his own school. It has, he says, gone from strength to strength. “We're having to rebuild British wrestling but it's hard because you can't compete with what's on TV. They're in huge arenas every week and we're in town halls and leisure centres. You get the same quality of wrestling and you're thoroughly entertained, but the audience have to get past the fact that there's no big screen, no fireworks.”

The lack of razzmatazz doesn’t seem to have put Scots off. Wrestling schools are springing up all over the country – in Glasgow, Dumfries, Perthshire and Aberdeen – all filled with pale-chested, spindly-armed youngsters inspired to follow in the bootsteps of their WWE idols. In Fife, they turn up every Sunday and train solidly for three hours. They’re also expected to hit the gym through the week, working with weights and improving cardio fitness. The faint-hearted need not apply.

They start by warming up – jogging around, mainly – then working through various set moves, cartwheels and tumbles. There are lots of neck exercises. “First, you want your neck to be wide for the way it looks,” explains Musso, “but secondly, if someone drops you on your head, you're less likely to break your neck if you have a lot of muscle round it.” Fair enough.

Then they hit the ring, working in pairs, bouncing off the ropes, leap-frogging each other in deft mock-avoidance tactics. There is the classic clothesline – running at the opponent, arm outstretched, slapping into their chest with a loud smack; the shoulder block – ramming the opponent with your shoulder in an attempt to knock them down; the head chancery – a sort of twisted-arm headlock.

Back at the office, I do some research into other moves I might like to incorporate into this piece, but decide against it. I don't believe the stink face (rubbing buttocks in your opponent’s face to humiliate them), the testicular claw or the eye rake (both against the rules, for obvious reasons) have a place in a family newspaper.

But some of these kids clearly aren't trying hard enough. “The chest can take a lot of punishment," yells Musso. “I want to hear, BANG! SMACK!"

Every time someone falls back on the floor, they land with a loud slam. I know this is all theatre – the grunts, the snarls, the roars – but it sounds painful. Is it? “Oh yes," laughs Musso. “The perception is that it's mainly entertainment and a little bit of sport, but it's actually the other way around. People think we're not hitting each other but really we're just trying not to injure each other. The guys, when they're falling – that technique is the same as a judo fall. And they're not falling on a mat. They're falling on a big sheet of plywood and steel. It's not a bouncy castle.”

There are frequent injuries, he admits. “It's very physical. Football players and rugby players get injured all the time and when that happens everything stops, the medics get wheeled on and the game would be halted until they're carted off the pitch. That's when our entertainment kicks in, because there is this ‘show must go on' mentality. In the ring, you're still expected to finish what you're doing. At the end of the day, it's a job and you get paid to perform. Wrestlers will work while injured because if you say you can't work someone else will take your slot. We don't get enough credit for the amount of pain we put our bodies through.”

As a result, he takes no prisoners. Even in training, this is no walk in the park. “Come on," he shouts at one trainee struggling for breath, complaining of a sore shoulder. “Suck it up. You can do it."

Even the girls – and, yes, he does have a few in the school, Divas in the making – have to roll with the punches. “They train with the boys but don't fight with them,” says Musso. “The audience would be uncomfortable with that. But you find the girls want to get just as into it as the boys; they don't want to be treated differently. They don’t want to be given an easy ride.”

So much for the rough and tumble. But what most people think of when they consider the new breed of wrestlers is not so much the size of their biceps, more the sheen of their spandex. The make-up, the fake tan, the smooth chests – and that’s just the guys. “It's almost like superheroes coming to life,” says Musso. “You must have something entertaining. As good a wrestler as you are, if you're not entertaining people, you're not going to get booked.”

That said, if a newbie turned up at his school decked out in cape and mask, they would soon get cut down to size. “The physical side is the important part. You have to learn first before you think about the showmanship. If you're preoccupied with thinking about costumes and stuff like that at this stage, you're barking up the wrong tree. You need to be focused on everything being perfect. If not, you might have the flash costume but you'll injure yourself within two minutes. They're either here to train and get better or they don't need to come.

“You're selling yourself,” he adds. “You’re a product. You need to go to the gym – I'm in the gym five days a week at the moment, and my aim is to get as big as I possibly can.”

But will any of these young wannabes ever be able to make a living in the ring? There is an image, mainly gleaned from films like The Wrestler, staring Mickey Rourke, of the game’s darker side – of men and women putting their bodies through spectacular punishment for a fistful of used notes at the end of the night. “Weapons matches,” nods Musso. “There is a market for that; it's an older audience, whereas our shows are marketed at kids and families. It is quite an accurate depiction of the underbelly of wrestling. There are people exactly like him, but there are also a lot of people who’ve never had those problems.

“The big money's to be made in the States,” he adds. “I think all the guys dream about that but know it's a far-off goal. Everyone wants to make it over there. At the moment in Britain it's very hard to make a living in wrestling.” n

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