What’s In A Name: The Stories Behind The Names Of Indie Wrestlers

Credit: @gene_munny/@theheaddrop/@hailwindsor

A sharp and catchy name can make or break the career of a wrestler. A name is not only their identity but also a symbol of who they are both in and out of the ring.

In our podcast interviews, which you can check out on YouTube here, we often ask your favourite wrestlers where their names come from.

Here’s some of the best answers we’ve had:

Jayde

Credit: @jaydewrestler/@victorkurzweil

“After training and getting to the point where I was match ready, I wasn’t 100% sure it was going to happen. I got a call from my trainer at the time, Gene Munny, and he was like, ‘right, you’ve got a match on Saturday, what’s your name? I’ve got to do the graphic’.

“I was like, ‘I-I dunno, I dunno’, he said ‘come on, quick, I need to know. I need it right now, right this second’.

“I was like, ‘I-I dunno, how about Jade’, he was like ‘no, you can’t do that’, because obviously Jade being Mia Yim was on the UK scene at the time.

“And he was just like ‘Y, we’ll put a Y in it, that makes it different’, he hung up straight after that like the Gene Munny he is.

“Then the graphic went out and that was it. This is all on Gene Munny.”

Jetta

Credit: @jetta_wrestle

“So, the story of the name is not great because it’s not well thought out at all.

“I was wrestling on my first show and didn’t have a name. There was another trainee there and she didn’t have a name either.

“Then one of the other trainees said ‘why don’t you use the name Jetta’, and we were like ‘what’s that?’. He said it was the name of a car in The Fast and the Furious.

“We flipped a coin for it and I won and that became my name and I’ve just never changed it.”

‘Damn Dirty Dog’ Gene Munny

Credit: @gene_munny/@theheaddrop

“I talk about Gene in the third person because it’s not the name I was given at birth, but we are very, very similar"

"The Damn Dirty Dog is what it says, I remember walking my dog Argus up a field, he rolled in shit, had a great time, ate something off the floor and then marked its territory over where another dog had.

“I saw it and was like that’s Gene Munny, he’s not afraid to make his territory and roll around in the filth. And it doesn’t matter how filthy they are you still want to give it a belly rub and a treat.”

Alex Windsor (Liberty)

Credit: @hailwindsor/@theheaddrop

“When I was at training school in Norwich, I’d been training for about four weeks and the head trainer was like ‘I’m going to put you on an academy show, what’s your wrestling name?’.

“I was like ‘Oh no, I can’t think of one…’, he was like ‘okay, you’re Liberty’.

“I was like ‘okay I haven’t thought of anything else, I’m Liberty I guess’. It was just handed to me and me being just 15 I didn’t really have any other thoughts about it.

“Then when I moved up to the West Midlands I thought I needed a revamp. Ryan [Smile] helped me with the name change, my look, my music.

“In terms of the name, I liked the name Alex and I think Ryan suggested Windsor as something regal - no necessarily to do with the Royal Family but regal and to have that about you, but then in the ring you’re quite ruthless.

“It was something I’d come up with myself, it was nice that I wasn’t just a trainee and I felt like a proper independent wrestler."“