In recent years, British talent has begun to crop up more frequently across the world of pro wrestling. Not only on independent circuits, but also featuring more prominently on WWE, Ring Of Honor, and New Japan Pro Wrestling.

This, however, hasn’t always been the case.

Rising 205 Live, and WWE NXT UK Superstar, Mark Andrews, was recently a guest on the They Are NXT UK podcast. During the show, Andrews discussed the importance of available TV exposure for UK independent wrestling.

At one point in time, British stars were a rarity on mainstream wrestling shows like WWE. Now, with the advent of streaming, and the sheer accessibility of pro wrestling to a global audience, Mark Andrews considers the landscape to be forever changed.

“[TV exposure] was really important because I come from a generation of wrestlers in the UK where there hasn’t always been a spotlight on us,” he reflected.

“I know when I started back in 2006, when I was 12/13, there wasn’t really anything on TV. I mean you had a few, like FWA [Frontier Wrestling Alliance] was on the wrestling channel and there’d be old reruns of World of Sport, but it wasn’t in the limelight much. It wasn’t in the mainstream. And obviously WWE, most of their roster would be kinda American at the time. You had the likes of William Regal, Fit Finlay — a few British guys were out there but there wasn’t really a booming scene like there is now.”

“So to first get television exposure, to actually be seen worldwide was huge for me,” he admitted. “And even back then, at the time, there wasn’t many British wrestlers being on TV. You have guys like Drake Maverick who has broken out a little bit, Zack Sabre that has broken out in Japan, obviously Finn Balor, people like that. But there still wasn’t an entire scene being pushed, so it [TV exposure] was really important. And I think I was one of the few at the time to get TV exposure, and it’s funny, you fast forward now to 2018 and look at NXT UK!”

With NXT UK now available via the WWE Network, and the influx of British talent appearing on different WWE shows, it may appear as though British talent have appeared out of nowhere.

Not so, according to Andrews.

“[…] suddenly you see all this talent that almost feel like they’ve been hidden gems over the last 5, 6 or 8 — even up to 10 years,” he said. “But I guess that’s because we’ve had such a strong scene over here in the UK, and now we’ve had years and years of honing our craft […] we finally get to be seen on the grand stage that is WWE.

And I almost feel like, well I’m hoping, and I’m sure that the world’s almost a bit shocked like, ‘Where have all these British guys come from?’, ‘Where have they been this whole time?’ And now it’s nice to be on that platform for the world to see what we’ve been working on for the last 10+ years.”