Meet the wrestler landing backflips off a cage in front of 'wild' crowds

The next he's Luke Watts, "The Hope from the Top Rope" who performs moonsaults from the top of a cage, downs steaks for breakfast and wins championship gold in front of almost 2000 roaring fans.

For now we'll run with Watts, the champion and one of the faces of the Slam Pro Wrestling League, a Canberra promotion which packed the National Convention Centre last month and will do the same at the Canberra Southern Cross Club on February 3.

He's been on this journey since he saw Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage and Ric Flair on a television screen, watching Scott Hall long before we heard him say: Hard work pays off, dreams come true, bad times don't last ... but bad guys do.

"There was something about the arrogance and the machismo," Watts said. "You felt like they believed it, so you believed it."

But Watts, with a moustache and bright blonde hair, is a babyface. Come Saturday, title challenger Vinnie Bronson is the heel, or simply, the bad guy.

Watts likens his style to Rey Mysterio, Juventud Guerrera and Billy Kidman - but it's another former WWE star who showed him the ropes when he moved to Calgary to train under Lance Storm.

"I was 19 years old at the time, still very starstruck. I had that glint in my eyes, like 'oh my god, I'm meeting someone famous from the TV'," Watts grinned.

"Where we were staying, I realised I had to get a train and two buses to get to the venue in the morning. I could barely sleep the first night beforehand, thinking 'I have to wake up this early to get to this bus, and don't look like a fool in front of Lance'.

"He was a great teacher, an excellent coach, and is still a great mentor for me to this day. He was very technical. You could see why, if you watch any Lance Storm match back now, why he was so special. He was so precise and he took care of all the details so you didn't have to notice them as a viewer."

And that matters.

"There might be a misconception there that it's as easy as putting on your best sleeveless black top and having a roll around in the ring," Watts said.

"When it's done right, it's done because at least 10,000 hours of very hard work has been put into the process. First of all, just physically being able to do what we do at the level we do it, it involves a lot of bodyweight exercises and core strength, reflex time needs to be calibrated for learning how to get down, get up very quickly, do it 500 times.

"We know the stronger we are, the better we'll be able to do. It makes what we do far more professional that some guys who train out of a garage once a month and just try to do chokeslams onto a crash mat."

Which is why an "absolutely wild" crowd of 1713 people turned up to the National Convention Centre to see Watts and Mikey Broderick compete in a steel cage match last month.

And why officials are anticipating another sell-out crowd of more than 700 at the Canberra Southern Cross Club for the Slam Rumble - a 20-man over the top rope battle royal, with the winner to challenge the Slam champion at a later date - next Saturday night.

The Slam Rumble marks the first of the promotion's "super six" events of the year - which are taken to the Southern Cross Club and National Convention Centre - while a host of smaller events are run throughout the year.

"Absolutely wild. That [1713] was the highest number crowd for an Australian company since the 1970s," Watts said.

"It hasn't been duplicated since the 70s when local wrestling was still on TV in Australia. Obviously WWE do big numbers when they come here. Fascinating that little old Canberra, home to 450,000 people, came out to the pro wrestling product aimed at families. It goes to show what a pillar of the entertainment community and sporting community Slam has become for Canberra.

"The crowd were absolutely with us from first bell to last bell. Can't think of a more satisfying experience, definitely a peak moment in my life."

As for that moonsault?

"A lot of people are under the perception that 'wow, this is something Luke must have been preparing for, something Luke must have had time to prepare, he had this in his back pocket the whole time'," Watts said.

"No, it was very much heat of the moment. Mikey Broderick had already kicked out of my shooting star press, nobody had ever kicked out of that before. What is going to keep this guy down? All I could think when I started the climb was 'it's now or never'. The 270 degrees of knees from the top of the cage or bust.

"I look back at my gymnastics training, I look back at all the hours I put in at the AIS as a teenager, the long 20-year journey of pro wrestling has led me here to the most important match of my life, with the most prestigious championship on the line, it was do-or-die.

"The roaring fans, you could hear when I was standing up there, the realisation 'Luke wasn't just going to climb down'. He was going to go for something like that moonsault and luckily, I was able to hit it right on bullseye.

"Absolutely terrifying, I'm amazed and thrilled it paid off, extremely painful for myself and Mikey on impact."