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Richard Holliday is one of the best wrestlers on the independent scene and has won numerous championships across numerous promotions since starting his professional wrestling career.
Holliday was most recently the Awesome Championship Wrestling (ACW) Heavyweight Champion before losing the title to Killer Kross last month. He was also ranked No. 112 in Pro Wrestling Illustrated’s Top 500 Singles Wrestlers of 2021.
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The Connecticut native opened up about his career in a recent interview with Pakinomist Digital.
“Richard Holliday is the best independent professional wrestler in the world today,” he said. “It goes without saying, but I have no problem saying it because it’s true… In November of 2014, Paul Roma and Mario Mancini opened a professional wrestling school that was legally two blocks from my house, and at the time I was playing college football, D-II football for the University of New Haven.
Richard Holliday gives the crowd the business at an Awesome Championship Wrestling event. (Jay Vogel)
“I always knew I wanted to be a professional wrestler, but at the time I was transitioning out of playing football. I didn’t want to play football anymore. I wanted to get in the ring. And I don’t know, by divine intervention or just by chance, a school opened up two blocks from my house and it kind of felt like the universe said, ‘Here you go, kid.'”
Holliday said the allure of pro wrestling is what drew him into the sport. He said it gave him the opportunity to showcase all of his abilities, aside from just his athleticism.
“To me, professional wrestling is the biggest thing in the world,” he said. “Obviously, I think it’s the greatest form of live entertainment, but I just think it’s above everything else. I couldn’t think of any other career path where I could really sink my teeth into and have all my skills portrayed the way I can in professional wrestling — from my creative ability, to my athleticism, to standing in front of my audience, a management center.
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“Pro wrestling has taught me so much about myself. Not in terms of what you see on the screen, but off the screen — running my own business, being an independent wrestler, being my own boss. So I control everything, and it takes a lot of skill and a lot of self-discipline to do that to make it in this business. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. So, I just wanted to do it from a young age.”
Holiday is now considered the “most marketable man” in professional wrestling.
Boasting thousands of followers across multiple social media platforms, his natural ability in front of the camera earned him the opportunity to appear in ACW.
Richard Holliday beats his opponent in Awesome Championship Wrestling. (Smoothlenz Photography)
“I’m from Connecticut, and so The Now — Vik (Dalishus) and Hale (Collins) — they’re both New York guys, so we’ve shared dressing rooms up and down the road for years,” he told Pakinomist Digital. “When they started this venture, I was one of the first people they approached. They say, ‘Hey man, what you’re doing is awesome right now and we want you to be a part of Awesome Championship Wrestling.’ It was very fitting.”
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Holliday is set to appear at ACW Reckoning next week in Poughkeepsie, New York, against Andrade El Idolo, a star with All Elite Wrestling and New Japan Pro-Wrestling IWGP global heavyweight champion. He said the fight is just the latest in a series of highlight fights he has been involved in.
“Really over the past year, I’ve had this rise on social media, where a lot of my popularity has come from what I post on social media every single day. Showing up every day and having really entertaining things on the platform like Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and TikTok — things of that nature,” Holliday said. “And it’s not lost on me that I’m getting new fans from social media, and a lot of them may have never seen me wrestle in person, which is cool because now it gives them an opportunity to be like, hey, I saw this guy online and I want to see him wrestle. So I think that’s kind of the point of social media is to attract new fans, which is great, but ultimately we want to see them live.
“Now I fight every weekend, but every time I fight for ACW, it really seems like these really big, marquee fights. I’ve fought people like Matt Cardona, Matt Riddle, Killer Kross, Mike Santana. The fights are getting bigger and bigger and now I’m fighting Andrade. So what I would really love to go to was to happen, and I know if someone were to go to my previous fight was to happen. look at the catalog, they’ve uploaded a lot of the library on YouTube, or you can go to Triller and watch these matches, I prove how exceptional a professional wrestler I am. I am truly one of the best at my craft at a very high level.
Richard Holliday plays to the crowd at an Awesome Championship Wrestling event. (Smoothlenz photography)
“So, me and Andrade, is it a clash of styles? I don’t know. Is it a dream match? I’m sure for some people, absolutely. This is a massive fight to go down at the MJN Center, as is every Richard Holliday fight that ever happens at the MJN Center. It’s going to be one to watch. It’s going to be a spectacle.”
Ben Bishop, Steph De Lander, Indi Hartwell, Mance Warner and The Righteous are among those who will be on the ACW Reckoning card.
ACW’s professionalism is what sets the promotion apart from all others, according to Holliday.
“It’s up and away the most professional independent professional wrestling promotion that I’ve ever wrestled for, and I mean it. It’s TV quality production,” he said. “Backstage, everyone is taken care of. It’s so great from the catering, the dressing room is spacious and comfortable, and it’s the most professional environment I’ve been a part of on the independent scene. I almost don’t want to put them in the independent category, because that’s how much they stand above everyone else.”
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The ACW Reckoning will take place at the MJN Center on May 16.
