Stratford's Great Canadian Loon finds purpose and better health through professional wrestling
CBC
His journey from jail to the wrestling ring was anything but a straight line but Jesse Adair has found a special kind of drive and notoriety as the Great Canadian Loon in a burgeoning professional wrestling league in southwestern Ontario.
Adair began training in 2020 and it started as a self-improvement exercise.
"My life just didn't have a lot of direction for staying in shape or continuing on trying to better my life health-wise and once I joined wrestling that changed massively," he told CBC News.
Adair competes with a number of pro wrestling companies in the province, including Hammerlock Pure Wrestling, which puts on shows across southwestern Ontario, including cities like Aylmer, Walkerton and Stratford.
Hammerlock is similar to WWE-style wrestling, circa 1985. It's more athletic and less showy than the wrestling of today, says promoter Shawn Bates.
Although the wrestling Adair does is performative — Bates decides the winners and losers beforehand — he said the sport gives him something to work toward.
"These goals really help drive me and keep me in good form, and staying out of trouble, I guess you could say," Adair explained.
And he knows what trouble looks like; Adair regularly walked past a jail where he spent a night, in London, Ont., years ago on the way to his training gym.
"It was a stark reminder of how I had put my life in a better direction," he said.
Adair trained for an entire year before hitting the ring, a regime that was hard than he expected.
"Our coach was a brutal, brutal conditioner," he explained. "And he would take us out back actually, and make us run the parking lot and do wall sits, run the parking lot, and we'd be out there for an hour before we even … went into the ring."
"It was really good. I'm going to say it was not easy, but I'm definitely happy that I got to be there for that experience."
The wrestlers train for a number of moves including clotheslines, piledrivers and body slams.
"I remember the first body slam I ever took," said Brian White, another one of the Hammerlock wrestlers. He's also a councilor with the City of Sarnia, and the deputy warden for the County of Lambton.