It's coming home! Local professional wrestler CBL excited about Longford showcase
Granard wrestler Conor Brady Lee (CBL) is bringing his sport back home to Longford's Temperance Hall on Sunday
Longford professional wrestler Conor Brady Lee (CBL) is bringing his sport back home on Sunday next.
There will be a wrestling event held on Sunday next, August 18 in the Temperance Hall (starting at 3pm).
The event will be a showcase for Fight Factory, which is the wrestling club that Conor is affiliated with.
A wrestling event was held in the Temperance Hall last summer.
It meant a lot to Granard’s Conor to bring the show to Longford. “My friends from Dublin travelled down for the event and there were locals who turned up to see the sport,” he stated.
After the event, in which Conor competed, he got messages from social media from young men interested in taking up the sport.
“Seven years ago, I took up wrestling. It was good to get messages from young lads wondering how they could take up the sport,” he stated.
An added bonus for Conor is that he will be returning to Longford as Irish Junior Heavyweight champion.
“I won the title a month after the show in Longford last year. Six years of hard work and dedication went into winning that title,” Conor explained.
“Wrestling is something that I always wanted to do,” Conor added.
His club initially started in Co. Wicklow but then moved to the East Wall area of Dublin.
“I travelled up early on a Saturday morning to train at the club. There are up to 30 wrestlers active in the Fight Factory club,” he explained.
Conor has had the opportunity to train abroad. “I have trained in the UK and also in the United States,” he explained.
“I have also got to meet many of my heroes in wrestling,” Conor added.
A huge influence on Conor’s career has been LJ Cleary, his head coach. Conor has also wrestled LJ and following a number of stints in Japan, LJ will be coming down to Longford this Sunday.
“LJ is a huge influence on me. He has provided a pathway and blueprint for me,” Conor explained.
Conor added that wrestling is “incredibly skillful.” “I train three or four days per week and I also spend time in the gym. I am trying to get bigger. When we wrestle in events, we feed off the energy of the crowd,” he stated.
In the week that Longford swimmer Darragh Greene returned from the Olympics, Conor is another young man from the county who is making a mark in a minority sport.