Photo credit: @slingbladephoto
In an exclusive interview with PW Ponderings’ Scott Mitchell (@ScottsScoop44), Connor Hopkins (@Hopper2017) sits down and talks about his time breaking into the independent wrestling scene, his time working at ZOWA, working with DREAMWAVE Wrestling, forming Those Damn Coyotes, and so much more.
When and why did you get into wrestling as a kid?
“I got into wrestling as a kid because one of my best friends growing up. We started watching it together in probably 2007 or 2008. I went through the usual thing, they get attracted to the bright lights, the colors, and the face paint. It’s no wonder Jeff Hardy and The Undertaker were my guys from a young age. That’s really what drew me in. I was always involved with sports growing up, but I also did a lot of theater and performing arts, and even from a young age I could tell wrestling was a perfect blend between those two.”
Growing up, did you have any inspirations that you wanted to emulate in the ring, or just people who you looked up to?
“Totally. I watched pretty religiously for several years, but I kind of fell out of it when I hit junior high and early high school. But I picked it back up again because I noticed CM Punk was still around. Punk was someone who I was always drawn to and took a lot of inspiration from. As I started to discover the independent scene and stuff like that, Adam Cole became one of my absolute favorites. I watched Ring of Honor in the early days of The Kingdom, and just that kind of really brought me in on the Indies. Also, watching guys like Edge, Chris Jericho, and Shawn Michaels as well. The stuff that we’re doing with the Coyotes, I draw inspiration from a lot of the heelish factions over the years.”
When and why did you really begin training and realizing that you wanted to become a professional wrestler?
“I knew I wanted to be a wrestler forever. My friends and I would wrestle in my basement on mattresses and couches and stuff. Then, I begged my parents for a trampoline, and we began wrestling there. A buddy of mine, Bailey Bright, pointed out to me that he knew I was a big wrestling fan and we used to wrestle in the backyard all the time, and he asked me if I ever thought about doing this for real. I said yes. And he pointed me in the direction of ZOWA in Northwestern Illinois. Six days after I graduated high school, I began training and from there, it really just took off. As far as when I knew almost from day one.”
When you began training at ZOWA, did you have any mentors or anyone to whom you attribute a lot of your success too?
“Totally. More than anything, there’s one man in particular that I can attribute almost everything to, and that’s Christian Rose. He had a hand in training me at ZOWA. He’s been around forever and has done a lot. He’s someone who’s had a huge hand in making me who I am today.”
You were named Mr. ZOWA pretty early on in your career. What was it like winning your first title?
“I finished training and had to go to college. It was something I wanted to do and also my parents wanted to do. The start of my career was a pretty weird one. Basically, I trained for a summer, then went away to college, and whenever I came home, I would train more. After my first year of college, I was in a ladder match for the Mr. ZOWA title, which really was kind of a coming-out party for me. It was the first time I had been involved with something of some substance. I had a big heel turn there, and it really kickstarted a great run at ZOWA. I was maybe a dozen matches in at that point. It was really cool to be told hey we’re going to give this to you, take this and run with it. It’s definitely kind of a watershed moment for me.”
Shortly after that, you formed The Soured Saints alongside Ashton Sours and James Thomas. What was it like to form that faction and work with a group for the first time?
“It was a little weird. We all were green as grass. Being put together in this faction was a little bit tricky. We didn’t really know who we were as wrestlers, so trying to figure out who we were as a group was kind of tricky. It ended up being a lot of fun. I love having goons, so to have that kind of story at my disposal was really fun.”
At ZOWA, you and Cole Radrick put on some great matches together and just beat the hell out of each other. What was it like working with him and having that storyline?
“Working with Radrick was one of the first times I ever was taken out of my comfort zone. I never worked with someone like him, as far as with hardcore stuff, and doing a lot in the ring really fast. I was trained in kind of the old-school style, where less was more. It was really cool dipping my toe into that pool. He absolutely ate me alive during that entire feud. I still feel like I earned a lot. It was a pretty cool series of matches that we got to have.”
You won the ZOWA Championship against Bucky Collins and you two put on some great matches, as well. What was it like to put on that story with him?
“If you want to talk about people who are underrated and have to be talked about more, he will be at the top of my list forever. The steel cage match we had was the culmination of two and a half years of storytelling. It was really cool to have all of that payoff. The steel cage was really intimidating. I spent a lot of time doing research because I’m just an absolute nerd when it comes to wrestling. Still coming out of the pandemic at that point, the actual cage we ordered didn’t arrive in time, so we had to make a makeshift cage. We get a lot of grief sometimes about the chicken wire cage, which wasn’t chicken wire, it was a cattle panel. I think that the rustic, grungy cage, which we absolutely destroyed, I think that for the live audience, it was really cool because it was just another layer of how much we hated each other. We had to be contained in a cage, and we still broke the cage. It was some of the most fun I’ve had in wrestling. It started with me beating him for the title in a tournament in July of 2020 where there wasn’t much happening in wrestling. Starting by winning the title off him, then transitioning to him being my biggest fan, renaming him CHIP (Connor Hopkins Intellectual Property) was just a lot of fun. Getting to team with him, he’s just such a creative genius. When I lost the title and he turned on me, that kickstarted a whole other thing for another year. It was a really cool thing we built for that.”
At DREAMWAVE, we got to see the debut of one of my personal favorite factions on the independent scene today, Those Damn Coyotes. What was it like forming that group alongside Damian Deschain, Brooks Berna, and Christian Rose?
“TDC came out of myself, Deschain, Berna, and Rose. We’re all friends. We rode together to shows and we kind of just started talking about it and figured why don’t we do our own Illinois thing? We’re a bunch of rednecks who love to gamble, fight, drink beer, and swear. Rose at the time was going by the moniker of the old, evil, bad coyote. So, we started thinking about what we could do with that because we’re all disciples of Christian Rose. So, I threw the name out there, and the rest is history. One of the best things about TDC is it kind of has been my brainchild since the beginning, I design the merch, picked out the theme song, and designed our gear, it’s just so great. I love being able to have a tangible effect on the scene.”
What was it like to work with The Hype (12 Gaige and Hunter Holdcraft) early on and see how they’ve grown since then?
“12 Gaige was someone I’ve known since he was training in late 2019ish. Hunter just came on the scene recently. The first time we tagged against The Hype, it was Hunter’s sixth or seventh match. They are fantastic as a team. They’re both incredibly talented athletes and complement each other very well. Hunter is unbelievably strong. It was great getting to be in that tag match with them in December. I highly recommend going and checking that out, it genuinely may be the best tag match I’ve ever had.”
What has it like been working with Vic Capri and helping Christian Rose win the DREAMWAVE Championship at Capri’s expense, as well as getting to face off with Capri one-on-one at the last show?
“It’s been a little conflicting. On the one hand, Vic Capri should stay out of the Coyotes business, but the early 2000s indie wrestling nerd in me is always overjoyed to be working with Vic. He’s seen and done it all. CM Punk was name-checking him regularly on his live journal back in the day. Vic has been everywhere and done everything. He has a lot to teach, and he is one of the most intimidating human beings I’ve ever met. It was awesome to wrestle him again. I wrestled him once before and it was on an outdoor show where it was 95 degrees outside, and we didn’t really do that much. This was a great redemption to prove we could beat the hell out of each other, and we did. I loved it.”
Your upcoming match, which just got announced for the June 17th DREAMWAVE Wrestling show, sees you facing off with Stephen Wolf. What’s it like getting ready for that match and knowing you’ll be facing off with another one of the top independent wrestling stars around today?
“I’m not sweating it one bit. Wolf and I are tied up at one right now. He beat me early on in my career, then I beat him to retain my ZOWA title. We’ve both grown tremendously since then, but I have insurance now. He doesn’t. He’s a lone wolf, but coyotes travel in packs, you just have to watch your back.”
What’s next for Connor Hopkins? Are there any future goals or opponents that you’d like to face?
“There’s a lot that’s next. I broke into the twin cities area, about this time last year. I feel like there’s still a lot left to accomplish up there. I finally beat Arik Cannon for the first time, and I will never stop rubbing that in his face. I think my next goals are I want to wrestle Darin Corbin again and would love to wrestle Effy at some point. I want to go international, that’s a goal of mine this year. I want to just keep doing what I’m doing and going up in the ranks. It seems like people are enjoying the product I’ve been putting out, I finally settled into my groove and am just being myself. It seems to be working for me. I just want to wrestle more and be everywhere. I want to go everywhere and see everything. I got to wrestle at first avenue last year, which is awesome for me because I’m a huge music guy. So yeah, more stuff like that please.”
If you would like to support Connor Hopkins, you can find him on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, as well as buy merch from him wherever you may see him live.
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