Inside a warehouse on the outskirts of Lincoln city centre, local promotion Fight Factory Wrestling is preparing for its biggest show of the year on October 25, Bodyslams to Cancer.
Walking into the building on a windy Friday night, 2 students are getting some extra training in for the show, one of whom recently came back from a serious injury and is getting used to moving inside the ring once again. Upstairs are the owners of the promotion, husband and wife Hayden and Rebecca Loeve. Following introductions and sharing a few humorous wrestling stories in the upstairs area, which is also the set of their Lad and Dad podcast, the training finishes up and we set up inside the ring.
Surrounded by historical and personal items which include figures, flags, and posters of previous shows, the big 200th Fight Factory Wrestling show not being too far away, all of the items have meaning to Hayden and Rebecca as the figures are of wrestlers who have inspired the students, and the flags represent the countries some of the students have travelled from to train at FFW.
The 2025 Bodyslams to Cancer will be the 12th iteration of the event, and one that has a very personal connection to Hayden:
“So I was just independently wrestling. My mom was battling cancer, and she’d never managed to come along and watch any events. So she’d seen it on YouTube and DVD, I keep being reminded how old that media is now. So she’d seen stuff on the TV or the computer, but she’d never seen it live. She wasn’t even a wrestling fan, but she wanted to come along. And so we kind of said, right, if we can get a bigger hall and you can sit out the way of people and not risk getting sick. We can do something and raise a bit of money for St Barnabas. I think it was Candles we looked at for the first one as well, because they were both looking after my mum. And then we had it all kind of pencilled in, what we were going to do in October with it being breast cancer month, and then she died in June. So we kind of went, Oh, let’s try and make it bigger than the 100, 150 people we were aiming for, and let’s try and fill the hall. And it was full. It’s just kind of happened. We had a lot of people contact us saying we’d love to work the show.”
With more than a decade of shows, Bodyslams to Cancer regularly opens with an address to the crowd from Rebecca and a heartwrenching video package reminding fans of how cruel and unforgiving cancer can be. For Rebecca, one year sadly stands out as the toughest:
“I think the hardest one I’ve done is the year that my dad died, like the first one after that was really, really tough.”
“I think they get a little tougher each year, especially for those of us who have been there from the start.“ Adds Hayden “Then those of us who have got personal stories, because some of the kids we’ve supported over the years, and some of the adults as well that we’ve supported over the years, because it’s not always been registered charities, it’s been individuals. There was a gentleman called Lex Davison. He was battling cancer, and he had kids, so we raised the money for him to put away for his kids. You get to know these people, and each time someone passes, there’s a bit of you that’s like why are we doing it to ourselves? As bad as that can sound. But then the reason is for those people you know, and for the little memories that you get for us is the reward, and for the smiles on the faces of the people who it’s helping is the biggest reward. So, yes, each year it’s more and more. The wrestlers ringside are wearing sunglasses. A couple of them don’t even come out of the curtain. They just can’t face it. And the reason we put the video out like a week before, two weeks before the event, it helps with marketing, obviously, to get bums on seats, but it’s so we can all see it and be ready. Because, if you’ve not seen it, it’s a kick in the face, but that’s what it’s intended for.”
In total, the promotion has raised close to £50,000 for charities over the last 12 years, with £43,000 being from the annual Bodyslams to Cancer shows. This year, all of the money raised will be donated to the charity Sophie’s Journey, another cause that is very close to the couple:
“So I went to school with Stacy”, said Hayden, “who is the mother of Sophie, and as kids, Ben, the father, used to live around the corner from me, so I’d known them for quite a while, and Sophie got sick. We saw the life event playing out on social media, and it’s heartbreaking. She’s the same age as my daughter. It brings it home. It’s scary, and it’s, how can we help? What can we do? Because we see what Sophie was doing and Stacey was doing with her while she was here, and the money they were raising for the brain tumor charity. Then when she set up Sophie’s journey, it’s like, that’s incredible. So what they started doing was a caravan. They were raising money for a caravan so kids could go on holiday. But if any kids are fighting cancer, if anything was to go wrong, if they were to get sick, if they would need some medical attention, it was available. They knew where to go.”
“The caravans are all adapted so they have hoists and everything. “ Adds Rebecca. “Everything that they would need to be looked after and to still enjoy a holiday was there, and that, for me, was just immense. It’s a building that’s going to look after, enable adults to go with end-of-life and palliative care. And it means that this building will be adapted so that they can go anywhere from sort of like the last 12 months of life up until when they’re dying. And it means that they’ve got everything that they need, and it’s somewhere, if necessary, the community nurses can go see them and just and that to me, because I’m a community nurse that deals with palliative care and end of life care, so that, to me, just ticked all of the boxes. And I was just like, yeah, and that’s why we decided that 100% of the profits this year would go towards Sophie’s Journey, because they’re covering adults and children.”
“Because kids with cancer, and I know adults too, but it’s always a bit more scary when it’s kids, they’re still kids, you know. That, that element of childhood we can keep for them. As society, we should be protecting that and that’s what they’re doing. They’re giving these kids a holiday, they’re giving them memories. They’re giving them time with their family, a couple of days, a couple of weeks, to forget about treatment and sickness, you know? And it’s amazing.”
With cancer sadly affecting both Hayden and Rebecca, they are aware firsthand that the work the charity does is vital, as it can allow patients to have some sense of normalcy during a very difficult time:
“You’re not just being the cancer,” said Rebecca. There are a lot of patients that I deal with that their life literally revolves around cancer. They’re not the person. It’s like, “I’m the person with pancreatic cancer.” “I’m the person with a brain tumour.” They just want to get away from that.”
“I remember a conversation with my mum.” Recalls Hayden, “She was like, I just want people to talk to me normally. Occasionally, she’d make the odd joke when her hair came out, and it’s, again, that sense of normal, you know, your sense of humour doesn’t go because you’re sick. So yeah that the sense of normal life and everything is, I think a lot of people do forget that. So yes, again, can’t credit Sophie’s journey enough for what they’re trying to do, what they are doing.”
Fight Factory Wrestling Owner Hayden “Dutch” Loeve Opens Up About Possible Last Match
Hoping to once again raise thousands for charity, Bodyslams to Cancer is the biggest show of the year for FFW, and the 2025 show could be an especially important one for Hayden, who wrestles under the name Dutch. A few days before the show, the promotion announced that Dutch would be teaming with longtime friend Lory to take on Damien Valentine and a mystery partner in what is being billed as “quite probably” Dutch’s final match:
“So I had my final match in February, not knowing it was going to be my final match, and a bit of a niggling pain in my shoulder, but you just put it down to I’ve had it repaired before, so is it just that playing up? I’ve managed to do a couple of matches, and I felt it go a couple of times, and then, of all the things, as we said off camera, I rolled over in bed, f*ck! What’s just happened here? It woke me up in the middle of the night. Holy sh*t, that really hurts! I think I even woke you up, and I don’t use painkillers, I had a big problem from years ago. So I went and I took paracetamol, ibuprofen. I was in a lot of pain, and then, I think the next day, I got coffee, and I dropped it. So I was like, my rotator cuff is gone, and spoke to my doctor. He was like, yeah, it does sound like it’s gone, but you’re passing these tests, which says no. Sent me for a scan, and he was like, your rotator cuff is in perfect condition. I was like, okay, so it’s nothing, then maybe some bruising. No, your shoulders f*cked. The bone has been hitting the bone for so long, which I’ve not noticed. It’s like a gravel driveway in the shoulder sockets, there’s bone fragment everywhere, and the left bicep is hanging on by a thread, so it’s pretty much ruptured. So he wants to replace the bicep or reattach it somewhere else, and then totally changed the socket somehow, I don’t know. So I’m in surgery two days after the event, and he said to me, there’s not very much chance of being able to be in a ring again afterwards.”
“You’ll be able to function normally”, added Rebecca.
“Yeah. His goal is for me to be pain-free. But essentially, I’m pain-free already. So I’ve been back in the ring. I started retraining a bit harder in the gym last month. I was like, okay, my fitness is okay. I’ve eaten the wrong stuff for a while, but my fitness is okay. Got back in the ring three times this week, sh*t, I don’t miss it. It hurts! So I’m gonna go into it thinking it could possibly be my last match. You know, the doctor said so, the rehab is a long rehab. There was a few people who I put forward who I’d like to work with, and other people had kind of said, look, the options are not limited, but I had to think about their safety and my safety, because we use the left arm a lot. So yeah, I kind of had some sort of say in it. It was narrowed down to like six people, and it was like, right, okay, this person’s here, this person’s here. So they’ve already got moving parts going on. So yeah, and if I can rehab, and if my physio is happy with it and my doctor’s happy with it, then I don’t know. I’m in my 40s. Should I carry on anyway? But yeah, we’ll see. So far it is the last match, but not retired.”
Rebecca also noted that wrestling retirements don’t exactly have a habit of sticking:
“In wrestling, people retire all the time and come back. But it’s the thing. It’s an addiction, isn’t it? You can’t just walk away from it, and especially when we’re doing this”
Although Hayden will be teaming with someone he knows very well in the final bout, there was a different match he originally wanted. As is often the case in wrestling with the likes of Charlotte Flair, Dominik Mysterio and Bron Breakker, many second and third-generation wrestlers find their way into the business. This is also the case with Fight Factory Wrestling, as their eldest daughter, Kiya and son AJ, regularly compete on shows. With Hayden hosting the Lad and Dad podcast with his son AJ each week, there was also a hope that a lad vs. dad match could have come to fruition:
“That’s what I wanted. Yeah, I never told him. So this will be the first time he hears it. That was the one I really wanted, him or Kiya, my oldest, but how could we make the one with my oldest daughter work? There would have been a way, but I don’t know how we’d get to it. With the lad, it’s a relatively easy story. We could start something on a podcast, but my brother’s main concern was, if he was to sh*t the bed, where would it go? Would I be safe enough to recover it? And again, I think so. I wouldn’t put anybody in danger, never mind my own kid. But there are a few things that we just wanted to avoid. Because again, if my shoulder were to go, I wouldn’t want in the early stage of his career, I wouldn’t want him to blame himself. His brain would have just not let him get over that, I don’t think. As much as it would have been good for me to say I’ve done it, probably the right decision not to yet. And again, there is my oldest, Kiya. I’ve wrestled TJ. I’ve tagged with Kiya, but she learned here, and then she’s gone off, and she’s learned other places as well, and she’s been working independently. I can see how good she is, but it’d be good to mix that up. But again, maybe one day.”
Personal And Professional Triumphs In FFW
Moving on to conversations about Fight Factory Wrestling in general, the promotion has seen huge successes from the very top, right through to one student reaching a major personal milestone. Fans of Progress and Japanese promotion Pro Wrestling NOAH have recently seen former FFW student Will Kroos make a major impact over the past few months, and he also recently received a WWE try-out. Having known Will since the beginning, Rebecca is so proud to see how far Kroos has progressed:
“When you see students who started with you right at the very beginning get a try-out for WWE this year, Will Kroos, I’m so proud of him and how well he’s done, and to know that we’ve had even just a small part of building his foundations for him to go on and do that.”
Recalling a success on a much more personal level, Hayden spoke about one student with cerebral palsy who was able to live out his wrestling dream despite the setback:
“We had a kid with cerebral palsy come in, and when he came in, he couldn’t walk between the ropes of a 15-foot ring. We got him to the point where it wasn’t perfect running, but we got him running the ropes on an 18-foot ring. He had very little control of his muscles because of his disability, so when he hit you, holy sh*t did he hit you! But he wanted to be in a match, so we put him on a main show in a battle royal, if I remember right, and obviously very, very scripted to get him out. But he got to live out something that doctors told him he’d never do. When you get these kids and adults on where people have written them off, when they’ve been written off by doctors, when they’ve been written off by peers, friends, at school, or whatever, and you can get them doing something, it’s not much cooler than that.”
Although pro wrestling has been a male-dominated industry since its inception, both in the ring and behind the scenes, it is Rebecca who calls the shots at Fight Factory Wrestling. Being the one in charge of the storylines, the medic, events manager, safeguarding officer and “the general person people come to complain to”, Rebecca, who notes that she is not a wrestler but knows what works, spoke candidly about one experience where a disagreement with another promoter occurred:
“I’ve never wrestled. I don’t watch wrestling. I know my product, and I know what I want to see, and I know what works for our crowds, and from going around and watching other people’s products, I’ve learned what works. But yeah, I had a bit of a disagreement with a well-known promoter a few years ago now, and it was over the fact that he and one of our students had been left to haul this wrestling ring down a really steep flight of stairs, and everybody else had buggered off. It was like, four o’clock in the morning. I rang him, and I was like, ‘Where are you?’ He was like, ‘I’m still offloading the ring.’ What?! So I had a bit of a humdinger with this very, very well-known wrestling promoter who basically womaned me, and I didn’t take it lightly. We were fine after that massive disagreement, and I put him straight, and he was all right after that. But yeah, it’s difficult, like they [think] yeah, just a woman. But I think that in the last few years, though, wrestling has progressed, because we’ve gone from bra and panties matches to women wrestlers being wrestlers, and it doesn’t matter who they get in the ring with, they are wrestlers, and that’s how it should be. So that’s made it easier, but it has been a lot of hard work, and it’s been a lot of hard work for women in general, in wrestling.”
While wrestling plays a large part in Rebecca’s weekends, during the working week, she is a nurse, which is when there was a concern over the disconnect between Rebecca Loeve and Miss Rebecca, her onscreen persona in FFW. Despite the fact that wrestling being scripted has been known for decades and movie fans being aware that the actor and the character are two separate people, even in 2025, the lines can get blurred:
“If people don’t get the Miss Rebecca storyline, they just see me, and they can report me to the NMC, which is the Nursing Midwifery Council, for something that is literally acting. Then the more serious side of it, if somebody gets injured at one of our events, I’m responsible for that. So that, there isn’t a disconnect, I could lose my day job, and my day job is something that is me. That’s the one thing that is me where I get called my name instead of mum, wife, and every other name in between. So it is difficult, and especially in today’s day and age as well. I’ll probably get cancelled for saying this, but everybody gets offended by everything. There’s jokes that you maybe used to be able to say you can’t say anymore, and there’s certain things that absolutely need to change, and that’s a good thing, but there’s a lot of people out there that also get butt hurt over stupid stuff, and it is really risky for me to be fair. But yeah, it’s a serious thing, and I’ve always got to consider my professional life as well as this.”
“There’s been some of the guys who have done the in-car promo in their work uniform, and they’ve got into trouble.” Added Hayden. “Yeah, they shouldn’t do it in the uniform, because, in my opinion, if you’re portraying a wrestler, you’re a wrestler. You’re not, yeah, whatever other job you are.”
The disconnect also became very apparent, albeit in a very humorous way, when Fight Factory previously booked local radio DJ John Marshall to host a Bodyslams to Cancer event. Although Marshall was initially excited to be involved in the event and spoke about it on air, Hayden remembers one of the heels sending Marshall an in-character threat, which the DJ took literally:
“So we reached out to see if he would host Bodyslams to Cancer quite a few years ago, I think it was the first one at NK [leisure centre]. He agreed to it, brilliant! I think it was quite far out, like the summer, where we didn’t really give a massive brief of what was going to happen, and he did something on air promoting it, brilliant! It’s on the radio. Then one of our villains took a social media platform, I don’t even know which one, and just called him out and said, ‘Hi, it’s all good chatting, but when you get in that ring, I’m gonna smash your head in’ or something. I can’t remember if it was an email or a social media thing, or we might have gotten a phone call. But it was like, ‘It’s disgusting that I’m doing this to help you guys out, and then I’m being threatened by one of the wrestlers…’ I said, ‘It’s wrestling, mate. He’s playing a bad guy. When you come on the day, he’ll shake your hand and he’ll be very quiet, because he’s normally quite a reserved guy.’ He doesn’t know. [The DJ said] ‘No, I don’t. I feel stupid,’ and he did a whole thing on the radio about it. Yeah it was heat for like a few hours, if that. But very funny.”
Although the promotion is based in Lincolnshire, with most shows taking place in the county, most events can be streamed online via their website and select shows have been uploaded to their YouTube channel. Closing out the interview, Hayden stated that 3 matches from Bodyslams to Cancer 2019 are the ones that he would recommend fans check out:
“I remember, so we put out a poll to the fans to give us their match of the year. Normally they’re just scattered out between the shows from what people went to, and most of the votes came from that one Bodyslams to Cancer. There was Damian Valentine vs. Will Jackson, me versus KD and Lori versus Eliza Roux. All three of them were pretty much the only answers we got, and Lori and Eliza won that one for match of the year. I just think there’s something about that show for three of the matches on there to be picked is, is pretty cool. Yeah, that’s probably the one I pick.”
Fight Factory Wrestling will present Bodyslams to Cancer 2025 at the One NK Leisure Centre in Lincoln. Tickets for the show can be purchased here.
