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James was incredibly lucky to sit down and talk with Pro Wrestling Australia’s Neal Mercer in his first interview about being the first Mauritian pro wrestler, his incredible journey from Mauritius to Glasgow and Sydney. Mercer has overcome geography and injury to become a pro wrestler. Modest, motivated, and clearly someone PWA sees great promise in, Mercer knows he is making history, but he’s not satisfied with that being the be-all and end-all of his identity. A graduate of marine science, the self-described Engine has no laurels to rest on. Mercer is watching the clock because being on a Graduate visa means his time in Australia could be limited. Pro Wrestling Australia is an exciting period of transition, with the tag team of The Dropouts leaving, rumored to be joining WWE-bound, and a brand new PWA Heavyweight champion; their latest YouTube livestream Black Label event, The Climb, taking place in Sydney’s Liberty Hall. Taking place on Friday, August 28, 2026, and is livestreamed on PWA’s YouTube channel (where you can catch up on many of their previous special events for free). Neal Mercer will make his Black Label debut for Pro Wrestling Australia in a fatal-four-way featuring The Anomaly, Cherry Stephens and Michael Spencer. The card will also feature Pro Wrestling Australia’s six-person ladder match for the Golden Esky, granting its winner their choice of championship match at any time, the start of the tournament to crown a new Soul of PWA Champion and social media sensation Lachy McIntyre and his enabler, Carter Deams facing the high-school best friends, turned powerhouse wrestlers, Mana & Manoush (Marley Peleti and El Phoenician). Thank you, Neal, for taking the time to conduct this interview, and thank you to Nicki Price for her help in coordinating. You can follow Neal Mercer on Instagram at @neal.mercer You can follow PWA on Instagram at @pwaaustralia Q1: Can you tell our readers about who Neal Mercer is and what your moniker, “The Engine”, means? “My name is Neal Mercer, and I am a professional wrestler from Mauritius. I am the first one, as far as I know. I’m trained by Pro Wrestling Australia, and pretty much what you can expect from my style is athletic, explosive and high-impact. My nickname is the Engine. Basically, I was an athlete my whole life. In sports, when you call someone an engine, it means they are tireless; they keep going. In football [soccer], think about the ones who are running around the pitch, controlling the game with a big gas tank [they won’t quit or lose stamina]. I’m precision-engineered, so powerful, fast, and do a bit of everything. “ Q2: Originally, you wanted to become an Olympic swimmer. How did your interest in pro wrestling start? “I was a competitive swimmer for most of my life. From pretty young until eighteen, when I moved to the UK. I’ve been wrestling obsessed since eight. My grandma is a huge wrestling fan. She is the biggest wrestling fan. She loves John Cena. Hates Randy Orton to this day; she still holds onto that. She is seventy-eight, and I’m like, you need to let this go. She was the one who, randomly, she sat us down. I was so captivated by the spectacle, the actual sport, the atmosphere, people screaming. It pulls you in almost immediately, and pretty much since then, I’ve been into wrestling. I knew deep down I wanted it for myself, but for a long time, it didn’t seem attainable. I was a little embarrassed. I’m from Mauritius, and it’s not going to happen to you. My sister is the only one who truly knew this was what I wanted out of life.” Q3: When did pro wrestling become a viable option? “Pro wrestling training came into my life at the right time. I was more confident in my athletic skills; I knew what I could do, and it was pretty much just a case of solid training. I’m going to take this extremely seriously. I moved to Glasgow around September 2018. I went to university, and I started maybe mid-2019. I saw there was a wrestling school called GPWA- Glasgow Pro Wrestling Asylum. I remember seeing Kay Lee Ray vs. Viper (Piper Niven) in a Queen of Insanity match at an ICW show. The atmosphere was insane! The Scottish crowds were incredible. How loud the crowd was is what pushed me to do the try-out.” Q4: What happened next? “I only did a couple of months of wrestling training because COVID came and training had to stop. COVID was a long time, and especially for contact sports like wrestling. I was like, “Clearly, there is something in the universe that doesn’t want wrestling to happen for me.” Around the same time, I’d picked up ju-jitsu after the lockdowns. I was so fully committed to ju-jitsu; it gave me the sense of competition, discipline and something I was looking for after swimming. I made peace with the fact that wrestling was something that I would enjoy watching. I moved to Australia, and I didn’t know what the Australian wrestling scene. I knew of Rhea Ripley, Grayson Waller and The IIconics, but not until a couple of friends invited me to this show. We went to a Pro Wrestling Australia show, and it was pretty much the same reaction I had with the ICW show. I remember clearly Robbie Eagles vs. Jude London. Both incredible. It reawakened something in me. “I need to do this, I need to make it happen.” After the show, Robbie came out to meet the fans. I was with all the other jiu-jitsu boys. He offhandedly said, “You guys should try out for wrestling.” I don’t think he really meant it, but I took that and, like, “Yes, I will try out. I will come to PWA and make this happen.” In my head, I thought I would try out- this was March 2025- but I literally broke my foot the next day at ju-jitsu. Then once I recovered, I found the next trial and went straight to it. Only recently out of the boot, and was like “it’s fine”. I need to get my foot in the door.” Q5: A good thing then you didn’t take injury as another sign! There was one more. I passed the try-out, and I stopped training two weeks in because I was doing both ju-jitsu and pro wrestling. So, I had a skull fracture from taking a knee to the head in ju-jitsu. I had a massive dent in my forehead. What do I love more? Do I love ju-jitsu or wrestling more? It was obviously wrestling, so I have to at least put ju-jitsu aside for now and focus on making this wrestling thing happen for me because I am on a visa. I don’t have unlimited time. I was on a student visa and now a graduate visa, but the second I saw the training, in my head, it was like this is a race against time. I wasn’t sure if I would get the graduate visa, so I needed to learn, absorb and train as hard as I can within the time that I have and if it happens- if I don’t get the visa and I can’t stay and I can’t wrestle- at least I can go home and say I tried and I tried to make it happen. Q6: You are competing in a fatal four-way at Pro Wrestling Australia’s The Climb. How do you feel about the match, your opponents, and how are you going to pull off the win? Fatal four-way is stressing me out because there are so many moving parts and there are three incredible wrestlers. You’ve got The Anomaly; he’s an up-and-coming talent who is so good, so scary, and so freaky. Then there’s Cherry [Stephen], who I’ve never been in the ring with, but I’ve been told her Ring IQ and brain; she is a true student of the game. Then you’ve got Michael Spencer, who is on a rampage right now. He’s beaten up two tag partners. He’s an incredible athlete as well, and in a bit of a mood and angry, so he’s going to be unpredictable. But because I have two months, I can watch and study what they’ve done, but they can’t do the same for me. I do have to rely on my athleticism because they’ve only seen bits and pieces of me. I am going to earn that win. Q7: PWA alumni have competed in NJPW, AEW and WWE. What’s the long-term goal? No, the main goal is to be able to have a career in wrestling, like an actual career. What that looks like, I don’t know yet. If you asked me maybe eight years ago, when I was in the UK, there were no options. It was mainly WWE everyone was aspiring to. There are so many different opportunities in different countries, in different companies, so my goal is just to have a career that honestly doesn’t matter what that looks like. I’m not set on needing to be in WWE or AEW or New Japan or Mexico. I just love wrestling so much that any opportunity I’m given where I can make a living off of this, have a life in wrestling, I would take in a heartbeat. The alternative is going back to Mauritius. I want to build up a portfolio that even if I go back to Mauritius, people will want to book me because I’ll be at least a half-decent wrestler. Once again, we want to deeply thank the wonderful Neal Mercer of Pro Wrestling Australia for giving us the amazing opportunity to get to know him, as well as get his story out into the world.