By Ross Blair:
He’s the voice of Southern Honor, 1FW, the Nightmare Factory, & Coastal Empire Wrestling. Brandon Benefield is undeniably at the epicenter of Georgia indy wrestling, and he’s a major factor in why these promotions are some of the hottest in the state. Benefield does his homework. His in-depth & enthusiastic commentary not only breathes life into the outlandish characters & storylines, but it has also garnered him GWH Commentator of the Year every single time in the award’s 6 year history. Benefield sat down with GWH via telephone from his home in Kennesaw, where he gave his backstory as well as some insight into the companies he works for.
GWH: Let’s start with your thoughts on winning Commentator of the Year 6 times.
BB: I think the awards are a lot of fun and good for Georgia wrestling, especially since they decided to make it an awards SHOW a couple of years ago. It's very flattering to have the respect of your peers. It really is a team effort though, and the honors belong just as much to Gerard Bonner over at Southern Honor & the Nightmare Factory, the Maestro over at CEW in Savannah, and Conrad Thompson with 1FW. Love those guys, and I couldn't do it without them sitting next to me. I'm not really sure why they made it a solo award this year, but I've been assured it'll go back to a team award next year.
GWH: I saw a video on your social media recently, showing you as a young sports interviewer. Tell us a bit about your background.
BB: Back in the heyday of "The Tom Green Show" & "Jackass", my youth group buddies & I were taking our video camera everywhere, filming bits in hopes of getting our own cable access show. Really goofy stuff, but we thought we were the funniest thing going at the time. We even crashed the annual 99X Celebrity Softball Slam, interviewing celebrities & athletes. The idea was, if you just look like you know what you're doing and you look the part, which we did with collared shirts, khaki pants, a microphone, & a camera. We bought tickets to the event, went down to field level, and just gradually worked our way onto the field. There we were interviewing players, and no one was stopping us. We did this three years in a row, looking more professional each year. The celebrity softball teams included musicians, actors, and the one that I was most excited about -- pro wrestlers. I got to interview guys like Goldberg, Ernest “The Cat” Miller, & Buff Bagwell. The cable access show never panned out, but it was an exciting first foray into interviewing wrestlers.
GWH: When exactly did pro wrestling come into your life?
BB: I’d say probably around '97ish -- the NWO was just getting hot and Goldberg had just arrived in WCW. I had a buddy at school, Freddy, who was really big into it. During gym class, while everybody else was playing basketball, we were running matches and taking bumps in the gymnasium. I grew up in Tucker, a suburb of Atlanta, which was WCW country, but I eventually started flipping back and forth between them & WWE during the Monday night wars.
GWH: How did you get involved in wrestling commentary?
BB: I kinda just fell into it. My very first show was SHW's very first show, which was October of 2018. At the time, me & my buddies at work had a wrestling podcast. My sister worked in Canton and saw a flyer hyping the first SHW show, so we all got tickets. Someone who worked behind the scenes had apparently heard our podcast and sent me a Facebook message saying "Hey, would you be willing to do commentary for our show?" As soon as that first show was done, I told him "That was the most fun I think I've ever had, and I can't wait to do this again!"
GWH: When it comes to commentary, what’s your process? How do you prepare for an upcoming show?
BB: Lots of notes & a bit of research because there's a lot to keep up with. Especially bouncing around from promotion to promotion, as many wrestlers are in multiple promotions but with different storylines.
GWH: And they might be a heel in Southern Honor but a babyface in Savannah.
BB: Exactly. Whenever I first meet somebody, I try to get their initial info: where they're from, what their background is, what their move set is, different names for their moves and all that type of stuff. As far as storylines go, I'll get with Dylan (Frymyer) at SHW while he's putting the show together to make sure we spotlight what he's trying to get across. Same thing in CEW and talking with Bryce (Cannon) before the show. I know the card ahead of time so, a couple weeks out, I'll make a list of the matches with notes on what each guy is doing, if they're involved in a storyline together and the history of that. I may even pull up YouTube, Triller TV, and/or IWTV to scan through some older shows for different things that connect to ongoing stories.
GWH: Let's talk about 1FW. 1 Fall Wrestling is a relatively new promotion, but they just cleaned up with Promotion of the Year & several other awards. Tell us about what makes 1FW so special.
BB: Before I do that, I'm gonna give a little background, as far as I understand it at least. Prior to the Nightmare Factory, QT Marshall and Ray Lloyd (aka Glacier) were running the 1 Fall Power Factory. Cody (Rhodes) came along in I believe early 2020 and they kinda merged & became the Nightmare Factory. When it was still the 1 Fall Power Factory, it was a wrestling school. When they would run shows, they would run it as 1 Fall Wrestling. It was before my time, so I don't know how often they ran shows. What makes it special? Obviously the roster, who bust their butts because they run a lot of shows. But it takes a village, and the whole crew is impressive. 1FW is QT's baby, and he has a plan for it and has put a lot of time, energy, and resources behind it. Each time we do a taping, it's gotten more & more produced. For example, the screen we have there now is massive compared to the big screen we started with. It's like a movie screen. The lighting has improved too, and the product looks amazing. For anyone reading this, you can watch 1FW locally on Peachtree Sports every Tuesday at 8pm or globally on Triller TV every Wednesday night, where a new episode drops at 6:30pm eastern time.
GWH: How did you get involved in 1FW?
BB: Right before the first Southern Honor show, which was October of 2018, the 1 Fall Power Factory (aka 1FW) was running a show inside the Action Building, which would eventually become the home of SHW. I attended that show & met Ray Lloyd there, who was the nicest guy I have ever met in pro wrestling. I started following Ray's Facebook page and saw where he was filming an action movie about pro wrestlers versus aliens, kind of in the vein of that classic Roddy Piper movie "They Live" back in the '80s.
GWH: "They Live" is just my all-time favorite film. I'm definitely gonna seek this movie out (note: "The Unbreakable Bunch", currently available on Tubi). BB: Very similar vibe. He brought in guys like Ernest Miller, Stan Hanson, Larry Zbyszko, and Haku among others...a lot of wrestlers you'd watch back in the day. Anyway, I saw where they put out a call for extras. I shot Ray a message on Facebook -- and I didn't know if he'd remember me or even reply to the message -- but I offered my commentator equipment and services to add to the wrestling scenes, just to have a commentators table next to the ring, calling the action to add a feel of authenticity. He replied real quick and said he'd run it by the producers, and they loved the idea. So I brought in my equipment and we spent a long full day on set, waiting between shots as they set up the different angles. But it was cool to see the behind the scenes of making a movie. I brought my buddy Alex Autrey along and we were the commentators in the background during the wrestling scenes…and then Gerard Bonner and I also cut some commentary in post-production that was used in the movie as well. There's even a shot where I'm doing a standup interview with Ray. Shortly after filming this, Covid hit. I kept in touch with Ray and sent him a message every couple months, saying "Hey, I know you guys aren’t running shows yet but, when you do, if you need commentary let me know. I'm definitely interested." Around December 2020, the Nightmare Factory was running their first student showcase. They basically do 12-week camps, and at the very end of each camp they do a student showcase, or a graduation show. That's when Gerard & I show up and we call the show, with Diana Michel ring announcing, and it gets posted on Cody's Nightmare Family YouTube channel. When Cody went back to WWE, QT ended up rebooting 1FW. Everything was left on good terms, but QT ended up parting ways with the Nightmare Factory since he was still working heavily with AEW. This led to doing commentary with 1FW, and I still do the shows for the Nightmare Factory as well.
GWH: Southern Honor is also one of the hottest independent promotions in wrestling. What's your thoughts on that promotion? BB: I wasn't that familiar with the indy wrestling scene in Georgia before I fell into the commentary position at SHW. I mean, I knew it existed, but I just didn’t really keep up with anything outside of WWE and TNA at the time. But when I started with Southern Honor, what I quickly came to find out is that none of the other indy shows had the production value that SHW had. They set a new standard that eventually caused others to up their game. Rich Ward, the lead guitarist for Chris Jericho’s rock band Fozzy & another one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met, was able to connect Dylan Frymyer, who works closely with Diamond Dallas Page, with Gary Lamb, who runs Action Church in Canton among many other ventures. Gary had the Action Building in Canton which had thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of lighting & production & smoke & a sound system & 2 giant screens on either side of the stage... and Dylan had the wrestling mind and vision for the show. So it couldn’t have been a more perfect match. I really lucked out with SHW. And much like 1FW is QT's baby, SHW is Dylan's baby. Which, quick sidenote — in addition to doing the editing and booking for SHW, Dylan also does the editing and helps with the booking of 1FW. But working with Southern Honor from the very beginning has been pretty special and a wild ride for sure.
GWH: What brought you to Savannah & Coastal Empire Wrestling?
BB: Hmmm, let me think of how much inside baseball (kayfabe) I want to give you. Naw, you know what, at this point I think a lot of people are already aware that I didn't really get hit by a car a couple of years ago during an angle at SHW (with Bryce Cannon behind the wheel, as part of an ongoing Brandon versus Exotic Youth feud). Can you keep a secret? Don't tell anybody, but Bryce & I are actually buddies, even though I’m sure he’ll deny it. (laughs) But in SHW, we're mortal enemies. As you mentioned earlier, some guys are good guys in some places and bad guys in other places. The very first time I went to a CEW show and saw how over Exotic Youth was, I was like what is wrong with these people? Why are they cheering these bad guys? Let me give you a little backstory. Back at Southern Honor in Canton Georgia, where Exotic Youth are big bad guys and enemies with myself & ring announcer Diana Michel, there was a month where I wasn't gonna be able to make it to an upcoming SHW show (February 2024), so we decided to storyline it to explain my absence. And you know, back in the day Rikishi hit Stone Cold Steve Austin with a car where he infamously “did it for The Rock”, and I think that idea got thrown out there as a joke until somebody said we should actually do that. We thought we should include some security camera footage of the incident, so I got with Bryce to see how to make this thing happen. The only time we were gonna be able to see each other between shows was gonna be at his Savannah show, so I made the 4 hour drive. When I got there, the guys were like "hey, do you wanna do commentary since you're here?" I didn't know any of the backstories, and I guess I might have sounded a bit like a heel announcer because I thought the crowd was nuts to cheer for Exotic Youth. Where I'm from, in Canton Georgia, those are the bad guys! And part of that was me realizing in the moment that, oh, they're over down here.
GWH: Welcome to the Savannah multiverse, my friend!
BB: Yup. Bizarro world indeed. I think at the time too they were facing Joe Black & Murder One. In Southern Honor, they're over like Rover, but down there they were big heels. So everything was flip flopped. I assumed it was gonna be a one-off deal because Bryce and I were about to start this angle for Southern Honor, and I figured we probably shouldn’t be seen together with that storyline going on. Then Bryce got injured and was out for about a year, so that kinda put the kibosh on any kind of storyline we had going at Southern Honor. That's when we decided there's no reason for me not to do commentary in Savannah, and I’ve been doing it ever since. I absolutely love working at CEW. We talked about 1FW sweeping the awards this year. Well, CEW had that experience last year. In previous years, SHW has won a ton of awards too. So it’s humbling to be with these great companies that have accomplished so much. GWH: What are some of the other highlights in your broadcast career? BB: Oh geez, so much has happened over the 8 years I've been doing this. There was the AEW invasion on SHW in 2019. This was in May of that year before AEW was on weekly television with Dynamite, and they were looking to build their main event angle for their first pay-per-view a couple weeks later. That was massive because there were over a thousand people at that show absolutely packed into the Action Building. We were able to promote a couple weeks out that Cody would be there, and the rumor started getting around that Jericho could possibly be there. The thing that really blew the roof off the place was nobody ever imagined that Kenny Omega would show up! I still get chills thinking about it --- Jericho & Omega squaring off in a Southern Honor ring with Southern Honor wrestlers in tow. More recently, SHW had another crazy moment when AJ Styles showed up to hand Alexander Lev the heavyweight title, after Lev shocked the crowd and beat Joe Black for the belt. I remember I was at my commentators booth, and I look behind me and he's just there watching the show. I thought "Holy crap! That's AJ Styles!" Eventually, someone from the back realized the fans would see him if he stayed there, so they pulled him backstage for his surprise appearance at the end of the main event. Being a part of the 1FW show at Center Stage was a big one. Other highlights would be calling matches for big names like the Rock & Roll Express, Billy Gunn, and Jeff Jarrett. Getting to call commentary alongside DDP a couple years ago in SHW and more recently alongside Tony Schiavone in 1FW are absolute highlights. Plus, guys like Tony and Ray Lloyd and Double J have kinda become mentors over the past few years, which is pretty surreal and a true honor. On top of getting to call matches for hall of famers & getting to meet all these folks, getting to see all these young wrestlers come up through the system is a highlight for me. Some of them have gone on to do big things in the big companies, and others you see that it's just a matter of time before that happens to them as well. Especially working at the Nightmare Factory, where you're REALLY seeing them from the beginning of their career. I'll give you an example: Carlie Bravo from the first camp. He's currently one-third of the Ring Of Honor World Six-Man Tag Team Champs. With guys like that, it's been really neat to see them progress.
GWH: What are you passionate about outside of wrestling?
BB: Well, I mean, it’s pretty much all about wrestling with me. (laughs) But if I had to say something else, I guess I would say what I do for my day job, which is radio. It's funny because I went to film school, got a film degree, and ending up going into radio instead when I got out of college. I currently work on the production side of things, behind the scenes. I put shows and commercials together. There was a time too that I worked for Cumulus Media, which is a cluster of several big Atlanta radio stations, which happened to include 99X. That was really cool for me because I grew being a huge 99X fan, and there I was working for them! GWH: What are your goals for the future? BB: Well, just like these indy wrestlers who are trying to get to that next level, I want to be there at that next level to be able to continue to call their matches. How amazing that would be to have called Carlie Bravo's early matches at the Nightmare Factory, when he was brand new, to one day calling his matches in AEW or another big company.
GWH: Best of luck to you, Brandon. Well, that’s a wrap. Thank you for your time today.
BB: Anytime, Ross. I enjoyed it.
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Note: Special thanks to Alex Snider for the artsy graphic at the top of this article.
