EXCLUSIVE: How Big Damo & Nikki Cross' Acquisition Of PROGRESS Wrestling Came Together

The landscape of the United Kingdom independent wrestling scene changed in May 2026 as it was announced that Big Damo and Nikki Storm (FKA Nikki Cross) were the new co-owners of PROGRESS Wrestling, taking over the promotion from Lee McAteer and Martyn Best, who had been the custodians of the promotion since December 2021.

Speaking with Cultaholic's Tom Campbell, Big Damo and Nikki Storm revealed the opportunity to become the owners of PROGRESS came out of nowhere just a few days after Nikki had received her release from WWE on April 24.

"Genuinely, this was not on the bingo card for us, either. We have talked about a million different scenarios for a long time. We have been wrestling for 22 years, Nikki has been wrestling for 18 years, so we know there is a time limit. We are going to have to start thinking about what is the future and we thought that was going to be with our little Scottish promotion in Glasgow, but no, it turns out," Damo began.

"This opportunity came along a few weeks ago. Not long after Nikki had been released, actually. It was only a few days after. I’ll just be honest, I was in Belfast about to jump on a plane going to another show and I had to sit thinking about it on the plane like, ‘This is wild. There's no way this could happen.' Then I come off the plane and we start talking about it seriously. At first we were talking with James Amner, he's been in situ at PROGRESS for a long, long time. He’s one of the hidden gems. He hates credit in every single way but he’s one of the reasons PROGRESS has been ticking over at all for maybe a decade," he continued.

After this, Big Damo held talks with Martyn Best and the deal quickly came together.

"When I broached Nikki with it, she was like, 'What?' So there's been plenty of conversations and, listen, the boys made it very easy. I dealt directly with Martyn Best…and he was very patient with me and we were able to come to the best agreement for both of us. That was one of the most amazing experiences in terms of how easy he made that for me. This could have been very, very difficult and this could have been out of our reach, realistically, because we are living in the United States. That is still our home. Obviously that will change in the next few years but that is our handicap, effectively, in one regard. But now it's putting us in a position where we're starting to think about, ‘Okay, what do we want to do next?’ and PROGRESS Wrestling has answered a lot of those questions very quickly," Damo added.

While the first show under the new ownership is Chapter 195: Wonderbrawl II on June 7 in Manchester, England, Damo noted he has already been working behind the scenes in PROGRESS while talks over acquiring the promotion were ongoing, and he has been learning the ropes from James Amner and the PROGRESS production team.

Following the acquisition, Big Damo and Nikki Storm are now looking to establish PROGRESS as the number one independent wrestling promotion on Planet Earth.

Damo stated: "We can now start thinking about long term, and that's something Nikki and I were talking about the other day. Our goal is to make this into the number one independent promotion on the planet."

"Number one. Letter A. Don't get me wrong, we want to give back to the industry, but PROGRESS is going to be the number one wrestling company in the world," Storm added.

Cultaholic's full interview with Big Damo and Nikki Storm is available today wherever you get your podcasts from 4 pm BST.