Every so often the internet coughs up a story that has no business being this wholesome. This one starts with a seating mix-up on a flight to Las Vegas and ends with a British independent wrestler getting adopted by four grandmothers from Cardiff. Man Like DeReiss, real name DeReiss Gordon, first told the story himself on social media, and it’s worth reading in his own words before you get to the part where they actually show up.
The Setup
Gordon was flying from London Heathrow to Las Vegas for WrestleMania week when he discovered his seat had been booked directly in the middle of a group of six women. The women, it turned out, were Lynn Crawford, Susie Matthews, Rose Sulley, and Christine Goodwin, four lifelong friends from Cardiff traveling with Rose’s daughter to scatter the ashes of Rose’s late husband, Pete, at the MGM. A booking error had split their party up, and DeReiss had landed right in the gap.
DeReiss’s Original Telling
Here’s the thread, in full, exactly as DeReiss posted it after he got home from Mania week:
“Last week I met these two amazing ladies on the flight London Heathrow to Las Vegas. They were in a group of 6 and they were all fuming because they apparently booked two row of 3 but for some reason my seat was booked right in the middle of them.
“Eventually the woman in the right seat would go back so she asked for help, I moved her seat back and from there we began talking. She asked why I was travelling to vegas alone. I explained it’s wrestlemania, and the concept of mania week from a Indy wrestler standpoint.
“She told me she used to love wrestling on World of Sport, Big Daddy, Giant Haystacks etc and her grand children love wrestling too. They then asked what time and place I will be wrestling. So I told them to come to Joey Janelas spring break. She doesn’t have social media so I told her to be at the Horseshoe, 7pm, Friday night. GCW.
“When we got off the plane I said bye to the group. I had a group hug with my new friends and they were insistent that they were going to come to the show. In my head I was thinking (no way they are actually turn up).
“It gets to Spring Break, I do my match, top rope breaks (but that’s a whole other fucking story) I stand and merch and look who walk up to me.
“THEY ONLY WENT AND FUCKING TURNED UP TO THE SHOW
(There were 6 of them but I only have a photo with these two)“After the show I never got to see them and now have no contact as they don’t have social media. So if anyone knows these women PLEASE LET ME KNOW. I know they’re from Cardiff, Wales and want to invite them to a show in the UK!”
What It Actually Looked Like From Their Side
The nans’ version of the night lines up perfectly, and it’s just as funny. None of them had ever been to a wrestling show before. “We didn’t know what was going on,” Susie later told the BBC. “We were all dressed up like Sex and the City, and there were thousands of people walking around with long beards down to their bellies and baseball caps… and there’s us, all dolled up. We were watching it and we were traumatised. We were like, ‘what on earth is going on here?’ They were flying out of the ring.”
Determined to let DeReiss know they’d actually shown up, the group flagged down a female wrestler in the bathroom and asked her to pass along a message backstage: “Can you tell him that the girls from Wales on the plane are here?” DeReiss got the message at the merch table. “I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “Someone went to get them, we had a chat, and then they carried on watching the show.” Susie said they took photos, gave him a “big cwtch,” and went back to their seats. “It was just such a lovely moment,” she said. “We’d promised we’d go, and we did.”
Losing Them, Then Finding Them Again
The story could have ended in Vegas. The nans don’t use social media, so once everyone flew home, DeReiss had no way to reach the two friends he’d swapped numbers-that-weren’t-really-numbers with. So he did what anyone chronically online would do: he posted the whole thing and asked the internet to find them. It worked. On April 25 he shared the follow-up himself: “HAHAHAHA WE FOUND THEM!!”
The reunion led to a joint appearance on BBC Breakfast on May 5, plans for the group to meet DeReiss again at a UK show, and DeReiss explaining, better than most wrestling promos ever could, why the whole thing worked in the first place.
“I think we got on because our lives are so different, we found each other interesting,” he said. “We were both going to Vegas for completely different reasons. People don’t talk to each other enough. If you strike up a conversation, you’ll often find someone has an interesting story. Just ask the person next to you how their day is going, or why they’re travelling, there’s usually a story behind it.”
And Now, Maybe, a Movie
The story might not be finished yet. Four nans and a wrestler are now in talks to turn the whole thing into a film. Producer Nick Barton, the man behind Calendar Girls and The Full Monty, reached out after the story broke and compared it to his own hits. “When I first heard about this story in May, it reminded me of Calendar Girls and Kinky Boots,” Barton said, per the BBC. “I immediately contacted DeReiss and the Welsh nanas. I believe this extraordinary story could make a really brilliant and successful movie and am now working on the next steps towards its production.”
Everyone involved is on board. “When we’d first met, we’d laughed that this should be a movie,” Lynn Crawford said. “Four nanas and a wrestler! It’d be brilliant.” DeReiss needed a second to believe it. “I couldn’t believe it at first,” he said. “Then I checked it out and was like, ‘WOW! A movie.’ This could happen. There’s a way to go but we believe this would be a great movie.”
The reunion has kept rolling in the meantime. This past weekend the four women, friends for more than 40 years, met DeReiss again for a wrestling showcase in Cardiff, got trained up by pros, and climbed into the ring themselves while fans held banners and chanted “Nanas! Nanas!”
Not every seating mix-up ends with a segment on the BBC and talk of a feature film. This one has, and it’s hard to think of a better advertisement for talking to strangers on a plane.
