If you’re walking in Detroit, Michigan, and hear “Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!” chants, don’t worry, there’s no revolution happening — Freedom Ramsey is probably fighting.
Ramsey has been taking the Michigan indie scene by storm.
The chant is part of it.
The idea of shouting Freedom and getting the crowd to join him was something that has become a staple of Ramsey’s and a great way for him to connect with fans, with Freedom describing the moment he and the fans start yelling “Freedom!” with each other as a “big energy circle where we’re all feeding off of each other.”
Detroit TV personality Tony Dixon sees the reactions first-hand. “Freedom Ramsey has good fundamentals in the ring, good ring IQ. What sets him apart from (above) most of the other Michigan based wrestlers is his ability to connect with the crowd! He can come into an arena and instantly get a positive reaction from the majority of the spectators/fans with just his rallying cry and the enthusiasm it brings to the audience. ‘Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!’”
A native of Auburn Hills, Michigan, the 6-foot-1, 230-pound Freeman (alas, not actually Freedom) Ramsey has an sculpted physique, which he credits to the fact that his main hobby outside of wrestling is “pumping iron”, but he is agile in the ring as well.
While the love for wrestling has always been there, the young Ramsey was a baseball player. Once he got into high school, Ramsey knew he wanted to be a wrestler, so he started competing for his high school because of guys like Brock Lesnar, Shelton Benjamin, and Cody Rhodes, who had all wrestled amateur before turning professional.
“I started bodybuilding at that age as well but I wasn’t that big because I always tried to cut weight for wrestling and that’s really all I did to get ready I was just trying to stay athletic, tried to stay coachable so that one day maybe I could do the WWE PC tryout that’s what I was always on my mind in high school 24/7,” Ramsey recently told SlamWrestling.net.
In 2017, Ramsey began his in-ring training at the House of Truth Wrestling School run by Ring of Honor veteran Truth Martini. He began wrestling under his real name but was struggling to find a gimmick, to establish who Freeman Ramsey was in the ring.
It was wrestling’s most famous one-legged wrestler who suggested that they change his first name to Freedom. “I was on a show with Zach Gowen, he booked the show and he wanted me to change my name to Freedom Ramsey and he just said yeah, just scream freedom. That was my idea actually screaming freedom and I’ve been Freedom Ramsey ever since.”
Once he had changed his name, the character and gimmick of Freedom came to Ramsey fast. “If somebody wants to know who Freedom Ramsay is, I ask them, What does freedom mean to them? Just describe what freedom is. Freedom can help anybody whether you’re young or old, boy or girl, man or woman, tall or short. At the end of the day we all want to be free from something… I’m just a fighter, a warrior. Never back down. Never quit. Basically, that’s what freedom is. And that’s how I developed the character ever since 2017 after Zach Gowen gave me the name.”
One thing that Ramsey does to ensure that he gets better with every match he’s in is constantly get feedback. It could be from other wrestlers in the back, or friends that are not wrestling fans outside of supporting him, as they can offer a different perspective on the matches. “What I do is I try to record every match. And I try to show those matches to my non-wrestling-fan friends. Their mind is a little bit different from the average wrestling mind… They look for more of the realism, like, Does this look like an actual fight? So I’ll just go, Hey man, how do these strikes look? Or, How did this punch look or kick look? And they say good and I’m like, Alright, good. If they say, It looks like you hit them too soft, then I’m like, Damn, I gotta work on that.”
There are currently three different championship belts around his waist: MPWA Heavyweight title, the Missile Dropkick Wrestling Association title, and City Championship Wrestling tag belts with Jackson Stone; he has also won multiple tournaments, including CCW’s Center Line Heritage Cup and Total Kaos Wrestling TKW Title Tournament.
Ramsey credits his success to always striving to be the best version of himself anytime that he is in the ring, and the passion that he has for wrestling, which spurs him on as well. “Stepping inside of a wrestling ring, stepping inside my wrestling character, I just want to be the best I can be. And doing that, it led to promoters being impressed, fan support and it’s not fake coming from me. It’s real dedication, real passion that I had since I was 14 — because I wasn’t in the business at 14, but I knew I wanted to be a wrestler at 14, so the passion burns deep. And I think everybody can tell that it’s real, it’s authentic. And if it’s like that, you’ll succeed in this sport, and it might take time. But it will happen if you just keep working hard in the gym.”
And it’s certainly working for Ramsey, as many people have begun to take notice of his emergence, including Jerome Pruitt, a booker, wrestler and promoter in Michigan. “Freedom has improved his ring presence and savvy ten-fold since I first saw him nearly seven years ago. Freedom possesses the raw athletic ability to adapt to just about any match or style of wrestling and is always willing to learn more, to improve with every match. Ramsey is just beginning to scratch the surface of a career that I’ll be watching very closely.”
Another person who is watching Ramsey closely is Brian Shotwell, a high school wrestling coach and the promoter behind the Michigan-based MPWA, who had nothing but praise for him. “Freedom Ramsey is a young talent. His abilities are vast. A few things that stand out are,” began Shotwell, launching into a deeper analysis:
1. His work ethic. He is constantly and consistently in the gym and in the wrestling school to be in tip-top shape and to have his wrestling skills sharp. He is a personal trainer outside of wrestling, which shows his dedication to health and fitness of himself and others.
2. His ability to connect with people. He is a very humble person. He loves talking to fans and signing the kids’ autographs. He loves and respects his mother and it shows.
3. Toughness. Mentally and physically he is tough. Plain and simple, he is tough!
Another aspect of wrestling outside of the performance of it that Ramsey really enjoys is the storytelling. One of his cherished matches in his career so far was one against an old colleague. “One of my favorite ones that happened a little bit ago, it was last year, was my rivalry with Father Marquis in City Championship Wrestling, where we were tag team partners once. And then he turned on me, and he attacked Freedom from the back. Before that, it was building up. We were a tag team. He didn’t just attack. We lost our chemistry. We kept losing tag team matches and the build just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. You could see it in our faces in our promos that we did together that the chemistry was no longer there. And we just keep building up from that.”
There are also some matches that Ramsey has in mind that he would love to be a part of in the future. “I want to wrestle Carmelo Hayes because I feel like he’s a competition for me and I want to see who could hang with who, if or when we step in the ring. As far as on the independent circuit I love to step in the ring with guys like JTG — Jay Tha Gawd. I’m gonna stop it right now, I could always just choose like big, big time WrestleMania-type matches but I want to take it step by step, one step at a time.”
TOP PHOTO: Freedom Ramsey in January 2024. Photo by Brad McFarlin
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