Professional wrestler and documentary filmmaker may seem like an incongruous career combination, but these are just two of the hats worn by Rionne McAvoy.
It’s the latter hat that he’s been wearing recently, having completed an award-winning documentary, “The Ones Left Behind: The Plight of Single Mothers in Japan.”
The son of a martial artist, McAvoy has been training since the age of 8. After winning the Karate Queensland state title at 19, he came to Japan for the first time on a karate training trip. Wanting to delve deeper into Japanese culture, he subsequently moved back as a young adult. McAvoy is a fourth-degree black belt in aikido and an avid catch wrestler.