Q&A: Akash Sherman on his newest film “Singh’s in the Ring”
By Sara Sheydwasser on October 24, 2025
Akash Sherman, an Edmonton-based filmmaker, has just wrapped a film festival run with his newest documentary Singh’s in the Ring. The documentary follows Stampede Wrestling’s first Punjabi wrestler, Gama Singh, and how he became one of the most infamous heels in Canadian wrestling.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What made you want to make Singh’s in the Ring?
“I have fond childhood memories of my dad. I would have been a toddler, but my dad would clear our living room and play wrestle with my sister and I. He grew up watching Stampede Wrestling, and Gama Singh was one of his favourite wrestlers. So, I had heard that name growing up, but it wasn’t until local producers Shane Fennessey and Sonny Sidhu came and approached me for the role of director that it immediately clicked. I was just like, oh my gosh, this just brought me back to my childhood. So it’s honouring my dad’s sports hero, it’s honouring my cultural legacy, and Alberta sports history. It just felt right.”
Q: Did you have any specific creative inspirations that you nodded to in the documentary?
“Growing up, my first films that I made, I’d be playing with my toys. As a kid, you play with toys and action figures, and you kind of form these stories in your head as you’re playing with the toys. So I did that, but then I pointed a camera, and I did a bunch of stop motion stuff as a kid. That’s really how I got into filmmaking.
“So, in the film, we had this unique challenge of either not being able to find or license certain moments or footage from the past, so we had to depict that through animation. And I said I’m going to open this story with a young kid who’s been bullied and runs home, is comforted by his mom, and then he turns on the TV to watch wrestling. And that’s kind of his escape. And he’s playing with these action figures in a wrestling ring. So, I thought, you know, why don’t I place the animation reenactments in the mind’s eye of this kid playing with his toys. That to me was my philosophy in filmmaking, just in general. I’m still just a kid playing with lots of toys to tell a story, and that kind of youthfulness, I think, really, really colored the film and gave it a bit of a vibrant energy.”
Q: What was your favorite part about shooting the film?
“My favourite part about shooting the film was definitely the wrestling matches themselves. We have two major focal point matches, and they ended up being very cinematic. But we were shooting those live. There were no retakes. We had to plan our angles as best as we could. It reminded me of broadcast a little bit because we had multiple cameras, and I’d be on a headset trying to direct live, and that part is so exhilarating. In narrative cinema, you don’t really get that chance. So, to do that and then also have it look so big and climactic, the payoff of that was just so cool. Shooting it was nerve-wracking and exhilarating – but ultimately really rewarding.”
Q: What was your favourite moment that was left on the cutting room floor?
“I’m sad to say that the thing we had to drop was Gama Singh’s, frankly, storybook love story. He and his wife met in Puerto Rico. He was wrestling, and she was not a wrestling fan at all, but she was dragged to a match by a friend who was a rabid wrestling fan. And that friend threw a shoe out of hatred at Gama Singh, and Gama looked, and beside that crazy one that threw the shoe, he saw this really calm, just wonderful lady. It was kind of an instant spark between both of them with a shared gaze. But the issue is, you know, they didn’t speak the same language. He spoke English and Punjabi, and she spoke only Spanish. So, he got a security guard to ask for her number in Spanish. He would return to Puerto Rico over the next few months on his wrestling schedule, and they would go on dates, but they’d always hire the same security guard to translate for them. And they just make it work. And then they got they got they got hitched. It’s kind of a world-spanning love story with letters, and it was just so touching and beautiful, and it speaks to how romantic Gama is.”
Q: What do you hope audiences take away from the documentary?
“I hope audiences take away that, number one, with everything that life throws at you, no matter who you are, you can still pursue things that you love and find a lot of meaning in what you do. Gama Singh exemplifies that, especially with some of the struggles that he had, like raising an entire family at age 28 after his father died. But I think the most important thing I want people to take away from this is that it’s important to celebrate good people. I think a lot of stories are focused on material things like success, and here’s someone who did follow their dreams, lived their passion, but also is just kind, warm and good-hearted. I just feel like people like that don’t really get their stories told much, so I’m really glad that I’ve had a lot of people come up after and say, I didn’t even know who this man was, but I totally love him now. And that is more than I can ask for.”
Q: You’ve been touring a lot of festivals with the film. How’s the audience reception been live and in person?
“Yes, we had three in-person screenings and the audience reception has been honestly more wild than I could have ever imagined. All three, Gama got a standing ovation, which is just so cool to witness. I don’t think he ever thought that that would happen. So yeah, the reception has been really good. And one thing I have been hearing a lot, which frankly I agree with and was the angle I was going in when making this, but they said, oh, this isn’t just for wrestling fans. This isn’t just a wrestling documentary because it’s very much a human story. And there’s just so many aspects to it that I think will entertain and inform and evoke feelings from a potential audience member, and you don’t need to know squat about wrestling.”
Q: Anything else you want to add?
“The biggest theme in the doc is legacy. We had a really unfortunate loss of the producer who came up with the idea, Sonny Sidhu, who was like a jack of all media trades. He’s been in the media sphere in Canada for so many decades and in every different level. And he passed away right before we finished the final cut. I think the best decision I could have made as a director was to force him to do an interview because basically he came up with the idea. He was the superfan. He was the kid at the beginning of the film who watched Gama Singh on TV and loved wrestling and used it as a source to feel stronger in life. And it hit a point because he was suffering from a very serious and rare illness called scleroderma, and I told him, you need to actually be in this documentary. And, you know, he was hesitant at first, but then, then once he started opening his mouth, this guy was a yapper. He shared everything, and a lot of people have said that he’s one of the most useful, funny and engaging speakers in the documentary. And, at almost every screening, there’s been kind of a gasp when they see that it’s dedicated to him because he’s no longer with us. So it’s profound to not only touch on someone’s legacy like Gama Singh, but to actually cement another’s legacy, which is Sonny, with the film.”
Singh’s in the Ring will be available on Crave as a Crave Original on Oct. 20.