WIN Magazine’s Q & A with Toby Willis
Neither lack of history, nor apathy nor fire could stay Toby Willis and Matt Case from completion of their appointed purpose when the co-founders of RealProWrestling saw their dream come to life this past spring in the RPW’s first season.
When the former Northwestern wrestlers first came up with the idea of a legitimate professional wrestling league in 2002, Willis and Case knew they did not have history on their side considering past attempts at a professional wrestling league failed.
The pair also learned to overcome other unexpected obstacles. One was a skeptical attitude among wrestling fans. Another was a fire that destroyed Willis’ home and office in Nashville, Tenn., and nearly the final product ” created last fall in a Los Angeles television studio ” before it could be aired on Sundays and Wednesdays over nine weeks between March 27 and May 25.
But after the tournament, in which 56 wrestlers competed in seven different weights, most observers called the first season of RPW a success.
RealProWrestling generated a total of 2.5 million household impressions (1.2 million on PAX and 1.3 on Fox Sports Net) in the inaugural season. On May 15, 2005, over 472,000 persons watched the RealProWrestling finale on PAX, a 48 percent increase in viewers from the premiere. Total household viewing stayed relatively steady with an average of 150,000 households tuning in weekly. The top 41 markets averaged a .2 rating for season one.
RPW is now planning its second season, which will include a tour this fall to eight different parts of the country that could eventually serve as permanent homes to eight teams represented last year in the states of Iowa, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Texas, New York and California. Once that is completed, Willis and Case hope to create a league in which teams will actually compete in more of a dual-meet format over a period of weeks.
RPW will release a DVD of season one this summer and a comic book that will introduce the RealProWrestling team mascots as a rag-tag bunch of wild grapplers who come together as the newest league of superheroes. The comic book will be used to market RealProWrestling and help introduce kids to the sport of wrestling.
Willis took time to speak to Wrestling International Newsmagazine about the first season and the future of RealProWrestling.
Q: What was it like to see your vision become a reality?
A: It was a great feeling but on the other hand, it was a heck of a lot of work. It’s like a wrestler who wins one match in a tournament. He doesn’t get too much of a chance to celebrate because he has to turn around and wrestle another one.
We had a vision to what it could be. But, by and large, we were disappointed with the pessimism of the wrestling community. We had almost 100 percent of the people coming up to us and saying, “It would be great but it will never work.”
It got to the point where we started answering people by saying you will never win a gold medal either. Wrestling is a sport where you have to have an optimistic view that you will get better. If you have such a pessimistic view, you might as well hang up your shoes and never step out on the mat again.
Q: Has your vision changed after one year?
A: The vision has not changed at all. This is exactly what we wanted. We thought wrestling could succeed here and internationally. We think that wrestling is a sport that is not indigenous to one country or one climate. Whether you are in the sand, in the desert, whether you are in the cold climate indoors; in the grass outside; in the gymnasium on the mat, wrestling has been in every culture throughout history.
It’s something that everyone can understand: two guys battling it out for supremacy. I think everyone wants to see a dual where you have 10,000 screaming fans, TV, pyrotechnics, lights. I think this will interest even non-wrestling fans. They will look at it and say, “This is fun.”
Q: How close is RPW to becoming an actual league in which the teams will compete in a live format?
A The next stage is to take it on tour. We have eight different teams to put in eight different cities. We’ve introduced the wrestlers and still have television coverage. After the tour, the next phase would be to put together a schedule similar to the NFL. One league will be good for a couple months. We could start the tour this fall like we’re hoping to and start the league the second half of 2006, which would be the soonest we could do it.”
Q: Are you able to say what eight locations will make up the league?
A: No, I wouldn’t do that; although some are pretty logical and a Chicago-area team could be based out of one of the suburbs. There are some locations where a community’s size doesn’t matter as much as its interest in wrestling.
Take Pennsylvania for example. You have big cities and then you have wrestling hotbeds like Bethlehem or State College, which aren’t necessarily big cities.
What we want to do is go to these cities and wrestling hotbeds, talk to people and see what the reception would be like. A lot of that is going to determine how we are received. We are keeping that open right now. No matter what city we base a team in, we want the whole state to get behind the team.
We also know there are another 8-12 other cities and states that could support a team. Part of how fast we expand depends on the television contracts moving forward.
Q: What are you looking at in regard to televising next year’s league?
A: We already have options. Pay per view is still open and we are being considered by another network. Like anyone else, we want to get bids and see how we are received and try to take the best offer. That is something we’ve done from the very beginning. After we held our first pilot, Fox Sports Net came to us and made an offer almost within two weeks of when we approached them. FSN has already made us an offer for season two.
We know where we want to go and we want to make sure we get the best offer at each stage, not just the first offer.
Q: Do you want better control of when the competition is aired?
A: That is the the reason we didn’t take the FSN offer the first three times they offered it because we knew that we could be preempted or shown in some regions and not others. That would have been a nightmare marketing-wise.
That’s what we ran into with PAX, which was supposed to be a single feed that would help us. PAX was not what we were told it would be. That ended up being a nightmare for us. What we ended up with was a lot but people were searching all over trying to find it. That is one of the big problems that we are trying to remedy.
A single-feed, national network national time would be to our advantage.
Q: What was the biggest surprise to you this past year?
A: This is kind of a boring answer but it’s all the internal work that had to be done. Matt and I are the creative guys and like to create art and at the end of the day, we like to say this is what we accomplished. What’s been the hardest thing for us is the business, administrative and communication side of building this organization. We have a wrestling mentality, which is like a (U.S. Military) Special Operations mentality. We are highly-motivated, work really hard and do whatever it takes to accomplish the mission. Whether it’s five minutes, five hours or five days, we don’t give up. What’s really hard is interacting with other people who don’t have that stubborn, crazy work mentality.
We’ve learned how hard it is to run an organization. We’ve had to learn on the fly; kind of learn as we go and still keep the ship afloat.
Q: Was overcoming the fire your biggest obstacle?
A: There is no question that the fire was just huge. All of the equipment that allowed us to communicate; we lost it all. We had temporary offices; we were constantly changing machines. The fire did set us back but the hardest part of that was on the administrative and communication side. We are still working through those issues.
Q: What were the wrestlers’ reactions to you this first year?
A As far as the guys we’ve talked to, they’ve come to us and said, ‘We love it.’ They loved the way they were treated and how the fans were interacting with them. Some said they didn’t like their bios. But when you have one minute to sum up a guy’s life, that’s not a lot of time. We also lost some of the background footage in the fire so we had to send crews back out again. We were editing the shows and getting done one day before we had to ship them out to get them on the air.
Q: Mo Lawal and Daniel Cormier upset some fans with their actions during their championship matches. What did you think about Lawal’s prancing around after his victory over Brad Vering and when Cormier slapped Tommy Rowlands on the rear during the match?
A: First of all, we told the guys to be themselves. The one rule we had was to not humiliate their opponent.
I’m not bothered if one guy tries to slug another guy. That happens in the wrestling room all the time. Wrestling, as it is, is a combat sport. You walk up to that line of violence all the time anyway. Whether it was a rough crossface or slamming the guy. These guys are tough guys. I do not have a problem with that.
Humiliation is another thing. I’ve talked to Cormier and he has issued an apology. He’s training with Rowlands right now.
We don’t have a problem with what Mo did. Is that personally what I would have done? Nope. As a matter of fact, I liked to wrestle guys like that. I want to take the guy down for being a hot dog. We have no problems with hot-doggers, so to speak. As long as it is done in moderation.
We need a variety of personalities and ethnic backgrounds. Some people are going to hate that. Some people are going to love it. By and large, personalities like that are going to help us.
Q: Do you want to create “Good” guys vs. “Bad” guys like those who compete in fake professional wrestling on television?
A: Absolutely not. I would prefer the good guy to be the guy on my team and the bad guy is the guy on the other team. Occasionally, you will have someone say, “I don’t like that guy’s personality.” As long as the guy is within limits, people are free to think.
We have no desire to head the direction that the WWE is doing; which isn’t just good guy vs. bad guy, but bad guy vs. bad guy.
Not to be old fashioned, but I would like our guys to have more of a chivalry code. They can be tough but there is a code where they show each other respect. I don’t want people to think of our wrestlers as violent people.
Q: As we look at the future of RPW, do you have a time table that might suggest you will see your vision completely fulfilled in five years?
A: Definitely, I see no reason why it can’t be fulfilled within a year under ideal circumstances. But it could take as many as five years.
With television and mass marketing, things can blow up real fast. I think wrestling has that ability. It has competition, emotion. It’s something different. and yet on the other hand very intuitive. Even animals wrestle. So we think it will strike a chord with people. Look at other sports; NASCAR blew up and we think wrestling has the same possibility.
Quite frankly when we started four years ago, we thought we could be at this state within a year. What we are hoping to do is start the tour this fall and with the league starting in 2006. I think we need one more year before people really wake up.
Wrestling Gear
I really enjoyed the interview. I’m looking forward to this season.