By Don Steinberg
Inquirer Staff Writer
Real wrestling – the kind done in high school and college gyms and the Olympics – hasn’t had a fan base far beyond the sport’s participants and their families.
“It’s a huge fraternity and a very small world, “says Jeff Prescott, a two-time NCAA wrestling champion at Penn State. Prescott hopes a new league, Real Pro Wrestling, will expand the sport’s appeal and enable its athletes to make a living off their sweat.
RPW will present Olympic-style wrestling in a made-for-TV package. The league has eight teams filled with college and Olympic stars, each squad named for a region where wrestling is popular, with names such as the Iowa Stalkers, Oklahoma Slam and Pennsylvania Hammer. Prescott is on the New York Outrage.
Toby Willis, the league’s founder and a former college wrestler, says he saw a previous pro wrestling league fail in 1989 and knew what it lacked: TV exposure.
So he’s built RPW around TV. He’s buying time to run matches on Pax TV and has an ad-sharing arrangement with Fox Sports Net (TV coverage starts March 27). Matches for the first season were taped at a futuristic studio/arena in Los Angeles, designed to be “reminiscent of the old Colosseum “(the one in Rome, not L.A.).
Willis is on the hunt for sponsors and owners who might base teams in actual home arenas in the future. Rulon Gardner and Dan Gable – really wrestling’s only two well-known names – are helping with marketing.
For now, Willis and his father are the league’s primary investors. Some of the seed money comes from a financial settlement after a terrible family tragedy. In 1996, six of Willis’ siblings were killed in a car accident.
“I thought I would turn something bad into something good, “Willis says.
RPW matches are hard-fought and unscripted, though traditional rules are tweaked to reward action and spectacular throws. Telecasts borrow elements from reality TV and Ultimate Fighting shows. Wrestlers compete with bare upper bodies, wearing only “fighters’ shorts “instead of singlets.
“People want to see what kind of shape a guy’s in. That’s part of it, the sex appeal. Say what you want to say, but it sells, “Prescott says.
“This is what we’ve been waiting for for a long time, “Prescott adds. By that he means getting a chance to be professional athletes.
“A lot of these guys went home [from the first season] with more than $10,000, “Willis says. “That’s pocket change compared to other sports, but it’s a start for wrestling.”
Wrestling Gear
