Outside our training facility The Vault From L to R Johnny Fitness, James Jeffries, Sparrow, Miss Frankie Jay, Aron Von Baron, Austin Aries, Ricky Love, Ugly, TS Agressor

I saw a video of a wrestling move on the Facebook page of Nathan Redwing the other day.  It was posted by Dustin Anderson.  He is better known as Hype Gotti in wrestling circles.  It made me want to write this blog about a once infamous, and now I hope, humorous story.  It was around 2005 and we were running a monthly show in Delta, Iowa.  I’m sure as I continue blogging about my time in professional wrestling, Delta will pop up often.  I promoted many shows there over the years and it was a great time for Impact Pro Wrestling.  We were drawing great crowds and bringing in guys from all over the Midwest.

We would use a core of about eight to ten wrestlers, and the rest we would bring in from neighboring states to give the show a fresh feel.  We were always looking for new guys to join the core group as other guys would drop off.  In 13 years we have had well over 100 wrestlers on our shows.  Some would come in, fit well with the locker room, look great in the ring, and we would bring them back on a regular basis.  Others would last one show and we would never bring them back.  There were/are so many wrestlers for promoters to choose from, that whether a wrestler stayed on was sometimes bordering on arbitrary.

If a wrestler didn’t have skills to get in the ring and entertain the fans, they more than likely didn’t get on one of our shows in the first place.  With us drawing well and paying wrestlers well, we could afford to be picky.  Wrestlers had to come highly recommended from people that I respected to get booked.  I don’t want to make it sound like we were competing with Wrestlemania, but at the time there were not a lot of places where wrestlers could find quality bookings (good wrestlers to wrestle and good paydays make up what I consider a quality booking).  That made us appealing to a lot of Midwest wrestlers during that period.  From 2003-2007 wrestlers such as Mitch Paradise, Austin Aries, Perry Saturn, Shawn Daivari, Ken Anderson, Evan Bourne, Johnny Fitness, Gage Octane, Seth Rollins, Jack The Berserker, and many others came through our doors.

It was with some excitement that we brought in three wrestlers from Omaha, Nebraska for a show one time.  They wrestled as Hype Gotti, Jayden Drago, and Babyface.  Several of our wrestlers had spoken well of them.  Drago had trained with Shawn Michaels.  They were smaller guys, and we were in need of smaller guys.  Most of our guys were 6 foot plus and well north of 200 pounds.  It would be a good contrast.  The three of them arrived and we made quick introductions.

There were a ton of guys around that day and I was running all over the place like usual.  I didn’t remember at the time which wrestler was which between the three.  They were wrestling in a tag match.  The match was good and the crowd was reacting well.    At this point of the story I think it is important to note that we run very family-friendly shows.  There is no cursing at our shows and we do very little “extreme” type gimmick matches.

I was standing up on the stage when I saw one of the wrestlers perform a routine move known as the sunset flip.   The wrestler receiving the move reached up and pulled the other wrestler’s trunks down.   I had seen this happen in the past and it could be a funny spot.  However, these trunks went WAY DOWN.   From the back side view I had I could actually see more than I wanted to of the front side!   The wrestler( to this day don’t know which one it was) proceeded to run around the ring with his trunks still pulled down.   This lasted just a few seconds, but at the time I was FURIOUS.  I don’t like surprises at my shows and this was definitely a surprise.   As I write this now, I am actually laughing thinking about what I must have looked like when I was watching this all take place.    It makes me appreciate the fact that anything can and will happen in a live production.

I don’t remember what I said when the wrestlers from Omaha came to the back.   I believe I was cordial.   I don’t think getting in a confrontation with a wrestler while the show is still going is ever a good idea.  I know I decided right then and there that I was never going to book any of those three guys again.   They represented what I fear the most, a liability.   To this day I don’t book anyone that I feel is a threat to the future of what we have worked so hard to build.   It only takes one bad decision to ruin a reputation forever.    Now to be fair, I don’t think there was any malicious intent by any one of the wrestlers in that tag match.   Also, looking back on it, those guys were great wrestlers that I could have benefited from in the long run by having on our shows.   It was just that visual of him in the ring with his ass out that I could never get out of my head.  We work closely with fair boards, schools, city councils, and similar groups.  I am just too conservative in my wrestling thinking to run the risk of that ever happening again on our future shows.

I haven’t spoken to any of them since, but I would like to sometime.  I have mutual friends with Hype Gotti and his Twitter feed is hilarious.   I would like to book him, Drago, and Babyface again to wrestle with us again.   I think 9 years is the equivalent to forever in pro wrestling.   I still work tirelessly in making sure our shows are free of anything that I deem a liability.   However, maybe I need to take more time to consider whether the wrestler is a real threat to being a reoccurring problem before I write them off forever.    Change can be a slow process.

Troy Peterson founded Impact Pro Wrestling in 2002.  IPW runs about 25 shows a year primarily in Iowa and Minnesota.  Troy helps organize the George Tragos/Lou Thesz Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame weekend in Waterloo, Iowa each summer.  The weekend features an awards banquet and a talent evaluation for young wrestlers scouted by Gerry Brisco and Jim Ross.  IPW also presents a live pro wrestling show in conjunction with the weekend.  Troy lives in Des Moines, Iowa with his wife Caroline and 5 year old son Truman.