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Move over, Vince McMahon: Soundview gym is site for monthly bouts
On a desolate Soundview street across the Bronx River from Hunts Point on a Saturday night in January, 40 wrestlers donned masks and costumes in the locker room of a neighborhood gym and prepared to go into battle on the mat.
Some hundred adults and kids now sat in their folding chairs, waiting. They had come to Daro’s Extreme Fitness Gym on Close Avenue to witness the forces of good and evil face off in a dozen matches, featuring acts like the Caveman, Justin Toxic, Bobby Venom, and the tag team of Ken Canada and Robert Saint, better known to their South Bronx faithful as the Axis Powers.
While the cavernous second floor gym on a street of warehouses won’t remind spectators of Madison Square Garden, Daro’s buzzes with excitement on the first Saturday of every month when the bell sounds for Bronx Wrestling Federation action.
“It’s very underground, the crowd has a lot of spice,” said Angel Velasquez, 30, who doubles as Ken Canada. When he’s not being flung around the ring, Velasquez, who says he has wrestled at the Garden, raises two toddlers and works as a doorman in a building on Manhattan’s upper east side.
“I needed a character that would stand out and get hated,” Velasquez said, explaining his choice to adopt a Canadian stage persona. “Once you’re a foreigner in the United States, you’re automatically hated, so I could get reaction from the crowd.”
Like many of the others, Velasquez became hooked on Pro Wrestling while watching the World Wrestling Federation on TV as a kid.
Robert Munoz, 38—better known by his Bronx Wrestling Federation sobriquet, Bobby Venom, the Submission Technician— grew up in Mott Haven and Soundview and played baseball when he was younger, but became increasingly drawn to the theatrics of wrestling when he saw the excitement it generated among crowds.
“Little by little I started to lose interest in baseball,” said Munoz, who works as a corrections officer. “I do this for fun.”
The crowd howled with delight when the Caveman emerged from the locker room mimicking a troglodyte, hop frogging on all fours toward the ring while banging a plastic club on the floor. In a later tag team match between Mexico and Puerto Rico, some hollered “Mexico!” while others countered with cries of “Puerto Rico!” Throughout the matches, an emcee egged on the audience with non-stop narrative, taking a page out of the WWF with shouts of “The rulebook has been thrown out the window!!” and “It’s mayhem out there!!”
Few of the wrestlers are compensated for their efforts, instead attributing their dedication to the thrill of performing and the rush of seeing their created characters titillate the throngs.
In the evening’s feature match, Bronco International, a masked, 50-year-old Dominican construction worker who helps coordinate the monthly event, faced off against Jason Sparks, 32, who goes by the name of Steelhorse Vachon. Because the two are more experienced, they were the only participants remunerated for their troubles. The Federation paid for Sparks’ flight from his home in Florida. He wrestles professionally for World Wrestling Entertainment.
When asked in the locker room before the fight if matches are rigged, Sparks waxed philosophical.
“Is Robert DeNiro a good actor?” he said. “I’m as real as he is.”
Becoming a wrestler requires years of training, and involves physical risks, Bronco said, after his duel with Steelhorse, still wearing his mask in the locker room. Since he took up the craft in his mid-20s in Santo Domingo, he says he has suffered serious knee, ankle and neck injuries.
Dozens of wide-eyed children looked on, mesmerized throughout the evening’s matches, often standing on their chairs to cheer on their heroes and to jeer their rivals. Thirteen-year-old Manuel Gutierrez Jr., a student at the Entrada Academy in Longwood, was impressed, but skeptical, after seeing wrestling for the first time.
“Sometimes it’s real,” he said, then reflected for a second, and added “but sometimes it isn’t.”
Emanuel Gonzalez, 9, who attends Bronx Lighthouse Charter School in Longwood, pronounced himself a fan of Bronco’s. He had stood on his chair watching in horror, hollering “No! No!” as Steelhorse Vachon, sporting a pointed beard and a shaved head, repeatedly savaged his hero with illegal hits and illicit objects.
“I like Bronco because he respects everyone,” Gonzalez said after the match, adding he was disappointed with the outcome. The referee declared Steelhorse the winner while the two wrestlers lay feigning exhaustion and injury on the mat after the match, though a scheduled rematch may allow Bronco to exact sweet revenge.
As for training to become a wrestler himself, Gonzalez defers, for now.
“I’d get injured,” he worried.