It’s a warm Central Valley evening when Sir Samurai drives down the highway toward Modesto, an hour and a half away from his home in Sacramento. The 41-year-old is making the rounds again. Next weekend, he’ll be in Reno, but tonight, with a warm breeze whipping through his long hair, he sets his eyes south.
It’s near dusk when he arrives at the squat multipurpose building. The lights in the parking lot are on—mostly. A handful of cars already litter the lot, and Sir Samurai spots his partner, Drake Frost, the other half of the Honor Society. As they walk in through the side door marked “Wrestlers Only,” Sir Samurai sees his stage for the night, a mass of steel beams, tightly wound ropes and wooden planks covered by canvas mats.
If you only know names like Hulk Hogan, Steve Austin or Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson, you’ve barely scratched the surface of the pro wrestling world. Punk bands don’t have anything on the life of independent professional wrestlers like Sir Samurai, who endure a hard road for a relatively small amount of glory and almost zero money. “Jobbers,” as the working-class pros are called, practically live on the road and will drive long hours to get the chance for just 20 minutes in the ring.
For over 50 years, independent federations have been holding matches and bringing live action to enthusiastic crowds throughout the country. In California alone, dozens of promotions, like Sir Samurai’s Supreme Pro Wrestling out of Sacramento, operate in small towns and big cities alike, though professional wrestling has largely been absent in the annals of North Bay sports history. Until now.
On Nov. 14, Phoenix Pro Wrestling, the newest wrestling promotion in the Bay Area, will make its debut in Petaluma at the Phoenix Theater.
PHOENIX RISING
Phoenix Pro Wrestling is the brainchild of Josh Drake, KWTF radio founding board member and an event organizer who hosts a popular weekly gaming event in Petaluma as well. Working alongside Phoenix Theater booker and filmmaker Jim Agius and Sir Samurai’s Supreme Pro Wrestling federation, Drake plans on reshaping public opinion of this niche entertainment and aims to build the first successful wrestling institution in the North Bay.
“There is no wrestling north of Oakland or west of Sacramento. There have only been a handful of shows up here and nothing sustained; no one has made it an institution,” says Drake.
For one night, Phoenix Pro Wrestling will transform the historic music venue into a sports arena for an all-ages, family-friendly event celebrating the drama of live wrestling. Phoenix Pro Wrestling promises a clean and thrilling show.
Drake and Agius are handling the event promotion and production, with an almost obsessive focus on a professional look and attitude. Sir Samurai, a veteran promoter himself, is booking wrestlers from around the region. Phoenix Pro Wrestling will feature all the hallmarks of the classic wrestling events that fans grew up with, from an authentic championship belt made out of leather and gold, to pre-match interviews and a cast of colorful characters.
“We’re giving the wrestlers an environment to thrive,” says Drake. “We’re setting the tone to look like an already established promotion, like the stuff we watched on TV. That’s how I like my wrestling.”
Phoenix Pro Wrestling will be filming the event for the web. “Our idea with this show is to not only put on a great wrestling show for the audience in the room, we’re also trying to make episodic web television wrestling shows,” says Drake.
He shares a story about watching WCW’s Super Brawl I over 20 years ago on pay-per-view. A tag-team championship match between Sting and Lex Luger and the Steiner Brothers was interrupted by the “Russian Nightmare” Nikita Koloff, who stormed the ring, bashing Sting.
“And that’s all cool,” says Drake. “But what’s awesome is when Nikita Koloff bails, he goes into the back and the cameras follow him, and you see Sting coming for him and they start fighting it out back. And then they go out the door and start fighting in the parking lot, and it was like, ‘This is for real!’ I’m 10 years old and I’m thinking, this is the most awesome thing I’ve ever seen,” reminisces Drake.
“It went so much further than just wrestling in the ring. It made it bigger,” Drake continues. “And after that I didn’t play with my Ninja Turtles anymore. I wrestled with them. And every match went out of the ring. I think it’s the extra stuff that makes it so much more interesting.”
And while its unlikely that any matches will go out onto Washington Avenue on Nov. 14, Drake and Aguis are focused on delivering an event filled with suspense and action.
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ISNI’T IT FAKE?
This isn’t the first time Drake has run a wrestling promotion at the Phoenix Theater. Back in 2006, there was the short-lived “Punk Slam” series, where wrestlers, including Sir Samurai, and punk rock bands shared the spotlight in an experimental blend of live concert and sports.
This time, Drake and Agius are solely focused on the sport and the storytelling that enthralls fans. “I’m interested in presenting it like a show: have interviews, motivations for why wrestlers want the title, simple stuff to give people time to get to know the characters, so it’s more meaningful when they see people they like wrestle in dangerous situations or when there’s something on the line,” says Drake.
“I tell people the first time I brought wrestling to the Phoenix, the audience was getting excited for headlocks and early pins. I didn’t feel the need to do the big spectacle, though everyone still remembers when Adam Thornstowe did a Moonsault [backflip] off the skate ramp. We can work up to stuff, but we want the audience to be with us for the show,” he adds.
Agius says the video experience is what’s missing in most independent promotions, and that it unfairly detracts from the action. “There’re two types of people out there,” explains Agius. “There are people who think wrestling is great, and people who think wrestling is dumb and would never give it a chance. Our position is, let your guard down a little and take a look. We’re going to treat it with respect, and try to get people into the idea of wrestling again,” he says.
“I notice there’s a stigma about wrestling fans too,” adds Agius. “We had Mick Foley at the Phoenix back in August, and meeting him was an absolute joy, a dream I didn’t know I had come true, but people acted like, ‘You’re not really a wrestling fan, are you?’ Of course I am. Nobody argues that because Rambo is scripted they like the movie any less.”
So what of the fact that wrestling is scripted? It’s been almost two decades since the 1997 Montreal Incident, commonly called the “Montreal Screw-job” by fans, when owners of the popular World Wrestling Federation (now called World Wrestling Entertainment) manipulated the outcome of a match between Bret Hart and Shawn Michael, without Hart’s knowledge.
Long before the incident, it was already widely accepted that wrestling was scripted, but this very public opening of the curtain angered many fans and disenfranchised others. Yet a new generation of fans has grown up in the new era of scripted wrestling, and Drake and Agius consider that perhaps the stigma of fakery may be a thing of the past.
“In talking to people, I find myself getting the whole ‘it’s fake’ thing out of the way, but are [the fans] actually the ones continuing the idea that people think it’s dumb because it’s fake? Maybe it’s not an issue anymore,” says Drake.
“People also think it’s dumb because it is dumb sometimes,” admits Agius. “There are shameful things that have happened, negative stuff which makes it look bad on a national level. Our goal is to have that be absent from our promotion. We want to make it so you can bring your kids and your family and have a positive experience.”
IN THIS CORNER . . .
For the Phoenix event, Sir Samurai has assembled a bill of eclectic matches. Sir Samurai himself will tag team with Drake Frost once again as the Honors Society, and will take on the gruesome twosome of Will Rude and Damien Grundy, “two big jacked dudes,” as Sir Samurai describes them, who go by the tag-team name Cold Cold World. “We’ve never faced each other,” says Sir Samurai. “So we’re looking forward to that.” Watch for the Honors Society to unleash their signature double-team move, the 12 Stack Superplex, in which Sir Samurai jumps onto Drake’s shoulders and slams an opponent onto the mat from the top ropes.
Also on the bill will likely be Virgil Flynn, described by Sir Samurai as one of the region’s best high flyers, taking on Marcus Lewis, a young, hungry wrestler making a name for himself with his aerial feats. Not to be missed is the match between Jeckles the Jester and CJ Curse. “They’re just two crazy wrestlers,” says Sir Samurai. Expect a knockdown, drag-out slugfest there.
Adding to the color of the night’s matches, there will even be ringside announcing from “Big Time” Tim Livingston, the voice of the Sonoma Stompers baseball team, and color commentary by “Rudo” Eric Ritz, longtime musical director at Sonoma State University’s KSUN radio station. Both are rabid fans with encyclopedic wrestling knowledge.
For the Phoenix Theater, this is a new chapter for a venue that has seen it all in a century’s time. Under the management of Tom Gaffey, the building has acted as a valued community spot in Petaluma, and Agius and Drake would love to see it continue to be so. “The Phoenix is such a great resource, it should be doing a million more things than it’s doing,” says Agius.
“Anyone can come in and do anything,” Agius adds. “Anybody who has Tom’s phone number, which is listed on the website, can call him, and if you want to use that building for any crazy idea you have, you would be allowed to do it. So in the spirit of that, this is our crazy idea.”
Phoenix Pro Wrestling debuts Friday, Nov. 14, at the Phoenix Theater,
201 Washington St,. Petaluma. 8pm. $2–$10. 707.762.3565
