South Bronx wrestlers Necro Black, Lucifer Darksyde and K-Von Brown. Photo by Jordan Hollender.
Wrestling superstars from yesteryear, including Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake and Nikolai Volkoff, are set to bring star power and tinges of nostalgia to Saturday night’s Forgotten Championship Wrestling (FCW) show at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
The New York-based FCW was founded in 2008 by three wrestling fans — Tony Ntellas, James Carro and Mark Parella — with the aim of returning the sport to its bygone days of slapstick grappling and pantomime narratives as opposed to the current emphasis on blood and gore. Among the wrestlers seeking to reverse this trend are a tag team from South Bronx known as the Bronx Bombers.
Gregory Caban and King Jeter, both 27, who wrestle under the respective pseudonyms of Necro Black and Lucifer Darksyde, met as teenagers in 1997 with a shared fanaticism for the sport. They took their first tentative steps inside the ring three years later and have gone on to cultivate quite a reputation on the local independent circuit owing to their unlikely arsenal of high-flying offense.
“Wrestling is like a live cartoon or a comic book,” said Jeter, who stands 6-feet-4, weighs about 360 pounds and frequently back somersaults from the ring’s top turnbuckles. “It’s the belief that you can do it. The moment you doubt yourself, your body tenses up and you’ll come down like bricks.”
“It’s the potato sack theory,” said Caban, 5-feet-6 and 315 pounds.
Caban was 13 years old when his father left home, leaving him to care for his mother and two younger sisters. “I had to become the man of the house,” he said. “I needed an outlet because I had a lot of anger.”
He tried artwork and writing, but then found his calling when he began “backyard brawling” with a circle of friends that grew to include Jeter and K-Von Brown, also now a member of the FCW roster. The boys would gather on weekends to watch professional wrestling shows on television, then spend countless hours afterward discussing and scrutinizing every move. By the time they reached the legal training age of 18, they were itching to learn the craft of bodyslamming opponents and applying headlocks.
“When we got to the gym and started training, we just picked everything up like that,” said Caban, snapping his fingers in quick succession. “We’d pretty much studied it already.”
Caban still uses his artistic talents to design online graphics and promotional work for independent wrestling promotions when he is not in the ring. But while captivating audiences can be a struggle for smaller organizations, wrestling’s popularity continues to endure.
“It has drama, it has emotion, it has violence,” Jeter said, adding: “In some cases it has sexual innuendo. It’s everything that society wants rolled into one, so you can’t help but to look at it.”
Although FCW is still in its infancy, Jeter expects Saturday’s card to be full of excitement for the fans.
“You can expect us to go out there and give 100 percent and it will set the pace for the night,” Jeter said. “FCW has a lot of potential. I hope the fans see that and come out and show their support.
“And if you ain’t gonna support that, at least come and support us.”
FCW is running a series of fan-interactive promotional events prior to the bell ringing at 7.30 p.m. Check their Web site for full details. The Bronx Ink will feature a multimedia clip of the event next week.