“Pure, moldy rock. Asbestos. All of that good, moldy bullshit.” Almost 10 years later, Mike Taverna remembers what his first match smelled like. A long, narrow garage in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Concrete floors and walls, a canvased platform squeezed into the thin strip of a building moonlighting as an independent wrestling venue. A flimsy black curtain separating muscled and oiled wrestlers from the rowdy crowd lusting for blood and a good show.
“To the naked eye, it looked like the most disgusting ghetto place you’ll ever see,” Taverna says with a smile. “Once the ring was there and the lights were on the ring and the guardrails were up and the chairs were full, it had a really good underground fight feel.” The pumpkin of a venue had turned into a fully dressed carriage. Surrounded by steel barricades, The Man of Steel was ready to perform.
Taverna, now 31, dreams of becoming the ultimate multi-hyphenate. Something akin to Dwayne the Rock Johnson or John Cena. A transcendent star who uses professional wrestling to springboard themselves to fame and riches beyond the ring.
Independent wrestling can be summarized in a word: “grind.” Thousands fight for limited opportunities with a smattering of regional companies. Perform well enough, build a big enough following, and maybe you make it to the big leagues: industry stalwart WWE, and the up-and-comer AEW.
Most independent wrestlers never make it, hanging up their boots with broken bodies and unfulfilled dreams.
“It’s a car accident… every time you slam, that’s what doctors compare a pro wrestling fall to,” Taverna says. To him, it’s a day at the office.
Undeterred by the odds of making it with a major company, Taverna maintains relentless optimism. Speaking at a breakneck pace, Taverna, unmistakably Italian, muscles bulging out of his signature black tank top, describes life on the independent wrestling circuit with a sadistic smile.
After 10 years and more independent shows than he can count, with brief appearances–but no contract–with AEW, the drug of performing still gets Taverna high. “The joy of doing it, the love of doing it in front of a crowd, better than anything,” Taverna says. “There is no comparison to what pro-wrestling is in front of a live crowd.” Six-hour drives to Massachusetts to perform for eight minutes. Fueled by rest-stop hamburgers and naps in his car, Taverna grinds on. He’s amassed 12,000 Instagram followers, numerous regional titles, and the reputation of a career grinder. Taverna missed his first show ever with the flu recently.
A native of Bergen Beach, Brooklyn, Taverna, along with his parents, still lives within the same 10-block radius of where he grew up. At 3, he started playing baseball, his first love, coached by his father. Around 10, he got into wrestling, his second love, a sport his father described using “the P word.”
Phony.
That outlook changed when his family and friends, packed into that narrow garage in Park Slope, saw Taverna’s first match. Their initial skepticism faded, replaced by cautious enthusiasm. The fights in professional wrestling may be predetermined, but the physical punishment of the sport is anything but phony. “Imagine having a crazy bender of anything that you would think was a vice in your life. Drinking wise, paraphernalia wise, and during that bender, you had a really bad fall that you didn’t feel during the moment, ‘cause you were so fucked up, but the next morning you woke up and you were incredibly hungover and you were incredibly sore,” Taverna says of the physical tolls wrestling takes on the body.
Taverna does not need to wrestle. A burgeoning acting career he began in 2018 allows him the financial stability to be more selective with his bookings. He’s made $5,000 for a single commercial. He’s been paid as low as $150 for a single match.
The pandemic almost gave Taverna his out. COVID created a content vacuum, one that professional wrestling was quick to fill. Taped shows in empty studios satiated audiences trapped at home desperate for something to watch once they finished Tiger King.
“That took such a toll on my wrestling outlook,” Taverna says of performing during the pandemic. “If I’m not working for a crowd, I have no interest in doing it. If we didn’t come back when we did, I might have hung it up.” But come back they did.
On a cold Friday night, the streets of Ridgewood, New Jersey, are quiet. Large homes with manicured lawns line the sleepy streets of the affluent suburb. Outside the Phil Sheridan building, run by the local Knights of Columbus chapter, tattooed individuals smoke cigarettes and cannabis. One group says they drove five hours from Baltimore to be here tonight.
The doors swing open, emitting a warm glow and the sound of loud music. Inside, the multipurpose gym has been transformed into a wrestling venue. A ring, sagging ever-so-slightly in the center, sits in the middle of the floor surrounded by lighting towers and steel barricades, then rows of folding chairs.
In one corner, two old men serve $3 beers and $2 hotdogs. In the opposite corner, blue curtains flanked by barricades resemble a runway, allowing wrestlers to make their entrances. Directly above the curtains hangs a crucifix. This, the fans say, is independent wrestling. It’s the first-ever show for independent company Expect the Unexpected Wrestling, or ETU. Deep camaraderie amongst fans, some of whom seem to get together exclusively at events like this. More than 100 people cheer, chant, and scream for performances happening just steps away.
At one point, a bout spills into the audience with wrestlers yelling for the crowd to move, delivering their punishment on the varnished floors of the gym. The Man of Steel wrestles tonight, part of a six-person tag-team match the wrestler admits is a bit “gimmicky.” Entering the ring clad in a regal bedazzled robe Taverna prowls, playing up his menacing glares to the crowd and his opponents when he isn’t tagged in.
Shane “The Franchise” Douglas gets up from his autograph table to deliver a few blows. The crowd hollers. They say Douglas, a paunchy man in his late 50s, hair still blonde as it was in the 90s, is an industry legend. During his limited time in the ring, Taverna delivers a punishing blow, driving his opponent back-first into the floor. The sound more closely resembles a gunshot than a body hitting canvas. There was little chance Douglas, a former ECW heavyweight champion and WWE veteran, would lose the match. He and his crew did not disappoint.
Despite Taverna’s loss he commands the crowd as the perfect “heel.”
“You’re there to enhance the talent and show yourself through losing,” says Taverna of the fights he doesn’t win, “which is fine. It’s wrestling, it doesn’t matter.” What does matter is putting on a good show; judging by the raucous audience, Taverna and the other wrestlers did just that. “My first time ever seeing wrestling live,” fan Quincy Don wrote on instagram of ETU’s first show. “If all goes to plan, I’ll go to more shows next month than this [entire] year.”
With fans like Don, it’s obvious why veterans like Taverna, or someone pushing 60, like Douglas, can’t pull themselves away.
Eventually, Taverna has to make a choice.
His acting work continues to pick up. He is close to landing a high-paying role on an undisclosed reality show, $100,000 for a few months’ work. Opportunities like that don’t come around often. Opportunities like that open new doors and can replace the grind.
Physically, Taverna says he is fearless. The tattoo inscribed on his left arm, meanwhile, reminds him of the possibilities outside the ring. It reads: “The saddest thing in life is wasted talent.”
“Sooner or later, there’s going to be that fork in the road,” Taverna says. He fears the fork.