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ELBURN – Chest chops and face kicks once offered Joe DeLand two-for-one invigoration. About a year ago, the Elburn resident sought something that would provide it again.
DeLand’s family moved more than a dozen times before he turned 18, leading the son of a union carpenter to the release of professional wrestling.
DeLand started a career at 15, flamed out, and returned 11 months ago as co-founder of North American Professional Wrestling, which has discovered its steadiest backer yet in the Elburn Countryside & Community Center.
“I basically said one day, ‘I want to make wrestling worth it again,’ ” DeLand, 25, said. “Those were my exact words.”
NAPW has averaged about 150 fans over six shows in Elburn, drawing a mix of families and adults with what DeLand calls an “old-school” approach. The federation stresses technical moves over glitz and interactivity over anonymity, all while building toward something bigger.
In his day job in building management, DeLand tirelessly makes calls and sends emails during idle time. He has sifted through paperwork covering legal and insurance bases and visited fans at their homes.
Once he's through with that, he hops in the ring as "The Difference" Joey Rose.
Spreading the brand and enriching the product will take a lot more doing, DeLand knows, but he thinks he’s in tune with every aspect of the operation.
Besides, he's his own boss this time. It's all in his happily busy hands.
•••
Hours before gathering to give and receive piledrivers, as many as six wrestlers cram into their trucks or mid-size sedans to carpool. NAPW also wrestles in Wisconsin and Indiana, and about half of its roster of 12 regulars hails from outside the western suburbs. Guests from other federations and roving contributors to the regular "rookie gauntlet match" also come from around the region.
Opponents traditionally take different cars, or at least make sure their iPods are turned up loudly enough when their foe tries conversing from the backseat. The card might be subject to change, but staying in character and keeping the spirit never can be compromised.
“I don’t like making this look fake,” said 24-year-old Ryan Elliott, a federation rookie who competes as Anthony Antonelli. “A lot of people are [thinking] you know, ‘It’s fake. It’s wrestling.’ The best thing about it is when I go out, I love getting hit hard. Maybe busted open. I love making it look real.”
Elliott captures the essence of his pastime when you ask him where he’s from. “In wrestling,” he starts, he’s a native of Naples, Italy. In real life, he was born in Glendale Heights and grew up in Wheaton.
He met DeLand through a circle of Wheaton North friends – both graduated from the school in the mid-2000s – and had previously dabbled in backyard wrestling and other Chicagoland companies when the NAPW opportunity arose. A friend brainstormed Elliott’s alias at a bar in a nod to Elliott’s Italian heritage. Elliott called DeLand, who quickly approved the Antonelli name, and has itched to make it look real ever since.
An Arlington Heights warehouse manager by day, Elliott trains three nights a week at NAPW’s “Camp” facility in West Chicago. His fiancee habitually attends events and helps work the front table, grinning and grimacing depending on which storyline her husband-to-be is following.
During matches and intermission, Elliott always shoots for smiles, especially when kids are around.
“That’s what I think keeps me going,” he said. “The fans.”
•••
Ravishing Ryan Kross, one brutish half of the tag team Midnight Express Reboot, screams to the community center crowd during the recent St. Patrick's Day Slam about the havoc he'll unlock here during NAPW's one-year anniversary show April 21.
Leaning near the top of a guardrail, 8-year-old Sean Murray of Elburn expertly puts Kross back in place.
“No you’re not!” Murray yells.
About 50 feet behind Murray – who forms his own formidable heckling tag team with 11-year-old brother Joey – a trio of grown men conjure more witty comebacks, evoking the ornery Muppets Statler and Waldorf. When Irish Andy Anderson’s sure victory appears imperiled, they implore Anderson’s opponent to use the as-yet-enacted “figure four leaf clover leglock” to coax him into submission.
Their creation earns smiles and laughs from all within earshot – the kids who scored special $5 tickets online, and the adults who paid $10 (general admission) and $12 (ringside). At ringside, DeKalb dad Jeff Harness, 45, looks back at the men seated below the gym floor and grins before crushing Kross with his own verbal barb.
“You’ve got to get the crowd going,” said Harness, whose family hosted a DeLand house call during the winter. “You’ve got to have some fun and just get some noise going.”
A handful of acts invite chants or taunts that never come. No fan takes audible issue with the fact wrestler Texas Pete comes from Oregon, dresses like a wannabe rocker and uses the music of Boston’s “The Cars” for his entrance theme. Similarly, neither Murray brother nor any of the other children assembled notice Jack Carpenter’s resemblance to “Bob the Builder” of cartoon fame.
The children grow more perceptive during intermission, when wrestlers emerge from the locker room for photo-ops and autographs. During a recent show in Janesville, Wis., Elliott encountered a horde of youngsters who were watching him for the first time yet still followed the protocol befitting wrestling royalty.
"The wrestlers talk to the kids. They sign things for them individually. They just interact with them," said Stacy Murray, in attendance with her sons and husband, Jim. "When you're 8, that's everything."
•••
Camaraderie and comfort soothe grown adults just as well.
Pursued by DeLand’s start-up amid years of performing and producing in industry-leading acts such as WWE, WCW and TNA, “Rockin” Randy Ricci signed on as commissioner and chief operating officer in late 2011 largely because he sensed these things in NAPW. He also was intrigued that the company’s chief investor in DeLand and partner Chris Koley was not a pro wrestling fan.
Training or preparing backstage, wrestlers frequently pick Ricci’s brain, absorbing stories from his days as Jerry Fox and seeking his feedback after shows.
“It’s adding spectacle from the inside of the business and outside,” DeLand said, “so it’s making us look good for the wrestlers and the fans.”
A St. Paul, Minn., native now living in Lake County, Ricci said he could have “begged, borrowed and pleaded” for a lower-level WWE job after recent departures from TNA and IWA Puerto Rico. Instead, he channeled memories of Jerry “The King” Lawler, Ricci’s hero from his wrestling beginnings in Memphis in the early 1980s, who juggled wrestling with radio and variety shows, and still slept in his own bed every night.
Ricci first met DeLand while DeLand trained for another Chicagoland federation about a decade ago. It’s not the only earlier association on which he’s capitalized. Ricci’s founding ties to the Chicago-based North American Wrestling Federation, which helped launch the career of current WWE superstar and Chicagoland native C.M. Punk, landed Colt Cabana for the St. Patrick’s Day show.
Born Scott Colton in Deerfield, Cabana wrestled in the WWE and also came to the Countryside & Community Center as a former NWA champ. During intermission, he manned a corner of the gym, signing autographs, just steps away from where fans scarfed $2 hot dogs. Next month, he'll be touring with a top circuit in Japan.
•••
With a 1985 WWE ring that once housed legends Hulk Hogan and "Macho Man" Randy Savage, DeLand is scoring the lights, mat, guardrails, music and other creature comforts that slowly are projecting the atmosphere of a big-ticket show.
“You show people what kind of heart you’ve got and show them the determination,” DeLand said. “Make sure it’s worth their time and it’ll happen.”
Community center officials have signed NAPW for monthly events through the rest of 2012 after its October debut in Elburn. The center’s Main Street marquee heralds the dates and times.
DeLand hopes Ricci’s addition will allow him to focus more on wrestling and less on production and promotion. He doesn’t mind the legwork of posting fliers at laundromats, restaurants and anywhere else he gets approval, he’d just rather have his legs whipped.
For the St. Patrick’s Day show, he’s the first to come and the last to leave, embodying the Jackson Browne lyrics that are too mellow to play before pro wrestlers lock horns for three hours. As a lights crew and several wrestlers begin with assembly, the disc jockey starts with Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird.”
Anderson, who wears a shamrock singlet in the ring and a T-shirt that reads “The Authentic Irishman” for promotional purposes, sports a full red beard. He’s standing in street clothes for the moment, carrying a tune.
On this day, you’d think it would be “Danny Boy.” Instead, it’s a Skynyrd refrain.
“Lord knows I can’t chaaaaaaaaannnnggggge,” Anderson sings.
He’d better. The show starts in a little more than an hour.
It's go time
North American Pro Wrestling has scheduled monthly stops in Elburn through the rest of 2012, beginning with its one-year anniversary show April 21. Here's a look at some particulars:
Where: Elburn Countryside & Community Center, 525 N. Main St.
When: Doors open at 6 p.m., with wrestling starting at 7 p.m.
How much: $5 for kids (online-only offer at naprowrestling.com), $10 general admission, $12 ringside (tickets available at the door)