Local wrestling organization overcomes adversity on its “Quest For Champions”

By Austin Powell
Daily Texan Staff

For any professional wrestler or promoter, uttering the word “fake” in his or her presence is the ultimate sign of disrespect. It is enough to send cold chills down their spine and bring about a stiff and awkward silence.

Peter Franklin | Daily Texan Staff

El Tiburon locks up his opponent in a submission hold during a tag team championship match.

“It’s worse than the other ‘F’ word,” George Del La Isla, a local wrestling promoter declared. “How do you fake the impact and the toll that it takes on your body every single time you take a bump?”
His assistant Ray Campos, a 15-year veteran of the sport, quickly added, “I was nearly paralyzed in 2003 from wrestling. I don’t want to hear that shit.”

As Campos said this, 43-year-old Arnaldo Torres, who is only beginning his wrestling career after spending 23 years with the Army, subconsciously massaged his left shoulder, held in a sling from an injury he had recently sustained. Mike Adkins, a 17-year-old beginner student, looked solemnly down at the large brace supporting his torn meniscus disc in his right leg.

The weathered gray wrestling mat behind them, stained with blood, stiff and unforgiving, stood as a testament to the pain and suffering that the sport demands. When fallen upon correctly, the loud crack that resonates within the broken-down building is evidence of the sacrifice and determination that drives professional wrestling.

Peter Franklin | Daily Texan Staff

Psycho Simpson brings 7-year-old Mason Cross from the audience into the ring to help intimidate his opponent. Cross regularly attends matches with his family from Burnet.

But running counter-intuitive to this brash brutality is an underlying element of beauty and grace that is often overlooked and ignored. Wrestlers shift in and out of the ring with improvised, poetic motion. Every movement, from the sliding of their feet to the way their arms clasp around another’s head, speaks in a language that only they understand to signal the next moment’s action.

In the ring, wrestlers are larger-than-life figures designed to manipulate emotions. For those watching, they are heroes and villains, people to love and people to hate. For the wrestlers themselves, stepping into character is a form of escape. It is a way to temporarily transform themselves into something more than they currently are.

For more than 15 years, George Del la Isla has brought all of this to the city of Austin through various independent wrestling promotions. The lives, characters, and struggles that make up his current organization ,Champions of Texas Power Wrestling, could not be more real, and they are currently caught in a dog fight to survive. With their backs against the wall, the company is embarking in a new direction, one that may save the life of the organization and possibly change the face of independent wrestling forever.

Establish: Who’s the face and who’s the heel

Peter Franklin | Daily Texan Staff

Mr. B lies motionless during a triple-threat ladder match.

Roughly a year and a half ago, Champions of Texas Power Wrestling was contacted by Acclaim Entertainment to help record the audio for a video game, “Showdown: Legends of Wrestling.” In the game, the sound of these local wrestlers can be heard every time a person is thrown through a table, smacked with a chair or slammed onto the canvas.

The game, which enables players to perform as renowned wrestlers from yesteryear, makes for an interesting reference point for the life of George Del La Isla. At 58 years of age, Del La Isla has been in the wrestling business for nearly four decades. He worked his way through the ranks of the NWA, AWA and into the WWF. He wrestled both alongside and against such greats as “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, Andre the Giant, the Iron Sheik and Chavo Guerrero.

“I was never a champion,” Del La Isla said with pride, “but I always had a job.”

Peter Franklin | Daily Texan Staff

Aside from working as a martial arts instructor, teacher and orthopedic technician throughout the years, Del La Isla began training and promoting wrestlers in 1984. Soon after, he opened up Pacific Coast Crown Wrestling in California. Though the names and faces have all changed, it is essentially this same company that now resides in Austin.

Despite the constant struggle that running a promotion entails and his own deteriorating health, Del La Isla has found himself unable to break away from the sport of wrestling. “It’s the love for the business that keeps me going, that’s all,” Del La Isla said. “You try to get out, but you get drawn back in. ‘The hell with my heart,’ I’ll say, I can still do this.”

Del La Isla has felt almost obligated to continue giving back to the business that gave him so many wonderful memories and taught him so many valuable life lessons. In order “to keep the show going,” as Del La Isla put it, he developed an idea that would both better his wrestling promotion financially, and place it in a position to reach out to members of the community who need the guidance and structure that wrestling offers.

Del La Isla is in the process of creating a nonprofit corporation entitled Quest For Champions, under which his current wrestling organization would exist. Doing so will allow the company to seek corporate sponsorships and donations, as well apply for government grants. It is this money that will be used to help keep the wrestling promotion running and to drive down the cost to receive wrestling training which can cost anywhere from $3,000 to $7,000.

“Independent wrestling promoters don’t make any money to begin with,” Del La Isla said. “Going non-profit stops it from coming out of my pocket like it has for the past 25 years. That’s what shuts down other promoters. My family has suffered long enough.”

Peter Franklin | Daily Texan Staff

Smaller wrestling organizations have a shelf life of about five years. SWWF, XXW, TEW, LSCW and OCW are just a few of the organizations that have closed their doors recently due to the high cost of maintenance that promoting entails. Along with rent and the cost of actual production, promoters have to pay roughly 20 wrestlers a night, along with a crew of referees, sound specialists, announcers and commentators.

“If we can get people to understand that when they attend shows or donate money that it’s going to a good cause, we know that we can bring something positive to this community,” Del La Isla said. “Our goal is to help get kids off the streets, to help them set goals to better themselves; where if nothing else, they have wrestling as a backdrop.”

Shine: Face outwrestles the heel

What ties together the rather diverse and eclectic cast of wrestlers that make up Champions of Texas Power Wrestling is an undying affection and respect for the business of wrestling. For most, the company serves as the family they weren’t fortunate enough to have and it is a place that keeps their dreams alive.

In many ways, wrestling has brought them into a life they’ve never known. Ray Campos, a friendly, compassionate and sincere man, who is one of the only openly gay wrestlers in Texas, portrays in the ring the antithesis of his actual personality. He is known as “Papa Don,” a hyper-masculine, double-crossing, mob-style character that physically dominates his opponents.

“Wrestling was my way of proving myself,” Campos said.

Unlike other wrestlers whose gimmicks may change frequently, Campos has never been anything but “The Don.” After 11 years in the independent scene, including stints in Mexico and WCW, as well as a match against the hardcore legend New Jack, Campos said later with a twisted smile, “I think I’ve done that and then some.”

The goals that Del La Isla has set out for Quest For Champions already strike close to home for many of his wrestlers. 25-year-old Luis Garcia, who goes by “Manny Domingo” in the ring and has held nearly every title the promotion has to offer, credited wrestling for changing his life around.

“I was a high school drop-out, hanging around with the wrong crowd,” Garcia said. “Wrestling made me set goals that I didn’t think about before.” After spending five years in Champions of Texas Power Wrestling, Garcia is now preparing to head to a training facility in Kentucky to take his shot at the big time. “God works in mysterious ways,” Garcia added. “As long as we believe in him, he’ll work things around.”

But what separates the wrestlers of CTPW from those of any other wrestling organization is that they care more about the company’s survival than they do their own individual success.

Peter Franklin | Daily Texan Staff

John Peterson Jr., better known as “Mr. B,” one of the most popular wrestlers at CTPW, gives all of the money he earns through his merchandise straight back to the company.

“We owe all of this to George. None of us would be here if it weren’t for him” Peterson said through his blinking mouth fixture, a trademark visual element of his ghetto fabulous character. “And I know we can reach bigger heights if we just keep at it long enough.”

Cutoff: Heel uses a spot to gain the advantage

In six years time, CTPW has moved from Burnet Road to Cesar Chavez to Hokey Lane to Shady Lane and into their current location off Stassney Lane in South Austin. Problems with landlords are just one of the many difficulties routinely encountered by independent wrestling promotions.

“They don’t like what we do,” Del La Isla claimed. “They start hitting us up for more and more money after they see some of the crowds we draw. But they have no idea what it takes to keep this place going. And it happens to us every place we go.”

The wrestling organization’s relationship with their current landlord is nonexistent. According to Del La Isla and his lawyer Linette Harris, their landlord, who also controlled M&M Skate Park, faulted on their mortgage payments and declared bankruptcy a little over year ago without informing him of doing so. Now, Del La Isla has spent thousands of dollars on rent payment for a building that legally belongs to Franklin Federal Bank, which has filed for a non-judicial foreclosure of the premises. Aziz Saleh, the representative for M&M Skate Park could not be reached for comment.

On Feb. 28, Del La Isla held a group meeting, attended by nearly every wrestler in the organization, to break the news about the rough financial situation and housing difficulties the company was facing.

In a sweep of emotion, characterized by moments of frustration and anger alongside shimmers of pride and hope, Del La Isla told his wrestlers: “At this point, they [the bank] say we’ve lost the building. I have to be upfront about this. I don’t know how much longer we’re going to be able to stay here. It’s time we start looking.”

Heat: Heel dominates the face

On March 2, with the deafening sound of the train running behind them, Champions of Texas Power Wrestling found themselves quite literally in their darkest hours. All of the power had been cut from the building. Likewise, M&M Skate Park, which makes up the other half of their building, laid completely in shambles. Paint had been smeared all over the walls, and the various wood structures had been broken and torn to shreds.

Yet even when covered in the veil of a black night, the wrestlers attempted to make the most of their scheduled practice time. They gathered themselves in the ring and pressed on with business as usual. They stretched, ran through drills, and completed a full work out that lasted over two hours. They even partook in an impromptu tag team match. With two men in each corner, wrestlers battled one another with only sound to guide them.

“Arm drag,” Joseph Karcula, an 18-year-old wrestler, called out to his opponent, Luis Garcia. “Body slam,” he cried out moments later to indicate his next move.
Though the young men could barely see, their familiarity with the ring and their trust in one another enabled them to proceed through darkness.

Hope spot: Face makes a false comeback

After several weeks of inactivity, the organization was granted permission by the bank to continue on for the time being. CTPW attempted to regain a sense of normality within their organization through the aid of one of their deepest and most sacred traditions.

On March 27, CTPW held a gauntlet match for Blaire Spikes, a 20-year-old wrestler. The match signified the completion of his wrestling training, which he has gone through for the past 3 years, and welcomed him into the ranks of the other wrestling veterans.

Peter Franklin | Daily Texan Staff

In order to successfully complete the initiation, however, Spikes had to wrestle every single man in the organization, one after the other. “It’s for him to think of how to compete and sell himself against every other wrestler here. He has to adjust for each of them,” Del La Isla said. “The object is for him to fail. The last guy who got to this died out in the last minute.”

The event is the textbook definition of tough love; in many ways, the grueling and punishing affair parallels that of a gang initiation. Wrestlers surrounded the ring like an old-fashioned lumberjack match, screaming both taunts and encouragement to Spikes and pounded the canvas with their hands.
The first one in the ring and the last one to leave, Spikes resembled current WWE Intercontinental Champion Shelton Benjamin with his stamina, athleticism and agility. He battled wrestler after wrestler for two minutes apiece without a moments rest.

The wrestlers took no sympathy on Spikes. Nearly all of them delivered multiple sets of spine-breaking suplexes, a move which required him to be lifted completely vertical above his opponent before being slammed down forcefully on to his back. Every wrestler also gave Spikes their finishing move, which under normal circumstances, would signal the end of a match.

After 32 minutes and 30 seconds, Spikes rolled out of the ring triumphantly. He could barely breathe; his normally milk-chocolate skin tone was bursting with shades of pink as all of his blood rushed to the surface. For the moment, he was speechless, but Del La Isla filled the silence for him. Following a well-deserved congratulatory speech, Del La Isla and Campos announced that the first stage of their paperwork to become a non-profit corporation had gone through.

Double down / Comeback: Face counters and both go down for count. Face makes comeback.

Becoming part of a non-profit corporation doesn’t solve all of the problems facing CPTW. They must still find a way to reach a broader audience and find another place to wrestle in the future, a daunting task for a company that lacks the money necessary for advertising or web sites.

A suggestion to hold a free show the following Saturday in order to attract possible patrons was given at an emergency meeting held last Thursday night. “Forget about the WWE for now,” John Petterson firmly stated. “If we can’t make this work now, if you can’t make it here, it’s not going to happen anywhere.”

With time ticking against them, the wrestlers took a vote for to who was willing and ready to sacrifice for the company, to wrestle for free and to do whatever it took to make the night a success. All hands were raised.

Finish: Set up the big move or the cheat

Peter Franklin | Daily Texan Staff

CTPW promoter George Del La Isla the night that power was cut from the building his organization wrestles in.

With little more than one full day to prepare, on Saturday, April 8, the lights were fully functioning in their humble wrestling arena. The wooden floor was swept and mopped, hundreds of chairs were set-up, the concession stand was running and the sound system was blaring. Two children stood on Stassney Lane, flagging down cars with cardboard signs.

Out-of-town wrestlers, largely former students of Del La Isla, who were accustomed to being paid for such appearances, showed up and wrestled for free. Russell Simpson, one of the organization’s most successful veterans, wrestled twice that evening. For one he was an escaped mental patient, “Psycho Simpson,” for the other he was “Skull,” a masked and mysterious wrestler. In back to back matches, Simpson manipulated the crowd as both hero and villain.

Likewise, the CTPW roster took center stage and sold both their gimmicks and their bodies to the appreciative audience. John Cartwright, a beginner wrestler, took what is known in wrestling as a squash, by CPTW’s biggest wrestler, a 6’5” monster by the name of “Voo.” Cartwright was thrown around the ring like rag doll until the match ended with a two-hand choke slam that left Cartwright requiring assistance to leave the ring.

Moreover, long-time referees, announcers, and commentators all willingly stood behind the company and the man they believed in. In short, blood was drawn, feuds were begun, and titles changed hands. By all accounts, the evening appeared to be a resounding success.

Yet, the show was only a minor victory in the constant battle that is at hand. The issues facing the company as a whole can not be solved with one night, with one show or with one phenomenal match.
The evening instead can only be seen as evidence for the heart and determination of the members of this small Austin wrestling alliance, whose true quest for champions, has just begun. As Del La Isla said that evening, “We’ve got lots to look forward to, so just hang in there and be patient.”

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