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Real Wrestling on TV?

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

Real wrestling - the kind done in high school and college gyms and the Olympics - hasn't had a fan base far beyond the sport's participants and their families.

"It's a huge fraternity and a very small world," says Jeff Prescott, a two-time NCAA wrestling champion at Penn State. Prescott hopes a new league, Real Pro Wrestling, will expand the sport's appeal and enable its athletes to make a living off their sweat.

RPW will present Olympic-style wrestling in a made-for-TV package according to the PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER. The league has eight teams filled with college and Olympic stars, each squad named for a region where wrestling is popular, with names such as the Iowa Stalkers, Oklahoma Slam and Pennsylvania Hammer. Prescott is on the New York Outrage.

Toby Willis, the league's founder and a former college wrestler, says he saw a previous pro wrestling league fail in 1989 and knew what it lacked: TV exposure.

So he's built RPW around TV. He's buying time to run matches on Pax TV and has an ad-sharing arrangement with Fox Sports Net (TV coverage starts March 27). Matches for the first season were taped at a futuristic studio/arena in Los Angeles, designed to be "reminiscent of the old Colosseum" (the one in Rome, not L.A.).

Willis is on the hunt for sponsors and owners who might base teams in actual home arenas in the future. Rulon Gardner and Dan Gable - really wrestling's only two well-known names - are helping with marketing.