Recently, we were fortunate to sit down with Victor Perry, the founder of The Wrestling Club.
For those who might not know, The Wrestling Club is an extracurricular program at the Kipp Amp Middle School in Brooklyn, NY. They’ve been visited by the likes of Sasha Banks, Keith Lee, and Swerve Strickland. They were also guests at NJPW’s Rumble on 44th Street show, courtesy of Rocky Romero.
You can view the exclusive eWrestlingNews.com interview in its entirety at this link. You can also support The Wrestling Club in their goal to get to WrestleMania here. Additionally, some highlights of our interview are below:
David: So I’m curious to know what was your inspiration behind starting the club, first and foremost.
Victor: There wasn’t really much of an inspiration. It just started literally organically. It’s random. I just so happened to get a notification in class while I was teaching about Bianca Belair coming to New York for a meet and greet and then upon research more, I found out that Survivor Series was also that weekend. So I bought a ticket to go to Survivor Series. But another student overheard me, I guess talking to myself about the experience, and he was like… he told me he liked Bianca as well, and so I called his mom was like: can I take him to meet Bianca? And she was like yes! And so we met Bianca and while in line, they offered raffle tickets. I didn’t know Monday Night Raw was going to still be in Brooklyn because I spent all my money on Survivor Series. Like, I didn’t pay rent. So we stayed in line and then we were going to leave after meeting Bianca, because you know there’s thousands of people there. So it’s like the chances of winning a raffle is like slim to none. But we ended up winning the raffle and we went to Monday night. All together we had the best of times.
David: That’s cool.
Victor: Yeah, and like, he went back the next day and was bragging to all his peers, and that’s when I found out kids watched wrestling. And then I was like, ‘if I started a club, would you join?’ And they were like, ‘yeah, we’ll join!’ And so four kids showed up during their lunch and recess and we just had the best of times. And then it just grew over the year, like a couple of months went by and it just grew to… at one point, we had 30 kids before the end of the year, and right now we have about 65 kids in the club.
David: I know your goal is to get the Wrestling Club to WrestleMania. I can’t even imagine the level of planning that’s going to take.
Victor: Yeah, so we’re taking four kids, maybe five, with the money that we’ve raised, because it’s so expensive, but like that in itself is such a…. We’ve never been out-of-state you know? And so like planning, you know, food, lodging, planes, like it’s a whole ordeal, something i’ve been planning since we started the GoFundMe. So that’s going to be fine. But it’s also stressful, like just figuring out what kids to choose because it’s only a few kids. But what it’s going to do for me is it’s going to give me an opportunity to see ‘okay on a large scale, even this is what it looks like so for Philly, which is like right next door to New York, to be able to take 40 kids, you know what I mean?
David: That’ll be really cool.
Victor: Yeah, so we’re starting out small just so that we can figure out what it looks like to take kids out-of-state, and to be with kids for more than eight hours in a day, you know, to be with them all day, every day, just to kind of get to feel as to what that looks like.
David: I’m excited about Philly because I’m from Boston myself and I’m going to be out-of-town for Survivor Series, and I’m kicking myself because I was like, ‘Noooo! They’re doing WarGames!’ Like, I want to be there so bad! So I’m missing out, but I was so excited, like when they announced that it was in Philly for WrestleMania 40, I was like ‘sweet Philly is… like, I can take a train to Philly. Do you think you’d bring kids both nights? Just one night?
Victor: So we’re doing both nights, for L.A., so we’ll see. We’re big fans of NXT. Our fave Carmelo Hayes is there. So we want to see him, even though we saw him in person at Barclays. We want to see him, you know, do his thing, you know, on a Mania weekend. So I’m trying to figure out now how are we going to get tickets to Stand and Deliver? But then it’s like, what does that look like in our day? Because that’s on a Saturday. So go there, then you go to Mania… It’s like, oh my gosh. And the kids… I’ve been with the kids for… so like the Rumble show. We went to school that day, so like I taught that day, kids went to school, then we went to Times Square the same day and it was… when I tell you I passed out? I have never been that tired before. So I’m like how in the world am I going to do three nights of Mania? And I hate flying. It’s going to be fine. That whole weekend is going to be fun.
David: So Carmelo Hayes is a favorite. I know you guys had Swerve and Keith Lee. How did you get Swerve and Keith Lee to come? Did you reach out to them? Did they reach out to you? Have you guys reached out to Carmelo Hayes, would you want to arrange a visit from him? I’m sure your kids would go bananas.
Victor: It started with Sasha Banks. So when she came that like opened the door for, I believe, other wrestlers to want to come to the club. She really put a spotlight on the Wrestling Club because she was the first person to literally reach out, her team, and she came. It was amazing. So when Keith and Swerve reached out, you know Will Washington, Swerve’s cousin is a big help with that. Like he interviewed me, we became good friends and he was like, ‘that’s my cousin.
You know I’ve been telling him about the Wrestling Club.’ So like that just came together, thankful to Will. So they reached out and we spoke and were like: yeah, like this is the day you can come and they were so professional, like even Sasha was professional. But like Swerve and Keith, like they were professional, like when it came to, like the planning, they were very accommodating for the school, for the schedule of the school, and it was just great. Carmelo, that’s my boy so he’s probably the number one supporter of the club and he’s going to come.
It’s just we don’t know when, you know? It’s like it’s hard to plan those things but Carmelo, his visit will be iconic and legendary for the kids in the school. But like, yeah, the door is always open to any wrestler but also to anyone in the business, because I want kids to see that there is a world in wrestling. That’s not just an actress on the stage, but there’s behind the scenes: creative writing, journalism, broadcasting, producing, fashion and seamstress work. There’s so much managerial work, correspondent work, being a ring announcer.
And, like my kids have all these personalities, and they all fit within that realm. So I really want the Wrestling Club to be like that door where people can come in and share their story and inspire the future. Like I really do believe that the Wrestling Club is the future of wrestling because I see in my kids’ faces a role for each of them, so it’d be cool to see them fulfill those roles, you know, as they get older.
David: So I have two young boys at home. They’re 12 and nine, seventh and fourth grade, and the fourth grader is really interested in wrestling, and he always asks me if I would ever want to be a wrestler and I was like, oh god, no, but I would give my right arm to be a referee.
Victor: Oh!
David: Because I love watching wrestling! I’m like, you cannot get a better seat than physically in the ring with these incredible performers. Like I would get to hold the belt. I don’t ever have to get beat for the belt, but I get to touch it, right? Occasionally take a really dramatic bump. You know like that would be the thing for me. If you like watching wrestling, how do you get a better seat in the house than that?
Victor: You know that’s a fact, that’s a fact.
David: So, yeah, I agree with what you were saying too, like there is a place in wrestling for everybody. Sasha’s husband is a wardrobe designer.
Victor: Yeah!
David: And you look at Paul Heyman. I’ve seen Paul Heyman. I can count the number of bumps that he’s taken on one hand, but every week, he is a vital part of what you saw on your TV every week for years and years. I’m curious how your kids would ever react if, like, Jim Cornette came to talk to you all.
Victor: He has a lot of insight. You know, you know people are polarizing and they have their own perspectives on things, but he’s a household name for a reason, and so there is some type of insight that could be shared and I’m sure the kids could be a sponge and learn from him.
David: My fourth grader this morning asked me because I told him about the website and I was doing the interview with you, and so he went out onto the website and he came down the kitchen. He goes David, who’s Eric Bischoff? And I was like, ‘oh man, how much time you got?’
Victor: Hilarious.
David: You said the kids have been kind of booking their own dream matches, crossover matches they’ve come up with.
Victor: Oh my god, that was a conversation that just happened randomly. We were watching Friday. It was a Speedball match….
David: With Jonathan Gresham?
Victor: It was a Speedball match, but I can’t remember the guy. It was guy we had never seen before. But then the kids are like, oh, imagine him versus Carmelo, and then another kid. Well, imagine Okada versus Roman, or imagine Seth Rollins versus this person. That was just like, wait a minute, pause. Are you all dream booking? And they were like yeah! So I said all right, the list, let’s run down the list. Give me like this created show. And so I gave them homework and their homework.
So like. I have three different classes that I teach-in the Wrestling Club. So the one after school, the more advanced, they’re like the kids who, like they, eat, sleep and breathe it to the point where it’s like obsession. And so like I gave them an assignment. I was like for your homework: dream matches, male or female, whatever you want, any company, any type of stipulation, book, your show. And so I can’t wait to read like what they booked for these three matches, and what type of matches. They all love ladder matches. So it’s like Roman Reigns is not going to be a ladder match guy.
So don’t do that and they’re like, ‘okay, okay, okay.’ So like I’m curious to see like what matches they book, because that would be fun to like, you know, read and like understand why, because you got to know like they, they see something in these people, otherwise they wouldn’t want to book them. You know, I mean, so I’m curious to know what is it about this person that you connect with and why you want to book him.
Like I told you Speedball, the kids have taken a liking to him, like how they took to Carmelo. I know why they like Carmelo, but Speedball’s different and I’m like, and I told him there’s something magical about you in the ring, because the kids love Speedball and it’s so cool to see like a superstar and they can find connection with that.
David: Have you ever shown them any Ricochet stuff when he was Prince Puma in Lucha Underground?
Victor: We are Ricochet stans, as well. Have not shown them Prince Puma yet, because I want to dedicate a whole unit to Prince Puma, but they have seen Ricochet and Will Ospreay and they lost their minds.
David: Was it the top rope match? [referring to their WCPW match where the top rope snapped early in the match]
Victor: No, not that one!
David: The best of the super juniors?
Victor: That was it.
David:I mean, you can’t go wrong either one. How about you personally? You got three dream matches, cross promotional. Whoever you can book, what would be your three?
Victor: Sasha, Mercedes versus…. Carmelo versus…. I would like to see Carmelo versus Speedball, Carmelo versus Seth Rollins, but I feel like that’s going to happen. So like that’s not really a dream. And then Okada, I would love to see Okada versus Ospreay, or Okada versus Reigns, or Okada versus pretty much anybody. You know, I feel like Okada could really be…. He’s like that wrestler that can just work with anybody in the ring.
David: So you mentioned, you have like three classes you teach with the Wrestling Club and some of them are more advanced. I asked you on Twitter about showing them like Attitude Era stuff because there’s a lot of blood. So I’m curious, like, do you ever go into the hardcore deathmatch stuff? Do you leave that alone because of the kids’ age? Is there like, October is where we focus on in-ring storytelling, November we’re spotlighting the women, December it’s all ladder matches and tag team specialists… What’s the criteria that goes into selecting the matches you guys watch?
Victor: So for the advanced class there’s a lesson involved. So like we started out from the beginning, we learned what kayfabe was, and then we learned about heels and baby faces and we did a whole extensive unit on, like Seth Rollins being a heel and a baby face and Bayley being a heel and a baby face. And then we moved on to promo work. And so kids know the different types of promos that can be cut and they understand the use of a promo and how it advances a story or advances a character.
And then we’ve recently moved on to what is a story in a match. So it’s like I have them shout out when we’re watching a match, when the story begins, the arm, the left arm, is the story of that match or the left knee or the neck, like they’re starting to pick that up. Like what is storytelling in the match, I have done. And so like for October, we did do a little bit of those spooky matches just for Halloween. We’re about to start a Survivor Series unit because Survivor Series is coming up.
So we’re look at war games and some survivor series elimination matches. Women’s revolution is coming, cannot wait for that. And then we will do some lucha, but I haven’t learned it myself. So I’m still trying to like figure out what to do when it comes to introducing them to that. But we do indie, where we just watch something from indie wrestling so like, just show them some indie stars, and then we do cross promotion matches so like Stardom and New Japan Pro.
We do AEW but it’s tough because the content, you can’t find much of the content like the full matches. So like, we haven’t been watching a lot. But the kids are familiar and they’re fans of like some of the stars. And I did show one match with blood to the kids, and it was the advanced class and several other kids didn’t like it. They were crying. So I was like ok. So I like, even though they are advanced and they know what is still scary because they look at these people as a superhero.
I remember one kid was crying when Mercedes was in a match with Charlotte and it was Hell in a Cell, and Mercedes was getting beaten up. And they were like, I don’t like seeing Mercedes lose like this. They’re still in that phase where they can’t distinguish between the character and the movement of the story versus it’s not really hurting them in a way. So I won’t show any blood no time soon, just unless it’s accidental blood. That’s fine, but when they’re leaking, it’s a problem.
David: I have a hard time with that. Even the Eddie Guerrero vs. JBL match, like I can’t revisit that. How did you yourself get into wrestling? Like when did you come up in wrestling?
Victor: I started like 2003 was like third grade. I think it was Velocity. It was Paul London and Brian Kendrick I saw in a tag team match. Because they were incredible, it’s like who are these superheroes doing all of these flips? That’s what intrigued me. My brother, he watched it, and he didn’t tell me and so when I told him about it, he was like oh man, I watched it all the time. Then we watched Raw and I saw Victoria. And because my mom’s name is Victoria, my name is Victor.
So I just automatically connected with her. I was her biggest fan. And then Randy Orton when he was doing the R.N.O, he was doing the news or whatever. I remember him vividly. I was like, he looks cool. I kept remembering like I want to watch him wrestle and then finally, in 2004, you know the Legend Killer thing. That’s when I was just like yeah, this is life, love, wrestling. I watched it all the way up until Victoria’s retirement, like 2009, and I followed her a little bit in TNA. But then it was hard to keep up with Spike TV and things like that.
I stopped watching and then I got into music and so I started doing music and going to high school, going to college. So I didn’t watch for about 10 years and then the pandemic hit and my brother stayed watching. He watched it all. He has not stopped watching it since third grade. He would just tell me about wrestlers and I’d be like I don’t really care, like I don’t know these people. I can’t connect with them, but he was always saying like Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins… I don’t remember those names and then when I saw it in 2020, I saw those three people and I was just like they’re incredible.
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