Televised wrestling event to rattle St. Clair College
Windsor’s Scott D’Amore started his local wrestling dream a quarter century ago as a 19-year-old kid with more guts than know-how. Now the seasoned wrestling impresario will bring a large-scale TV event to Windsor that will be seen in 120-plus countries. “It really is a production size that Windsor very rarely sees,” D’Amore said this week. “And one thing that’s important to us: we sourced as much as possible locally. As a guy who was born and raised here and is still a Windsor guy, it’s great to bring something like this to the community — and for so many people to get an opportunity to work on something of this scale.”
Far and away the largest televised wrestling show ever shot in Windsor — four episodes of Impact Wrestling, filmed with some 50 performers and 70 crew members — will rattle St. Clair College this weekend.
And the 43-year-old D’Amore, promoted this year to executive vice-president of Impact Wrestling, will pull the strings in his hometown — the place where he helped launch Border City Wrestling.
It was at a doughnut shop. At midnight.
He met with the Canadian Destroyer, Doug Chevalier, who trained D’Amore at wrestling, and Chuck Fader, a local music promoter to chat about their favourite topic in a city that has produced wrestling legends Killer Kowalski and Abdullah the Butcher. The rest is history.
“I was just a young hungry guy,” D’Amore recalled about the discussion that spawned Border City Wrestling in 1993.
“I had two friends. One was an experienced wrestling trainer, the other had been a rock ’n’ roll and punk music promoter who was a fan of wrestling.
“The three of us sat down at Snackin Good Donuts one night around midnight and hatched this completely ridiculous plan to start a wrestling company. And I’m sitting here 25 years later having had The Rock and Rey Mysterio and Bret Hart and everybody else come through.”
Other wrestling icons who have tangled in Border City Wrestling productions include Edge, Christian, Chris Jericho, D’Lo Brown and many more. D’Amore did more than arrange fights, of course. He also fought, from 1993 to 2000, making it as high as WWF (now WWE) undercards. Plus, he rassled around the world, including Europe and Japan at the renowned Ryōgoku Sumo Hall.
“A lot of my friends said they used to love waking up hung over on a Saturday or Sunday morning and turning on the TV and seeing who was going to beat the heck out of me that week,” D’Amore recalled. “But, hey, it was a great experience.”
He logged hour after hour on the road and in the ring, sometimes fighting seven days a week and twice on Sunday.
He has had shoulder surgery and four knee surgeries and has a plate and four screws in his hand. But the time in 1998 when he fractured his neck — at a little arena in northern Manitoba, in a town whose name he never even knew — remains most frightening. He was performing a classic wrestling takedown called a DDT, going head first into the mat, when an injured shoulder gave out and he landed on his head. He lay quadriplegic for a horrifying 90 seconds.
“It was one of the scariest moments of my life, not being able to move,” D’Amore said.
Edge played with the crowd while D’Amore felt tingling in his fingers and toes, and eventually a reduced show went on.
That was then, this is now. D’Amore works behind the scenes these days, as he will for the big show Friday and Saturday: Border City Wrestling Presents Impact Wrestling. Impact Wrestling — formerly Total Nonstop Action Wrestling — owned by Anthem Entertainment, airs on Fight Network in Canada and on many other networks around the world. The two nights at St. Clair College’s main campus will form four weekly episodes of Impact Wrestling, the organization’s first entire shows taped in Windsor. “People will get to see the real drama aspect of wrestling,” D’Amore said. “With this being a television taping for worldwide distribution you’ll see a lot more back and forth and you’ll see some of the Shakespeare, as we call it.” Part of the theatrics will include stars Austin Aries and Katarina, both former WWE talent, and Quinn (Moose) Ojinnaka, a former NFL offensive lineman who has huddled with both Peyton Manning and Tom Brady. Moose actually trained for professional wrestling in Windsor, at D’Amore’s Can-Am Wrestling School.
“This is like a homecoming for me,” Moose said. “Windsor’s my second home. I trained there and I’ve done shows there. Without Scott, I wouldn’t be where I am today. He’s definitely the biggest key to my success. He taught me pretty much everything I know.” On the weekend, the six-footfive, 295-pound Moose plans to go all out.
“I’m going to show fans things they don’t normally see a big guy do,” he said. “I’ll just have fun. Windsor fans know what to expect.”