FIGHT CLUB
As Indians make it to the big leagues of WWE
prowrestling, more are dreaming the dream. Take a look inside the new academies and training camps offering to teach them how to perfect a chokeslam, land a bump
When a wrestler weighing 250 lb jumps off the ring ropes onto his opponent in a professional- or prowrestling match, everyone knows it’s not real. The big, burly men and women oozing sweat and aggression are playing their part in a carefully scripted show. The triumphs and losses are staged. But the dangers can be very real and one does not become a pro wrestler just by jumping into a ring.
It takes training, determination and practised choreography. And as more Indians make it to the big leagues, there are now academies popping up that promise to help recruits become the next Rock, John Cena or Great Khali.
Professional wrestling came to Indian television in the 1990s. Remember those trading cards, featuring a massive Yokozuna (Chest: 50 inches) and a very surly The Rock (Biceps: 32 inches); the drama and aggression, betrayals and intricate backstories?
“When I was about five, I remember sitting with my family in front of the television in our house in Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar. My grandparents were big fans and they sort of got us kids, my two sisters, my brother and me, interested too,” says Vinayak Sodhi, 28, who now runs Wrestle Square in Noida that trains and promotes pro-wrestlers in the country.
In 2002, WWF became WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment), following a legal conflict with the UK-based World Wide Fund for Nature, or WWF. A new batch of stars like Batista, Randy Orton and John Cena debuted. As the entertainment business boomed, however, WWE faded into the background in India.
Over the past three years, World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc, has made a concerted effort to change that. “India is a jewel for us,” WWE’s chief strategy and finance officer, George Barrios, said in an interview in 2017.
In 2007, the 7’1” Dalip Singh Rana aka The Great Khali became the first Indian on the WWE world championship circuit.
Indian representation at tryouts has grown; at the 2017 round in Dubai, 10 of the 35 aspirants were Indian. There have also been attempts to woo the Hindi-speaking audience, via a partnership with Sony Ten 3 that offers live Hindi commentary and weekly reruns of flagship shows.
A year after The Great Khali’s contract ended and he exited the enterprise in 2014, WWE inducted another Indian, Satender Dagar aka Jeet Rama. Four more — Rinku Singh Rajput, Saurav Gurjar, Amanpreet Singh, and their first Indian woman, Kavita Devi — were recruited between October 2017 and February 2018.
“I believe that many Indian athletes will make it to the elite level,” Paul Levesque aka Triple H, executive vice-president for talent at WWE, added to HT. “This will ensure we have more localised content and athletes, which will encourage fans to tune into WWE.”
And as Indians join the big leagues, fans are turning adoration to aspiration.
“I was passionate about pro-wrestling in my youth but my father was against it, so I would get together with friends and mimic moves we saw on TV,” says Ramesh Kashyap aka Shaka, 44, who runs an electronics store in Delhi and now trains at Wrestle Square in Noida. “There were no pro-wrestling training schools then; now things are different. I’ve got my two daughters married and have enough free time to pursue my dream of becoming a wrestler.”
INDIA IN THE RING
There are currently a handful of training academies in India — most are based in Noid, Haryana and Punjab, but they’re holding exhibition games and recruiting bouts in states like Jammu and Kashmir, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Some are small, free and operate out of a basement; others train hundreds every years on campuses sprawled across acres.
Continental Wrestling Entertainment (CWE) Academy in Jalandhar, established by Khali in 2015, trains 200 students each year on its 8-acre campus. Kavita Devi aka Hard KD trained here.
Noida’s Wrestle Square, also launched in 2015, offers six-month courses and the opportunity to participate in bouts and fight pro-wrestlers from the US, Thailand and Japan, at public exhibition matches. Freak Fighter Wrestling (FFW) in Haryana has been organising pro-wrestling events across the country since 2010.
Though the methods and moves are different in each academy, the aim is the same — to promote pro-wrestling in India, create wrestlers with a distinct identity and domestic fan base, and then hope at least a couple will end up at the WWE tryouts as Kavita did.
“In the past, WWE executives have travelled over the globe and scouted athletes locally. That’s how we found Kavita Devi,” explains Levesque. These efforts have become more structured, with the launch of a WWE recruitment website last week that lets applicants apply online. “We want to find the best there is in India and around the world,” Levesque says.
For those running the academies, this is good news. “The idea of setting up a prowrestling academy is to explain to people that you don’t have to be a Khali to make it big, you just need to have jazba (zeal) and junoon (passion),” says Khali.
There are those who would argue, however, that it makes more sense to focus on the real sport of wrestling and the struggling akhadas. “This is not a sport; there are no regulations. There is no real competitiveness, as there is in akhada-style wrestling,” says wrestler and Arjuna awardee Geetika Jakhar.
The impact on health is a concern too. In most pro-wrestling training sessions, there are no doctors present. “Bumps and bruises are part of any sports training, but wrestlers need to be extra cautious about neck, lower back, shoulder and knee injuries, which can even be fatal,” says Dr Ameet Pispati, director of orthopaedic surgery at Mumbai’s Jaslok hospital. “Whiplash, dislocation and hamstring injuries are common; they need time to heal. All this needs medical supervision.”
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The idea of setting up an academy is to explain to people that you don’t have to be a Khali to make it big, you just need to have jazba (zeal) and junoon (passion).
DALIP SINGH RANA AKA THE GREAT KHALI , India’s first WWE pro-wrestler and founder of the CWE Academy in Jalandhar