SO YOU WANT TO WRESTLE?
Unique Saskatoon academy offers students chance to learn how to become pro wrestlers
Sask. school can teach you how to become a pro
Wrestling’s hard on the body, and I don’t have very many years left. So I decided to open up a school and give people the chance that I had.
Roberto Ureta sat riveted in front of his television virtually every Monday night during his teenage years, watching “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and Goldberg, the NWO and Degeneration X, dreaming of one day captivating a professional wrestling audience in much the same way he was enthralled by the larger-than-life superstars.
When he finally got the chance to enter the squared circle, reality hit him like a steel chair to the head.
“I think the crowd was yelling ‘Boring!’ It wasn’t great,” Ureta, now 35 years old, says with a laugh.
It was around 2001. Ureta was in the ring that night with Dice Steel, another newcomer to the industry. The match was held in between periods at a Saskatoon Blades home game.
It was in the very same arena — now known as Sasktel Centre — where Bret “Hitman” Hart beat “Nature Boy” Ric Flair to win the World Wrestling Federation heavyweight title, and where the likes of Andre the Giant, “Macho Man” Randy Savage, Ted Dibiase, Brock Lesnar and Triple H have battled under the lights.
Ureta and Steel quickly realized they had some work to do before they could even lace up the boots of those iconic figures.
The rough start didn’t dissuade Ureta, now 35, from chasing his dream. Nearly two decades of hard knocks in the ring eventually led him to his next venture — opening Saskatoon’s Prairie Pro Wrestling Academy in July 2018 and beginning to pass on what he has learned to others.
“Wrestling’s hard on the body, and I don’t have very many years left. So I decided to open up a school and give people the chance that I had,” he said.
The chance he describes took place in 2001 while Ureta was living in Regina. A knee injury had forced him to the sidelines. When he was ready to get back to wrestling, he trained with the man who would help take his ring craft to the next level.
Crash Crimson, a familiar name on the regional scene, took Ureta under his wing “and taught me pretty much everything I know when it comes to the in-the-ring part of professional wrestling.”
Crimson helped Ureta go from humble beginnings to an 18-year career.
Slowly and steadily, his game improved. He vividly recalls the moment, years after his debut disaster, when things were starting to click.
He was working with Vance Nevada, a famed pro wrestling historian who has wrestled well over 1,000 matches. Ureta felt like he belonged.
“That’s probably the one match I can remember from way back then that I felt really good about it.”