Wrestling with success
Montour graduate chasing his dream
After racking up 119 career wins and taking home a PIAA third-place medal as a senior — the highest finish ever by a Montour wrestler at the PIAA tournament — Roman Macek dominated his way to a 19-4 technical fall victory in the 285-pound weight class at the 2017 Pittsburgh Wrestling Classic, then left his shoes on the mat to signal the end of his wrestling career.
“As time expired, I took him down and got the tech fall and put my shoes on the center of the mat, and everyone was like, ‘This kid is not wrestling in college?’” Macek said. “No one reached out to me until I got third in the state.”
Heavyweights often get recruited less than state placewinners in smaller weight classes, but Macek already had other plans anyway. An all-state offensive and defensive lineman in high school, he would spend the next five years playing football at Duquesne, becoming a standout lineman for the Dukes while pursuing a law degree and a career as a sports agent.
Nobody could have known back then, but it turns out the 6-foot-2, 280pound behemoth wasn’t done wrestling after all — only now, it’s a whole new kind of wrestling.
After being invited to a three-day tryout at the Dallas Cowboys’ practice facility during Wrestlemania weekend this past April, Macek received an offer from the WWE for a threeyear deal to join the company’s developmental roster and train at the WWE Performance Center in Orlando, Fla. Macek has been a devout WWE fan since he was a child, and this is an opportunity he had always dreamed of — but he never imagined it would come true.
“I don’t think I can remember a time without watching it,” Macek said about his WWE fandom. “I’ve lived in a lot of different houses, and I can remember watching it in every single one of them.”
Surely, then, signing the contract would be the easiest decision of his life, right? Actually, it was quite the opposite.
Although he already used up his redshirt when he tore his ACL going into his junior season in 2019, Macek still had one more year of eligibility at Duquesne because of the NCAA’s special “COVID year.” Now, Macek had to decide whether he wanted to accept the WWE’s offer or return to Duquesne as a sixth-year senior for one final season. The Dukes finished 7-3 last fall after a shortened 4-1 season in the spring that ended in a heartbreaking overtime loss in the NEC championship.
“The hardest part of making my decision was, if I were to go to the WWE — leaving my teammates behind,” Macek said. “[It was] very hard, because I feel like this was my chance to be — this would be my last year. I always look at it like, you build your way up. You build respect. Your freshman year, you respect the older guys.
“I thought that I was able to lead this team into being something great. But me leaving doesn’t change that, because these guys are something special.”
Above all else, the support Macek received from his teammates and coaches to go pursue his dream in the WWE helped assure him he was making the right decision.
“I would have made the decision on my own either way,” Macek said. “But I made sure my teammates were at least able to voice their opinions and my coaches, and I wanted to get everyone’s thoughts before I made a decision. Everyone was so supportive. I don’t think there was one person who told me not to go.
“Even my head coach [Jerry Schmitt] was like, ‘Ah, man, I knew you would get a contract.’”
After a couple months of reflection and deep thought, Macek made his way down to Orlando to begin his training at the end of June. He then announced his decision via Twitter on Aug. 16, effectively saying goodbye to his football career at Duquesne and embarking on a new journey with the WWE. He now trains every day from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Performance Center, working on everything from in- ring moves to crafting a persona on the mic and studying the history of pro wrestling.
“I love the storytelling and the entertainment side of the WWE,” Macek said. “What I would tell anyone who said, ‘It’s fake,’ or whatever — go take a few bumps and then tell me it’s fake. My body is hurting 24-7. Just like it is in football. I think it’s more of a strain on the body, even than football. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Harder than football, harder than law school.”
Unlike his close friend Gina DeLucia, a Mars grad who also received a developmental contract offer from the WWE in April, Macek hasn’t yet come up with any background for his “gimmick,” let alone picked a name for his character or decided whether he’ll be a heel (bad guy) or face (good guy). He still has plenty of time to work on that with the WWE creative team, of course.
For now, Macek’s focus is on learning the business from the ground up. After a few months of training, he will likely begin his TV career on “Level Up,” which airs on Peacock at 10 p.m. Fridays. After that, wrestlers who show enough potential are called up to perform on “NXT” on USA Network on Tuesday nights. Eventually, if he’s good enough, Macek’s ultimate goal is to get promoted to the main roster, where he would find himself competing on either “Monday Night Raw” or “Smackdown!” on Friday nights.
“I will do whatever they want me to do,” Macek said. “Personally, I feel like I’m a natural babyface. I feel like I’m a fun guy, but it would be fun to be a heel. I love being booed. It’s fun being at away games and you have the student section right behind you, cursing you out.”
Macek is an engaging speaker with an outgoing personality, traits when coupled with his monstrous build and natural athleticism that could have him ticketed for stardom. He still has a long way to go, but Macek couldn’t be happier with the position he’s in.
“If I could go back, I wouldn’t change a thing, because I wouldn’t be where I am right now,” Macek said.