A feeling you can’t replace: Body slams and feisty feuds, Pioneer Valley wrestling has it all

By Hannah Bevis
For the Valley Advocate

All hope seems lost. The hero, the crowd favorite, Pedro “The Shot-Caller” Dones, lies defeated in the center of a wrestling ring.

The crowd lining the walls of the upstairs room of the Pulaski Club in Easthampton is hushed as Chris “The Don of PVP” Benne hoots triumphantly in celebration of a victory he didn’t earn; it was given to him unfairly by Antonio Zambrano, one of Benne’s employees and the “guest referee” of the match. Benne vaulted out of the ring and snatched up his belt while Zambrano, clearly conflicted, paces around, mulling over the ethics of what he’d just done.A flicker of hope ripples through the crowd – would Zambrano do what was right? Could he stand up to his boss?

Benne, still reveling in his glory, goes to hit Dones while he was still down. No! You’ve crossed a line! Suddenly, a flash of referee stripes as Zambrano throws himself in between Benne and Dones. The crowd roars their approval as the match, seemingly over, takes an unexpected twist. Now it’s two on one, with Zambrano and Dones teaming up to take down Benne and rightfully restore the belt to Dones.

And just like that, the story was over – the good guy prevailed, the bad guy got what was coming to him and the crowd goes home happy.

This is entertainment, distilled down to its purest essence. This is independent professional wrestling. Ask any wrestler about it, and they’ll say there isn’t another feeling like it in the world.

“You’ll be sore, banged up, but as soon as you go through the curtain, everything changes,” wrestler Sammy “Top 5 Dead or Alive” Diaz said on the emotion of wrestling. “As soon as the music hits, all that adrenaline picks up … If you could bottle it and sell it you’d be so rich, because it’s a feeling that you can’t replace.”

Specifically, this is the Friday Night Fiesta hosted by Pioneer Valley Promotions wrestling, a wrestling organization founded and run by Justin “The Hammer” Tunis, that hosts independent wrestling events around the Pioneer Valley. Not many people might know that there’s professional independent wrestling so close to home, but PVP has been around for a decade, founded by Tunis in 2015. Independent pro wrestling existed in the Valley before then, and Tunis got some behind-the-scenes experience. But when a local promotion company, Eastern Wrestling Alliance, closed its doors, there was an opportunity for Tunis to take a leap of faith and fill the void.

Tunis had some experience beforehand with behind-the-scenes managing of shows, and some might say he’s been preparing his whole life to to manage PVP.

“I have home movies as young as 10 years old, fifth grade, of me putting on a full event with my friend. We had all the costumes and picked all the wrestlers and we came out there and had matches on my trampoline,” Tunis said. “I’ve always enjoyed the setting up aspect of that, the managerial aspect.”

With support from other veteran wrestlers in the area and sage wisdom imparted by wrestling legends including Dr. Reginald Heresy and Jonny Idol, both in the New England Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame, PVP has taken off and stayed in business for 10 years now – though it’s very much a team effort.

On the day of an event, PVP has a very limited amount of time to set their ring up – they bring their own setup to every event, and need to get a box truck in order to transport the massive ring around to different venues. They rely on local wrestlers and their “street team,” other folks who help set the ring up and take charge of other behind-the-scenes logistics. They rarely get into the venue until hours before an event, so they have to hustle to set everything up before doors open. Wrestlers can show up closer to show time, but often they’re there hours before, meeting their opponent for the evening and walking through their bout.

“I don’t want to say it’s like a dance – it’s a live stunt performance, (that’s) the best way to put it,” said wrestler RJ Rude. “Every match is different, because each match you want to tell a different story.”

The second the first wrestler steps into the ring, the crowd is captivated, their attention fully fixed on what’s happening on the big stage in the center of a ballroom. It’s very much an interactive experience – the crowd openly voices their displeasure and enthusiasm all night long. Each match has a different tenor – during July’s Friday Night Fiesta, the first bout, a PVP Lineage Championship between Ichiban and Dustin Waller, featured two crowd favorites. Nobody wanted either wrestler to lose, and they’re both high-flying and acrobatic athletes, cartwheeling and bouncing around the ring so fast that it was hard to keep up with them.

Other matches have clear good guys and bad guys, like heel RJ Rude squaring off against hero Sammy Diaz. When Diaz fell in a heartbreaker, Rude basked in the boos, and while Diaz limped off in defeat, the crowd cheered him on to let him know they had his back.

Stories often build up over multiple matches, over the course of months or sometimes years. The actual action in the ring is often done “on the fly,” with some of the big moves worked out beforehand, but most everything else improvised along the way. But the drama, the soap opera-ness of it all, that can be planned months in advance, and is what gives each match meaning – the “business” of a match.

Performing to the crowd is a important part of wrestling. Entertainment is king, and keeping a crowd engaged is critical. But just as important is making sure all wrestlers get in and out of the ring uninjured. It takes years to train to be a pro wrestler, not just to get your fitness and technique where it needs to be, but also so you learn how to work in tandem with another wrestler in a ring with maybe an inch of mat to cushion your falls.

“If somebody ever asks you as a wrestler, what do you think the biggest things about being a wrestler are? Be safe and be entertaining,” wrestler Allin Bayno said. “Because if you’re safe, other guys will trust you to have a match with you, and if you’re entertaining, promoters will keep booking you because they know fans want to pay to see you.”

It’s not easy to be a wrestler in an independent organization like PVP. It can be a stepping stone to the big leagues like the WWE, and PVP has some success stories – currently, PVP alum Carmelo Hayes is starring in the WWE, and he’s not the only local wrestler to make it big. But most of the wrestlers here, though they might aspire to stardom, are doing this as a side hustle – they aren’t yet at the stage where they can make wrestling their full-time career. Their reasons for why they wrestle vary, but most of them saw a match when they were younger and it lit a fire in them that can’t be put out.

“There’s some fans where it’s like, they watch it and they just want to stick to watching it. I knew I had to get in the ring. I had to do it … I had to!” wrestler Brianna Bandz said. “I don’t know what to say. I just had to wrestle.”

Still, every wrestler is different: 18-year-old Liviyah has been in the wrestling scene basically her entire life thanks to her pro-wrestling father, “Edward G. Ecstacy.” She started training for wrestling when she was 12 and hopes that it can become her full-time profession one day.

RJ Rude balances being a wrestler with a day job and being a musician (he has occasionally been known to wrestle and play a show on the same day), and seasoned wrestler Dones teaches math in New York City, often traveling to wrestling performances right after he gets out of school and sometimes getting home around 2 a.m., collapsing into his bed for a few blissful hours of sleep before he has to get up and do it all over again. Did we mention he just got his master’s degree in school building leadership?

“(It’s) a good busy,” Dones said simply about his schedule. “Shout out to my mom and my dad, Maria Dones and Pedro Dones. They’re my rocks, they support me. My ex-wife, Tina San Antonio, who’s also a wrestler, her and I have a great relationship. I wouldn’t be here without her … and I don’t watch any TV, clock that right there,” he added cheekily.

Making it big is a goal, sure, and some wrestlers aspire to it – but wrestling is a thankless task, and one that someone has to love, deeply and purely, in order to pursue. Why else would you willingly throw yourself into a wrestling ring, fighting one on one with just a thin layer of lycra between you, your opponent and the unforgiving ring floor?

And yet, there’s something in the air at every PVP event. It can be hard to describe – every wrestler struggled to put into words exactly why they wrestle, what it is that keeps them coming back to the ring. But they know, deep down, what it is. The wrestlers know, the promoters know, the fans know. There’s the special something, a current of electricity thrumming through the air at every match.

They just can’t stay away from it.