Students for 60K Host Pro-Wrestling Fundraiser at NHS

Three dozen wrestlers are getting ready to beat the living daylights out of each other this Friday, all in the name of charity.

New York Wrestling Connection, a pro wrestling federation based out of Deer Park, is coming to l with a full roster of one-on-one and tag-team matches. Proceeds from the event will go directly to Students for 60,000 (SF60K), a Northport High School club dedicated to providing care and support for the needy. I t was named for the 60,000 homeless of New York City at the time of the club's founding in 1987.

“My daughter is in SF60K and is very active with their fundraising,” said John Curcie, founder of NYWC and a 1982 graduate of Northport High School. “We’re really excited to come back to Northport and looking forward to putting on a good show.”

Pro wrestling has long been a passion for Curcie. As a child, he said he used to sneak his television under his sheets at midnight and turned on Channel 9 to watch his favorite wrestlers ike Bruno Samartino and Chief Jay Strongbow.

As an adult, Curcie went from watching the matches to being part of the action himself, training at the ECW House of Hardcore and competing in independent promotions around the region. It was through these local matches that he was approached in 2000 about opening up his own wrestling school in Hicksville.

“Once you have a wrestling school, you have all these guys that need a place to wrestle, especially since Long Island isn’t known as a hotbed for pro wrestling,” said Curcie. “We had a garage that could barely fit the ring and didn’t have heat or running water, but we packed over 100 people in once or twice a month.”

Eventually, Curcie hooked up with a local promoter in Deer Park and NYWC began to take off. Approximately 30 to 40 wrestlers will appear at any given show and compete in the same types of matches seen on WWE. In addition to the NYWC Championship and Tag Team belts, there’s also an Interstate Championship belt and a Hi-Fi Championship belt for light heavyweights.

NYWC even has their own version of Wrestlemania every January called Psycho Circus.

“That’s the one event where we really go all out and have ladder matches (where the match can only be won by climbing on top of a 15-foot ladder to grab a championship belt), table matches (where the match can only be won by driving your opponent through a table) and barbed wire matches,” said Curcie.

Curcie said that the majority of the wrestlers in NYWC come straight from their training school, where athletes will spend anywhere from six months to a year training two or three nights a week. The school offers aspiring pro wrestlers a crash course in fitness, showmanship skills and in-ring maneuvers.

“We have every type of athlete come through here,” said Curcie. “Almost all of them have other jobs or are in school. You get guys who want to have fun and do this as a side venture on the weekends, and we’ve had other guys who have gone on to wrestle in the WWE.”

Although the motives of his students at the school may vary, Curcie said that pro wrestling is not for the faint of heart.

“It’s not like you would come here in the same way you would go for a class at the gym,” Curcie said. “You do get hurt and you do get bumps and bruises, so you have to love the sport. That being said, we have people of all fitness levels coming down, and most of our guys lose a lot of weight through the cardio work that’s part of training.”

Even if you’re not a fan of pro wrestling, Curcie said it might still be worth coming to Northport High this Friday to check out the event.

“If they’re not wresting fans, what we usually hear from people is that it’s not what they expected and that they’re impressed by the level of athleticism they see in the ring,” said Curcie. “If they already are fans, many of them like it more than the WWE because it’s an intimate setting and you feel like you’re part of the action.”

Curcie said to expect NYWC to pull out all the stops for a fun- and action-filled event.

“Who knows,” said Curcie. “I may even have to lace my boots up again for this one.”