I have been a fan of professional wrestling my entire life. I grew up watching WWF and WCW very early on. In fact I am not sure if I ever missed a pay per view during my childhood. Even though my parent’s may not have been able to afford it financially, they ordered every pay per view for me and I sat glued at the television. Although he may deny it, I think my father may have been just as much of a fan as I was. I even remember going to my first show in Washington DC and it was a house show that felt like a pay per view. I will never forget that event. Even in my high school years I still continued to love watching wrestling. I remember watching it with my uncle and we would flip between WWF and WCW during the Monday Night Wars. It was a great time for wrestling.
As much as I enjoyed wrestling I never knew about independent wrestling. I remember going to some small show at the Jaffa that had a few names like the Bushwackers and a whole bunch of guys I never heard of. It was independent wrestling, but at the time I still had no clue about it. Then came ECW for me. It was something different, but I enjoyed it. I went to countless shows at the Jaffa when they came into town, but I was limited how I could see them until one Saturday night I was at my grandparents house in Ashville. My grandparents didn’t have cable where they lived, but they had an antenna on the roof that picked up a decent amount of stations. That one Saturday ECW came on the tv late at night and I was in heaven because I now knew I had the ability to watch ECW on a regular basis. After that lets say I spent a lot of Saturday nights at my grandparent’s house. Still though, I didn’t know about independent wrestling and what it was.
One day at work though a lady I worked with Marge called me over and introduced me to a guy. He introduced himself as Kato. Marge was handling all of the printing of flyers for his wrestling shows. She introduced me because she knew I built graphics/websites and that I liked wrestling. Kato and I talked briefly, but it was the start of learning about independent wrestling. A few days later I purchased a ticket for myself and at that time wife to attend his next show. It was one of KCW’s early shows of the company. I had a blast and really enjoyed what I saw, even though I did not know anyone who was wrestling. After the show I got to talk more to the guy I met Kato and shortly after that I started doing the website for his company Keystone Championship Wrestling or what most people know it as KCW. I wasn’t doing it for money, but for the opportunity to go to shows. I am so glad I did because little did I know KCW would become a huge part of my life and I met a lot of great people through it all.
After a while I approached Kato about training with the company because I thought it was something I wanted to do. I mean come on as a child we all pretended to be a wrestler and loved it. I trained for a little while and I really wanted to do it. My body though had other thoughts. I was maybe 120 lbs soaking wet back then and taking bumps in the ring made my body feel like it was falling apart. I would go to training and wake up the next day barely able to even walk. By the time I would start feeling better, it would be back to training. I even would pop painkillers without anyone knowing just to get through it all. That is something I don’t think I ever told anyone to this day. Eventually I knew I wasn’t going to be able to keep doing it because to me it wasn’t worth how I felt daily. I had to go to work and I had a family to support. Do I regret it? Often, but it was for the better for me and my family at the time. I was straight up with Kato and I think he respected that. I asked if I could still be involved and he let me. I continued doing the website and anything I could to help during shows. I did this up until the day KCW closed it’s doors for good. What a sad day that was because I had a lot of great memories.
Fast forward a few years and I met with Kato and Dave Daniels at Hooters about bringing wrestling back. We had some great ideas, but it didn’t happen. I would have loved to seen it happen at the time, but with how things in life worked out I am glad it didn’t. A little while later I would move to Delaware and would rediscover independent wrestling. A company called ECWA ran about 15 minutes down the road from my house. Little did I know, but a friend I made through KCW wrestled at ECWA. He was none other than Bobby Shields. I would attend many ECWA shows while living in Delaware, but to me it wasn’t the same as KCW. Maybe it’s because I was sitting in the stands just watching shows? Eventually though I moved back to Altoona and really didn’t have independent wrestling to go to unless I traveled to Pittsburgh, which I would do every so often.
Fast forward a few years and every once in a while I would bug Kato about bringing wrestling back. It never happened until July 24th, 2018 when I got a message from Kato about meeting up to discuss this. I was super happy to see that message and was excited to meet. In fact we met that same day down at G-Raver’s tattoo shop in Newry, PA. We discussed a few things and he said he knew a few people who would get involved also. I told him I was on board and let’s make this happen. We moved quick and August 5th, 2018 Kato, Mike Lattieri, Donnie Cyphert, and myself all started discussing this.
One of the earliest challenges we faced was finding a building to run in. Kato and I spent a good deal of time looking at buildings. We found a lot that could work, but none that would fit our budgets for shows or would allow wrestling events. Finally we found our home at the Juniata Civic Association building and I am glad we did. It was the perfect fit for us. We spent some time discussing the perfect name. We didn’t want it to be just letters like you see with most independent wrestling companies and we went back and forth on many names. Finally we all agreed on Imagine Wrestling. August 26th, 2018 we introduced our logo, social media, and website. That was when it all started becoming real.
The next step of Imagine Wrestling was getting our school open. December 6th, 2018 we opened the door to our school with just three students. A few days later we had an open house for the public to come see the school and for potential students to see what the school was about. As funny as it sounds, even the PA Athletic Commission showed up. Not sure if someone called them on us or what, but they showed up thinking it was a show. We all got a chuckle out of it. Later that day we announced that our first show was going to be March 9th, 2019. Going into this all we only had that show planned and maybe one more. We discussed we would do one show and discuss the second show. We all agreed to keep going forward for show two. Show two the interest was still going, so we decided to keep running and I signed a lease for multiple dates.
I don’t want to say everything has been easy, because it sure hasn’t. At one point I debated on if I wanted to keep doing this. We have had some hiccups on the way, but we keep pushing forward. Here we are 7 shows in the book and getting ready for our 8th show to finish out the year. It’s been a lot of work, but from this I have made some more great friends and have had a lot of fun as well. We couldn’t have done this though without all of you fans of Imagine Wrestling and that is why on November 16th we are doing our Family Appreciation Night. We call it that because we consider you all family. I hope you all enjoy the show and continue supporting Imagine Wrestling. I am looking forward to what the future of Imagine Wrestling brings. I can tell you this, I have already sent our 2020 dates to the building, will be signing the lease, and look forward to announcing them to you all soon. Get your tickets for Family Appreciation Night and witness as we send 2019 out with a bang on November 16th. Thank you all again for your support!
Sincerely,
Jeremy Chaplin
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