He’s bad but not nasty
Published 9:00 pm Thursday, October 26, 2006
Jacob Nanfito doesn’t sound like a bad guy. And he probably isn’t.
But the 26-year-old Everett resident’s alter ego, “Wild Card,” is the textbook definition of a bad guy.
He hits guys with chairs, chokes them, kicks them in the face. It’s all in a night’s work for a designated bad guy on the American Wrestling Association Pinnacle Pro Wrestling circuit.
Nanfito and his fellows wrestlers invade the Everett Armory at 7 p.m. Saturday for more than two hours of wrestling entertainment that will feature all the body slams, clotheslines and elbow drops you can handle. Promoters promise a more family-friendly environment than what is being presented in mainstream pro wrestling these days, an event free of the cursing, excessive blood and sexual innuendo found elsewhere.
“Wrestling started out as very much a family thing,” said Nanfito, a graduate of Marysville-Pilchuck High School.
But the TV version of the sport shifted its aim from kids and families to mostly adult men, which led to more violence and more innuendo.
“We’re trying to take it back to where it used to be,” Nanfito said. “We want kids to be able to go and get into it and yell and scream. We want everyone to come out and enjoy it all.”
The family-nature of the show provides a better challenge to the wrestlers who are trying to get reactions from the crowd.
“If you go out there and cuss and swear, to me, that’s the easy route to get a crowd reaction,” Nanfito said. “If you have to watch what you’re doing and at the same time get a reaction, you have to put more thought into it. That takes more skill and more creativity.”
And this is coming from a bad guy!
The top of Saturday Night’s “Can-Am Chaos” card features a battle between Seattle’s Caden Matthews and AWA Washington Champion T.J. Wilson of Calgary, Alberta. It also features Nattie Neidhart, the daughter of former wrestler Jim “The Anvil” Neidhart,” in a “Triple Threat” match against Nikki and Veronika.
Nanfito, aka “Wild Card,” partners with “Cadillac Callous” to make the tag-team of “Rollin’ 2 Deep.” The duo lost its tag-team championship in Everett last month and is issuing an open challenge on Saturday night, taking on any team that dares step up.
“We were good guys for a while, but that didn’t really play off too well,” Nanfito said. “As soon as we turned bad, it’s really taken off. “We have a new demeanor and attitude, we’re very cocky, we call the fans names, we get in their face, we cheat in the ring, we don’t care. We’ve hit some guys with some steel chairs pretty good, we’ve choked ‘em, kicked ‘em in the face. We have a manager who distracts the referee so we can cheat.”
Talking to Nanfito conjures up images of the earlier days of the World Wrestling Federation, when Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant and Rowdy Roddy Piper owned the ring and managers such as Jimmy Hart and Bobby “The Brain” Heenan taunted fans and refs.
“Those are the guys we try to emulate,” Nanfito said, “the old school of wrestling. We want to learn from those guys.”
Victor Balta: 425-339-3455 or vbalta@heraldnet.com.
